Once when I was a teenager, my mother called me from the mall because a man was masturbating in the parking lot she needed to walk through to get home. Could I come get her?
My mother was small, but not easily intimidated. I had seen her tell off leering men in forceful Puerto Rican Spanish. So if she was asking, it was because she was worried. I picked my scrawny self up and, burning with impotent rage, went to chaperone her home.
That’s a long way of saying that I’m not terribly surprised by what #MeToo has revealed. If you have a mother or a girlfriend or eyes, it’s hard not to be aware of the aggressive entitlement that many men feel toward women’s bodies.
Most men are not, I’d wager, serial harassers or rapists. But problematic male behavior seems widespread enough that it suggests our conception of masculinity is flawed. I have a beautiful young son now, and I wonder: How can I instill in him a code that prevents him from becoming a groper or harasser? How do I raise a man who will never be a rapist?
