I'm a social scientist. I'm also someone who has seen or read about other cultures or subcultures where the things we just accept even though they are unacceptable do not exist. This proves that we have the culture that we tolerate. If you think that's silly, I don't suppose I'm going to convince you otherwise but I didn't say that men are all just a problem. I said that we all have the responsibility to confront social wrongs (and even mentioned racism and homophobia) and dominant groups have the greatest responsibility to do this. Men uphold the violent and harmful aspects of masculinity the most so they have the greatest ability to shift those - not just for women but for us all. Most of the violence that men experience (including sexual violence) is at the hands of other men.

It's well established through research from Cambridge but also other places that men are much more likely to listen to other men about gender equality and that white men have a huge amount of impact around confronting racism without the backlash that others often experience when trying to talk about it. Having that power and not using it to help others is why we have the messed up culture that we do.

Rape (for one terrible example) is illegal and almost nobody would say they are in favor of it - and yet, it's actually a key feature of our culture that is deeply intertwined with the way we view masculinity -that it's important for a man to dominate others and control women.

Scully’s (1990) study of sexual violence views rape as learned behavior within a patriarchal culture. According to her findings rapists as compared to other felons are more likely to believe in a double standard regarding gender roles and they identify more strongly with the traditional male role.

“Rape may be a way of proving one’s manhood, an important concern for adolescent males.” In rape cultures, dominance and control over women become aspects of achieving and experiencing masculinity, and rape, while not condoned, becomes part of the culture at large.

As long as you accept that part of masculinity in this culture is domination oriented, you're helping to uphold rape culture - whether you do any raping or not. I've personally never met a woman of any age demographic, political persuasion or geographic location who hasn't experience some level of sexual violence - including my mother and grandmother's generations. This shit isn't being done by "bad apples" - it's baked into our culture.

You've said that many of us speak up and take action because it's the right thing to do and I applaud you for doing that, because it's incredibly rare - and also well documented how incredibly rare it is. One of the reasons it's so rare is that a key element of male bonding takes place around denigrating and sexualizing women so if some guy speaks up about that, then he's stepping out of the Bro Code and perhaps opening himself up to "What are you, some kind of fag..." or similar. This isn't feminist theory - it's sociology. Lot’s of guys may not feel comfortable with sexist jokes or remarks, or entitled behavior around women, but they often don’t say anything because they think they are the only one and they don’t want to be ostrasized from the group. If more men spoke out about this stuff not being OK, then more would realize that they aren’t the only ones, and the culture could begin to shift.

You aren't quite getting what I'm saying with all this - I'm holding the culture responsible. It's the complete opposite of demonizing all men. But, that being said, individual men have the responsibility to confront that culture when it's harmful (particularly the damaging aspects of how masculinity is conceived in America) because if they don't, then we have one where every 68 seconds an American is raped and most of those are women. We could have a culture like some others around the world where rape is considered extremely unmanly and where male dominance isn't part of the social fabric (because they believe in balance between the sexes) - and then rape wouldn't be a problem. But instead we have a culture like ours where it's ubiquitous, and also where women are still blamed for it much of the time. Continuing to insist that there's nothing you can do because it's not about you is what allows that culture to continue.

I'll say it one last time, and then I guess I'm going to just leave this be because I'm not sure how much clearer I can be - racism continues less because of the overt racism of a small percentage of Americans and more because it is entrenched in our systems and in our unconscious biases. Same goes for sexism. It doesn’t have to be malicious and intentional to be taking place. Those systems can be confronted; the stories we tell and the actions we take that reinforce inequality can be altered. But we have to all be willing to do that. Otherwise things stay as they are...

Edit: After WWII the German people took responsibility as a nation and as individuals for allowing the Nazi party to rise — much of that through their inactions and passivity towards harm that was being done. Many, many Germans did not support the Nazis, agree with their beliefs or do bad things to anyone — but their refusal to speak up is what allowed for the Holocaust and as a nation, they intentionally came to terms with that so that they could move forward. I’ve heard more than one German say that this wasn’t about shame, it was about accountability that then allowed the nation to go into the future without being weighted down by self-loathing.

We could do that too if we really wanted to — around racism, around sexism, around homophobia to name just a few — but then we’d have to actually be accountable for our culture, and as you’ve clearly demonstrated by your responses, you think that is “silly.”