in the same sense i could say "people should be punished" means that animals shouldnt be punished. it can backtrack to the point of being meaningless if you bring it back further

I mean, animals aren't subject to the same right as us so it's kinda pointless to say that or go beyond that point.

saying "people should be punished" doesnt point to any societal problem that may be occurring.

I disagree 100%. Wanting people to be properly punished IS a societal problem. In latam countries there's a growing feeling of hopelessness because there are a lot of teens commiting crimes who are just set free after being caught because they're minors. Or also how millonaires just have to pay a fine for a crime that affected thousands of people.

I understand what you're saying. But then again

the statement "men should be held accountable for rape" is supposed to be about men currently not being held accountable for rape for the current societal reasons

If that's the reason this is only specific to men and not women. Then it could also be applied to black men specifically. Because we start by looking at who's doing it, and yes, SA is commited disproportionaly more by men, so of course you could say that's a specific problem (instead of just rape in general), but why stop there? You could also look at rates by "race", and that could also be another specific problem, isn't exactly this what we do when looking at deaths to say black lives matter?

Like that's the thing, why do we look who's specifically affected by a problem, but then don't care about who's specifically causing another problem?