Telling me I deserve to get raped or someone needed to give me a good fuck so I'd shut my mouth or that I needed to stop letting my virgin-fueled-male-hatred to come out of my mouth, among many others.. No. That's not okay.

If you're interested in hearing my interpretation of these comments...

First, I want to emphasize that these PMs are not OK, and the reason they are not OK is that they create fear in people. Maybe you personally are not afraid, but some people would be. Please don't misinterpret anything I'm about to write to contradict that.

That said, I have zero fear of being sexually assaulted myself, and I believe that my lack of personal fear makes it easier for me to see what might be motivating some of these words.

Men know that grabbing someone and penetrating them against their will is, at the very least, not legal and not acceptable to the general public. By "not acceptable", what I mean is that if a man is holding down a woman on a busy sidewalk and penetrating her with his penis while she screams in pain and fear, some onlookers will call the cops. When they do, they won't report two lovers taking their exhibition fetish too far. They will report a rape, and their emotional response will be different. Of those who don't call the cops, the vast majority will remain silent because they're shocked or afraid, not because they believe what they're seeing is OK. Men are aware of this. In addition to that, the vast majority of men also believe, in their hearts, that rape is a moral wrong.

For a man to say he wants to rape you into silence, he has to be so upset by what you're saying that he's willing to risk violating that particular social norm, with all of the legal and emotional consequences it entails, just to make the feelings he is having go away.

It reminds me of how suicidal people have described their feelings: they don't want to die; they just want whatever is happening in their life to end, and they're willing to do whatever in order to stop it.

I do apologize for the women who are shitty to the good men.

I don't feel it's as simple as that. I firmly believe that the desire to place men (or women) on a spectrum from good to evil is just another way of objectifying others by refusing to acknowledge their full complexity.