The Backlash! - December 1994

• Conservative pundits and pop-feminists alike assert that most men feel driven to produce, while women are content just to "be." Oh? Are women less anxious about death than men? At the end of their lives, are women any better able to say, "I am content"?

• Some African-Americans decried how easily South Carolina cops accepted Susan Smith's assertion that a black man took her children. What they would prefer not to admit is that the police would have been no less responsive had she simply said that a man did it.

• For most men, the choices are love or fulfillment, while most women can have both.

• On a recent Sally Jesse Raphael show, one woman explained how she got revenge on her goldbricking ex-husband. He married her for her money, then demanded half her assets on divorce. So, she told him to meet her at the bank. There, she handed him an envelope, told him to give it to the bank president and he'd get everything he had coming to him. The note said "Give me twenty thousand dollars and nobody will get hurt." The police hauled him off to jail. You know, she may be on to something, here. Could this be what men need to start doing?

• Femigogues like Shere Hite decry the "double standard" that says a woman who "sleeps around" is a slut while a man who does is a stud. What Hite and others don't understand is that, while almost any woman can "sleep around," it's not so easy for men. Although we may not respect a male slut any more than a female slut, there's nothing to admire about a woman who does what any other woman can do.

• Men who point out female hypocrisy don't get love; women who point out male hypocrisy don't get respect. Which is worse?

• A woman has her period while staying at her boyfriend's, and deposits her tampon in bathroom waste bag. Her boyfriend notices, retrieves, places in plastic bag in refrigerator, as soon as he can he rushes to facilities with "donor" egg, fertilizes it, places it in artificial womb, 9 months later he demands child support from the egg donor. Soon, it could happen.

• Femigogues complain because when men create wealth, their wives and daughters do not control it. They also complain that men always want to be in control. But who's obsessing about it? Just who are the real control freaks?

• In a recent Seattle Weekly article about the various factions of the men's movement, Kenneth Clatterbaugh, a "pro-feminist" University of Washington philosophy professor, is quoted saying that the men of Generation X are, "at 20 or 21 where a lot of my generation were at 40." That explains a lot about "pro- feminist" men like Clatterbaugh, and why they don't "get" the men's rights movement. Many members of the men's rights movement were, 20 years ago, where Clatterbaugh is today. Maybe in another 20 years, he and his kind will catch up.

• As male success is often a response to sexual-rejection, does this suggest that female lack of sexual failure leads to career failure?

• Some feminists assert that female logic is superior to male logic, because female logic is inclusive -- "both/and" -- while male logic is exclusive -- "either/or." If this is true, then why do anti-pornography feminists insist that women choose between either freedom or sexuality?

• Pop-feminists complain that because men suffer from "testosterone poisoning," sometimes we are easily provoked to anger. Oh yeah? And what's PMS? An excuse for murder?

• In Backlash, Susan Faludi harangues author Allan Bloom for lamenting about women's liberation from "the dictates of the male will." Okay, and will she also harangue they who lament men's liberation from the dictates of the female need for financial support? Or the female need for career support? Or the female need for child support? Or ...

• Do girlie calendars in the work place create a hostile work environment for women? Even if the images are only of women dressed in miniskirts and blouses that show cleavage? If so, then why is it such a reach to understand the effect a woman wearing a miniskirt and a blouse that shows cleavage can have on men in the workplace?