Germany Warned Women About The Risks Of Dating Men, Citing Safety Concerns
perfectwave | Canva It's 2026, and dating is in free fall.
Thanks to scandals like the so-called online academy uncovered on Motherless, incel violence, and political attacks on women's rights, a growing number of women are choosing to stay single. And you know what? They're right to do this. Way too many men still minimize the danger women face, blame women for what happens to them, or act like women are overreacting for being careful. So when a German police official made international headlines for saying women may be safer not dating men, it landed hard because it sounded like someone in authority was finally admitting what women have been saying for years.
Germany's warning about dating men shows why so many women are done taking the risk
Way too many men I've spoken to have tried to minimize the damage men have done to women. I've heard one too many guys say that Andrew Tate doesn't have too many followers, or try to talk about how there weren't that many victims from the online school scandal. Others have blamed the women. Classic, right?
It is oh, so easy to dismiss the feminine exodus as something that is just blown out of proportion. Perhaps it's just women overreacting. Sure, investigators found more than 20,000 videos of "sleep" content on that one site alone, but hey, it's not all men. Men keep telling women they're dumb for choosing the bear. Surely, they are correct, right?
Violence against women broke the dating scene
It's no secret that there has been a global spike in violence against women. And this is not hypothetical. In 2024, a man in Brooklyn attacked 19-year-old twin sisters after they refused to give him their number.
Cases like that are common enough that victim advocates have a name for them: rejection attacks. But not frequently enough for there to be a national system that is even tracking how often women are being attacked for saying no. These are not isolated incidents.
On Motherless, investigators uncovered over 20,000 videos of victims being traded online like postcards. The same manosphere that made Andrew Tate a household name repackaged all of these hostile acts as self-improvement. They are coaching men on how to handle women who would even dare to turn them down.
As a feminist writer who has worked in the adult industry, I can honestly say something has changed. The vibe has changed.
Women are no longer as open to dating as they were. While many were comfortable among men, that's now a rightfully rare experience.
The benefit of a doubt is no longer available as a common courtesy to men.
Despite all the horrific headlines, way too many men keep minimizing the collective trauma every single woman experiences at the hands of the opposite gender.
Women are now backing away from men as a whole: no dating, no marriage, no kids.
Men react in several ways, depending on the man. Some are speaking out about how bad women are being treated. Others are staying silent, hoping no one notices and everyone drops the subject. Some say that it's not up to women to choose if they date or marry. Others still are calling women crazy and trying to minimize it all.
Germany made headlines after a police official said dating men could be dangerous for women
Wynand van Poortvliet / Unsplash
The news didn't just hit Germany. It sent an international shockwave around the internet and, more importantly, showed women that they were right to go on a man ban.
After all, the person who said it wasn't female. He was a man by the name of Dirk Peglow, head of the Federal Association of German Detectives. And he was interviewed by journalist Dunja Hayali about the country's latest crime statistics when he said it.
Ladies, y'all will understand this if you've ever been disregarded by a man in a medical setting. I've spoken till I was blue in the face about certain things, only to be dismissed. It usually takes a man to say the same thing I do for other men to agree something is wrong. Well, it's either that or a very obvious move toward litigation.
Here's why this is big: a man is openly agreeing that men can be dangerous to women, to the point of suggesting it may not be safe for women to date them at all.
In other words, it is no longer just women saying that men are unsafe.
Period. That is a serious admission!
This should be the moment when men hit the pause button, if they haven't already.
Let's be honest here. It's oh, so easy for people to write off the awful experiences women have when it's only women. I can't name how many men have told me that, "If everything smells terrible, it's time to check your shoes."
Well, sometimes everything is terrible-smelling because it's stunk up from the manosphere-shaped manure farm. It's not always because you're stepping in something gross. And this is absolutely the case with the dating scene.
As someone who has been blamed for "choosing wrong," shamed for trying to break things off with a man who later institutionalized me, and has been gaslit by others on the state of dating, I can say that it's cathartic to see men validate what female-presenting people already knew: it's bad.
Women aren't crazy. Good men know what women have been seeing and experiencing is real, and they're now actually saying the quiet part out loud.
Whether most men want to admit it or not, dating is generally not worth it for women.
Men behaved just as you'd expect them to after Peglow's admission.
His suggestion that women avoid dating men went viral, to the point where Peglow had to backpedal. He called it an "obvious exaggeration," then gave his statement the same #notallmen spiel every woman seems to have been pressed to add at one point or another.
Hayali also got the world-class male-silencing treatment. She noted, "Now there are men who do not criticize the rise in violence against women, but instead express violent fantasies and threats of violence against [Peglow] and me."
Well. If that's not the most obvious, expected behavior you'd expect from "men's rights advocates" being called out on their own stuff, I don't know what is. It's almost as if those guys' brains short-circuited when they realized that people can't ignore the Big Lie of Many Good Men anymore.
Why am I not surprised? I have a long-documented history of reporting death threats I receive to police, and let's be real, that's life as a feminist writer AND adult entertainer.
Ladies, if you choose to stay single, I ain't going to judge.
khorkins | Shutterstock
Honestly, I realize I am making an insane gambit on my new relationship. I intend to marry as soon as the ink on my divorce is dry. Am I crazy? Probably.
However, I am aware of one thing: if it were anyone other than the guy I'm seeing, I'd only be interested in the physical. Commitment would not be an option, and yes, I think a lot of men would be shocked to hear that.
The truth is that men can't threaten their way out of this.
When actual government workers and departments start warning women that it's no longer safe enough to trust men to treat them well, it's a done deal.
At the end of the day, this isn't what women wanted.
Most women I know would have loved to be happily married to men who treated them as actual partners, lovers, treasured people, and family members. It's just not something that most women can trust will happen anymore.
Now is not the time for guys to try to rework the wording of Germany's police officers. Now is not the time for men to police-tone women. It's time for them to listen to women or face staying alone for life.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.
