The best defense is to never deny what is true.

Hitler understood this difference when he relied upon the power of the "big lie" to sustain his power. Subjective facts are like opinions. They are what we think they are. Persuade the public or media of a thing, for all practical purposes, that thing is a fact.

The rape crisis exemplifies this. Despite that Professor Neil Gilbert, of the University of California at Berkely, demolished the idea that rape pervades our society, the Northwest Women's Law Center still reports that, "A woman is raped every minute in the U.S. for a total of at least 683,000 women rape victims per year." It need not be true to be a "truth."

Answering a "truth" objectively is like bulldozing a fog: Pervasive but tenuous, there is nothing of substance to assail.

Never attack legitimate facts
This is why we generally do not attack their "facts." Like a fog, they shift and dance away. Sometimes, it's just easier to accept their truths at face value. Being subjective subjects them to many interpretations, and their inconsistency provides so many contradictions that, like Keystone Kops, they are their own worst enemies.

But we are always ready to embrace what is objectively true. Consider all sides, and eventually the sun will shine through.

That is why this issue features an article by Scott Abraham that presents the case for Repressed Memory Syndrome. As one who possesses a writer's memory for events, it may be hard for me to believe it possible to suppress the memory of something that happened again and again, but before we do any more knee-jerking on this issue (and I am certainly guilty of that), let's get all the facts.

Never trust the mainstream media
Turning now from the hard to believe to the unbelievable, the predilection of the mainstream media to manufacture extremes and create conflict never ceases to amaze me. These people have no shame!

January The Seattle Times published a LARGE article spotlighting The Backlash! While the reporter did take several quotes out of context, thereby artificially skewing their meaning, she did note that we are NOT anti-feminist per se, but primarily oppose the extremists. She also mentioned our sibling publication, The Equalitarian.

Following this, we received several invitations to do more newspaper and radio interviews. Bob Sides, one of our Boston correspondents, handled the east coast for us, while John Sample, Raj Kumar Singh and I filled requests for midwest and west coast interviews, including a profile of The Backlash! on National Public Radio.

During that interview, we strongly emphasized that we are pro-fairness, not anti- female, and that with The Equalitarian, we provide a forum for resolving the issues and facilitating harmony. Of course, they edited all of that out.

Reminds me of the old joke about newspaper headlines announcing the end of the world: "Comet to destroy Earth - women and children hardest hit."

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.