I am still on a more or less neutral side here although I have not a single bit of understanding for Gankers.
Yes, if you have a decent shipbuild and know what to do it's fun to play in open and interact with gankers. I decide the terms of action. I can always high-wake. Didn't lost one ship since I finished my g5 eng grind. I can try to fight and even when I see that I am likely going to loose, there is plenty of time to leave the engagement. Of course that cost me a huge amount of time to get here.
I have persuaded my wife to try out ED, so that we can play together. She is in open because I fly in open. She basically knows how to fly, ship is not engineered and she still uses docking computer. And she has only very limited time for the game, so that it will take very long until she is halfway good at this game.
Last week she was ganked in Deciat... Yes I told her she should go there in solo but she forget or whatever. Point is, she was really upset and had no clue why or what happened there. I tried to explain and it cost me all my power of persuasion that she did not quit the game at all.
Call it suffering or whatever you want... She was negativ affected by this. I now try to lead her emotions towards the revenge approach. But it will take time until she is ready for retaliation. An unbelievable amount of time.