Serena brilliantly named the thing that was happening to her while it was happening. I wish every woman in the stands had rushed down to the courts to support her and refuse the demeaning spectacle. Watching clips of Ramos, his body language, his face, his lean, it is the thing we cannot tolerate for another moment. This Me-too is happening every fucking second of the day and night, girls and women warned they can’t object, they can’t loathe unfairness, they can’t dream the murder of everything that points a finger and sends them to their rooms. Serena, more and more you are made to embody our vast and loud refusal.

At the heart of the control of women’s bodies is a desire to curtail their pleasure. Good girls who behave politely on tennis courts, for example, receive approbation. Being good feels bad. It gives no pleasure. Different forms of pleasure are all the things that Christian morality and other religions have categorized as sins or errors or whatever the fuck negative term they apply. Males for the most part get a pass. Their pleasure is supported. Their pleasure excuses their aggressions against others, especially women. One of the most degrading roles you can assign to women and women will assign to themselves is the role of moral guide, moral uplifter. I’m not going to refine what I’m saying here. It’s a thought I had while washing a plant dish. Don’t correct me. I’ll delete you. It feels good.

Men like Ramos understand themselves as men in encounters such as his with Serena yesterday. He feels his anger rise. He has been challenged by a female, and everything in his being and from the culture that has made him and surrounds us all tells him in a way he is not conscious of his responses are correct and lawful. He feels no hesitation and doubt, and why should he? Where in society or in his private life would he learn he is a puppet, acting according to a set of commands?