I am in a fairly recent relationship with a great woman. I have two sons. She has a daughter. They've met her and her daughter casually. They all between late primary and early secondary in school.
Over time, I have realised that she really has issues with men - trusting them, or not seeing them as intrinsically bad. Exploitative I think is the right term. She feels like they can't help, but to take what isn't theirs.
I haven't mentioned yet but I am also a woman. I understand sexism, VAWG, the patriarchy, I am not a pick me. However, I am the mother of 2 sons of an impressionable age. I need to consider their mental and emotional health.
I don't think being with someone who sees them as a ticking time bomb is in their best interests. I am candid with my sons' about sexism in an age appropriate way, but I won't have them treated like criminals for their sex. She's never been directly horrible to them, but there are things she does where it is as if she expects they will do the wrong thing and so they need to be warned or told or harnessed to stop them.
I've seen her treat other male children like this, too, and often just have this look of disgust and annoyance when it comes to discussing men. Like someone's husband or brother. She automatically assumes the worst of them and much of her conversation to women about the males in their lives seem to be around warning the women that said males will take whatever advantage they can if the women don't take steps to prevent it. This can be children she is speaking about!
She's compared boys/men to XL bullies and said they should have similar restrictions in public.
What I think was the straw that led me to write about this was a couple of days ago, we watched a Netflix documentary about a woman who discovered the man she was seeing was married and she embarked on a stalking campaign that culminated with her stabbing herself to pretend it was him. My GF felt it was the man's fault for driving her to that point with his betrayal and selfishness and that she should have received psychiatric help, not legal punishment.
I found this very scary and more confusing when she said she would not feel this way if it has been two women, as the gendered context of female oppression is absent and she therefore could not have been driven to do it in the same way. I realise this is a sort of tangent from how she regards all males (including male children and the boys/men she knows), but I think it is all part of the same coin.
I don't know how to balance the reality that men are often abusive, with also not allowing my sons' to be treated like they were born evil.