Males learn very early in life that psychologically they will lose any confrontation with a female, because win or lose they will be labeled "bullies." -- The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege, Herb Goldberg

Angry Women
1992 Bellevue, Wash. - Women are mad, and men know it. In the media, in books, on TV, from women at work, everywhere, we're repeatedly reminded of this. Where ever we turn, women are angry and the misandrist indictments seem inescapable -- "our society is more anti female now than it has ever been." (Body Hate, Heyn, Ms., July/August 1989, p 36 -- this comment was made the year before the 1990 Roper survey indicated American women's hostility toward men is at an all-time high.)

Men must be to blame for this because, according to pop-feminist dogma, men control everything: "Do most women feel some form of generalized anger at men, for being in control of the society, the home, their lives, everything -- having more power, more status, more influence?" (Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress, St. Martin's Press mass market edition, 1989, Shere Hite, p 639) But men are feeling angry, too. Many women take this for granted, and the assumption of equality implicit in its expression frightens them. (Farrell: Why Men Are the Way They Are, Warren Farrell, Ph.D. p 346)

Pop-feminist pundits pounce on this, frequently and loudly asserting anger is the single emotion men express. Given the constancy of this anger, they tell women to oppose rather than fear it because anger is the tool by which mad men today have oppressed and victimized modern women throughout history: "Why shouldn't women be mad at all of history for keeping them out?" (Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress, St. Martin's Press mass market edition, 1989, Shere Hite, p 640)

Male Anger: Emotion of the Oppressor
Male anger, by pop-feminist logic, is the emotion of the oppressor (Farrell: Why Men Are the Way They Are, Warren Farrell, Ph.D. p 334), and men are the specter against which society must defend women: unproductive and self-destructive, men assault and rape women, abuse children, pollute social values, corrupt morals and destroy the world. Hence, society must control men because they are dangerous.

To this end, boys are admonished not to hit girls because it is not okay to be angry at women. (What Do Men Really Want?, TIME, Fall 1990 Special Issue, Allis, p 80)

But suppressing anger is not a good thing. (Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why, Dr. Susan Forward and Joan Torres) So, many men try to sublimate their anger in work. There, however, they are hounded by the harpy voices of pop-feminists wailing their worn-out lament against Patriarchy. Or they're bounded by the oppressive demands of 60 hour work weeks in emasculating environments where Anita-Hill-attitudes toward male sexuality prevail.

In frustration, some men turn to athletics to release their pent-up passions on the field or in the weight room. But there again, they are targets of malevolent misandrists jeering them as "macho jocks."

Under such oppressive conditions, what are men supposed to do? What do women say men do? "They want to stay little boys and they want to fight with the little trucks and they want to do the little things that they do with the little Army men, but they don't want to have relationships." (Claudette Elaine Sims, author of Don't Weep for Me, speaking October 18, 1989 on Donahue)

Driven by the blame and shame pop-feminists use to control them, men withdraw, less willing and able to "relate in an intimate one-to-one, enduring way." (The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege, Herb Goldberg, p 52) This is making some women angry and many sad because they expect men to conform to the indestructible icons portrayed in female pornography -- the soaps and romances.

In response to these, many men deny their anger altogether, neither sublimating it nor suppressing it, but utterly disowning all their feelings in a vain attempt to become the granite-faced heroes or suavely sinister scoundrels of female fantasy. Despite the fact they fail, the attempt undermines their ability to deny the pop-feminists' spurious accusations, with the result that, "today one great difference between men and women is that woman at least know they are oppressed." (The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege, Herb Goldberg)

Oppressed Men: Casualties of War
How many men will die beneath the banner of pop-feminism? How many commit suicide as either a direct or indirect result of the maledictions against men? How many self-destruct -- dying of drink, drugs, poor diet or through self-neglect -- than would without the male-bashing of man-hating pop-feminists? To pop-feminists, these men are merely "casualties of war." (To feminists and pop-feminists alike, it is a war, as noted in a 1990 interview covering the Feminist Movement with Gloria Steinem: "By historical precedent, we have about seventy-five or eighty years to go in this war...but it's finally happening." Rick Bard, Cosmopolitan, July 1990, p 185) They believe that it is unfortunate, but necessary to the greater good. But when men realize they are victims of an undeclared war, a backlash will follow.

How many more men will die before they recognize their own oppression and rebel?

The War Against Women
2012 Olympia, Wash. - Feminists rely on a simple shaming technique to silence men. They accuse us of attacking women. In 1991, Susan Faludi's book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, was the vehicle for this accusation. Today, it's the Republican "war against women." Tomorrow? Who knows. But it's always the same: men are attacking women, and men ought to be ashamed of themselves.

A week ago I was a member of my tribe's tribal council. This was my tenth year on council. A faction I think of as the "feminazi faction" had been making my life miserable for years. For 8 years I was my tribe's volunteer webmaster. During that time, I contributed more than 3,000 hours to maintaining the site. In 2010 and 2011 I also produced the tribe's newsletter. I spent hundreds of hours to produce the biggest, but also cheapest and most comprehensive newsletter in the tribe's history. For my trouble, I was accused of being abusive and a bully. My crime? Standing up to the feminazi faction and their efforts to politicize the website and newsletter to promote themselves.

A week ago I was a member of my tribe's tribal council. Today I am not. A week ago I challenged my tribe's domestic violence program to tweak one element so that it would not be sexist and would not promote a double standard. This program assumes that women cannot be good role models and that men, all men, need to embrace their traditional roles as warrior and protector. I observed that were we to encourage women to embrace their traditional roles, society at large would accuse us of sexism. I pointed to the statistics that reveal women are responsible for at least half of all domestic violence. And I asked that we direct the program manager to tweak it so that it was not sexist and did not promote a double standard; and if that were not possible, then to return the money.

For this, as Herb Goldberg observed in the quote at the top of this page, I was accused of being a bully. Abusive, too. Following which, one of the most abusive women on council demanded my recall. So I resigned. Later, out in the hallway, another woman asked me, "With all the people telling you that you're wrong, how come you don't get it?"

When I tried to answer, she interrupted with a biting remark. When she finished, I tried to answer again, and again she interrupted. So I just looked at her.

"Just because you spoke in a soft voice and used soft words doesn't mean you're not a bully," she said in a soft voice.

"Okay," I replied.

Then she told me that some of the people whom I hurt the most had been abused as children. When I replied that I had been severely abused as a child, her response floored me: "Well that explains it," she sniffed, "all abused children grow up to be abusive adults."

What answer is there for such ignorance? She had just condemned me, as well as the women she had just claimed were abused, as being irrevocably abusive, doomed by the violence of our respective childhoods. So I left before I said something just as silly.

Feminists have taught women to become that which they resist: angry and oppressive. Rather than put up with any further abuse from the feminazi faction that is gradually taking over my tribe, I resigned. Is that a part of the Men Going Their Own Way movement? I don't know that I would describe it as a movement. This isn't Atlas Shrugged, not quite.

What I did, and what I encourage all men to do, is to stop making yourself a target. Instead, as I outline at the bottom of the chapter on Nice Guys, focus on getting rich. You can do it! And once you have the means, join with others, like the guys at A Voice for Men or Man Woman Myth, or any other group that resonates with you, to produce videos, movies, documentaries, stories--the stuff that shapes our cultural aspirations and norms--to fight back through the most effective means we have: entertainment and education.

That's what I plan to do.

Regards

Rod Van Mechelen

Rod Van Mechelen is the author of What Everyone Should Know about Feminist Issues: The Male-Positive Perspective (the page now includes several articles by other authors), and the publisher of The Backlash! @ Backlash.com. He is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and served for 9-1/2 years on the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council.