by Laura Flanders

About the author: Laura Flanders is a columnist for In These Times, a national biweekly magazine of news and opinion.

All men are natural-born rapists. This is not the sort of allegation that usually gets serious treatment in the mainstream media. But Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer have been journalistically feted from coast to coast for making just that charge. The attention has been enough to more than double the print-run of their book, A Natural History of Rape, three months before it will be released by MIT. Not bad for a couple of uncharismatic guys with a meandering theory based on bug research. The key to their success: They use their theory to criticize not rapists, but feminists.

Professors of evolutionary biology at the University of New Mexico and...