I just don't see how saying that it's men that are to blame helps the situation at all.

I don't say that. I know a lot of great men in my family, and I know a lot of great guys on this board. But I also think there's a segment of the culture that encourages men to think of women as property, as unequal, as objects, and not as people.

It doesn't mean every man in the world or the US or the South thinks that way. But I do think it exists.

But do you really think they assaulted the woman in question because they're men?

I think they assaulted the person because she is a woman.

Oh, I think the email is a joke.

Oh, most definitely. A case of 'know your audience' is at work here I think. He's an idiot. An unfunny idiot.

there's the unmistakable sense that McFadyen certainly didn't think of the woman as human -- I mean, he said he was going to kill her.

Not to excuse him, but I didn't take his comments about killing and skinning strippers at face value but simply purposefully outrageous. Your basic fratboy rapist isn't really Ed Gein, but he would certainly say the most demeaning or shocking thing he could about women. That would have some currency in his culture, indicating that he's not some pussywhipped PC girlyman.

In sum: thoroughly loathsome rapist but of the stupid braggy type, rather than the insane serial killer stripe.

xpost with Scrappy the Wise.

Every time I start to post something, I click "refresh" first and find that Dana has said it, only more concisely and eloquently.

Absolutely. I'm just saying that if the friend got charged, Ransone really needs to get charged, even though the surface of the story is more white-knight and saviourly.

Yep. I don't actually think your friend should have been charged, based on what you've said, but that's a different story.

Every time I start to post something, I click "refresh" first and find that Dana has said it, only more concisely and eloquently.

t preens

A case of 'know your audience' is at work here I think. He's an idiot. An unfunny idiot.

"Idiot" is the kind of word I reserve for people who aren't also rapists. Something a bit stronger is in order here, I think.

I do think they assaulted her because she's a woman.

That's a different question, though. Subhuman assholes like this don't even deserve to be called men, let alone define how I feel about half the species.

And, I think this may be the crux of the discussion. We have one group looking at this from the perpetrator side (subhumans) and others looking at it from the victim's side (women--mostly).

Is this a gendered problem from the subhuman side? No. Not all subhumans are men and not all men are subhumans.

Is this a gendered problem from the victim's side? I say yes because the victims are usually women. Should it be is another question. And, no, it shouldn't be. It should be a human problem, but it realistically isn't.

ION, 9,000-Year-Old Dental Drill Is Found

WASHINGTON -- Proving prehistoric man's ingenuity and ability to withstand and inflict excruciating pain, researchers have found that dental drilling dates back 9,000 years.

Primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 5500 B.C. and 7000 B.C., an article in Thursday's journal Nature reports. Researchers carbon-dated at least nine skulls with 11 drill holes found in a Pakistan graveyard.

That means dentistry is at least 4,000 years older than first thought -- and far older than the useful invention of anesthesia.

This was no mere tooth tinkering. The drilled teeth found in the graveyard were hard-to-reach molars. And in at least one instance, the ancient dentist managed to drill a hole in the inside back end of a tooth, boring out toward the front of the mouth.

The holes went as deep as one-seventh of an inch (3.5 millimeters).

"The holes were so perfect, so nice," said study co-author David Frayer, an anthropology professor at the University of Kansas. "I showed the pictures to my dentist and he thought they were amazing holes."

How it was done is painful just to think about. Researchers figured that a small bow was used to drive the flint drill tips into patients' teeth. Flint drill heads were found on site. So study lead author Roberto Macchiarelli, an anthropology professor at the University of Poitiers, France, and colleagues simulated the technique and drilled through human (but no longer attached) teeth in less than a minute.

"Definitely it had to be painful for the patient," Macchiarelli said.