The Backlash! - June 1996

• What does it tell boys when most of our social icons of innocence and sensuality are women, and the male icons of what women find attractive are hoods, hooligans, shysters, drug lords, boy toys, bullies and so on?

• Women's bodies sell commodities; men's bodies make commodities.

• Sexual attention is not harassment when it's wanted. How are we supposed to know when it's wanted? Feminatics say women never really want men's sexual attention. Nonsense. Most women do ... just not all the time. As long as most women want men's attention some times, and as long as most women make a habit of forcing men to guess when they do and don't, all heterosexual men will sometime engage in behaviors that, by law, can be deemed sexual harassment.

• Do men harass women in response to how women harass men, or do women harass men in response to how men harass women? To break it down into a "man problem" or a "woman problem" ignores the function of sex, how that function affects human relationships, and how each sex contributes to and participates in "harassment."

• Pundits proclaim that because most whites have more social power than blacks, this justifies such things as affirmative action. But when we point out that most women have more social power than men, that's irrelevant.

• Feminists keep telling us that sexual harassment is almost always about power, not sex. That when men "come on" to female coworkers, it's a tactic aimed at keeping women in their place. Let's see now, these women are telling us guys all about our motives? How we experience being men? How would they know? Isn't that a lot like men telling women what menstrual cramps feel like?

• Expect pop-feminists to impose a new twist on the issue of acquaintance rape. "Yes" means, "Yes, I hear you," not necessarily "Yes, I agree." On March 20th, 1994, CBC aired a report on a management training program on sexual harassment. During the discussion, it came out that when men say "yes," they mean, "yes, I agree," but when women say it, they mean, "yes, I hear you." Andrea Dworkin was right - even when women say "yes" to sex, it's rape.

• "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" almost ranks as a female prerogative in our society. Is it time for men to adopt the same attitude?

• Many have defended feminist extremists who attack men, on the grounds that it's oppressive when the strong pick on the weak, but okay -- even admirable -- for the down-trodden to poke fun at the strong. Men have all the power, the reasoning goes, so it's okay for feminists and women to hurl mud their direction, but oppressive when men fling some of it back. What about the more than 80 million men in America who have less power than most women?

• The term "backlash" implies a prior "lash."

• According to Nora Dunn, on the Playboy Channel's Who's On Top, when women argue, they tend to get deeply personal and resort to ad hominum attacks more quickly than men do because they "think it just goes away." Isn't that a lot like a guy saying sexual innuendo -- "hostile environment sexual harassment" --doesn't count? That "it just goes away"?

• Pop-feminists like to say that men must take greater responsibility for rape and other forms of sexual violence against women. Many also say North American men must do something about the circumcision of women in Africa. Really? Then why aren't these same people interested in doing anything to stop the genital mutilation of men here?

• RU486? How can women expect men to support choice for women, when most women oppose choice for men?

• New Rage women complain about the many ways men disrespect women. Okay, but what about the pervasive disrespect women express for men?

• Feminists of all persuasions like to say that the personal is political, that the individual's experiences are what are important, and that these experiences translate into a political agenda. Okay, let's test this: In many men's experiences, many women are violent, back-stabbing bullies, and in the experiences of many of our readers, most women are morally wishy-washy. On the basis of our individual experiences, what political action should men take? What political agenda should men support?

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