A simple analogy to illustrate why women can't live by "but not ALL men!"

This is one the tactical peeps will love (or hate?)

When those of us ladies try to explain our lived experiences that include men of the creepy or violent variety, a dude bro sprains his fingers in his haste to hate peck the comment “BUT NOT ALL MEN!” even though that’s usually implied. But as I’ve sadly come to learn, the dude bros who spend far too much time on the internet and not enough time outdoors with grass, sunshine and reality, are typically not of the genus rationalus thinkosaurus. I’ve watched ladies explain this to the knuckle-dragging buffoons countless times, but I’ve not seen this analogy put to use. Ladies, don’t explain things to dudes who don’t understand explanations or who refuse to take any words from women. Unfortunately, and this can be yet another topic I hit at yet another time, it seems far too many dudes only take information about a woman if it first is filtered through a man, and probably one who’s anointed himself an “alpha.” Hopefully some guy out there will take the analogy I’m employing below to explain to the internet’s cavemen why screaming “not all men” at women is a futile effort. I just ask I’m given credit if and when they do.

It’s simple. The first rule of gun safety: treat all weapons as if they’re loaded. Until you’re sure the weapon is unloaded, by checking the chamber and the magazine, every weapon is assumed to be a loaded one that could kill. Because a loaded weapon can kill.

This is how women must treat men they do not know especially in new or strange circumstances.

Yes, it is that simple.

Until women can be sure which man is a loaded weapon and which one is not, we have to assume he is dangerous and might harm us. Because, statistically speaking, men are far more physically dangerous than women. Especially to women but also to men.

Screaming “but not all men” doesn’t matter. Scream until you’re as blue in the face as a third wave feminist’s hair. Men can’t go around smack talking the stupidity of women’s sports, or beat their chests about how their superior in strength, then get their boxers in a bunch when women have to abide by the very reality over which they share manly giggles when mocking the WNBA.

What’s doubly annoying with a dash of nagging on the top, is men instinctively know this and abide by it frequently. I’ll take you back a year or so to GymSpandexGate, when lady influencers with lycra up their booty cracks set up their phones to record men at the gym who, they said, were being creeps. The reaction, by and large, that I saw on Twitter (as it was then known), was men pecking out in 280 characters or less how they wouldn’t help women at the gym anymore out of fear they’d be used as content on social media. Because they couldn’t be sure which women were influencers eager to snag hate content, and which were just ladies buffing out.

The concept isn’t foreign, but the stakes are much higher for women. In the latter scenario, the worst thing that might happen is an annoying twenty-something influencer would be a troll and use a man’s face to score likes. In the former scenario, a woman might get killed, raped, assaulted or harassed.

Men and women are different. It’s unfair for dude bros to engrave this fact on every stone they see and then get upset when women have to operate differently than men. Our biology is different, our experiences in the world are different. So if you could, let us continue doing what we need to in order to keep ourselves safe.

Women’s safety matters more than men’s egos.