Darling, sweetheart, love, honey, baby and cunt

Apparently, they are all "terms of endearment", according to the president of the University of Colorado. She was being questioned about the sexual assault of the sole female player on the football team. Obviously, the victim's teammates did their best to create a hostile enviroment for her. And part of the fun was calling her a "cunt", which the president acknowledged was probably a hostile word, but that it can be a "term of endearment".

Hoffman acknowledged that it is a swear word, but she was also asked if she could cite any polite way in which the word could be used.
And Hoffman replied, "Yes, I've heard it used as a term of endearment."
According to the report, a CU spokeswoman says Hoffman is well aware of the negative connotations associated with the word.
However, the unnamed spokeswoman also said that Hoffman is a medieval scholar and she is aware of the long history of the word, and that it was not always a negative term.

What a dodge! It's true, "cunt" is an ancient word, and I do believe it's related to words like "queen". And yes, in certain circumstances, that word can be used inoffensively.
However, I have trouble believing that a bunch of men who have a woman enter what they want to be an all-male enviroment would call her "cunt" out of affection. Call me crazy, but I'm guessing that they used that word because they wanted to remind her on a regular basis that in their eyes she was an intruder and they would never regard her as more than a set of genitals. And maybe, just maybe, that her teammaters felt this way might have something to do with why one of her teammates felt the need to forcibly remind her of what he thought women are only good for.