You hear this thrown around a lot by Feminists who make analogies to men making sexist jokes for example, and saying that you didn't do the bad thing, but you did nothing when it happened, which is effectively the same. "This is why women don't trust men"

To be clear, we do live in a very "I got mine" "Every man/woman for him/her self" culture, and this does need to stop. I've actually talked a lot about this with friends when it comes to anti Imperielist activism.

What irritates me about this however, is how it assumes that all or most men are:

  1. Knowing

  2. Able

In order to berate men for "not standing up" you'd need to know how much those men knew of what was happening and were able to do something about it. This comes up a lot when talking about "rape culture. "Sure, you didn't grape the lady. But you helped normalize a culture which promotes other men to go out and do it, and you do nothing about it when it happens."

This is a case by case thing. Some men do that, sure, but most don't. I don't make sexist/rape jokes, and even if I did, you couldn't possibly know that that joke helped lead to X guy committing X crime. It's just an assumption, one they superimpose on men they've never even met to evaluate.

Even in the worst case scenario, a man murders his wife, they come out to say "Where are all the men condemning this? You didn't do it, but you're not doing anything about it either." Like what do you want me to do? I didn't even know the guy!

This also assumes collective guilt, as if every time a man does something bad, we all need to apologize for it, which is just dumb.

They should be trying to help promote a healthy environment where men can express their feelings without feeling shame or guilt. This will lead to better relations between men and women and far less crimes against both. But they don't want that, so they jump to collective blaming.