"Men aren't to blame for everything."

Last night my family and I sat on couches and the odd dining chair and had a conversation about how dodgy the chicken schnitzel is on tuckshop sandwiches, whether anyone understands the concept of folding a ‘throw’ and slinging it back over the couch arm after using it, and “good” men.

The last topic point went on for a bit longer than the others. There were six of us in various states of after work and school tiredness; my husband, three daughters and a teenage boy who is living with us at the moment.

As you can see by my casual use of the word “throw” and tuckshop sandwiches that contain chicken schnitzel, we are a lucky, privileged family. I am white, university educated and employed. If my daughters want to they will have the means and opportunity to attend university too.

Yet the conversation about good men turned convoluted and full of caveats and counter-arguments. And that was just me.

Yes, misogyny is alive and well…

Yes, it’s not fair that men don’t know the fear we know…

Yes, I know we shouldn’t praise men for simply doing the right thing, but…

Despite all of the privileges inherent in a lounge-room with two couch throws, there is a gender narrative my daughters are told regularly: men are the enemy.

In the past week I have read about, and so have my kids (or they have plucked details out of the information ether), the Sydney Boys High International Women's Day video that went viral and the backlash they received for making it. We've scrolled through memes depicting men as useless buffoons due to the fallout from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey that found women are still doing far more housework and childcare per week than men, even if they are both working full-time. We've had discussions about a 15-year-old school boy allegedly raping a 15-year-old school and another boy videoing it.

We've sat in our lounge-room talking about the "hopelessness" of men and  the "systemic sexism" of men with a "privileged' male cooking dinner for us all (and I'm not trying to paint a cosy domestic scene - he does the cooking, I do other things as part of the division of household labour) and a teenage boy with long, knotted limbs who is kind, thoughtful and wise.

And I thought, 'How do these men I am with - and all the other men I know from friends and brothers - fit into this dark picture?' The short answer is they don't.

Yes, there are men who are sexist and vile, "unreconstructed" and stuck in the Dark Ages, and every other horrid adjective in the dictionary you can think of. But men are not one amorphous mass, no matter how convenient that is for generalisations, winning arguments and believing you've solved complex cultural issues.

I am not every woman (sorry Chaka Khan), and the men I know are not every man.

The Sydney Boys High Video that went viral on International Women's Day. (Post continues after audio.)

I'm not saying for one minute men are hard done by compared to women. I'm a feminist, I've been raised by a feminist — of course I want political, economic and social equality between the sexes. But the older I get, the less prepared I am to see the men I know bashed simply because we can't be agile or clever enough to distinguish the good from the bad. Or worse, having to incorporate complexity into our understanding of gender issues doesn't suit our argument.

I'm also less prepared to listen to privileged women like myself blame systemic cultural sexism for their lot, and every other women's lot, and sigh and say there is simply nothing they can do to even make a dent in it. "That's just how society works, it's unfair," they say with a shrug, as though they are but leaves drifting in a river.

I say that because in the past week I have also been involved in conversations like these:

A 20-year-old telling me about a party she went to on the weekend and how sexist some of the men were.

Me: "Did you pull them up? Say something? Get your friends and leave?"

A: "No. I can't fight against a lifetime of entrenched sexism. It's too late now. They should have been taught as boys."

Then there was a conversation about the barriers women face when returning to work after maternity leave. I thought we might be here for a while, as there is so much to discuss.

Me: "What is to blame for women not being able to get back into the workforce after taking time out for having a baby?"

A: "Men."

Not forgetting last minute drinks with some friends and acquaintances, where one woman kept bemoaning her husband's invisibility around the home.

The list of grievances included not knowing what the inside of a supermarket looked like, not being able to cook, leaving the morning and evening routines with the kids to her, not knowing any of the kids' routines. It went on, until she came to a place where she kept on talking but her husband was swapped for all men.

"Men just have a different idea of what clean is. Men ... "

No, your man. Not mine.

Of course, on a socio-cultural level entrenched sexism impacts on every woman — from having a drink on Friday night to workplaces, paypackets, education, culture, how much you spend on razors. But within this framework I have choices and I can make demands and I can decide that what is critical for my life, and my children's, is to be with a man who knows what the inside of a supermarket looks like. It's not a big ask.

I'm privileged; there are women who are not. I can exercise the power I have, first in my home, then in the world, and try to change things. Or I can lump the man currently serving out his famous Thai chicken curry to his family and the thoughtful boy on my couch with men who are hurting women and hurting the future for women.

Surely we can come up with something smarter and more nuanced than a mass caricature that draws all men as domestic buffoons at best and evil predators at worst. What about those men who are nothing like that?

Would you ban men from looking after your kids? Post continues below.

(Oh, by the way I'm not meant to use the expression not all men because #notallmen is a "feminist meme" that is meant to mock the people who use such expressions. By using the phrase 'not all men' I am attempting to use it to defend men from gendered criticisms and I'm not allowing uncomfortable conversations to happen about men's failings. I'll file that in #notmyfeminism).

Surely, as Mia Freedman wrote last week, it's only going to aid the advancement of feminism if good men are on our side. Surely we can acknowledge we have some agency over our own lives too and that the obstacles women face are complex and require a corresponding complex response — not just a men did it.

So, this is how I'm going to move ahead: I'm going to love and respect the good men in my life, laugh and fight with them and do my utmost to change what is unfair, unjust, cruel and holding all women back. I'm going to look deeply and critically at the reason why discrimination happens, and I'm going to work hard at redressing it.

And I know the man who makes a great Thai chicken curry and the teen boy with the long limbs will be trying to do exactly the same thing.

#notallmen.