"Back door".  

Anyone who ran the UASF client clearly knew exactly what the effects of that code were.  Some were purely interested in activating SegWit as swiftly as possible, while some also wanted to give the miners a bloody nose as they felt miners held too much influence.  Plus, as stated before, not many people were actually running that client anyway.  BIP91 is the code that effectively broke the deadlock and avoided a split.  A "back door" implies that devs can do something in secret that users aren't aware of.  It can't simultaneously be something they're doing in secret whilst also being "luke and buddies promoted it".  Devs can't just "change the network" at a whim because their code does nothing if users and miners don't use it.  As always, your problem boils down to the fact that users and miners did run code that you don't like and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, other than whine incessantly.

It's all well and good saying that the community should have a bigger say on what the code is, but then you have the chicken and egg problem where users can't agree or disagree with code until it actually exists and then they can all see what that code does.  Then you have the small, but insurmountable, obstacle where Bitcoin is not some sort of committee or parliament with points of order and rules governing social conduct.  There is no way for anyone to enforce a rule that says people can't write code with an arbitrary activation date.  There's no way to enforce a rule saying we aren't allowed to have softforks.  It's just people writing and running code.  If you want to write some code, go ahead.  If you want to run some code, go ahead.  If you want to cry like an infant because supposedly bad people did supposedly bad things, go ahead.  That's about the extent of your influence here.  It's not a conspiracy.  People did what they wanted to do and now SegWit is activated.  Similar changes could happen again in future and there's nothing you could do to stop it.  Choose the blockchain or blockchains you want to be on and get over yourself.



That's generally how forks work, yes.  

You'll notice, however, that you still have the choice to be here on the BTC network even though you haven't embraced the new rules.  Some might be grateful for that opportunity, but apparently all you can do is complain about the fact that you haven't been forked off yet.  I suppose that's probably the best argument against softforks you've come up with so far.  It means we still have to share a network with you.  That is a real concern, now that you mention it.  Tangible and lasting consequences that we'll have to deal with for many years to come.