More atheist men than women?

[SteelCurtain]

Also, the anonymity of the internet allows the women on your forum to be more vocal, whereas most men feel like they can say whatever they want IRL within a patriarchal institution.

I don't think so. Most Catholic women on there aren't on there to say bad stuff about Catholicism. Most of them are very devout.

And women can say what they want. The pope does not "punish" women for saying something, while being ok with men saying the same thing. ;-)

We don't need to hide behind the internet to say what we want about the Church.

You don't. I'm not talking about saying bad things on your forum. I'm taking about discussing doctrine and having opinions in general. You are extrapolating your experience to everyone else, I am saying the general experience might not reflect an unspoken 'rule' or tradition that theology has been done by men. A quick read of the NT would tell you that women aren't to have opinions about church doctrine, but are to be silent and defer to their husbands. The anonymity of the internet may overcome that.

---

But we are also talking about the blackmail of eternal torture that is looming over everyone's head. So the stakes are believed to be much higher than an abusive relationship, and less temporal.

But this is the same for both men and women. And if anything, if I felt like I was being "blackmailed" it would make me more likely to not want to believe in any of it at all.

That's the Stockholm syndrome we're speaking of. If believe in me or suffer eternal torture isn't blackmail, I don't know what is.