I don't get why that would make anyone angry, but here's my best guess. I think the point of all these arguments is to avoid responsibility. It's not like saying "yeah, there are predators who behave like me and have the same cultural norms as me" would mean you were a predator. Rapists would still be a minority. But acknowledging that you are not culturally immune to being a rapist would require some introspection. For one, it would require acknowledging that you could become a rapist, or that you could be creepy and predatory. It means being aware that the line you would have to cross is actually very thin, and simply having the "right" culture or belief system or values will not protect you from it. I know that I look back at my behaviour in the past, and I now see that line clearly enough to know that it was a lot closer than it seemed at the time (yeah, don't think I'm exempting myself from any of this, because that's kind of my point, noone can).
Being vigilant towards our own behaviour is a responsibility we should all be taking. It's something we all have to do. It kind of doesn't matter whether or not we think we're a good person, or whether we're the type of person who commits rape or not, because that fundamentally doesn't change anything. That line is not always clear and crossing it is not always going to feel wrong even to the "right" kind of person. It's very easy to make excuses for yourself that you shouldn't be making.
But yeah, let's get to the really spicy stuff that I think is really making everyone mad.
Taking responsibility also means acknowledging that even if you are not a predator, even if you've never hurt anyone, the fact that you culturally resemble people who do is not an accident. Let's leave aside hegemonic masculinity for a second because it's clearly tripping people up and I don't want to have to explain it (even though it's incredibly formative of my position) because at this point it's become work. The important thing is, the culture we live in is full of sexual predators, most of whom are men and most of whom are completely indistinguishable from other men. There are many different cultural niches which men can fit into, that's why it's so easy to blame all the problems on other men who are culturally different. But if we accept that predators can look like us, that they can share the same cultural expression and cultural identity as us, then we have to ask an incredibly difficult and troubling question. What is it about our behaviour which makes it possible for predators to be predators and still look like us? What is it that we do which can camouflage predation? How do we fit into a culture that allows predators to thrive?
We can all sit down and do the work of answering that question. But ultimately, as different as we all are, there are going to be commonalities, there are going to be things that we share because they have enormous cultural traction.
Heck, let's do me as an example. When I was young, I desperately wanted the approval of other men, and the way I found to get the approval of other men was to be successful with women. There were plenty of other rewards. It turns out I really like women so that was convenient, but I developed a very instrumental attitude to relationships which kind of went beyond my own enjoyment. The number of people I slept with mattered to me. That was the success. It was a way of protecting myself against the painful memories of all the times someone had come for me for being too feminine, or being gay. Of course I wasn't gay! I had a list to prove it.
But what I'm saying is that I had internalized the idea that I had to make people sleep with me, that it was my job to overcome any resistance, that it was my job to put on a persona that made people feel safe and relaxed, that I had to be in control. I wasn't coercing anyone, or deceiving them, but someone who was doing those things wouldn't necessarily have looked very different to a cursory examination. I'd probably have looked at that person and thought "wow, they seem to be very good at this".
My point is not that every man is like me. Every man will have a different answer to that question, every man will fit into a different niche, every man will have adopted a different behaviours and a different mentality. In some ways, my experience is very atypical (if nothing else because I'm not actually a man). But there will be commonalities, there will be threads that run across our experiences because we do live in a society. That instrumentality, to a greater or lesser degree, will be part of many men's experiences. Even if it's not part of our personal experience, we can see it in the culture around us. James Bond has a really long list. Noone's going to call him a ******.
So, what do we do with this? I don't know. I could tell you what I think, but this post is well over a thousand words. But it is something that I think is important, and I think sharing the cultural responsibility makes it easier than dealing with it alone.