A fine and sober article, Cathy. Kudos to you. I wish I’d been able to attend the symposium at the time.
It’s worth remembering that though Feminist narratives are commonly perceived by society’s wiser elements as greatly exaggerated, they are in fact the mirror opposite of truth, as per all Socialist narratives. The Feminist philosophy projects human intersex behaviour patterns backwards; id est, with the sexes reversed. This is most easily seen in the partner violence models (such as Duluth), which are accurate in their portrayals of the sex disparities in relational coercion, manipulation, control and aggression — but inverted. Domestic violence, for example, is a female-perpetrated issue, not a male one, with genetic roots in a strong, inherent female need for mate control. Compounding the perpetration disparity is aneurological inhibition against violating females, triggered by a specific pathway present only in the male brain, reponsive only to the close presence of a female. This is also an important factor in how rarely men actually, genuinely rape women.
Similarly, the moral panic over a (fabricated) pandemic rise of “rape” in the early 70s came in response to plummeting levels of actual rape and claims thereof. The driver of this phenomenon was the increasing availability of pornography, which acts as a displacement activity rather than an aggravator. Now that such erotic material is so widely and easily available, male-perpetrated sexual assaults of women, at least in countries with unfettered access to porn, have never been fewer in recorded history.
The rape of women by men has also always been the single most falsely claimed crime there is, everywhere on earth. I am little suprised you didn’t quote the groundbreaking 1980s study by Charles MacDowell of the USAF, which set a very conservative, rock-bottom estimate of 60% falsehood in female claimants. Today, the figure for some Western states must be upward of 90%. Men simply do not rape or assault women, by nature. Only damaged individuals do this, the vast majority of whom have been shown to be victims of severe childhood abuse, usually at the hands of their own mothers.
It’s sadly too thorny an issue to ever be resolved any time soon, and certainly one too profitable for the global fake-rape industries to give up on.