This happened to me irl. They ask me to mess a bit with tarot cards and as they’re leaving they tell me “You’d go think about stuff before go you out dating. All men are predators”. When I ask them that sounds incredibly prejudiced they just respond with “It’s in the studies”. I was perfectly fine when feminism meant egalitarianism but thats is oughtright stupid vitriol that’s gonna help noone.
If men want women to stop having to say “All men are predators”, they need to remove the survival need behind that line.
All these lines have a reason behind it, and as long as “All women are whores” gets shrugged off as locker room talk, or excused as he had a bad relationship experience, this aggressive mindset often leads to women trying to leave a relationship they’re unhappy in getting harmed or killed.
If men want women to not see them all as predators they need to keep their bros in check. As well as end the toxic macho culture that regard women as owing men sex when men are nice to them or as their possession once they’re in a relationship.
If a country elects someone who says “Grab them by the pussy” and there are men - “good” men - that meme this, that’s not ok. Yet it happened and it’s no wonder women feel threatened underneath a government like this.
It’s not in the women’s power to stop this. Good men need to finally start fighting the bad apples if they don’t want to be mistrusted as a survival strategy.
Most men I talked to are more upset about being lumped in with the bad apples, when in reality you should be upset how your mothers, sisters, girlfriends, daughters are constantly living in fear and can’t move through any space in life without preemptive measures.
Men have exactly as much power to stop this as women do. None of the things you mentioned are acceptable. I don’t tolerate someone “memeing” Trumps “grab them by the pussy” remark except to paint Trump as a despicable person specifically because he made that remark (among many other reasons). Anyone trying to defend that kind of remark or shrugging off “all women are whores” as locker room talk is wrong and I would call out anyone who did so. But you also need to see how what you’re doing here is essentially the same thing. Someone said “all men are predators” and then when it’s pointed out that’s not acceptable you try to defend it by citing the statistics for women being assaulted and then dumping all the responsibility for fixing that problem on every man.
I’m not a senator, I’m not a congressman, I’m not a judge or governor, I’m not a cop, I’m not even a manager. My ability to fix society’s problems is highly limited, mostly what I can do is call out bad behaviour when I see it which is exactly what I did in this instance. Beyond that I can donate to charities that try to address these problems which I do, and vote for politicians that try to address these problems which I also do (not that it ever seems to make a difference).
If you do, good on you! Most men don’t.
The thing is, if men don’t change, it will annoy you. But for women it may very well kill them. You’re seeing the problem and understanding it, yet you blame women for trying to survive.
They don’t say “All men are predators” because they want to be petty and pay men back for how they talk about women. They live by this because anything else puts them in harms way. I’m pretty sure most women would love to not have to live by that saying. Most women would love to be safe enough to abandon this. But they aren’t.
And here you are, yelling at them for trying to survive and keep themselves and each other save, because it bothers you that you get associated with bad men.
I don’t know, I feel like survival might be more important than someone feeling judged wrongly (even if the judgement truly is wrong).