I can recall a lifetime of abuse in various forms at the hands of various men from practically every sphere of my life--decades of this crap. I can talk about what all my female friends have been through, point out how saturated our culture is with the sexualization of women, how desensitized we all are to it, the horrors of trafficking, the prevalence and escalation of porn & the horrors of that industry, statistics regarding domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, abuse that can be easily looked up, etc. and I've got to prove I don't hate men after all that. I'm expected to understand how painful & frustrating it is for men to be subjected to generalizations, hence their 'Not all men' reaction. That's why men get angry with us instead of the jackrabbits doing this stuff! 🤦 All the evolutionary psychology stuff, all the ways we're 'coached' on how to talk to them, etc etc. I had no idea how deeply rooted it all is. Saw glimpses of it but wasn't able to put it together so clearly till recently.

People who will fight tooth and nail for all kinds of things will back the hell off this stuff, and the second you bring up any of it, you're the one put on defense. That's anecdotal, that's your experience, that's your trauma, you can't blame all men for this, all men aren't responsible for what happened to you, all men aren't responsible for a few bad apples, it's just some outliers, et al. Men somehow don't ever have to defend themselves against this garbage or understand us, but we have to justify the living daylights out of our anger.

Edit: We have to go through this stuff with other women too!

Edit: A lot of these same people will tell you not to worry about it if it's not affecting you and that's part of the problem. This stuff is everywhere and it's impossible to get away from unless you choose to cut yourself off from the media and social media in all of its forms. There aren't really too many movies or TV shows from any era that you could watch where you wouldn't have to deal with this stuff in some form or another either.