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Comment by easyThrowaway | Hacker News Reader

As a man who's currently trying to escape a previous, truly abusive relationship, could you expand the verification to both genders? The only real support I had in this situation were only women who had experienced the same and could genuinely empathize with my condition. When trying to talk about this with other men I only experienced embarrassment and mockery on their side.

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Thank you so much for your candid comment - and for sharing your personal experience. You are absolutely right: emotional and psychological abuse has no gender, and your case emphasizes how important it is to make space for support for men too.

In the first phase, we are focusing on the female audience because of the specific threats that women face most often in online dating. But we will definitely add the ability to verify for all genders and sexes as well - including men caught in toxic relationships. It's an important and necessary part, and it's already in the plans for upcoming releases.

Thanks again for your kindness and sensible remark

100% true - the sad fact was that I was able to find better help in women support communities was because they were more impacted by toxic, often violent relationships than men by several orders of magnitude.

The risk of not having similar spaces for men is that they could probably end up the alt-right "man-o-sphere" communities in their stead.

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