‘Feminism has gone too far. It’s crossed the line.‘

That’s what columnist Cathy Young says in an editorial for the Washington Post titled “Feminists treat men badly and it’s bad for feminism”.

The problem, Young says, is that feminists are too busy picking on individual men’s behaviour to address the real issue here, which is… things that a lot of individual men do as a group.

She hates the way modern feminist rhetoric crosses the line from attacks on sexism to attacks on people.

After all, we know that sexism is a virus that can attack any man at any time, and that nobody can be held personally responsible when it happens. Why do women insist on making it seems like it’s the man’s fault? (Note: sarcasm)

Women, she tells us, are constantly putting the "nastiest spin" on male behaviour. Take, for example, the term "friend zone", which Young claims has been spun by feminists to suggest that men think women exist only to have sex with them.

In fact, she argues, the term "friend zone" should be interpreted to reflect a man's romanticism and loneliness.

Which would be fine, if we didn't have thousands upon thousands of examples of men reacting with explosive vitriol and violence to women who reject their sexual advances.

It's a little hard to write off men's harassment of women who turn them down online as "romantic disappointment" when that same response too often ends in violence and sexual assault when it plays out face-to-face.

But Young delves further into the culture of "male bashing", taking particular exception to the words "mansplaining" and "manterrupting".

Women, she tells us, also explain things and interrupt each other, and it's unfair to suggest that men are the exclusive perpetrators of such behaviour.

What she fails to recognise, of course, is that when a man interrupts a woman where he wouldn't interrupt another man, or when he explains something to a female colleague but not a male colleague, he perpetuates the notion that a man's time and knowledge is more valuable than a woman's.