OP, the problem is, you're asking people to pick a team. That just diminishes responsibility for longstanding bad behaviour on the part of men.
The reality is that predatory perpetrators of violent crime, aggressors, are men. You could pepper statistics with a few female perps, but men are the issue here and men, nice men, good men, men like our husbands, sons, and brothers, write off so much predatory behaviour that males possess and act on as 'biological/just blokes being blokes'. Watching women get gang-raped on a pc monitor. Oh, it's just porn. Your DH has a wank to it. It ain't no thing: it's just porn. He's just a bloke. Was that the thinking behind the police officer who decided it was ok for his 'flasher' colleague to keep on working his shift, keep on carrying a weapon, keep on being a predator until he became a murderer? Boys will be boys.
I understand your point of view, OP. And I agree with much of what you said. My son is 19 and will not go out after dark. He hasn't been out under cover of darkness since he was 16 and mugged at knifepoint, held to the ground, then beaten up by 5 young men. Believe me. I understand where you're coming from. I worry just as much about my son as I do my daughter. However, with my daughter, that shadow of fear will follow her ALL of her life... not just while she's young and attractive, but when she's middle-aged, elderly even. I want my daughter to grow really tall, not because it's elegant or attractive, but because height is more intimidating. Being tall might help save her from being harassed. This isn't a fact, only a thought. She will always be far more at risk of being attacked and murdered by a male perpetrator than my sons because she is female, because the motive for attacks on women is sexual (my 19 year old did not have to worry about being raped on top of beaten, so there's that! Yes, I am being rather sarcastic here). Undeniably, there are sexual assaults on men too.... by, wait for it, other men. But if I were to make list of all the bodies that have shown up days after being dumped by their rapist killers, those names would be female, every. single. time.
I am nearly 50.
I was repeatedly raped at 9 by a male neighbour. My brothers were not. I was.
I stood at the open caskets of my two friends who were murdered by their rapist. They were 11. Female. Murdered by a man.
I was forced into an alley at knifepoint when I was 19 by a man.
I was stalked by a male at 21. Ironically, it began on the same night a sniper was shooting randomly from a Manhattan rooftop on my very street. The sniper was... you guessed it, a male.
My days of looking over my shoulder will stop when I turn to ash because I am female and that is how it is for us. Pretty unacceptable, isn't it?
Men. Their predatory behaviour is normalised, forgiven. They can't help themselves, awww bless. On any given day here on MN, a woman complains about her husband's/partner's porn use. She feels devalued as a woman and disgusted by what he views. She ends up being made out to be the unreasonable one, the controlling one, every time. Hard proof that there is no sisterhood on MN. These are guys, husbands, and fathers, upstanding citizens who would club a guy to death for flashing their daughters, are quick to turn around and prove that the rules they lay down for their daughters don't apply to them when they're wanking in front of the family PC or locked in the family toilet getting off on some woman being gagged and violently gang-raped. But hey, it's only porn. Harmless. And it's her job. She probably loves it. I digress. Or do I really?
We live in a society where violence against women is habitually fuelled and salivated over in video games, pornography, film, and TV. We know, as humans, how to modify our behaviour. Sarah Everard's alleged attacker (I will refer to him as such for the sake of not getting my post pulled) knew how to modify his behaviour until he could no longer do so. Then he tried not to get caught until he was. He had the big ol' family man smoke screen going for all and sundry to admire.
Men have to own their shit. It is time for men to own their shit. My 19-year-old son was attacked and beaten, as mentioned above. He cannot afford to be a victim because he his male. And that is a shame. But at the same time, his attack doesn't absolve him of his own responsibility as a man to make sure he is not the reason a woman walks the streets in fear. My son still has a job to do. His attack was a terrible lesson, a traumatic event in his life, and a reminder that people can be violent, abusive dicks. But he can be a vital cog in the great wheel of change. He can't just think that though, he has to act on that and change the record.
Our sons have a job to do, OP. And as women, we have to become the sisterhood we are more than capable of being.
We all need to heed the advice of Libby Squire's mother, posted on Twitter yesterday. Not verbatim, but she pretty much said, Look out for each other. Just take the time to not leave a woman alone at night. Stay with her. Help her get home safely.
It takes seconds to help a sister out. We can do this.