Last year I called the police on a man who was jerking off in a school car park. He had his phone pressed against the glass while it played hardcore porn and children walked past with their parents. The police thanked me for my call. I saw him there again a week later.

I wonder, in a case like Harvey Weinstein’s, whether the fact of his great power excuses other men. It’s an extreme situation: a Hollywood heavyweight, a serial predator. He’s spent years systematically abusing his power to make women think they have no choice. He’s been protected by a perpetual system that abuses women and gives everyone a reason to think ‘that’s just how it is’. Everyday, knockabout blokes can’t find themselves in him. There is simply no comparison between his high-profile scandal and the time they grabbed a chick’s tits on that pub crawl.This hyper-reality separates the man from the problem. Dehumanised, Weinstein becomes an anomaly, a fluke, something other than the offspring of processes designed to oppress and disempower women. Allegations came from dozens of women in the industry, and the men who had been silent—who could not find their reflection in Hollywood—began to shout at a monster that wasn’t themselves.Women have seen two options today: watch another case be attributed to ‘a bad egg’, or draw the comparison themselves and wear that hard labour.