Actually, it is all men: Why patriarchy makes every man a potential threat

It's time to stop pretending that distrusting men is fundamentally unreasonable, when the opposite is true.

All men are potential threats to all women. This is not because all men are bad or unworthy, but because patriarchy forces us to live in a world where we can never be certain we are safe with any particular man.

Every few months, a version of the “not all snakes” analogy circulates on social media. It goes like this: You’re in a pit of snakes. Some of them are venomous. Does it matter that it’s not all snakes?

This doesn’t fully capture life in a patriarchy, though, so let’s add some elements that might:

What if there is no way to tell which snakes are venomous, no matter how much expertise you have? What if some venomous snakes are actively mimicking friendly and beneficial snakes? And what if even the most benign snakes can turn venomous at any point—months or years down the road?

Now imagine that there is an antidote to the snake bite, but most people can’t access it, and your ability to access it is mostly a random gamble that depends on whether people will believe you. And in this snake hellscape, people are indoctrinated from birth to never believe snake bite victims.

This is the reality women live in with men, whether we acknowledge it or not, and no matter which man’s feelings this reality hurts.

Our social structure is built around men’s needs and feelings, and all of us are enculturated to believe that women can avoid abuse if they behave correctly. For this reason, we disbelieve and blame women rather than looking at the obvious facts, which include that 1 in 5 men admits to assaulting his partner. I can’t think of anything in life, other than a relationship with a man, that carries a 1 in 5 risk of being assaulted.

Patriarchy, as a system, seeks resources, privilege, and other goods for men at the expense of women.

Sex, for example, is defined as what men want, and as something women owe men. Witness millions of married men who think that their wives “withholding sex” means they are being mistreated, or the men on social media who view sexless relationships as a problem with the woman rather than a sign that the man is bad in bed.

Household labor inequity is treated as a trivial issue—a communication problem, or a failure to implement the right system or communicate correctly. Almost no one acknowledges that it is the act of literally stealing another person’s life, and many patriarchal men openly view this inequity as an entitlement.

No matter what the issue, patriarchy teaches us to center men’s wants over women’s needs, and urges us to never do anything to benefit women if it could possibly inconvenience men in any way.

It doesn’t matter if he’s a nice guy, a feminist, or an ally. If he’s a man in a patriarchy, he poses a theoretical threat—even if he never actually becomes threatening. Simple mindfulness of this fact could help women better weigh the risks and benefits of their relationships with men.

I include my own husband—my podcast host, my equal partner, and a tireless activist—in this list of potentially threatening men.

I am married to a good man who has given more than anyone I have ever known to support the causes of feminism, racial justice, disability rights, and an end to class-based oppression. He has never harmed our children or me, and my relationship with him has been a tool of liberation, personal growth, and massive joy.

This does not change the fact that he could become a threat to me, and that patriarchy would support him in doing so. My belief that he won’t is what makes the risk calculus—reaping the benefits of this relationship while still incurring the theoretical risks—manageable.

It’s time for us to be honest about this reality, rather than pretending that it is somehow irrational to fear men, or that the existence of good men in any way negates the widespread influence of patriarchy.

It is all men. Not because all men are bad. But because all men are potential threats—and because it makes sense for women to fear all men.

Even in relationships with men who are truly decent and who never become abusive, it is impossible to fully free ourselves from patriarchy’s grasp.

Good men can exert significant control without ever trying to, without ever meaning to. An entire lifetime of sexist conditioning, abuse, and brutality do it for him. If the entirety of a culture is devoted to normalizing male abuse, lauding misogyny, and defending men accused of misogyny while systematically depriving women of resources we could use to protect ourselves, then does it really matter if the man in front of me is not personally abusive or misogynistic?

In what ways will I automatically change my behavior based both on previous abuse and on the potential threat of any individual man’s abuse? In what ways will I constrain my own choices because of the very realistic fear that a man might become abusive?

Every woman has felt terrified when a man was angry, even if that specific man has never and would never hurt her.

Every woman has considered how to escape a date, what to do if he turns out to be a serial killer or run-of-the-mill rapist.

We’ve all grabbed our keys, or our pepper spray, or our gun when a man in a parking lot got too close—or when the angry man in our home seemed like he might be ready to tip from mere anger to abuse.

When the abuse and violence are everywhere, it doesn’t matter if they are, for this moment, absent from one specific person and location, because there’s no escaping the danger. And we know that if the “good” men we love become abusive, society will try to trap us with them.

When I talk with men about women’s fear of men, one of their many dismissive responses it how “sad” it must be for me to “live in fear.” They tell me women and men should be able to meet as equals, that everyone should be treated as an individual.

As if not acknowledging the reality of the danger will somehow free women of fear. As if patriarchy treats any woman at all as an individual, free from its mandates and its violence.

We have to live in fear no matter what. Patriarchy doesn’t come with an opt out button.

So we might as well live in truth.

It is all men, because it is potentially any man.

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