Linda,

Don't want to rain on your misandric parade but um, you know that,

"Across Europe, in the years of witch persecution around 6,000 men – 10 to 15 per cent of the total – were executed for witchcraft.

In England, most of the accusers and those making written complaints against witches were women."

See: https://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Arcana/Witchcraft%20and%20Grimoires/case_witchhunts.html

In Salem, out of the 19 Witches who were hung?

"Fourteen were women and five were men."

And this from same source:

"Robin Briggs calculates that 20 to 25 percent of Europeans executed for witchcraft between the 14th and 17th centuries were male. "

"Regional variations are again notable. France was "a fascinating exception to the wider pattern, for over much of the country witchcraft seems to have had no obvious link with gender at all."

"Of nearly 1,300 witches whose cases went to the parlement of Paris on appeal, just over half were men.

"The great majority of the men accused were poor peasants and artisans, a fairly representative sample of the ordinary population." Briggs adds:

"There are some extreme cases in peripheral regions of Europe, with men accounting for 90 percent of the accused in Iceland, 60 percent in Estonia and nearly 50 per cent in Finland."

Bottom line?

Superstition, jealousy and revenge as well as the need for a scapegoat fuelled the ignorance that enflamed the witch hunt mania.

By far, older women, especially from the lower classes, were the easiest prey...but it would be scholastically disingenuous to purport that men did not suffer as well.