Setting the record straight

And others have complained that defending men automatically makes me antifemale (as though being pro male and pro female are mutually exclusive).

The irony of these viewpoints, of course, is that every day in hundreds of newspapers and magazine articles, and TV and radio shows, reporters and commentators generalize about male violence without apology. No one suggests they need to run disclaimers assuring us they are not anti male, or that they do not mean to suggest that all men are prone to violence and need to be treated like dangerous animals.

There's a simple reason for that -- thanks to the pop-feminist campaign against men, many people do feel that all men should be treated like dangerous animals. Moreover, this prejudice is so pervasive that to argue against it really is taken as an indicator of misogyny.

Well, in the interest of making our position on these and other issues very clear, we will now offer a blanket disclaimer. In the future, if you ever read an article that leaves you wondering, you may refer back to this tofind out precisely where we stand:

At The Backlash, we oppose spouse abuse, child abuse, sex abuse, all sexist stereotypes, lawyers who grow rich from promulgating contentious and drawn out divorce cases, sexual separatism, sluts (of either sex) who sleep around and then complain that all the members of the opposite sex want only one thing, sluts (of either sex) who expect their significant other to live up to a higher standard than they do, and newspaper reporters who bias their articles.

We oppose authors who take facts and legitimate insights and use them to stereotype one sex or the other, rather than telling the whole truth, pundits who profit from perpetuating the gender war, authors who don't index their books, pundits who use subtle rhetorical games to demonize otherwise well-intentioned individuals, academic ideologues who use only those facts that promote their particular agenda and attack and oppress anybody who dares to tell the whole truth.

We loath talkshow hosts who give in to producers who would rather stage a headline grabbing "oh look, Geraldo got his nose broken again" donnybrook than a thoughtful discussion of the real issues, barring women from active combat duty, requiring men but not women to subject themselves to being drafted into active combat duty.

We disdain sexism, sex discrimination, sexual harassment, rape, sexual entrapment, double standards, the IRS, conservatives, liberals, low fat milk, any freeway speed limit under 65 mph, cars with diesel engines, Hyundai cars (take my Hyundai, please), drug abuse, Win95 (and Windows 8), child pornography, the near extinction of wolves in the wild (if you don't like wolves, don't move into their territories), Barney the dinosaur, clear cutting of old growth forests, the way Microsoft dumped sludge and construction chemicals into local streams killing all the fish in a nearby fishpond and then saying "we don't care" when the owner of the pond complained about it, federal policies that support archaic and dirty industrial technologies by erecting artificial barriers to new technologies, and snooty Seattle yuppies who are doing their best to use tax and zoning laws to drive Boeing (and the blue collar middle class factory workers) out of Seattle.

We dislike Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's policy, which was passed on to Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, based on fear rather than prudence, country-western music (if it's Country, it ain't music), tax deductions for home loans (they help fuel the land and housing speculation that has been driving up housing prices beyond all reason for the past 30+ years), telephone solicitors, Prozac, Ritalin and the rampant overuse of antibiotics.

We despise FDA opposition to the vitamin and "health food" industry, soap operas, romance novels that appeal to the prurient interests of women, prose that is called poetry, dance "music" that consists primarily of drumming, elementary school teachers who do not make their pupils use the dictionary and technical writers (most of whom have yet to demonstrate that they know how to write a computer manual for anyone who is not already an expert), the criminalization of women's breasts and the criminalization of men who stare at women's breasts

The virulent attacks on Playboy magazine (before they eliminated pictures of naked ladies), the hedonistic "Playboy Philosophy," and television series like Beverly Hills 90210.

We gag at the stench of perfume, wishy-washy politicians who don't have the backbone to say, "Yes, I inhaled, now get out of my face," luddites, B.F. Skinner, pragmatists, relativists who claim they're certain you can't be certain of anything and a legal system that operates on the "golden rule" (them who has the gold makes the rules).

We dislike Civil Engineers and Architects educated in California who then think they know how to design and construct roads and buildings for rainy Seattle, people who protest the deforestation of the rain forests in South America but think it's just fine to build sprawling shopping malls, and warehouse and factory complexes on top of some of the most fertile farm lands in North America.

Women who, as they sit waiting for the jerk to call, complain how men don't call when they say they will, yet would never consider taking the initiative and calling the guy themselves, men who go around indiscriminately hitting on women and women who date and mate men who go around indiscriminately hitting on women.

We laugh at chihuahuas and toy poodles, diet coke, diet Pepsi, people who sit on their butts complaining about how all the fad diets they try to help them lose weight don't work, rather than getting up, going to the gym, and putting a little sweat equity into their physical health.

We sneer at people who think cats and women are better than dogs and men, people who think dogs and men are better than cats and women, the idiot who decided to discontinue Studio 60 and Eureka, the diamond monopoly (of all the gemstones, diamonds have the least intrinsic economic value, and yet, thanks to the monopoly, carry the highest market price...sort of like Microsoft software), NAFTA (he may have been a loon, but Perot had it right), Michael Kinsley's politics and people who attack Michael Kinsley the man.

We laugh at people who don't laugh at Bill Clinton's sexual antics, people who smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and support anti-marijuana laws.

We dislike chemical fertilizers, people who would rather try to outlaw chemical fertilizers than to compete in the free market with organically grown foods, Sharing Violation messages and Oracle Errors.

We shake our heads at Christian majorities who complain about being persecuted, female executives who complain about how they are oppressed by their male subordinates, men who pine after hairspray queens and complain to "plain Jane" how they can't get a date, government policies that create homelessness (as with the state of Alaska and several other states, most of Washington state is "owned" by the Federal government -- if the US still allowed its citizens to homestead on Federal lands, and if we did away with property taxes and found other ways to pay for "public" services, and lowered construction costs by discarding silly building codes -- like the one in western Washington that requires new homes to be made tornado-proof [we've had all of three waterspouts here in the past 26 years], not only would there be virtually no homeless, but it would allow new construction innovations to be implemented on a vast scale, creating new industries and new sources of wealth).

We disrespect people who steal shopping carts, religious hypocrites, women who oppose pornography yet read romance novel pornography for women, people who say "hate intolerance" (if you're tolerant, you're going to tolerate those who aren't), people who say there are no absolutes, yet say racism, sexism, and homophobia are absolutely wrong, gay rights advocates who ally themselves with feminists who hate male sexuality (a Faustian bargain if there ever was one) and people who don't know how to use the turn signals on their cars.

We despise women who apply makeup while they're driving, and starlings in America.

Disclaimer to the disclaimer: This list is by no means comprehensive and is subject to change at anytime without reason or warning.

There you have it. A partial comprehensive list of everything we oppose. If I missed anything, I'm sure you'll let me know.

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.