What we oppose

Setting the record straight

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 to find out precisely where we stand:

At The Backlash, we oppose wife 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, newspaper reporters who bias their articles, 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, 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, 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, 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, Bill Gate's harem, 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, 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, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's policy based on fear rather than prudence, country- western music (if it's Country, it ain't music), credit cards, 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, the rampant overuse of antibiotics, FDA opposition to the vitamin and "health food" industry, soap operas, romance novels that appeal to the prurient interests of women, an auto industry that continues to ignore the gasoline-electric car as a transitional step to the use of fuel cells, poetry that doesn't rhyme, dance "music" that consists primarily of drumming and chanting, elementary school teachers who do not make their pupils use the dictionary, 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), dittoheads (Rush can be entertaining, but he's not infallible), the criminalization of women's breasts, the criminalization of men who stare at women's breasts (hey, don't blame me, cute butts and nice legs are what catch my eye :-), the virulent attacks on Playboy magazine, the hedonistic "Playboy Philosophy," Beverly Hills 90210, Baywatch, the shopping channels, the Sleazehawks, 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, a legal system that operates on the "golden rule" (them who has the gold makes the rules), Civil Engineers and Architects who grow up and receive their educations in California and 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, all presidential candidates (you want to lodge a real protest vote, come November 1996 write in Dennis Miller and Dave Barry), 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, women who date and mate men who go around indiscriminately hitting on women, 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, 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 Hagen Daz Choc Choc Mint Chip Ice Cream, any car that costs more than $10,000, 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, people who attack Michael Kinsley the man, Pat Buchanan's politics, people who attack Pat Buchanan the man, people who don't laugh at Bill Clinton's sexual antics, people who smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and support anti-marijuana laws, 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, Oracle Errors, 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), people who steal shopping carts, religious hypocrites, women who oppose pornography yet read romance novels, 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), people who don't know how to use the turn signals on their cars, women who apply makeup while they're driving, Federal holidays that close the banks and post offices on my regular days off, and starlings.

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

With ribald regards, Rod Van Mechelen