Roast beef curtains.
This was the subject line of the email I received from an unknown sender, mixed in with so many other messages from addresses I did not recognize. Since publishing a piece about HPV, vaginal prolapse, menopausal atrophy, and how they intersect with toxic beauty culture, my inbox had been flooded with emails from men who wanted to tell me how repulsive I am. The only reason Roast beef curtains stood out is because these same three words had been some of the first to appear in the public comments section of my article. Having never heard that charming expression, I’d had to look it up (and won’t waste time explaining it here).
Now, sitting before my email, I wondered whether it was the same man. This being the age of porn culture and extreme unoriginality-of-thought, it was as likely to be someone different as it was to be the same miserable troll who commented on my article.
The body of the email read:
Hello darling, I’ll fuck you so hard your vagina will get shoved up to your ugly throat.
The editor in me debated emailing him back to point out the incoherence of his message: If he was thinking of my anatomy in such derogatory terms, did he really want to fuck me?
The therapist in me wanted to inquire about what had happened in his life to make him so vicious. So hateful. So cowardly.
Because the name in his email address — like the names in the comments section — sounded made-up. There were no profile photos. These “men” could be anyone. They could be, as the French called them, Monsieur Tout le Monde.
Literally: “Mr. Everybody,” or roughly translated, your Average Joe.
“Monsieur Tout le Monde” made headlines in France in 2024 during the Dominique Pelicot trial. Between 2011 and 2020, Dominique Pelicot secretly drugged his wife, Gisèle, by mixing sedatives into her food, so that he could recruit strangers online to rape her while she was unconscious. Because he filmed and meticulously labeled thousands of hours of footage of the abuse, the police had their investigation handed to them. In total, 51 men were identified (20 still remain at large) and charged with rape. These 51 spanned all ages, professions, educational backgrounds, ethnicities, and relational statuses. They were, quite literally, every type of man.
The public was privy to this information thanks to Gisèle Pelicot, who waived her right to a closed trial. She had no reason to keep the facts of what had happened to her secret, she said. She had nothing to be ashamed of, whereas her rapists did. And it was high time that shame changed sides.
As someone who writes about sexual violence and women’s health, I am no stranger to dealing with vitriolic pushback. And honestly, pornographic hate mail from men I have never met is far easier to deal with than the casual sexism of the “good guys” I know in real life — men who would (probably?) never troll someone online, but who are, nonetheless, products of the same system that objectifies and dehumanizes women.
These things exist on a spectrum. On one end, there’s outright, hostile misogyny (where people like Dominique Pelicot and his buddies, Monsieur Tout le Monde, sit). On the other end, there’s casual sexism — so everyday and ordinary that it slips by unnoticed, not just by the people doing it, but often even by the people experiencing it. Until someone points it out.
I remember vividly the first time I “unlearned” the casual sexism I had never thought to question. I was in my late 20s, standing in another interminably long women’s bathroom line at a concert. A man walking out of the near-empty men’s room shouted out, “What do you all do in there?” as though the line were our fault, as though biology (smaller bladders) and design (insufficient number of stalls) were choices we’d made for fun.
Three women ahead of me — at the time I thought they were so old, but looking back they must have been the age I am now — hooked arms and said, “Fuck this shit! Come on, ladies!”
Half of us charged the men’s room, to the protest of some guys at the urinals. The women who had incited our bathroom rebellion said, “You don’t like it? Tell the city planners to stop designing sexist buildings. Women need more bathrooms than men.”
We occupied those bathroom stalls without shame, laughing out loud as we peed. In that moment we were Madame Tout Le Monde — every woman, from every walk of life. We all knew what it meant to stand in long lines for the bathroom while the men’s room remained largely unoccupied. It was a beautiful, spontaneous revolution.
Since then, I have felt entitled to storm the men’s bathroom if waiting in line for the women’s will mean missing my flight, or the opening moments of a concert. But it’s only in recent months — especially since hearing Gisèle Pelicot’s clarion call that shame must change sides — that I’ve begun to live fully on the other side of shame.
It’s why I wrote that article about my vagina, knowing full well the trolls would come calling. I just didn’t care: Monsieur Tout Le Monde cannot hurt me because I am not ashamed of my body or my mind.
They, however, should be ashamed of their monstrous behavior, and were they not hiding behind their fake names and profiles, they certainly would be. Imagine if the girls and women in their lives found out how they behave? Because let’s face reality: Many of them must have sisters, wives, daughters, female friends and co-workers.
We know all of these men have mothers.
In my case, shame has changed sides so completely that I recently ended a budding relationship with a man I really liked. Let’s call him Joe.
Joe was 58 years old, recently divorced, and what I liked most about him was his openness, from topics such as his grief over the recent loss of his mother to his regular porn use. To be clear, I wasn’t delighted to know that he used porn regularly; I have been around the block enough times to believe that porn tends to turn men into worse, not better, lovers. But so many men were addicted to porn, and I was delighted that Joe was at least transparent about it.
One Sunday afternoon, about a month into our relationship, we walked hand in hand across the Place de la Bastille, where the Olympic rings from the Paris Summer 2024 games stand.
“The Games were so great,” he said, an excited expression on his face. “I saw men’s wrestling and diving. But the best?” He paused and mimicked wiping sweat off his brow. “The best was the women’s beach volleyball. The players are SO sexy! I just love seeing them in those bikinis!”
“Are you aware that female athletes have been fighting the double standard that forces them, and only them — never their male counterparts — to wear such skimpy uniforms?” I asked.
He gaped at me, clearly confused by my reaction, and I said a silent prayer: Please say “I wasn’t aware of the uniform controversy.” Please say “I’d like to learn more.”
Instead, he said, “Wait … Are you a feminist?”
The tone of his voice — one that implied I was tiring and uptight — made me so disappointed that I wanted to lie down right there, in the middle of the Place de la Bastille, and kick my feet and sob.
Words poured into my head — oh fuck you and why? — and there were images too, of skin and legs and bellies and buttocks and I could see it so clearly. Of course he wanted to gawk at those young female bodies, because he could. Everything in his life had pointed him to that “right” and he didn’t even need to find the nearest volleyball match to get his fix; there were posters in every direction of young, half-naked women selling everything from lotion to watches.
I suddenly just wanted to be done with him. And yet ... I didn’t want to be done with him! I liked him! And I would forgive him for making sexist comments if we could talk it out — if he was willing to examine the entitlement and the automaticity of his sexism.
But, alas, Joe only made it worse.
“You can’t even say women are beautiful anymore,” he whined. “A guy can’t even give women compliments.”
And there I was, suddenly, being that woman — middle-aged, indignant, hands on my hips, fed up and unashamed.
Fuck this shit.
“That’s ridiculous. Of course you can still give women compliments.”
“Not since Me Too!” he droned.
“Do you interrupt your doctor to tell her how beautiful she looks analyzing your eczema?”
“Of course not!” he said.
“Do you go to your son’s girlfriend’s tennis match and tell all the players that you think they look sexy in their skirts?”
“You know I don’t do that!” He sounded angry.
“So what’s your big grievance? What are all these situations where ‘poor’ you have been ‘unable’ to compliment women? It seems to me that the night we met you told me I had beautiful eyes, and I don’t remember telling you off.”
“Never mind,” he snapped. “Thanks for ruining our afternoon.”
A few minutes later, I watched his back disappear down the steps into the metro. I understood that in his eyes I was heavy, pedantic. Some former version of me would have felt ashamed for being no fun, and I would have disregarded his dumb comments to keep the peace. But that’s what happens when shame changes sides: I couldn’t — and wouldn’t — forgive him for having learned so little in this Me Too era that he still thought it was normal to say something so tritely sexist, and then refuse to consider his mistake.
Refuse to learn.
Combing through the trolls’ messages and comments on my essay, I kept thinking about Joe. I was pretty sure he’d never send vulgar, anonymous messages to someone online, but I was also pretty sure he’d never call out the men who did. He wasn’t “as bad” as a flagrant misogynist, but he refused to consider that casual sexism is the entry point on a toxic and violent spectrum that ends where Dominique Pelicot and the abusive cowards on the internet live.
I was turned off by Joe’s disinterest in joining the growing body of men who actually care about that spectrum. They do exist, and they are the ones that women long for. I call them “real” men, and by that I don’t mean some fantasy archetype or the Hollywood version of masculinity. I mean men who are curious about other people’s lives (PSA for the trolls: “other people” includes women), and who approach the subject of women’s bodies with respect. Men that are willing to listen, to learn, and to be vulnerable, rather than defensive.
After my piece was published, the real men also showed up, and I loved hearing from them. One of them wrote in the comments section: “I have had to accept the fact that I am unattractive to women. I have never had the option to sleep with anyone I fancied. My childhood was made miserable not by molesters, but by bullies — many of whom were attractive to others.”
Another admitted: “I avoid beautiful women and those striving for beauty. It attracts all the wrong kind of guys, driven by superficiality. Finding jubilation and depth in life are a lot more fun. Sorry, but beauty can be a terrible curse.”
And then there were the men who reached out directly by email, confessing how early-onset balding, midlife weight gain, erectile dysfunction, or other conditions had affected their senses of self, leaving them hesitant and insecure.
These men did not attack me, insult me or argue. Rather, they offered their stories and their perspectives. They shared their own fragilities. They proved their decency.
Oh, and one of them said I have a great smile.
And guess what? I thanked him for his lovely words.
Because real men know that in the right context, coming from an ally, compliments are absolutely welcome.
Kristin Louise Duncombe’s books chronicle the journey of an American woman who gives up everything for love ... and learns the hard way that love is never enough. Her latest book is “OBJECT: A Memoir,” which recounts the U.S. State Department’s protection of a serial pedophile in the 1980s, and the consequences on the lives of his many preteen victims. “OBJECT” has been called “devastating and enthralling; a bombshell of a book.” Duncombe is a therapist and coach who specializes in working with complex trauma, depression and anxiety. She is based in Paris. For more from her, visit kristinduncombe.com.
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