Things are never what they seem. Men certainly aren't, according to the American writer Marilyn French: "Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that's all they are."

French said that in 1977. It wasn't good PR for the feminist movement. Maybe some feminists did, as detractors claimed, have something against men -- but it was nothing compared to what a group called Wolbachia have against them.

Wolbachia are male-killers, though sometimes they only castrate males. Yet they are not radical feminist guerrillas: They are bacteria. Wolbachia quietly infect at least a million species of insects, spiders and crustaceans, and for males with a dose, the outcome is bleak.