People often go on these tirades about how men abuse and assault women and that's why women have to be "careful" around them. Usually this is something of a dog whistle but sometimes they're a little more direct about it: men are simply bad people, they'll say.

The thing is, most stats about sexual assault and domestic violence show that men are abused and assaulted by women at about the same rate. For every woman abused or assaulted by a man, there is a man abused or assaulted by a woman. I get that there are some differences: 68% of intimate partner homicide victims are women, for example. But when you include wives and girlfriends who encourage their partners to commit suicide, more men are killed because of domestic violence than women. Plenty of men also get wrongly accused of some of these crimes. Their lives are ruined as a result, and many commit suicide. Fathers lose custody of their children because of vindictive mothers. And many men are used and exploited for their money.

So just like how some men aren't nice to women, there are women who aren't nice to men.

I do not believe that there is any significant difference between the two, either in severity, or in prevalence.

And yet all the vitriol and hatred is directed at men. It's men who aren't doing enough for women. It's men who need to be better. And it's men who are somehow the villains in all of this.

It's a terrible double standard, and I think 99% of the time, all it amounts to is plain bigotry.