Opinion | In the Sean Combs and Dominique Pelicot Trials, the Dehumanization of Women Is Exhibit A

I was raped in college by an ostensibly nice guy who was not a stranger to me.I think that’s a banal statement of fact, but if that sentence makes you uncomfortable, I understand why.

I describe it this way to point out how common my experience is.We regard rape in the public dialogue as an exceptional event, something that happens only in extraordinary situations.

Pop culture — police procedurals in particular — have taught viewers to think of “real” rape as a thing that strangers do in dark alleys.But the reality is that most sexual assault happens in situations where the victims know their attackers.I was thinking about this as friends and I were discussing the horrific case of Gisèle Pelicot, whose husband of many years, Dominique Pelicot, drugged her repeatedly and invited dozens of men over to rape her.

More than 50 men are on trial — a range of ages, some in their 20s, some in their 70s — for raping her while she was unconscious.In New York this week, Sean Combs, otherwise known as Diddy, was in court regarding sex trafficking and racketeering charges.Prosecutors say he hired sex workers to perform at parties he called “freak offs,” then coerced them, using drugs and threats, into sexual acts.

This follows the revelation, in May, of a 2016 video that showed him dragging his then girlfriend Cassie Ventura by her hair and beating her in a hotel hallway.(She later brought a lawsuit against Mr.

Combs that he quickly settled.)The cases are so dramatic and their scale is so sweeping that it’s easy to miss how much they have in common: Both cases involve principals who have either been accused of or have confessed to raping or abusing women they claimed to love (a wife, a girlfriend).Combined, the cases involve dozens of men who are accused of enabling these acts and even participating when they thought they’d get away with it.It’s also easy to miss how much these cases have in common with everyday reality.It might seem obvious to say ...