The most powerful, simple tool for avoiding abusive and dangerous men

Easy to articulate, but hard to implement in a patriarchy

Please stop giving men the benefit of the doubt.

We all want to believe other people are good, and there are indeed many good men in the world. But those men should have to prove it. Because relationships with men, according to every possible measurement, are the biggest public health threat to women.

A few weeks ago, I got into a debate with a reader I know and care about in response to this article. Her perspective was that he seemed like a well-intended guy who was doing the work, and that many commenters were unfairly maligning him. We went back and forth a bit, and then I realized the problem was a difference of approach:

She felt that we should only treat a man as a dangerous potential abuser when he shows evidence of being so, while I felt that we should only treat men as safe when they show us evidence that they are.

This difference in perspective meant that I saw a number of red flags in his post: his desire to approach women in spite of knowing this scares us; his insistence that he is “doing the work” without providing any evidence of what that work is; his prioritization of his attraction to women over their need for safety.

And the more I thought, the more I realized that this reader and I don’t just begin with different perspectives. The different lens through which we see men, in my opinion, makes her more vulnerable because she is more likely to dismiss red flags.

We must approach men like we would approach any other potential threat.

Being in a relationship with a man increases your risk of rape, assault, and murder. It exposes you to a higher risk of sexual coercion. It almost always means you lose time to someone who thinks you’re a robot there to serve him with chores. If we approached relationships with men mindful of this knowledge from the beginning, perhaps we would be more skeptical and less likely to fall for abusers and liars.

Good men do not suffer when women refuse to give them the benefit of the doubt. That’s because, over time, they can prove that they are safe to associate with by not being abusive or defensive, supporting feminism, and engaging in other green flags.

This simple reframe, though, makes bad men seem as toxic as they are.

Moreover, missing out on a relationship with a man because a woman chooses to reframe how she views men is a small sacrifice. This is doubly true when we consider how much abusive men take. Would we rather a woman lose a potential relationship, or lose her life?

Women are socialized to assume men are decent, pending evidence to the contrary. Not only do we give them the benefit of the doubt, but we require conclusive proof that they are abusive, as if every relationship is a court of law. No matter what a man does, our socialization and our society will happily tell us to give him just one more chance.

Maybe he’s neurodivergent. As if neurodivergent women don’t exist, aren’t wholly abandoned by society, and forced to do even more work in a patriarchy. As if neurodivergent people are inherently assholes.

Maybe he’s too stupid to know that children need food. Just communicate better! As if being too dumb to understand children’s basic needs should be a point in any man’s favor.

Maybe he just doesn’t know any better. As if someone who can’t learn to treat people with decency is in any way entitled to a relationship. Women are not rehabilitation centers for broken men.

Maybe he’s too sexually incompetent to know that women are people, not sexbots, and that their pleasure matters, too—not to mention their general preference to avoid men who smell bad and treat them like garbage.

The excuses are endless. And women get neither a break nor an excuse. Ever. Just imagine what men would say about a woman who smelled bad, didn’t do a fair share of household labor, let her husband do all the parenting, or engaged in any of the other abusive behaviors that are standard in heterosexual marriage.

Abusive men do not immediately behave in abusive ways. They don’t abuse everyone. And even when their bad behavior comes out, it’s not there all the time. By the time you fully accept the reality that a man is abusive, you may be trapped, and he may have done significant damage to you, your children, or your life.

Instead, wait for compelling evidence that a man is safe. With most men, the evidence never comes. But make sure you know what green flags actually look like.

In every relationship with a man, trust in him must be proportional to his displayed, documented trustworthiness. And he doesn’t get nice guy points for saying he’s “trying.” Every man, including every violent man, thinks he’s nice.

Behavior is what matters.

Start listening to what men reveal with their behavior, and don’t read in goodness that’s not there.