Thanks for your kind words. You are the kind of audience member of which poets dream. Of course, we tend to dream about having an audience at all, so ... :-)
Perhaps you are right though, most women (particularly the ones who don't share the same view as female activists) actually just remain silent.
The guys will probably shoot me for this, but women need to become more vocal. Not the activists ... all the rest. The idea that any "male activist group" would have the temerity to assert that they "speak on behalf of men" is unimaginable. Individual men would never surrender their power in such a systematic and over-arching manner. Why are "female activist groups" not similarly restrained ... by other women?
As a rule, I get along extremely well with women of all ages. I like femaleness. And, my observation in life is that the overwhelming majority of females really like maleness. Indeed, they often prefer it. Don't get me wrong: There's a lot of eye-rolling on all sides. "Why are you crying ... it's a dog-food commercial?" You have to admit ... female waterworks can be perplexing. Similarly, I suppose, women might wonder why guys feel the need to continuously insult other males with whom they are friends - especially given that everyone knows the insults aren't real.
Eye-rolling.
Our brains are wired to crave both certainty and novelty. So, like a Venn Diagram, there has to be a huge overlap that yields a commonality of interests (birds of a feather flock together), and hence, predictability and certainty. If there wasn't, relationships couldn't cohere. But there also has to be some differences (opposites attract) to create novelty lest we become bored with one another, like we are, most of the time, with ourselves.
And, it is those differences between men and women that are forever destined to create the three F's: Frustration, Fascination and ... well you know.
The system isn't nearly as broken as the activists claim. For the most part (and we already know how to deal with the exceptions) men are not monsters and women are not witches. We're letting extremists wind us up and create tensions where none ought to exist.
Quill