So, Jessica Ahlquist recently received a letter charmingly threatening to rape her and her little sister for the sin of being atheist, because apparently rape is more in keeping with Christian values than not believing in Jesus.

PZ Myers wrote about this, which I’ll excerpt:

I don’t even understand the connections

[T]his letter is full of sexual slander and rape threats. WHY? This is not a sexual issue. She’s a minor; the last thing you should be talking about is having sex with her.

I’m just trying to wrap my mind around how those people think.

That’s not the way to think about this. Ahlquist is being threatened because she’s atheist. But the specific threat is violence for a different reason: the misogynist scumbag, and those of his ilk, simply did the math. “She’s female, 17, and small. I can beat some sense into her. In fact, someone needs to.”

The author—and I hesitate to call him a “man”, “person”, or anything else denoting humanity—would never use the same thought process for a man or woman who could visibly beat his ass into the ground. But he probably presumes that most women don’t fall into this category. Given his penchant for anonymous threats, well, let’s call that unproven.