1) I love bookstores, but if I walked in to one where the majority of books were backwards on the shelves, I'd walk back out the door.
2) What with Amazon, Chapters Indigo, and other online sites to buy books being so convenient, I'm surprised an independent store would go out of its way to behave so obnoxiously.
3) When I shop- for books, clothes, groceries, or anything else- I don't expect to be hit over the head with a political statement. That's not what I'm there for, and not what I'm interested in. If you want me to patronize your establishment, stock the goods I'm looking for and, unless I ask for assistance, leave me alone. That's all I require.
4) I don't believe in silencing anyone, whether it's the spoken or written word. The hypocritical subjects in this article decry the fact that for much of history, women had a very hard time writing books or getting them published because of their sex. Yet while bemoaning the unfairness of this, they turn about and discourage the sale of books by men for the exact same reason: their sex. Have they no sense of irony? Are they incapable of logical reasoning? One doesn't mend past wrongs by perpetrating fresh ones.
5) I just took a quick survey of my bookshelves, and you know what? I own more books written by men than I do by women. Which isn't to say that I don't have a lot of books by women; Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, L.M. Montgomery, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and numerous others take up lots of shelf space. It's just that P.G. Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, Walter Scott, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens etc., take up a lot more room. You know what else? Most of the writers- men and women- are British. Not all, of course, but a lot of them because I tend to really enjoy British humour and writing styles. I feel no compunction to read mostly Canadian authors because I'm Canadian, and I don't feel the need to read more books by women simply because I'm a woman. I read what I enjoy, without troubling myself about the sex or nationality of the authors.
6) I don't take kindly to being herded to the "appropriate" books by feminists or anyone else. This is essentially what these people are saying: "You will be forced to read these books, because we will remove the other options." Sorry, but a book should be worth reading based on its own merits, not on the identity- or sex- of its author. I'm revolted by the unmitigated gall and hubris of people who think it is their place to decide which authors should be read, which should be silenced, and what books "right-thinking" people should buy. Go pound sand: I'll read what I want.