I've been feeling slightly nauseous all week, in that way that anxiety can make you feel, sort of nervously queasy, unable to shake the sense that something has gone very, very wrong indeed and is nowhere near finished spiralling. The reason is this. As tales of male sexual predation are rained down on us every single day, at times by the hour, it's started to feel as though history is playing some kind of weird and nightmarish trick. Instead of moving forward towards sexual harmony and happiness, we've regressed into a mire of spite and division that the pre-war generation must be observing with utter disbelief.

I thought the whole point about life in a modern liberal democracy was that we'd shaken free of the old habits of seeing others first and foremost in terms of biological categories like sex, race, disability and so on. I thought we were meant to see others as individuals, and believed in the infinite variety and complexity of personality, psychology and social background. And yet here we are anyway.

Sexual assault should always be taken very seriously, but "men" are not some animalistic herd from the cavemen era. They, like women, are individuals with the range of sensibilities, ideas and choices that befit life in the 21st century. Many are just fine and dandy human beings (who woo women in all sorts of perfectly fine ways). Do I really need to state that many of my favourite people in the world are men? Amid the distortions of the moment, it seems so.

Then there's the issue of backlash. With "men" as a sex demonised and smoked out of their hiding places, I worry that it won't be long until all the righteous fury rebounds on women. Very quickly the mood has turned ugly, with women being reviled as pathetic snitches, lawsuits waiting to happen, fun-killing bluestockings and criminal teases. I can't help think back to when feminism became fashionable again, five or so years ago, and how it seemed to coincide with a growing "rape culture" against women on university campuses, more grotesque pornography, and the general sense that men, having been unfairly targeted, were "fighting" back in some way. It'll be grim.