Ordinary Men
This is the face of the man who molested me. What you see is someone who could be your father’s colleague; your mother’s best friend’s husband; the father of your friend; a teacher; a mentor; a scholar. Ordinary.
What I see instead is a man who managed to be all of those things at the same time he was molesting me and harassing other women. To you, he’s nothing when taken out of context, except that I can’t do that. I do not have the choice of unseeing his face. This face — though younger — appears all the time, at the most annoying and intimate circumstances. Like when I’m reading something, anything. Or on a date. Or in class. Or having sex with my husband. Or getting married. Or talking to a student about her own assault. His face is imprinted on my brain.
The banal fact is that most women (and many men) have someone just as ordinary in their pasts, sometimes more than one ordinary man. They are not monsters, they are not especially attractive, they are not men we would look at twice while walking down the street. That is the key to their inner ugliness: they are everywhere, and nothing stands out. If you are a man and reading this, they are you. Or your friend. Or your relative. If you are a woman reading this, they’re everywhere. Don’t bother trying to figure out who they are because they are legion.
These men reproduce. We live in a society that allows and encourages dominance and power over women and the weak. When we don’t call them out and make them stop and prosecute them for causing us violence and pain we add these man to the so-many-other men who have done the same things that violate, hurt, shame, destroy. We approve of them when we don’t do anything about those they hurt. What they do is ordinary and therefore they are ordinary.
Making a fuss, creating a scene, exposing a shanda fur die Goyim, being a jerk, a bitch, a cunt, a traitor, these are all what we will do or be until it is normal to grab and raise the hand that creeps up your skirt on the subway. Or when it’s normal to tell your brother that you’re turning him in to the police. Once we are as angered by those who cause harm then we can change how we feel about those who were harmed. The power of disgust needs to be turned on those who hurt us and not against those who are hurt. We need to estrange what they do from what is right.
Fix your gaze on this ordinary man and imagine anyone else’s eyes there: your professor, your postal carrier, your waiter, your father. Because you might as well. Any man’s eyes could go there. We can redact the eyes all we want, and we are left with man after man after man after man who have a black slash through their face in photos. It really doesn’t matter whether we know them or not because we can’t actually tell them apart unless they’re our molester. Otherwise, they’re just a guy. Nothing to see, move along. Until we hear about the next one.