The Rules of Misogyny describe patterns and aid with identifying them. Women's ability to spot patterns helps to keep us safe.
Some things are really simple. That 98% of sexual violence is perpetrated by men is really simple. That women, when asked "would you rather be alone in the forest with a man or a bear?", overwhelmingly answered "the bear" is also really simple.
That, when asked about their daughters being in the forest, 19 out of 20 fathers chose the bear is really simple.
Men as a class are dangerous to women as a class. It is that simple. We just had an employment tribunal panel state as such in the Darlington Nurses case.
270. We [the tribunal panel] accept – as does the Respondent – that women are more likely to have experienced sex-based harassment and sex-based violence than men. It will come as no surprise to anyone that this is so. The risk posed to women generally by this state of affairs causes a reaction in many women and leads them to adjust their own behaviour according to the circumstances. Women do not have to experience sex-based harassment or violence personally. The experiences of some women can and does have an impact on others. Depending on the circumstances, a woman might experience fear and distrust in the presence of a man even though, objectively, as a matter of fact, the man is an entirely innocent actor. We take an example that we can all recognise, of a woman walking alone on a street at night, whereupon she notices an approaching male. She crosses the road to avoid the man, holding her keys in her hands in the event she needs to defend herself or she phones someone or pretends to do so. The approaching male is a perfectly decent and innocent person with no intention to harm anyone and is oblivious to the woman on the street. He would feel offended at the thought that someone might regard him as potentially harmful. But it is not the individual’s character that dictates the reaction in the woman. It is not the man himself but the fact that he is a man. The difficulty for the woman in this example is that she is unable to police the character or the intent or motivations of the approaching male. She is fearful of the risk presented in the knowledge of women’s experiences in life generally. Her reaction does not depend on personal experience, although of course it may be explained by this. The Tribunal is able to draw on its own experiences of life in recognising these fearful, defensive, precautionary traits in women in certain circumstances. They are not irrational reactions. On the contrary, they are entirely rational, based on the lived experiences of other women generally. Many women will feel anxious and may take extra precautions in what men might regard as normal situations.
You might know some good men. You might work on a contruction site free of sexually-explicit graffiti about what your male colleagues would like to do to you or the admin lasses. In which case, you are lucky.
A lot of women know some very bad men and have our lives limited by them. We are allowed to talk about that and should be able to express our frustration and fear without being judged as harridans. In the context of the OP, we are talking about fear and mistrust of men. The bad ones don't helpfully wear t-shirts that say "I am a rapist", so we have to act like they all might be.