Dear Feminists,

I realize that it comes from a good place: Empowerment. Confidence. Success. But your way of achieving this has caused some real problems. Take, for example, men. Can women only achieve “empowerment” by destroying men, masculinity, and male leadership? Gender is not a zero-sum game. You don’t have to pick a team. It’s not a “cat’s rule, dogs drool” situation. Being pro-woman should not mean being anti-man.

We both live on this planet and we need each other. On a basic level, men and women need each other to make the human race continue. Men and women also bring different things to both family and work dynamics. For all the talk of unity, where is the unity of male-female relations?

And what about the “toxic masculinity” thing? What does that even mean? To be sure, there are some terrible men in this world. There are abusive men, chauvinist men, cheaters, and oppressors. But are these men inherently terrible because they are male or because they are simply toxic people making bad choices?

On the flip side, there are some terrible women in this world: abusive, manipulating, and vengeful women. Was it due to their femininity? Was it due to their gender? Or were they terrible because they were toxic people making bad choices? It does not seem reasonable to claim a person’s bad behavior is an inherent quality of their gender. Where is the personal responsibility in that? It seems more reasonable to call people (of either gender) toxic because of their poor choices.

And here’s another irony. With all your talk of discrimination and victimization, what about the guys? Are they victims of their gender like women are? It’s not like they had a choice in the matter. It’s XX chromosomes for females and XY chromosomes for males. None of us had a choice. So to discriminate against all men based on something they couldn’t help is wrong. To accuse every man of being an abusive, misogynist, patriarchy-obsessed warlord — without evidence — is not fair, either.

Further, our legal system is based, among other things, on the presumption of innocence. To shift that system into one that finds women to be inherently innocent and men to be inherently guilty compromises the rule of law for everyone.

Shaming men for masculinity attacks them for being strong, for being protectors, and for being providers. Yet what does that accomplish? Do we really want a society with weak, passive men who won’t stand up for their families?

In the end, most women still prefer strong men who act as able leaders, protectors, and heroes. To the feminists who are destroying the last remaining vestiges of chivalry in this county, please stop the anti-man crusade. If you want to turn your guy into a passive man, do that on your own time. But stop ruining life for the rest of us.