I grew up with the mentality that men were just like women. I thought our human nature was about the same and that we were equally moral human beings and that most people are generally good and don't want to hurt others.

It took me a decade and a half of dating men to really change my opinion, and this is only because I was in denial and it took man after man treating me the same way for it to get through to me. While I still think men and women are inherently the same, morally, I think the version of masculinity we buy into now teaches men to manipulate women for sex, which is immoral and so bought into a lot of men don't even consider what they do to be "lying for sex" even though its literally what they do.

Some specific actions that caused this:

-- Being raped by men who seemed normal and nice.

-- being anally raped twice by men I was in love with and in a relationship with. one of them i was literally crying and saying no the entire time, the other I think was an accident but he acted like it was just okay and didn't apologize or say anything as i bled out of my ass onto his sheets and said "that was my ass" and then left to go home to treat my ass wound.

-- being ghosted by someone I had been having very loving, intimate sex with for three months. Just stopped responding to me one day. The last thing he ever said to me was how much he enjoyed our previous night together. At first I didn't realize he was ghosting me and was just asking if he was free to come hang out. Then I realized and was like... will you please just talk to me? Never sent an angry text. Just lightly begged for him to please help me understand. Was too devastated to date for years after.

-- a weird casual dating encounter where a guy asked me to bring a bunch of expensive edibles over. This was our third time hanging out and he ate them all and pressured me to eat a bunch of them so I did and then a few hours later was like "well im tired i'm gonna go to bed" and made me drive home. I get that our communication was bad but i would never pressure someone to do drugs and then ask them to drive a long distance home, that's.... a lot imo. If someone even came over and was drinking, I wouldn't pressure them to drink and I would let them know if I wasn't comfy with them crashing.

-- The number of men who defend rapists and abusers online, though to be fair a lot of women do this too.

These things have lowered the value of having a man in my life so much, it would take a lot for me to agree to go on a date with someone.

Since relationship problems are often framed as a "both sides" issue, I'm wondering what the female equivalent of these things are.

***What specific actions have women done to you (or women, feel free to chime in with stories about men or women or both) that have made you think differently about humanity? ***