Let’s stop talking about Harvey Weinstein for a second. When I was 11, my gym teacher told me to kiss his cheek, in front of a crowd of peers, his and mine. Was that appropriate? Should I have made a fuss? Am I supposed to know that at 11? I let him do it because I knew it would be over and done. At my last summer job, before leaving college, the hands and eyes of male supervisors were wandering constantly, on a thigh, as a shoulder rub, in the dress code. I wasn’t staying long so I literally let it slide. Should I have said something? It was never that bad, but who determines what “that bad” is and where the line is? When I worked in a local pub, the hands and eyes of most customers were everywhere. Is that just part of the job description, when serving beer to 50-year-old factory workers every day? And, at 20, I figured it was normal, nothing around me told me otherwise.

Do the Weinsteins of the world start that way, or do they get away with little things incrementally, until it becomes unacceptable and where on earth is the line?

The line of course is “my body, keep your hands off” but my personal examples all show that I didn’t do that. What is an over-reaction? Is anything an over-reaction? And, when you are the young woman with no power and no experience, how the hell do you know what to do?

What Weinstein did is both deplorable, shocking and yet completely unsurprising. Everyday sexism is rampant, but do we diminish the little things when we engage only with the big things? We only pay attention when it gets big, but everything big has a root system.