The scientist of Rosetta mission fame, Matt Taylor, is arguably better known at the moment for a shirt he wore, depicting scantily clad women than his extraordinary scientific breakthrough. After a massive kerfuffle, led by feminists, Taylor broke down in tears at a briefing recently and said: “I made a big mistake and I offended many people, and I am very sorry about this.”

Many would hail this as a feminist victory: a big-name scientist apologising on TV and being reduced to tears for his apparent sexism. We must have come a long way to wield so much influence. But there’s another way of seeing it. As less of a victory, more of a sign of a shift in feminist tactics. Instead of attacking the root cause of women’s inequality, we’ve moved towards the vilification of individuals.

Daniel O’Reilly, a comedian who created the misogynistic Dapper Laughs, has had his TV programme axed, and there is pressure on those who do not publicly condemn him to do so. The Canadian broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi has been convicted by the kangaroo court of social media. CBC, the radio station where Ghomeshi worked, terminated his employment in October 2014 after several sexual abuse allegations were made against him, despite his denials.

The US “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc has been forced to leave Australia, after receiving a barrage of criticism over his “dating seminars”; these suggested that men deploy tactics of harassment and abuse to attract women. Britain and Canada are also considering a ban. He is described as “the most hated man in the world”, but rather than using racist and sexist immigration laws to keep Blanc out of the country we should be looking at using the criminal law against him. The petition to deny him a UK visa so far has more than 156,000 signatures. Would we get anything like so many signatures on a petition pressuring David Cameron to fund rape crisis centres, or to close down Yarl’s Wood – the immigration detention centre for women that has been widely criticised for its treatment of vulnerable inmates? I bet not. In fact, a petition to close Yarl’s Wood was set up earlier this year, and has attracted fewer than 50,000 signatures.

Feminism, a great social movement, is in danger of becoming toxic and repressive. The focus on individuals, however vile they may be, signifies a shift away from the more difficult, long-term work of making institutions such as the Crown Prosecution Service and other governmental departments accountable. Justice for Women, a feminist campaigning group I co-founded, managed to change the law to prevent men claiming that “nagging” was a justifiable reason to kill female partners; Southall Black Sisters successfully challenged Ealing council when it proposed cutting women’s services. The CPS, badgered for decades by anti-FGM campaigners, ended up changing its policy and began to proactively seek prosecutions. Feminists campaigned all through the 1970s and 1980s to make rape in marriage a crime – and in 1992 the goal was achieved.

Rather than spending so much energy piling on a man for wearing a sexist shirt, is it not better to focus on the manufacturer? Is Taylor’s shirt really as problematic as an entire clothing label named Porn Star?

The current climate of McCarthyism within some segments of feminism and the left is so ingrained and toxic that there are active attempts to outlaw some views because they cause offence. Petitions against individuals appear to be a recent substitute for political action towards the root causes of misogyny and other social ills. Petitions have taken over politics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A protest against Sheffield United’s decision to allow convicted rapist Ched Evans to train with them. Photograph: Philippa Willitts/Demotix/Corbis

Ched Evans is the only Football League player who has been convicted of rape, out of the many who have been accused, and yet feminist energy at the moment is being directed towards him as an individual rather than towards a criminal justice system that fails rape victims. It has been long known that there is endemic misogyny within football. What are we doing about the culture within the sport that makes it OK for groups of men to use their power to lure young, impressionable women back to a hotel room and queue up to “roast” her? I want the FA to initiate a “Kick Sexism out of Football” campaign.

I have absolutely no sympathy for Evans, because he has refused to admit his guilt, and shown no remorse whatsoever. But I would far rather be waging a war against the FA for its inaction against endemic sexism in the game.

The “ban this sick filth” approach is starting to look more like censorship than progressive politics. Political protest and heated debate has been replaced with a witch-hunt mentality.

It would appear we have forgotten how to target institutions. The tactic du jour is to wind up a crowd and shut down any nuanced discussion or debate. Patriarchy is being left to its own devices while bad and unpalatable men are being taken to task one by one.

Last year more than 20 student unions in the UK banned Robin Thicke’s song Blurred Lines, which was widely thought to glamorise rape, forbidding the playing of the song at functions within union spaces. But when the Islamic Education and Research Academy hosted an event on University College London premises at which seating was segregated by gender, a National Union of Students delegate at King’s College London said that “gender segregation should be respected, if not tolerated, in institutions of higher education”.

Identity politics and the emergence of feminist preciousness – the tendency towards putting trigger warnings on everything and wrapping each other in cotton wool – has translated into a disproportionate focus on individuals who offend, rather than the culture that allows them to do so. That lyrics could be a more legitimate feminist target than universities that support gender apartheid is depressing.

It is hugely important to hold abusive men to account, but we feminist campaigners have learned that the state allows men to perpetrate individual crimes, and have therefore tended to focus on making root and branch change. Lately we appear to have gone backwards. It is as though we have lost the strength and confidence to effectively challenge institutions.

Moral superiority and “call out” culture has trumped political activism. Feminists have a proud history of taking state institutions and corporations to task. It would seem this is being lost in a sea of vitriol. We built this movement on a desire and willingness to question and challenge old assumptions and truisms. We are in danger of becoming autocrats who would rather organise a pile-on than try to change systems. The life blood of feminism is in danger of becoming bile.

• This article was amended on 19 November 2014. An earlier version attributed a quote made about gender separation to the then women’s officer of King’s College London Students’ Union. It was not made by her, but by a National Union of Students delegate.

• This article was amended on 20 November 2014. An earlier version said “University College London held events at which gender segregation was enforced, at the request of the Islamic Student Society”. To clarify: there was an attempt at gender segregation at an event held on UCL premises, and UCL has asked us to point out that it was hosted by an organisation with no connection to either UCL or its student Islamic Society, and that the attempt at segregation was in direct contravention of UCL policy.