I find this all framed a little oddly.

What I see here seems to be people arguing from the predetermined biases without regard for the topic.

For example, claims of it having to do with abuse in any direction would require some substantial evidence.

But then, there's also bias in this:

"If you want to somehow tie feminism into the declining birth rates, especially given the relatively recent MeToo movement, a less tenuous tie would be the increase in awareness that women have to how abusive men are ..."

And in this:

"But it's the womens fault still?"

The idea of "fault" here seems to imply that falling birth rate is something that is wrong that needs to be blamed on somebody.

The available evidence of falling birth rate can actually be "tied" to feminism fairly easily, but in terms of women having choices and tradeoffs, including women becoming more educated and building careers. I don't think anybody would argue that these choices didn't emerge as a result of feminism. I don't know that anybody, or very many, would say that is a bad thing. Rather, an consequence of staying in school, going to university, and building a career is that marriage and having children is delayed, and having more children would mean more time out of their career.

For example, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) summarizes the research nicely in their article, "Why is the birth rate declining" (May 6, 2021): "Between 2007 and 2020, the TFR in the United States declined from 2.12 to 1.64.3 This decline may signal a longer-term drop in lifetime fertility shaped by broader social factors, including postponement of marriage and childbearing to older ages and long-term increases in women’s educational attainment and labor force participation. Although most American women say they expect to have at least two children, many women delay childbearing whether by choice or circumstance to the point that they may end up having only one child or no children at all."

Refs:

Martin O’Connell, “Childbearing,” in Continuity and Change in American Families, ed. Lynne M. Casper and Suzanne M. Bianchi (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001).

Eve Beaujouan and Caroline Berghammer, “The Gap Between Lifetime Fertility Intentions and Completed Fertility in Europe and the United States: A Cohort Approach,” Population Research and Policy Review 38 (2019): 507-35, https://link.springer.com/arti....

You'll also note that while fertility rates declined for women of most ages, the rates actually increase consistently from the late 1970s to today for women in their 30s. That is, women have children much later than they used to, and have fewer of them total.

That is inconsistent with any links to abuse (in any direction). It a simple matter that the changing role and available choices of women -- which of course has a lot to do with feminism -- is a trade-off. There's finite time available. Women can't have children at the same rate as they used to, and stay home with them, and go to school, and build careers. That's impossible.

Instead, what we've learned is that when the choices are opened up, a very large portion of women prefer education and career over having children, or having them while young, or having as many. Is that a bad thing? It certainly has consequences on populations and demographics, but would it be better to declare the outcome "we" want and then force women to do the bidding to get that outcome?

By "we", I mean collective discussions about what "should" happen in society. A free country means the outcomes can't be dictated; if you want to dictate statistically outcomes, you have create an unfair, unfree society where individuals are forced to do what is necessary to get that outcome.

This is fundamentally the result of freedom along with the rapid increase in standard of living. People aren't forced into things by circumstance, government, or social pressure. (Sure, I've heard some objections that women have been pressured to not stay home and have children, but at the scale of whole population that would require a lot more evidence than pointing to a few feminist leaders who have said women shouldn't do that.)

It is what it is. It isn't a "fault" or a blame. It is an outcome of freedom and choice.

That's absolutely correct. It's not thermal. If you look at the article or go to the source images on Neptec's site (and caption info), you'll notice it says it's a false-color depth image, meaning the color indicates it's depth below the surface according to the scale on the side. The damage is about 1.2 inches deep and a little bigger than your thumb in diameter.

This isn't really an issue of insulation. It's the disturbance of laminar flow. The laminar boundary layer is actually quite a good insulator itself, especially at Mach 20. The main issue is how much the hole disturbs the boundary layer and what localized heating might result. This small of a hole in diameter, even though it's mostly through the tile, should be mostly negligible. But NASA is treating it VERY seriously and is doing simulations as well as has an arc-jet facility to test on an exact duplicate of the damage. (It's a 3D model of the hole, if you check the video, and is easily reproduced on the ground. It has even been printed out with a 3D printer.)

Remember that Columbia damage was on the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) panels on the leading edge of the wing, not the tiles on the belly. The leading edge is one of the hottest and most critical points where that damage occurred. This damage is generally low risk, and EVA is always risky to some degree, but this might be a great opportunity to test repair procedures. When people talk about whether NASA is making decisions based on schedule for this damage, it's not about ignoring risks for the sake of schedule. Risk wins, easily. The schedule issue is that if the damage is not a risk at all, is it prudent to fix it anyway to test procedures and have an actual flow repair to analyze upon return. Remember, EVA and extending flights adds risk to the crew too, but can be beneficial and reduce risk both for this flight and future flights.