Joss has snapped, and like the useless little sycophant I am, I'm right there with him. I have lately perceived a subtle shift in the anti-women fervour in North America (what Inga Muscio calls cunthatred) from the baseline repressive technology that it has been for the past, say, two or three thousand years, to something that feels even more dire and desperate. I think this is because of an equilibrial shift brought about by the realities of modern economics. Marriage has become pretty much irrelevant in a society where every member can generally hold a career and support themselves (and children) financially, so control of female sexuality/reproduction is in jeopardy of falling somewhat out of male domination for the first time since the stone age. I say jeopardy, because it hasn't happened yet, and if Bush and his like get their way, it won't for a long time. Shutting down abortion is essential to this, as is shutting down gay marriage, as is shutting down anything that is even linked to the notion that a woman can choose to have and raise a child on her own. Speaking directly to the "torture porn" point, I do believe a strong psychological need has grown up in the United States to view elaborate fantasies of brutal domination of women, as a kind of psychic vengeance for womens' successful movements towards equality in the past hundred years. (The lead characters/victims of Hostel 2, naturally, will be three American college girls... who are studying abroad, to add a bit of free xenophobia atop the preexisting misogynic engine. But I also think Spider-Man 3 justifies the American presence in the Middle East, so what do I know.) We're still very much in the beginnings of a time when there will either be a tremendous amount of positive change that will rewrite the landscape of how our societies work (taking heterosocial relationships as the baseline of all current societies today), or a phenomenal backslide into sex-based despotism that would make the Inquisitors blush. Obviously I'd prefer the former, and I also know that nature abhors imbalance. Some treaty will need to be reached.