A trip to the local watering hole brings the bleak prospects shared by many young American men into sharp and painful focus.

Olympia being a hotbed of slouching teens with nothing much to do, I prefer to make my visits to the fountain in the wee hours of the morning. Four a.m. suits me. If it's raining, all the better to ensure alone time while I quickly fill my jugs. The last time I got up so early, however, I spent the morning updating the headlines links on my home page and now I was running low.

So this afternoon I loaded fifteen empty one-gallon water bottles into the trunk of my Ford and reluctantly drove to the fountain. Sure enough, slouching teens were there despite the threat of rain. Not many, but a couple were partially blocking the parking space I wanted as they observed with stony faced horror while a woman who in generations past would have been called a teen age girl bitched out a man who in generations past we would have called a teen age boy.

Careful not to crowd the onlookers, I parked such that my Ford was about a foot over into the next stall. Shouldn't matter, I thought, almost nobody else was there and there were plenty of empty stalls.

Careful not to evoke the wrath of the young woman--I have seldom heard so many F-bombs squeezed into such a short span of time, each of them spoken with the righteous fervor usually reserved for hellfire and brimstone sermons--I set about to fill the jugs.

Glancing at the teens, I wondered why the young man put up with her abusive diatribe. In less light it would be hard to distinguish between them, so little did she resemble a female. Her voice was unmistakably female, but the slovenly young woman's self-righteous litany of complaints clearly labeled her as a product of the progressive-feminist education system. Him, too; why else would he put up with her abuse?

Embarrassing Liaison
At his age, I would have been embarrassed for anybody to think I had taken a tumble with her: his sloucher status notwithstanding, it was obvious he should have been able to do better than her.

During my ruminations the parking lot began to fill up as more people pulled in to get water. Just as I was about to fill the last jug, a woman closer to my age came and asked me if I had many more jugs to fill. I showed her the last jug. "You took up two parking spaces!" she snapped. Very true, but there was no point in trying to explain why so I just smiled and said, "Oh, I'm sorry."

As I filled the jug she began to argue with the two teens. The young man had started to smoke a joint. It's legal, now, under state law in Washington State, though federal law still prohibits it. The angry woman and an elderly man scolded him for it, but he retorted that it was legal and walked away. "I'm f-ing trying to teach him manners!" the young woman growled.

Loading the last jug I made my getaway. Briefly I was tempted to approach the young man, who had rejoined the two observers to his torment, and suggest to him that he visit The Backlash! or A Voice for Men or one of the other great sites, but despite all the sex the young woman claimed they'd had, her comments about spending time in "juvie" suggested they were skipping school and, although the angry woman had no such compunctions about talking to the young woman (lending a sympathetic feminist ear, perhaps?), enough people hate my personal guts already without inviting trouble from the local authorities. So I slipped into the Ford and made my getaway.

Are hostile young women all that most young American men have to choose from, today? Are most young American women slovenly, foul-mouthed harpies no self-respecting male should want to touch? Are well-mannered, healthy and self-respecting young women the exception rather than the rule in America, today?

Her claim that her intention was to teach him some manners reminded me of a line from As Good As It Gets, when Jack Nicholson said to Helen Hunt, "You make me want to be a better man." How did she do this? Mostly by example, and with very brief but polite scolding.

Higher Standards
Women who behave well, invite men to behave well. And vice versa.

Before my time, schools taught boys to behave like gentlemen, and girls to behave like ladies. Casual kind of guy that I am, I can do without starched collar behavior of the prim and proper kind. But our schools, today, with their relentless condemnation of all things masculine and empty-minded celebration of all things feminine very obviously failed the two young people I observed at the fountain. Just as a growing number of American public schools have failed most of their wards under the progressive-feminist doctrine.

There's no short-term solution for the boys and young men who are trapped in this system. The economy may collapse, and with it the feminist dominated education system. Then we can replace it with something better. More private options, maybe. In the meantime, however, they are stuck. Little wonder that so many young men use young women as little more than masturbatory aids; what is there to like about them?

So many lives tainted if not ruined by feminism. Where will it end?

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 and Cowlitz Country News. He is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and served for 9-1/2 years on the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council.