'The Reverse Bechdel Test': Examining Academic Feminists Views On Men

[Zyler]

Margarent Wetherall is a prominent academic in the field of discourse analysis and has been cited by a wide number of academic institutions and papers. Within discourse analysis, an academic analyzes the discussion surrounding an issue (otherwise known as the 'discourse') without taking a particular side. Wetherall and other prominent discourse analysts have explored a range of issues and discourses within our modern culture, but perhaps none quite as divisive (at least on the internet) as the discourse surrounding the areas of Feminism and Gender Studies. People on this forum have expressed an interest in exploring this topic, so this is a thread dedicated to discussing the specific academic information presented here as well as moreover aspects of discourse and discussion within gender and/or identity politics.

The first example I can present here comes from "Identity and Diversity: Gender and the Experience of Education: A Reader", which you can find a link to here: [URL="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=0KAkFC4WsMMC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=Margaret+Wetherell+Feminism&source=bl&ots=hjnBB8i-xK&sig=LUOGCOUFSbiA_fi4ScWGtYmHqOI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRpMHc94TKAhWHGKYKHYmyCw0Q6AEISDAJ#v=onepage&q=Margaret%20Wetherell%20Feminism&f=false"]https://books.google.com.au/books?id...minism&f=false[/URL].

After a short introduction, Wetherall and Christine Griffin write about interviews they had with a small collection of both male and female academics who respectively share two or more very opposed view points when it comes to gender politics.

First they interview four psychologist men, two of which "adopt a mainly humanistic or ecletic" perspective (one of whom, John Rowan, writes for Achilles Heel, A Men's Movement magazine in the UK, and the other, David Cohen, is the founder and former editor of "Psychology News" as well as the author of a semi-autobiographical book combined with a review of psychological literature called "Being a Man"). The other pair, in contrast, describe themselves as being interested in "the bad behavior of other men". Paul Pollard is a researcher of sexual violence who seeks to find patterns of "rape-tolerant attitudes" within society today, the other, John Archer, is trained as both a psychologist and a biologist and is interested in finding the sociobiological reason behind male violence.

The following are from the interviews:
[QUOTE] John Archer: "I started out as a biologist at the University of Sussex with an interest in sex hormones and behavior. There were a couple of feminist biologists working there also. In our research group we became interested in the way work on hormones and behavior was being used by psychologists such as Corinne Hutt and Jeffrey Grey to bolster their ideas about the biological basis of psychological sex differences. Of course, once you start saying there's something wrong with these biological explanations, your attention becomes drawn to surrounding issues and alternative explanations."

[/QUOTE] [QUOTE] Pollard: "I think, unconsciously almost, I began moving through different research areas, stopping whenever I encountered something that I felt was of sociopolitical value to actually spend one's life researching. In terms of my current interests, sexual aggression has always been, as a lay person and a researcher, one of the things (though not the only thing) I would identify as an important social problem."

[/QUOTE]

Pollard and Archer cite academic interests as their motives for exploring gender issues, while Rowan and Cohen instead point to personal issues that have caused them to re-think their lives and both academic and personal beliefs.
[QUOTE]
John Rowan: "I started vaguely getting into it in 1970 to 71 when I was involved in the 'Camden Movement for People's Power' (which produced a magazine called Red Camden) and living with a woman in a revolutionary commune in Holloway. She was interested in feminism and quite concerned about some of the issues. I went on a couple of demonstrations with her and was quite active, got photographed and so on.

Then I broke up with her, and the group broke up, and I went back to my wife. By this time she had been discovering feminism in the year I had been away, and was now going to three meetings a week of various groups. She was very keen on feminism and very critical of men. She suggested I should go to a men's group and introduced me to a friend of hers whose husband was running a group in South London.

And so in 1972 I went to my first men's group and at that time we were discussing what we should called ourselves "Men against Sexism", "Men's Liberation" or "Changing Men". Already there were these various orientations and labels.

So I got in very early, and I've been involved with the beginnings of what was first called the 'Radical Therapy Group' and which was later renamed 'Red Therapy'.

Feminist ideas began to come into that more and more and it split into a men's group and a woman's group, and soon after that disappeared althogether. I think it had completed all it had to do. Some of the women went and joined the Woman's Therapy Centre, and put their energy into that. Some of the men went and founded 'Archilles Heel'. So I think a lot of good came out of it."

[/QUOTE]

The main difference between the two pairs of psychologist men are their views on the theorization of gender relations and the potentiality of the origin of gendered behavior being rooted in biology. Basically, Archer believes in some of the biological explanations of male characteristics such as male violence and aggression while Pollard describes himself as 'agnostic' in regards to the question and states that it is 'parsemonious' (i.e too costly, not interesting) to drag explanations back to biology. They both draw strongly on the concepts of gender roles, social identity, peer groups of socialization theory to explain aspects of gender theory.
[QUOTE] Archer: "I was particularly interested in the social world of children because if you look at the dominant social learning and cognitive theories in developmental psychology both traces the same processes in boys and girls. Well there is developmental evidence that there are two sorts of male role model. One is the active one of boyhood based on physical toughness and interest in sport, the other develops later and is based on achievement in non-physical spheres. The first one predominates in boyhood up to about 14 or 15, then the other model takes over but presumably not in all cases, predominately in the middle-class Western world. That's just one of the many things that came out of looking at literature, also the asymetry about crossing the gender boundaries- how boys from a very early age are prohibited from doing things which are seen as feminine but this doesn't happen as early or as strictly in girls."

[/QUOTE]

Archer has been experimenting with children's gender groups in order to discover how power relations come to exist within wider society. Pollard also uses the concept of socialization theory in order to understand male violence, which he also believes to a lesser degree is socialized into male children but is also more importantly reinforced in masculine subcultures that are the true predominant cause of male aggression.
[QUOTE] Pollard: "My point really concerned the presence of inequality and the general acceptance of power and aggression, displayed in the love of shiny nuclear weapons, for example. I'm not just talking about street corner fights, I'm not even talking about aggression at that level, I'm also talking about minor forms of sexual harrasment, say, which is another way it emerges.

Inequality coupled with general social reinforcement of aggression means that male-female relations are rife for people executing power. I don't think it depends on your socialization at all, you just find yourself in a situation where as a male you tend to be more often in powerful relationships with females, and as society condones aggression, competitiveness, utitlization of power over others, it's indirectly supporting you to do that."

[/QUOTE]

Pollard states that he is interested in individual differences between people of both genders, but that those differences are connected and submissive to, in his view, cultural differences and wider societal beliefs. He argues that there are 'constellations' of attitudes to broad political issues and specific attitudes to sexual aggression and that 'male-oriented cultures' are more likely to condone sexual aggression and receive 'societal reinforcement' for it instead of being discouraged by 'societal sanction'.

Archer is also interested in exploring individual differences between people, but only so far as those differences fit with the context of his work in relation to stereotypes and development of gender-identity.

In summary, as the article puts it: "Pollard and Archer's views sum up their theoretical orientation" Their academic viewpoint stems from their political motivations and goals and "both men found it difficult to specify any general theory of society or social divisions which influenced their work." They argue that if the problem of male sexual aggression is solved it "didn't really matter if a Patriarchial or a Marxist analysis of social divisions were more apposite."

In contrast, Cohen and Rowan emphasize the value of the subjective experience of the individual rather than roles, subcultures, groups and identities.
[QUOTE] John Rowan: "Humanistic psychology, it seems to me, has always been saying that the most important thing is your own experience, and not some abstract theory or great law. There are moments in my life when I have thise feeling that what I'm experiencing right now is true and unalloyed and not mixed with the social flim-flam of one kind or another- I'm really seeing this as it is. Those moments of authenticity, moments of truth, which don't come that often but which do come sometimes, I really trust. I think there is something in human experience that makes it possible to see things without social veils sometimes."

[/QUOTE] [QUOTE] David Cohen: "The first thought that occured to me when I read feminist books was that men were very powerful but that didn't square with my own experience. I've worked in traditional jobs very little, but the year I did I was as powerless as I've ever been. I had a maniacal boss who was under pressure himself, and I was made to feel...certainly very bad. Now in the context of the experience to be told that really being a man was about having power I just thought doesn't square with people's experiences.

It seems to me very strange. There's a whole tradition of left-wing thinking which argues that the workers are downtrodden and exploited, and undoubtedly there are some people who took out their frustrations on their wives and children-but I don't think they were powerful people. Many people didn't act in this way.

I accept that women may see men as more powerful than men see themselves. Now that's quite an important point because it doesn't mean men have the power and it doesn't mean that women are wrong- it means there's an interesting set of attitudes to explore."

[/QUOTE]

Cohen also doesn't think there's a relation between masculinity and power:
[QUOTE] David Cohen: "None at all, none at all. I think anybody who does [make this assumption] is equally making the assumption there is a simple equation between feminity and weakness."

[/QUOTE]

John Rowan argues a similar point:
[QUOTE]John Rowan: "As far as men are concerned, feminism is deeply wounding. It hurts men to hear that they're responsible for the world's ills- whatever bad things are done, they have done them. That's hurtful enough, but then to hear that not only have you been doing it for 6000 years or whatever, what you said five minutes ago proves you are still doing it-that's hard to take. There is a wound there.

My angle is to say that unless men actually allow themselves to be wounded, to let that wound go very deep, to shatter their ego, to really experience that shattering, that collapse, and the results from that, you cannot heal the wound."

[/QUOTE]

Rowan then gets into his interests with regards to spirituality, eco-feminism and mystical feminine power:
[QUOTE] John Rowan: "There are three channels of healing which have to be used and explored. One in the conscious channel, where you make obvious changes in your own life. And on the public level- changes in laws, regulations and rules, in illustrations in books, the words you use, pronouns, and all the public things which can be done. All these things entail a real understanding of the importance of power within society, and how nothing can change unless those power issues are faced and dealt with.

Second, there is the unconscious level, where you must admit you have, a man, lots of prejudices against women that are not constantly owned so they can't be consciously changed...

The third channel is the spiritual channel. When sociologists talk about power, most of the time they retire baffled, because they have no concept of female power as different from male power. Just because they have no notion of what it might be. It is only by studying mythology that we have an inkling of what female power is all about, and how men have to relate to that if they're going to make the final radical change. Female power is more fundamental than male power."

[/QUOTE]

Anyway, this paper is extremely long and I'll get to summarizing into the rest of the interviews in following posts. Let me know what you think.

[Murky42]

In the other thread I talked about the importance of not just citing people talking about things but actual actions that have been undertaken.

So I'm going to start with talking about bad feminist science:

[B]Mary P Koss on males being forced to penetrate.[/B]

[quote]Although consideration of male victims is within the scope of the legal statutes, it is important to restrict the term rape to instances where male victims were penetrated by offenders. It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman. Mary Koss - Feminist[/quote] [url]http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/8/2/198.abstract[/url][1]

Having read the testimonies of people that have been raped by both men and women I find her statement highly disagreeable and incredibly sexist.

This is reflected in the scientific literature she influences.

[quote] Being Made to Penetrate Someone Else Approximately 1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported having been made to penetrate.[/quote]

Quote from page 19 from this highly influential CDC report: [url]http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf[/url]

This is classed as non rape and instead thrown in the sexual violence category. This makes female on male rape seem much less likely then it really is which they can use to try and make rape seem like a gendered issue.
[quote]The 2013 reauthorization added a non-discrimination provision that prohibits organizations receiving funding under the Act from discriminating on the basis of sex, although the law allows an exception for "sex segregation or sex-specific programming" when it is deemed to be "necessary to the essential operations of a program."[/quote]

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Against_Women_Act#Coverage_of_male_victims[/url]

What ends up happening now is that the above "men don't get raped by women" conclusion gets used to justify discrimination in abuse shelters. It's IMO shameful to pass an act called VAWA and then pretend its going to serve men and women 100% equally. I can go on all day about abuse shelters but I would rather do this in another post or have somebody else do it because this post is large enough as it is and it deserves its own post covering the topic. For starting points on this topic I would recommend googling Erin Pizzey and Earl Silverman

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_P._Koss#Honors_and_awards[/url]
This isn't some twitter nobody. She is often quoted and has widely influenced the policies of rape prevention, victim services and has had a major impact on a lot of scientific literature.

Here we have an analysis of how a study is flawed and poorly addresses male rape (yet again Mary P Koss is involved).

[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1av7kz/another_awful_rape_study_that_utilizes_the/[/url]

[B]Feminists against equality [/B]

Feminists versus rape being described as gender neutral in the law.

[url]http://www.firstpost.com/india/rape-law-amendment-where-are-the-cases-of-sexual-violence-against-men-384227.html[/url]

[url]http://thoughtcatalog.com/janet-bloomfield/2015/03/if-feminism-is-about-equality-why-do-feminists-oppose-equality/[/url]

[B]Feminism making non gendered problems gendered[/B]

Acid attacks are frequently publicly perceived and reported on by the media as a form of violence primarily used against women.
This however is simply not true.

[quote]A 2007 literature review analyzed 24 studies in 13 countries over the past 40 years, covering 771 cases.[12] In the cases studied, men were more frequently victims in every country, with the exception of Bangladesh and Taiwan, with a male/female ratio ranging from 0.15:1 in Bangladesh to 6.14:1 in the UK.[/quote]

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_throwing#Gender[/url]

As mentioned above rape is considered a gendered problem but yet again that is highly contentious.

I'm obviously going to be criticized for using /r/mensrights as a reference. It's certainly a flawed subreddit with shit floating to the top often enough. However the same can be said with most subs on reddit and I personally think that attributing the shit floating to the top as mensrights exclusive is bollocks. I wrote a review on mensrights a long time ago adresssing the things that I considered it does wrong and right.

Either way even if you are absolutely convinced that the entire sub is toxic even a broken clock can be right twice a day just read the OP and the sources cited.

As for other posters I would personally recommend taking a look at these source aggregators.

[url]http://www.mrarchivist.com/frm_display/full/[/url]

[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/MRRef#page=1[/url]

I could definitely add more content but honestly I have been working in this for long enough as it is and will let it rest for now.

To sum it all up I think feminism does a very poor job as far as equality is concerned. There have been many instances of narrow minded feminists making massive PR campaigns and political lobbying to fix a problem. However when you try and fix a problem without truly understanding why the problem exists due to a limited world view the problem only becomes worse. When you act on false assumptions not only do you ignore the true cause but you also cause new problems to emerge.

[Zyler]

[QUOTE=Murky42;49425936]stuff[/QUOTE]

This is a fantastically detailed and sourced post. What makes the issue you've brought up particularly troubling is that it suggests a clear abusive cycle: an academic states that male rape doesn't exist, an institution sees this and either fears perceived social repercussions or simply wishes to follow the group or not ruffle feathers and chooses to discount male rape as something that exists in a study, then an academic uses the study to prove male rape doesn't exist. Nowhere in this process is their any proof provided that male rape doesn't exist (quite the opposite really, since the numbers are still available in another category), but any awareness of the issue is systematically wiped out because someone with some sort of institutional power wills it; and that's that.

The only relevant online feminist articles that I could find in my brief searching in relation to what you post is this article:
[url]http://feministing.com/2013/01/31/the-dangers-of-a-gender-essentialist-approach-to-sexual-violence/[/url]

The article expresses that the current provisions of sexual violence and rape prevention theory lack nuance because they only identify straight cis-hetreosexual women as victims and that we should accept that all people of different gender orientations, including genderfluid and non-gender binary, can be raped but that sexual violence is still a gendered issue (i.e. a issue about female rape and not male rape) and should be treated as such.

This doesn't really make sense to me because if the reason that male rape victims should not be given a platform is that (supposedly) there aren't as many cases of male rape then surely we should also treat the rape of trans/genderfluid/non-gender-binary people the same way since, even by the most conservative estimate of male victims, there are more instances of male rape than instances of the rape of non-gender-binary victims as they only make up a fraction of a percentage of the population.

This argument also falls a part when you consider that men are much more often the victims of non-sexual violence. Does that men that we should give no platform to female victims of non-sexual violence? Why? What purpose would it achieve to pretend that roughly 50% of the human population is never the victim of something?

I'll quote a comment from the article here, because it's really quite thought-provoking:
[QUOTE]What about people on the gender binary? Are both included? Or just cis straight women?

Bringing up the statistics on female-on-male rape, female-on-female and any other combination not usually considered when discussion rape is not a derailment - it's putting the train on track again after it being derailed by many for many years, including Mary P. Koss, the CDC, and to a large degree men and women in general. The traditionalist perception of rape as a man-on-woman only crime adopted by feminists like Koss doesn't change by itself and only by bringing the subject up can awareness be brought about.

If feminists had been on the ball when the NISVS 2010 Report came out and not been "blinded" by already held beliefs and therefore omitting and/or mischaracterized male victimization rates they might've a better take on this aspect of rape than the MRA. Now they don't because the kicking and screaming of "no, it isn't so" when the male victimization rates are mentioned reveals exactly how much of a take feminists in general have on it.

I for instance haven't seen even only one feminist written a blog-post/article to seriously discuss what the last 12 months prevalency numbers for raped women and raped men (including those men who were made to penetrate someone else) means and if it should have any effect on how the discourse on rape should be going forward. Have anyone?

I'd love to see that as feminists are very influentual in the rape discourse, the design and execution of anti-rape campaign, a strong lobby on rape policy making and so on. Feminism is the powerhouse when it comes to anti-rape policy and unfortunately that also means that feminism have become the establishment. An establishment seemingly unable to adapt to new facts going against commonly held beliefs.

I haven't seen any, not one feminist blogger or article writer even mentioning the last 12 months prevalency numbers for male victims of rape reported in the NISVS 2010 Report (I include "being made to penetrate someone else"). They apparently don't want to touch it with a 12 feet pole. Either ignoring it completely or saying they don't trust the number (although the number for female victims in the NISVS 2010 are a-ok). I can't help but wonder why and none of the answers I can come up with is flattering. The response one receives when that statistics are pointed out in comments etc is, to put it mildly, defensive and dismissive.

When I read feminists like Soraya Chemaly citing some statistics (but not that one) from the NISVS 2010 Report in the same article where she states that "only men can stop rape" I was so triggered that I can't afford to put any stock in the assertion that feminism have anything to do with reality when it comes to male rape victimization. When feminist academics like Mary P. Koss thinks it's important that male rape victims isn't counted as rape victims I can't put any trust in feminism on this subject. When I see very little or no pushback from feminists against Chemaly's assertion that only men can stop rape or Koss' dismissal of male rape victims I am disappointed. Saying that women can stop rape by men by dressing more modest to a crowd which includes female victims of male rapists are rightfully horrible and prompted protest such as the Slut Walks. Saying "only men can stop rape" to a crowd which includes male victims of female rapists are apparently nothing to protest against for feminists. When it's only male victims and MRAs who protests that I again find OP's assertion that feminists are more reality oriented in male rape than MRA to be pretty weak.

Feminists have dropped the ball for many years hurling "what about the menz" at men - including male victims bringing the subject on male rape in the only arena where rape was discussed with what initially seemed to be empathy towards victims. "MRA!" seem to be the new invective replacing the "what about the menz".

I personally believe 1+1=3 when it comes to rape prevention. Rape prevention programs with a sincere equal representation on both axis of gender and orientation not only help teach people that other's consent and boundaries are sanctity, but also that their own consent and boundaries are sanctity. A boy/man get countless messages that his consent and boundaries doesn't really matter ("he wanted it" and so on). Women do to. A person who's perceives that their consent and boundaries doesn't matter is I believe less likely to respect the consent and boundaries of others. Or rather the other way around; someone who have been told that their consent matter and that other's consent matters are more likely to care about consent from others than someone who has been told that their consent doesn't matter (and never been told that it does) and that other's consent matters (more).[/QUOTE]

[Murky42]

[QUOTE=Zyler;49426036]This is a fantastically detailed and sourced post.

This doesn't really make sense to me because if the reason that male rape victims should not be given a platform is that (supposedly) there aren't as many cases of male rape then surely we should also treat the rape of trans/genderfluid/non-gender-binary people the same way since, even by the most conservative estimate of male victims, there are more instances of male rape than instances of the rape of non-gender-binary victims as they only make up a fraction of a percentage of the population.

This argument also falls a part when you consider that men are much more often the victims of non-sexual violence. Does that men that we should give no platform to female victims of non-sexual violence? Why? What purpose would it achieve to pretend that roughly 50% of the human population is never the victim of something?[/QUOTE]

Thanks I put a lot of effort in it and if more people end up commenting here then I'll probably expand on it later.

But I would rather first wait and see if the thread takes off as its very disappointing to write a wall of text only to see it be almost completely ignored.

One of the other excuses I see every now and then from women advocacy groups is that they worry that female victims (male victims don't exist) will be accused by their male accuser of rape. Rapists will supposedly do so to harrass the victim and make the situation more complicated for the cops.

Needless to say I think that is the biggest pile of horse shit I have ever heard of.

If law enforcement is too incompetent to deal with that they should shutdown their offices and never reopen. It's also a relatively unlikely occurrence and could only really successfully be pulled off by raping sociopaths.

Certainly not a good enough excuse to let millions of victims have no recourse.

[Zyler]

[QUOTE=Murky42;49426175]Thanks I put a lot of effort in it and if more people end up commenting here then I'll probably expand on it later.

But I would rather first wait and see if the thread takes off as its very disappointing to write a wall of text only to see it be almost completely ignored.

One of the other excuses I see every now and then from women advocacy groups is that they worry that female victims (male victims don't exist) will be accused by their male accuser of rape. Rapists will supposedly do so to harrass the victim and make the situation more complicated for the cops.

Needless to say I think that is the biggest pile of horse shit I have ever heard of.

If law enforcement is too incompetent to deal with that they should shutdown their offices and never reopen. It's also a relatively unlikely occurrence and could only really successfully be pulled off by raping sociopaths.

Certainly not a good enough excuse to let millions of victims have no recourse.[/QUOTE]

Most (competent) police institutions should take all accusations of rape very seriously, if they don't then it is an altogether different problem. Any accusation of rape should be taken seriously and dealt with appropriately by the authorities. Moreover, the same justification could be used to deny the platform of trans, genderfluid or non-gender binary people (and many Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists already do this, see here: [URL]https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/is-transgender-the-get-out-of-rape-free-card-twitter-rapist-dana-mccallum-walks-free/[/URL]), in fact you could arguably deny anyone a platform using this logic because anyone can rape anyone and anyone can also potentially lie about being raped by someone they raped.

Besides, are false rape accusations such an issue that people who get raped shouldn't be allowed to talk about it? I thought the mainstream feminist opinion was that false rape accusations shouldn't deter people from speaking up about rape? Feminists are using MRA logic here.

[Murky42]

[QUOTE=Zyler;49426266]Most (competent) police institutions should take all accusations of rape very seriously, if they don't then it is an altogether different problem. Any accusation of rape should be taken seriously and dealt with appropriately by the authorities. Moreover, the same justification could be used to deny the platform of trans, genderfluid or non-gender binary people (and many Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists already do this, see here: [URL]https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/is-transgender-the-get-out-of-rape-free-card-twitter-rapist-dana-mccallum-walks-free/[/URL]), in fact you could arguably deny anyone a platform using this logic because anyone can rape anyone and anyone can also potentially lie about being raped by someone they raped.

Besides, are false rape accusations such an issue that people who get raped shouldn't be allowed to talk about it? I thought the mainstream feminist opinion was that false rape accusations shouldn't deter people from speaking up about rape? Feminists are using MRA logic here.[/QUOTE]

I said incompetent because often false accusers leave holes in their statements. So if you get one legit looking rape complaint in followed by an idiot making a counter claim with a constantly changing story they should be able to tell the difference.

I have to say I quite like your point of them using MRA logic.

IMO people should be always be able to accuse somebody however the accused should have his identity protected considering how fucking incompetent the police and the media can be.

Especially since rape accusations seem to be solid gold for blackmailing, harassment and publicly ruining people that you don't like while putting yourself at relatively little risk even if you have little to no proof.

Found this lovely little factoid just now:

[quote]153 of the 268 exonerations in the Innocence Project were for rape. This is 57.1 % rape convictions, we found in a search of the innocence project for "Rape". A large number was due to eyewitness misidentification. People freed by DNA testing are freed because the innocence has been proven.[/quote]

[Darknife]

I just wanted to say that I highly appreciate you all for creating and posting in this thread.

It's very refreshing to see people having a legitimate discussion about this topic without devolving into misandry/misogyny finger-pointing shitposting as is typical elsewhere on the net.

I plan to contribute once I let what you've all wrote sink in a bit more and once I re-read the posts a few times.