Warren Farrell’s notorious comments on date rape: Not any more defensible in context than out of it
Warren Farrell, possibly pondering the mysteries of consent.
NOTE: This is the second installment of The Myth of Warren Farrell, a continuing series examining Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power, the most influential book in the Men’s Rights canon. You can see the first post here.
Men’s Rights elder Warren Farrell has been accused of being a “rape apologist,” largely because of one now-notorious sentence he wrote in The Myth of Male Power:
We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting.
This sentence is at least as puzzling as it is disturbing. Calling date rape “exciting” is pretty foul. But what on earth is “date fraud?”
To find out, let’s do what Farrell’s supporters insist we always do with his more troubling remarks: look at it in context to see if it is somehow more defensible – or, at the very least, to see if we can discern what exactly is is he even meant.
Looking at the sentence in context in The Myth of Male Power, we find that it appears in the midst of a long discussion not only of date rape but also of a number of other dating-related behaviors that Farrell claims traumatize men in the same way date rape traumatizes women. So let’s back up a bit to let him spell out his basic premises — and define what “date fraud” is in the first place:
While the label “date rape” has helped women articulate the most dramatic aspect of dating from women’s perspective, men have no labels to help them articulate the most traumatic aspects of dating from their perspective. Now, of course, the most traumatic aspect is the possibility of being accused of date rape by a woman to whom he thought he was making love. If men did label the worst aspects of the traditional male role, though, they might label them “date robbery,” “date rejection,” “date responsibility,” “date fraud,” and “date lying.” (p.313, The Myth of Male Power, 1993 hardcover edition)
He proceeds from here to some Men’s Rights subreddit-style man-whinging:
The worst aspect of dating from the perspective of many men is how dating can feel to a man like robbery by social custom – the social custom of him taking money out of his pocket, giving it to her, and calling it a date. To a young man, the worst dates feel like being robbed and rejected. Boys risk death to avoid rejection (e.g., by joining the Army).(p. 314)
I think Farrell is confusing “the Army” with “the French Foreign Legion” and real life with Laurel and Hardy movies.
Evenings of paying to be rejected can feel like a male version of date rape. (p. 314)
Yep. Paying for a woman’s dinner and having a pleasant conversation with her, only to have her refuse to have sex with you, is in Farrell’s mind just like being raped.
Having dealt with date robbery and rejection, Farrell moves on to date fraud and lying:
If a man ignoring a woman’s verbal “no” is committing date rape, then a woman who says “no” with her verbal language but “yes” with her body language is committing date fraud. And a woman who continues to be sexual even after she says “no” is committing date lying.
Do women still do this? Two feminists found the answer is yes. Nearly 40 percent of college women acknowledged they had said “no” to sex even “when they meant yes.” In my own work with over 150,000 men and women – about half of whom are single – the answer is also yes. Almost all single women acknowledge they have agreed to go back to a guy’s place “just to talk” but were nevertheless responsive to his first kiss. Almost all acknowledge they’ve recently said something like “That’s far enough for now,” even as her lips are still kissing and her tongue is still touching his. (P 314)
Uh, Dr. Farrell, I’m pretty sure that women are still allowed to say no to sex even if they are kissing a man. Either partner, of whatever gender, is allowed to stop sexual activity at whatever point they want to, for whatever reason they want to. That how consent works.
And now we come to Farrell’s famous quote:
We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting. (pp. 314-315)
It still doesn’t make sense to me, but that combination of “date rape” and “exciting” makes me queasy.
Perhaps the rest of Farrell’s paragraph will help to elucidate what he means:
Somehow, women’s romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said “No”. They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this “marry the rapist” theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women’s most enduring romance novels. (p. 315)
Oh, so because some women enjoy fictionalized rape fantasies, real non-fictional date rape is therefore “exciting?”
Farrell follows this up, confusingly, with two sentences that utterly contradict one another:
It is important that a woman’s “noes” be respected and her “yeses” be respected. And it is also important when her nonverbal “yeses” (tongues still touching) conflict with those verbal “noes” that the man not be put in jail for choosing the “yes” over the “no.” He might just be trying to become her fantasy. (p. 315)
Three things. First: If the “conflict” is as Farrell sketched it out above — a woman saying “that’s far enough for now,” while kissing with “tongues still touching” — there is no conflict. Kissing, with tongues or without, does not give a man permission to put his penis in a woman. Reciprocal kissing gives you permission for … reciprocal kissing.
Second: when the alleged nonverbal “yeses” and the verbal “noes” conflict – or you think they do – here’s an idea: RESPECT THE VERBAL NOES. Err on the side of NOT-RAPE. If she says no, assume she means no, until she uses ACTUAL WORDS to say yes. Strange but true: woman can actually USE HUMAN LANGUAGE to express what they want. If a guy doesn’t respect a woman’s verbal “noes” because he thinks — or pretends to himself — that she’s saying “yes” with her body, how exactly can the law distinguish this from rape?
“Your honor, it’s true she told me no, but her elbows were saying “yes.””
Also: if your gal and you want to play out “nonconsensual” fantasies, that’s fine; lots of people do that — consensually. You just need to work out the basic rules and safewords in advance. There are entire subcultures of people devoted to this who will be happy to fill you in on the details. Really. They are very chatty.
Third: Do you all find it as creepy as I do that Farrell tends to sketch out these various rapey scenarios in the steamy prose of a second-rate romance novelist?
If you’re an MRA convinced I’m somehow misquoting Farrell here, here’s a screencap of most of the passages I just quoted which someone on the Men’s Rights subreddit helpfully posted some time ago. Or you could get hold of Farrell’s book and check for yourself.
Oh, but I’m not done yet. I’ve got even more context to provide.
Farrell tries his best to draw some sort of distinction between date rape and stranger-with-a-knife-rape:
We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance. (p. 315)
So going on a date with someone and ostensibly making a “choice to explore sexual possibilities” means that it’s ok for people to force sex on you against your will later in the evening? Uh, Dr. Farrell, how exactly is this not rape? How does the fact that two people went to a movie beforehand turn coerced sex into not-real-rape?
You’ll have to ask Dr. Farrell that question, as his explanation makes no sense whatsoever to me.
A few pages down the road, Farrell warns about the dangers of “date rape” legislation in hyperbolic terms, arguing, bizarrely, that it will lead to more rape.
If the law tries to legislate our “yeses” and “noes” it will produce “the straitjacket generation” – a generation afraid to flirt, fearful of finding its love notes in a court suit. Date rape legislation will force suitors and courting to give way to courts and suing.
The empowerment of women lies not in the protection of females from date rape, but in resocializing both sexes to share date initiative taking and date paying so that both date rape and date fraud are minimized. We cannot end date rape by calling men “wimps” when they don’t initiate quickly enough, “rapists” when they do it too quickly, and “jerks” when they do it badly. If we increase the performance pressure only for men, we will reinforce men’s need to objectify women – which will lead to more rape. Men will be our rapists as long as men are our initiators.…
Laws on date rape create a climate of date hate. (p.340)
I don’t even know where to start with all that. That is just one giant steaming heap of nonsense. To put it as politely as I can.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, Farrell also thinks that a lot of what’s called spousal rape is really “mercy sex,” because people who are married to one another often have sex when they don’t want to — and that’s the way it should be, since “all good relationships require ‘giving in,’ especially when our partner feels strongly.” Sex you don’t want is just part of what makes a happy marriage happy!
The Ms. survey can call it a rape; a relationship counselor will call it a relationship.
Spousal rape legislation is blackmail waiting to happen. (p. 338)
So, does putting Farrell’s “we called it exciting” quote in context transform it into something innocent and understandable and not-rapey?
I think it’s pretty clear that the answer is no.
But not everyone agrees with me on that. When someone on the Man’s Rights subreddit recently provided some of the context for Farrell’s quote, the assembled Men’s Righsters mostly thought what he was saying sounded fine to them, arguing that he brings up some very legitimate points, attacking feminists for quote mining, suggesting that “feminists don’t reality” and that the Feminist machine slanders anyone who gets in their way. Heck, one fellow even suggested that he had gotten the distinct impression that Feminists want to create more instances of “rape-by-misunderstanding” in order to punish men. Oh, and then one of them attacked my previous post on Farrell’s disturbing views on incest.
Posted on May 3, 2013, in antifeminism, consent is hard, imaginary oppression, mansplaining, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, nice guys, oppressed men, playing the victim, rape, rape culture, reddit, the myth of warren farrell, warren farrell and tagged men's rights, MRA, rape, reddit, warren farrell. Bookmark the permalink. 1,058 Comments.
Quite apart from everything else, which I am not touching with a barge-pole because I’m about to start a long weekend here and don’t want to still be typing furiously at the end of it, what is with his assumption that on every single date with anyone, anywhere, the man in question definitely and always wants sex, and that very night? Mr Farrell, it is okay, just because you asked someone to have dinner with you, you are not obliged to have sex with them.
I like* how being accused of date rape is “traumatic” but experiencing it is merely “dramatic”.
*don’t like at all
Shorter Farrell:
“Yes, sometimes men “accidentally” force women to have sex but why does everyone have to make such a big deal about it? Sometimes women don’t put out after a dinner so it’s basically all the same, right?”
I can’t even with this shit today.
The weirdest part of all this is that it rests on the assumption that it’s the end of the goddamned world if you could’ve had sex in a particular instance but didn’t for whatever reason. Guys: if you didn’t get laid, it just means you didn’t get laid. There will be other chances.
What….
what
wat..
wut…
asdfvbnmhjkl?
No can English more. Brain borked.
…What.
I seriously can’t wait for the trolls to come here and see what half-assed defense they can come up with for this.
I’m gonna jump to the spousal rape bit.
Yes, sometimes, when you’re in a committed, monogamous relationship, you decide to have sex (or at least, some degree of sexual activity) at a time when you might not be feeling up to it. This is not spousal rape, though, because the key word in the former sentence is decide. You still choose it. You say in your mind, “I love this person; I may not be feeling frisky tonight, but they are, and I enjoy their happiness.”
Or you don’t, because you’re REALLY not feeling it, and forging ahead regardless would be difficult, maybe even painful or traumatic. Maybe, instead, you suggest gently that tonight might be a better night for them to indulge in a little self-pleasure, possibly with some verbal encouragement from you. Or if it’s happening a lot, you might suggest opening up the relationship for a healthy outlet for the less-satisfied partner.
But what doesn’t happen–or shouldn’t happen, ever, rather–is one partner saying, “Hell with this, I want sex” and forcing themselves on their spouse. That, Mr. Farrell, is spousal rape, and it is, if anything, a greater violation and offense than your man-with-a-knife scenario, because it’s a breach of trust of abysmal proportions.
Which reminds me of the standout quote from Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear:
Because fear is fear, right? And all fear is equivalent, all fear causes the same trauma, all fear must be equal, so being ‘afraid’ of spending money without getting something in return is totally the same as being afraid of being assaulted and terrorized.
Long-time lurker, first-time commenter.
Don’t MRAs and PUAs like to complain about whiny “beta” attitudes? Yet, they turn around and take this petulant, rapey whiner seriously?
Here’s a bit of free dating advice for Farrell & Co.: just take women at their word. Even if you’re attracted to them and want to have sex with them. You’ll be amazed how much respect and long-term success this garners for you.
Seriously, it’s easy. Safe yourself the Excedrin, and spare women your rapeyness.
Oh, and stop trying to put your words in my mouth. That’s kind of rapey, too.
As an evil modern Western woman, I’ve always gone dutch on dates.
The idea that traditional dating is “free” for women is ludicrous. The money women spend is spent before the date begins. Our clothing and personal maintenance requirements (again, for those of us who follow the “traditional” or “old fashioned” style of dating) are hugely expensive in comparison to the requirements for men.
Likewise, the idea that dating is merely prostitution, a transaction in which a man buys sex from a woman in exchange for food, is disgusting, and a huge part of why feminists want to get AWAY from the old patriarchal notions of courtship.
You know, out of all that revolting rape apologia and assorted stupidity, what baffles me the most is the idea that men join the army because they’re scared of being turned down on dates. I mean, what?
Warren Farrell kick-started the MRM with his book The Myth of Male Power, which many MRAs have praised since its publication in 1993. The book contains mountains of misogyny and rape apologia, as shown here and according to many other sources.
Mary Wollstonecraft is widely credited for jump-starting feminism as a movement. Many feminists today continue to praise her even though the second wave has passed. Her most famous book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, is about why women deserve equal rights and respect, particularly the right to full education.
Hmmm…
Just something to think about, MRAs!
@ Gametime
It makes sense because women never join the army or national gaurd – OH WAIT THEY DO.
That should be national guard, not gaurd.
“Date fraud.” Jesus wept. Warren, just come right out and say that a man has every right to expect sex if he buys a woman dinner.
The rest of this just makes me run around the room screaming like I was on fire.
For all his talk about being there for men and boys, he sure does a great job at erasing the experiences of male victims of assault.
David, after you’re done with commenting on this book, can you please comment on another famous book by Farrell, “Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say?” I’ve heard that that book has quite a few vile things in it as well.
Well, we all know that expecting honest human interaction is misandry, right? Because women own language and use it to commit violence against the poor menz by saying no and all that?
How much freaking entitlement do you have to have to think this? Look, if you want to knwo you’re going to get sex for paying for stuff, just ask
See above comment. I also love the arrogance of these men that they think they know what a woman wants better than she does AS SHE IS ARTICULATING HER DESIRES
This reminds me of how From Russia With Love proves all men want to sleep with enemy agents.
Yeah, and if I tried to become people’s BSDM fantasy by randomly punching people in the back, I’d get arrested.
You know, I’m normally not comfortable guessing things about the authors behavior from quotes, but this really, really makes me think Warren Farrel is a rapist.
I think it is worse in context. The context makes it horribly clear what he meant, whereas the original quote was just kind of nonsensical
ugh X| This book. I have no idea how you have the stomach for it; I could barely read the post.
That is obvioulsy your biased, feminist perspective talking! A Vindication of RIghts of Woman ACTUALLY talks about taking away men’s right to vote, forcing them to be hooked up to semen suction machines, and dividing the housework 50-50
/it’s there if you read in between the lines (though I bet they actually suggest something on the housework)
I can see why MRAs love this guy. Farrell has absolutely zero empathy for women. I don’t think he’s capable of seeing women as people, even if he wanted to. Since, to an MRA, it’s impossible to be both sympathetic to men and women at the same time, WF probably sounds reasonable and logical.
Ok, this made me laugh out loud. Also, David, thanks for writing this. It will be really handy to have such extensive WF quotes in one place later.
Finally, every time I hear that quote “before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting.” i imagine exciting sounding just like it does in this commercial.
The ‘it sucks that men have to pay on dates’ thing? Yeah, it’s not feminists who are the ones saying to guys that they need to be the ones to pay. I know I would sure as hell rather there was no genital-based reason either of us should pay or not pay. So the idea that this is all the fault of feminists? Yeah, no.
also I ‘love’ how if men pay on dates, they’re being robbed. But if women insist on paying for half, then we’re rejecting their masculinity or something. I was talking to someone who was going on about how erasing gender differences was like making people into robots. I was confused.
Is it now? Are you sure? Why haven’t I met a single Woman who wants to go Dutch, and claims that she is a Feminist, at heart, at least.
From my experience, even the ones that say that they aren’t Feminists, are in fact Feminists to a significant degree, in which case they are lying outright claiming that they do not support Feminism
Mind you, every woman, even the ones that pick up the tab, want Men to do so, and when the Man does not, they start looking out for one that does, surreptitiously
All of that is pretty ironic if you consider his statements on why he became an MRA. He said that he just wants to bring about understanding between men and women. Feminist women just don’t understand men. He likes to paint himself as a gender pacifist, for lack of a better term. And I think that’s why a lot of people like him.
Though, in light of all the awful things he says in his work, it’s obvious that he’s full of shit.
I am totally going to go home tonight, and carry on a conversation with Beloved in the middle of our liberty lip-lock, while our tongues are still touching.
What? Warren Farrell said that was totally possible!
When I got to the part where “having to pay for dinner and not getting sex” somehow equated “date rape”, I started shaking. What the hell is wrong with people? Not to mention that a lot of guys will -insist- on paying, like it’s their duty. My ex insisted on paying for everything, from movies to books, even when I offered to pay multiple times! And I feel terrible when everything is paid for me, so they weren’t coy half-offers, either.
Sometimes I wonder if, for assholes like Mr. Farrell and my ex, they pay for dinner so they’ll have an excuse to demand sex later…
Warren is trying so damn hard to equate active harm and assault with a failure to live up to expectations. No matter how I look at it, being out 40 bucks and a few hours for dinner is in no way comparable to being robbed, attacked, assaulted, or raped.
… Yeah… I don’t understand this at all. Ok, so when people go out on a date, there is usually a background of possibility for intimacy. Ok… So why does Warren then imply that this possibility must either become actual sex or be labled fraud?
I mean… nobody can help it if their date has different expectations about the evening. If the woman expects just to go out to dinner, but the man suddenly dumps his expectations of sex on her, is he committing date fraud for hiding his intentions? Or must all dates end with sex? If so, then I’ll bet that a vast majority of dates would never happen.
It’s just… infuriatingly entitled and contradictory no matter how I look at it.
@Redcap: I wouldn’t be surprised. When I was a college student, I heard the expression “If she gets the lobster, you get the tail,” which was broadly understood to mean that dating and sex was transactional. I kind of avoided anyone who actually recited it like it was law.
Yep, he says shitty things in a not-angry way, and that’s supposed to make everything all right. And it goes back to him not seeing women as people – he thinks he can bring about understanding between men and women by making a relationship between the two 100% about one of them, because the other doesn’t count.
Why is this guy ever described as a “former feminist”? (Serious question, actually . . . did this guy ever actually actively do anything for women’s causes)? Because I have a hard time believing someone who would write things like this could have ever been in his life anything remotely resembling a feminist.
“If she gets the lobster, you get the tail”
That makes me extra glad to be a vegetarian.
Exactly. Another example is that I watch scary movies sometimes, but I don’t want a monster or axe murderer to chase me in real life.
His views fit in with Christian patriarchy leaders who teach women that when you get married, you give eternal consent to your husband. I don’t know if that works the other way, or if means anything goes for what he asks for.
Another thing is that if one of the people in a sexual relationship stops wanting sex, it could be a red flag for the relationship. Sometimes the cause can be hormonal changes or tiredness, but it could also mean that one of the people isn’t feeling very close to their partner. So if a husband is getting rejected by his wife, and she doesn’t have physical changes making her libido fall, then he might need to talk to her and find out if there is something wrong between them. Maybe the cause is that she feels taken for granted and needs more help around the house. Perhaps another cause is that she resents being treated like a sex dispenser.
Everyone knows that all men are notoriously great at reading the body language of women. Just ask any woman working in the service industry.
Bleah.
Or what was that meme a few years ago of the angry e-mail from a guy after a date? “You twirled your hair! Google says twirling your hair means you want me. But you wouldn’t understand, it’s science.”
Communicating with your sexual partner is MISANDRY
The generally agreed upon gender-neutral rule is that the one who initiates pays for the date. As feminism gains more influence, more women will feel comfortable asking men out and more women will have the money to pay for the dates.
Why is it that whenever MRA come up with something that might actually be a grievance, it’s something best solved by MOR FEMINISM? It’s as if all they care about is finding problems with women.
This is definitely the crux of their entire movement.
Okay. Okay. First of all, the “most traumatic aspect of dating for a man” is ALSO getting date-raped.
Second… if, IF we even accept that it’s incredibly painful and traumatic to have a woman cry rape after what you genuinely thought was a purely romantic and sweet night of lovemaking (I believe that it probably would suck; though I also believe getting hit with an asteroid is more likely), why on EARTH is it a problem to err on the side of stopping? If the consequences are that bad, then it’s only reasonable to be mega-attuned to her negative signals, right? Why not assume that if a woman appears to say yes and no simultaneously, that something is up with you, her, or the situation that makes continuing not a good idea? What is the problem with STOPPING?
The amazing thing for me isn’t even that this guy has screwed-up views of women and dating. It’s that he seems convinced that even in the context of those screwed-up views, getting laid is the goddamn holy grail of being a man.
He gives himself away in that one little quote where he mentions, apropos of nothing, “wimps.” Being thought of as a wimp and unmasculine is, inherent in this whole thing, WORSE than having your life eternally ruined by being falsely accused of rape.
Yeah, I guess this is something that happens now and then to most long-time partners, and it’s like he seriously can’t see the difference between this and RAPE.
I’ve seen this before, and can’t really agree… Women have to spend way more TIME on their looks than men in order to meet society’s standards, but I don’t think we really need to spend more money. Cheap make-up doesn’t really cost much, and I seriously doubt anyone can tell the difference between a woman in cheap make-up and a one in expensive (when someone says “cheap make-up” as derogatory it’s more about the way it’s applied or the colours chosen). And particularly if it’s a fancier place the dating couple go to, I’d say women’s clothes are generally cheaper. A suit costs a lot, but a nice-looking dress can be had for far less. So I’d say it’s more about women being “required” to spend much more TIME on the way they look, not really much more money.
It’s still tremendously stupid to regard dating as implicit prostitution though.
Hey, freemage, if you’re reading this thread, I was surprised to find out that CEMB actually has a lot of transgender ex-Muslims. Thank you for recommending that place!
Can we start calling it “employment fraud” when you get called into an interview and then don’t get the job? Because I’m pretty sure I have a case of it on my hands.
QFT.
Because then the guy would have a sad boner, and we can’t have THAT.
Does he ever say who these two feminists were? His writing style is fucking abysmal, on top of everything else, and you’d have to be either very dumb or desperate for confirmation of your biases to find his “arguments” persuasive.
Back before it was called date rape, maybe the rapists called it “exciting,” but the victims didn’t. They had their own euphemisms. In the 1950s, if a woman told her female friends, in private, that she’d had a “bad date,” it was understood that she didn’t mean the steak was overcooked. It was a signal to avoid that guy.
How does one even begin to think of date rape as merely a “dating woe” worthy of discussion alongside things like being rejected or “losing” money? (The idea that a bad date can feel like bring robbed also implies the man thinks he’s paying for sex. Poor guy, he thought he was dating a prostitute! The trauma!).
The whole premise of the discussion is dehumanizing to women— and more subtly to the men for whom Farrell presumes to advocate, since his implicit valuations here don’t even acknowledge the possibility that men can be raped, let alone the trauma of it. It’s like going to someone whose parents just died and saying “I know how you feel. I stubbed my toe last year.”
On top of all that, his self-satisfied singsong rhyming shit is really obnoxious. “Instead of courting and suitors, they’ll think about courts and suing. BRILLIANT! This totally belongs in a discussion about sexual violence!”
I would ramble on, but I was recently mugged by a really attractive woman who also ejected my advanced, so now I need to go enlist in the Army to ensure that I die as quickly as possible. (That’s what the Army does, right? Dispose of its soldiers so it doesn’t have to think about them, or something? Goodness knows why women want to be in it, but I guess that’s equality for you.)
In addition to ejecting my advanced, my mugger also rejected my advances. In fact, the primary reason she rejected me was because my advanced were ejectable. And that’s why I have to join the Army.
Also, let’s see how Farrell’s predictions of the dystopian anti-rape future have shaken out:
If the law tries to legislate our “yeses” and “noes” it will produce “the straitjacket generation” – a generation afraid to flirt, fearful of finding its love notes in a court suit. Date rape legislation will force suitors and courting to give way to courts and suing.
Show of hands: are we currently living in a sexual police state in which nobody flirts or sends love notes anymore? Have marriage and birth rates plummeted as dating has become impossible? Are people constantly suing each other over dates? Because it seems to me that romance is about the same as it was when Farrell wrote this in 1993, except with less danger of getting raped. Okay, my personal love life is a lot better, but that’s because I was in high school in 1993.
(I just looked up the Wikipedia entry on The Myth of Male Power to get the publication date. Holy crud, this guy is the “reasonable” MRA? I can’t wait for David to get to the part about how men earning more money and holding more positions of power is actually proof that men are oppressed, because financial, social, and political power aren’t “real power.”)
Advocating for the criminalization of spousal rape is misandry for sure.
But this?
Come on – that’s not misandry at all!
So have I. My parents and other authority figures told me to insist on it, so guys like Farrell couldn’t claim I owed them sex. In retrospect, I realize that a man (or anyone) who intended to rape me would have done so regardless, but I guess it made sense at the time.
Also, my parents were proto-feminists and I wasn’t raised with really rigid gender roles, so it never occurred to me not to pay my own way.
@redcap
Sometimes, the people you’re paying will insist on it, too. I once had a shop owner demand to know why I was paying for my own sandwich, and he only relented when I told him (truthfully) that the man I was with was my brother.
@the OP
I still struggle with this, because it’s such a pervasive message. TMI time:
I experienced a period of low libido over the last couple of years, due to depression and pain issues, and I was almost constantly riddled with guilt that I wasn’t fucking my partner, to the point that I would try to get into the mood and end up having a tear-filled anxiety attack about the whole situation. I’m lucky my partner is a decent human being, because I totally could have guilted myself into having sex just to make him happy, if he’d been the sort of jerk who would let me. Because everywhere I look, from Cosmo to mainstream marriage books to the supposedly progressive Dan Savage, I’m being told that not having sex with your partner is unfair, they (usually he) has needs and deserves to have them met, he’d be within his rights to break up with me, blah blah blah.
Um, I may have just unloaded some personal problems onto you, Manboobz. Sorry.
@emilygoddess
“Um, I may have just unloaded some personal problems onto you, Manboobz. Sorry.”
I don’t think you need to worry. If that were a bad thing, I would probably hang around here a lot less. XD Just look at all my comments about my life problems that you’ll see in many of these threads.
I’m happy to hear that you have a partner who isn’t an asshole.
The last time we heard from AJ, it was 12:40 comment time. It is now 2:12 comment time. According to my timestamp.
You know, totally, completely this.
Which is yet another thing that strikes me as odd about the MRM’s unquestioning daddy worship of Farrell. They (and he) like to minimize the trauma that a person who is raped feels by equating it with having to shell out for dinner and movie without getting sex in return, which is just as insulting to male victims as it is to female ones.
Though given the rather musty, rotting, tomb-like scent that wafts around so many of Farrell’s other ideas, I really wonder if this is just him still being stuck in the unevolved 1950s to 1970s, when “everyone” understood that all men wanted sex (with women) all the time and no women ever did and every interaction between potential sex ‘partners’ boiled down to the woman getting as much as she could before ‘trading’ her virtue (which could, alas, never be recovered).
And, of course, anyone male couldn’t possibly have been raped by anyone female, because that can’t happen, by definition (see above re: all men want sex, with women, all the time). And if you were a man raped by another man, well better that you just go be ashamed of whatever you did to bring that on yourself in secret somewhere because your experiences certainly aren’t worth discussing, let alone evidence that you might need help, compassion and sensitivity. Not to mention (literally! Never, ever talk about it!!) people assaulted for presenting as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth to go along with their parts, or for being a ‘super-sexy’ preteen…
And yet, this crap is compelling to people? A person with ideas like this is worthy of lionizing as the head and founder of your movement? A person so consumed with disgust for one category of person that all violence and harm done to others is completely acceptable because someone once turned you down for sex?
Ugh, ugh, a thousand times ugh.
@t7g Have you seen zir pop up again? I’ve been watching that thread but so far nothing.
@gillyrosebee
I haven’t, though I’ve been watching too. If she set an alarm for two hours, we should hear soon. It just bothers me that she stopped talking, instead of saying, “Okay, I’m gonna go nap now!”
Ah! She went to the bank!
I just do not understand people with these ideas. And how they can say this stuff in public, where people can hear them. But publishing a book? With a major publisher??
Sorry, zie, not she.
It’s more involved than makeup, though. I never buy label brands and didn’t go nearly as far as other women do, but it was still damned expensive when I was actively dating. Clothes, shoes, undergarments, hair, makeup, skincare, perfume, dry cleaning (which is more expensive for women than for men). I didn’t do nails, I didn’t do pedicures, I didn’t do tanning, I didn’t dye my hair, I didn’t have shoes to match every outfit or a purse to match every outfit, etc. But I still spent way more than the dinner actually cost, AND I always insisted on paying my share for dinner, too. We’re supposed to invest a ton of time and money on ourselves but at the same time look like it’s effortless.
Two things.
1)
@Gametime.
I’ve got it.
I understand why Warrel wrote it like that. I understand what his thought process is.
OBSERVE A POPULAR ARMY RECRUITMENT MEME:
https://www.google.dk/search?q=I+want+you&rlz=1C1ZMDB_enDK502DK502&aq=f&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=2hiEUZe-JYbesga6s4CYCQ&biw=1920&bih=947&sei=3BiEUYmtCovRsgbhuICwCw#imgrc=M5XwnKgfhpHshM%3A%3BzAgagdOAyT3NNM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffc03.deviantart.net%252Ffs71%252Fi%252F2011%252F051%252Fe%252Ff%252Fwwi___i_want_you_for_u_s__army_by_razornylon-d39nw3f.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Frazornylon.deviantart.com%252Fart%252F1917-I-want-you-for-U-S-Army-197629755%3B1280%3B1729
Men join the army because they’re scared of rejection, and the won’t feel that when joining the army! In fact, when they do so, they feel nothing but complete devotion and total, honest communication about ones desire for the other! The army wants you to be inside of it! And it’s not afraid of saying so, loudly, repeatedly and often!
(… To anyone in the armed forces: I know it’s not like that)
Unlike feeble women, who will never, ever, ever tell you an honest answer to a direct question, and whose words sometime say no while their bodies say yes and the waiter behind you whispers maybe in your ear and the lobster dish clacks its claws in a morse code that must mean possibly but its a crustacean, so what does it know about mammal mating patterns, the Army will tell you straight up that its wants you.
And best part is, when you get all sweaty and short of breath together, you and that glorious armed force, it’s totally consensual.
2)
Date lying. Date fraud. Date rape. Date hate. Date courts. Date legislations. Date breaks. Date dates. Dates.
Date up! Date down! Date all around town! Date there! Date here! Date in that koisk that’s near! Date sometimes! Date a lot! Date misandry! Date misogyny! Date expectations! Date confusion! Date communication!
He could have written date a little more, I think.
3)
I lied, I have three things.
(Comment fraud)
@Emilygoddess:
I actually think, in a relationship between two people, where one wants sex and the other doesn’t, that it’s okay for them to break up.
But you know what?
It’s just as okay for two people to love and like each other, to find other things to do, to talk about their needs and desires, to feel it, to not feel it, to communicate, to empathize, to sympathize, to understand, to hug, to hold, to love, to like, to repeat themselves endlessly about those two points, to walk for hours, to go on dates and split the bill, to have their good times and their bad times and all the other times. And not one bit thing is any more one bit important than the other because it’s between the two people in that relationship, and if they’re happy, then they’re happy.
(Sorry if that crosses a line by writing like that?)
And then I’m back with: Does Warren Farrel understand pain? Because if he doesn’t, then he can’t understand rejection, rape or even love, because what exactly is his reference point?
(Comment elaboration)
People have needs, true, but people also have desires.
And it’s a weird conflation to mesh the two together. You’ll die if you don’t get water, and you have a direct need for it. You’ll also die if you don’t get the right chemicals, and you have signals that tell you.
You won’t die if you don’t have an orgasm… I mean, I’m sure things can be more enjoyable if that’s what you’re into, sure, and orgasms are fun, okay, but not getting them isn’t going to kill anyone.
So:
“And rejection sure hurts, for a little bit, but eventually you get over it and realize that most likely, it’s not so much you, it’s just that the other person had different things in mind and that, out there, of the 7 billion people or so, you’ll find a lot to spend your time with in happy, positive ways”.
And then book ends. Fireworks. The MRA disbands. Everyone’s happy.
(Comment fantasy)
I think one of the most dangerous kinds of people are the sort of people that assume pleasure is a right, not a joy to be had.
And I think the worst kind of dangerous person is the type who think that pleasure, when getting it is dependent on other people, is a right.
(Comment vituperation)
… my link leads to a manboobz post from september 26, 2011.
How did I do *that*?
Ugh….and people still defend him and say that he is NOT a rape apologist.
OK, I’ve got to say this: There is a lecturer I know at university, and for some reason the way he looks has been bothering me. Now I’ve figured out why: He looks just like Warren Farrell. Cannot be unseen.
Anyway, yeah, I’ve read this before. It was terrible then and it is terrible now. Blergh.
“Do women still do this? Two feminists found out the answer is yes”
Funny how feminist “don’t reality” until it supports an MRA trope. Must be true! A feminist said it! Tight argument.
However, I have no problem believing women turn down sex when they actually want sex. Seriously MRAs, you might want to tackle slut shaming if that’s a problem to you. I’m pretty fed up with nice guys crying that they are denied their due amount of sex while they shun women who enjoy sex as disgusting whores.
Hamsters?
Also, did you mean to call him “Warrel” up there, or was that a typo? Either way, I like it! I think I’m going to start calling him that.
I’m bored
Pick a country and age and I’ll figure out just how many partners are available. Assuming anyone in the country is a viable partner, and our protoganist is straight, I shall math it! (Also assuming that he’ll date trans* women and that the marriage rate is stable across all ages, why yes, I was already thinking up how to do this)
How about “Wharrgarbll”?
Katz: that bit about “employment fraud.” Congrats, you are thinking more like Warren Farrell than you might imagine! (See upcoming post.)
Also, I forgot who mentioned this, but on the whole “women like reading romance novels” thing, I also enjoy fiction/movies/tv shows in which the heroes/heroines are routinely punched, shot at, stabbed, blown up, thrown off cliffs and out of airplanes, attacked by monsters and aliens, etc etc, and yet I want none of these things to happen to me in real life. Even though they would all be quite exciting, as in terrifying.
Funny how fiction and reality are two different things!
Last D&D game I ran, my players ended up in a high speed sand sleigh chase across a magical desert. The group of lizardmen pirates hunting them on the orders of a deranged cult tried to firebomb the various sleighs and at the end, they had to trek through a few hundreds miles of desert with no water.
Clearly, I’m a desertist.
And I want to be a pirate.
And I enjoy murdering people
@serrana:
I did not. But feel free to use it!
@David
I think there is a whole unwritten notion running through the discourse on What Women Want that presupposes that women are incapable of separating real life from fiction and fantasy from reality, whereas men are. That’s why a lot of romantic and marital advice for (grown and even middle-aged) women begins with the shattering revelation that life isn’t a romance novel and that real-life men aren’t two-dimensional fictional characters. It’s always very irritating to me, because despite the fact that men, just as much as women, like to read fiction that in no way reflects reality, no one generally lectures men on the importance of not being mislead by their entertainment. In fairness, I have heard young men told that sex in real life isn’t like porn — but there is still a lot less of that presumption of congenital stupidity. But women ARE presumed to be stupid by those like Farrell. Therefore, if we read a romance novel set in Medieval France, we obviously want — nay, expect — to meet that perfect lover who wears honest-to-goodness armor and speaks in langue d’oil verse. And the choice of what we read must necessarily reflect what we actually want in real life, in every excruciating detail. Plus, of course, there is the presumption that all women lead completely sheltered lives, hence the need to explicate to 40-year-olds what “real life” is like.
Amused
part of the “dating isn’t like a romance novel” or w/e strikes me as mad at women for having standards, too.
Like “woman have standards” and some people think “Omg, women are so vain and gold diggery they want a rich hot romance hero not all men are like that sheesh!”