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Stanisław Baj (Polish, born June 3, 1953)

Rzeka Bug [Bug River], 2020

Oil on canvas

30 x 24 inches

Put out by the suggestion that the sexism implied by these patterns was real or potentially constituted a form of violence, a nineteen-year-old man at the back of the classroom asked, “What’s the difference between sharing a picture of my toaster and sharing a picture of my naked girlfriend? Either way, the picture is mine.”

The student may have been trying to be amusing, but he asked the question with a straight face. He was sitting in a scrum of men who were also eager for an explanation. “I mean, if she gives it to him,” another asked, “what does she expect?” I waited to see if anyone in the class was going to disagree.

The young man’s choice of a toaster was fascinating. He equated the woman in the photograph with an actual tool, perceiving both in terms of their instrumentality. They were inert, possessions to be used, and lacking in self-determination. A toaster, coincidentally, contains warm slits and produces consumable pleasures. If the woman, unlike a toaster, had any boundaries that should be respected, they were easily done away with in the subtle shift from subject to object. Stymied and laughing to myself, I couldn’t figure out how to answer his question in the scant few minutes left. Women and toasters are different. Did I really have to explain this? Out loud?

The other students were cavalier about the question. It was clear that they could comfortably overlook the fact that the issue didn’t hinge on the man’s possession of the woman’s picture or his use of a particular technology, but, instead, on his disregard for the woman as a person. No one brought up the woman’s potential emotional response, consent, privacy, or agency. The entire conversation centered around the man’s property rights and, as one student insisted, his “freedom of expression.”

No one seemed outraged by his carelessness and what it represented. Perhaps the women in the room did feel personally insulted and angry, but no one said anything. The slight represented by the man’s question was irrelevant to them. It certainly didn’t strike them as gendered, despite the overwhelmingly gendered nature of what he was describing. His assertion was, in a deep way, an assertion of relative status. In it, I saw threats to safety, health, physical integrity, and a whole host of other practical outcomes. Maybe, I thought, the women simply saw an asshole and felt no insult or threat. The issue of dignity didn’t come up at all. I perceived insult; others did not.

Insults are the most common provocation for anger because, whether we think about this or not, they generate social imbalances. Why weren’t the women students insulted? His question hinged on an imaginary scenario but not an uncommon one. The overwhelming majority of people harassed and abused by nonconsensual sharing of sexualized images are women or girls; in fact, the problem is so common that it goes by the popular misnomer “revenge porn.” Where, I wondered, was the indignation?

Toaster Boy, to provoke indignation, would have had to violate norms, but he didn’t; he confirmed them. The relationship between “woman” and “dignity” and “rights” is far weaker than that between “man” and “property” and “free speech.” In fact, if anyone was indignant, it was Toaster Boy, and his anger held purchase among his peers.

Being indignant is a powerful emotional response to insults and to threats against dignity. It is a specific kind of anger rooted in believing that you are being treated unfairly. A precondition for indignation is a secure sense of your worth and an equally strong sense that some valuable standard or norm has been violated. Subjecting someone to indignity involves making a person feel shame or a loss of self-respect. It’s the core of humiliation, embarrassment, and loss of face as well as pride. It is the bleeding edge of dehumanization and violence.

When your ability to gauge insult is worn away by learning to see yourself mainly in terms of usefulness to others, there is no expectation. No expectation means no violation, and no violation means no anger in response. The cycle goes round and round.

The kind of objectification the man was describing causes feelings of shame and anger in women every day, but we frequently ignore both the objectification and the feelings because even the idea of being insulted or demanding dignified treatment is difficult to reconcile with certain types of femininity. Indeed, indignity can often feel immanent in femininity.”]