John,  in my view, the context of this sentence comes from the theoretical framework of giving "empathy" a practical meaning to the whole subject. Empathy is not gender or race, but is a natural mutual feeling that could be defined in many other examples, e.g. love each other like doves. In this context, the writer is making a "sensible" plea that could easily connect the reader with a familiar subject "mother/son/daughter" in order to justify what men should do. This "sensible plea" could also be defined as a call for "conscience" in its truly subjective sense.  To expand on this, we do not expect a "reasonable" person to attack his/her own family.  Therefore, in the same spirit, we do not expect him/her to attack another human being. It is for this reason that I am of the view that the sentence is suitable to call for empathy from men.