Men’s Rights Activists tend to be fairly blunt; when they express a noxious opinion – and oh so many of their opinions are noxious – they do it in the most obnoxious possible way. It isn’t enough for Paul Elam of A Voice for Men to blame victims of rape; he also has to call them “STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH[es]” wearing the equivalent of PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign[s] glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.”
Warren Farrell is different. He takes a softer approach. He would never call a woman a bitch or a whore or a cunt. When he speaks, he manages to sound gentle and caring. He talks about the importance of listening to others. He sometimes even manages to give the impression that he cares as much about women as he does about men.
And yet his ideas are as noxious as Elam’s. He is as much of a victim blamer as any slur-spouting MGTOWer complaining about “stuck-up cunts” on an internet message board.
It’s just that he does his victim blaming with such carefully evasive language that he’s able to hide the noxiousness of his ideas – and to avoid taking responsibility for them when he’s challenged on them.
So it wasn’t surprising that a lot of the questions directed at him during his Reddit Ask Me Anything session the other day were attempts to pin down the real meaning of some of his more troubling pronouncements over the years.
A Redditor by the name of fiskitall asked Farrell about a quote from his Myth of Male Power that I also had hoped to see him clarify:
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.
Though worded with characteristic evasiveness, Farrell seems to be suggesting that men should not be prosecuted for raping women who explicitly tell them “no” if they think that these women are somehow giving them a “nonverbal” go-ahead. His “tongues still touching line” suggests specifically that he thinks a woman who kisses a man is essentially consenting to sex.
So how does he explain this quote? He starts off by trying to explain the bit at the end about fantasy:
the quote comes from the politics of sex chapter of The Myth of Male Power. The point that “He might just be trying to become her fantasy” comes after a discussion of how romance novels and, in my 2014 edition, books like 50 Shades of Grey–books that are the female fantasy–are rarely titled, “He Stopped When I Said ‘No.'” The point is that women’s romance novels are still fantasizing the male-female dichotomy of attract/resist versus pursue/persist, and the law is increasingly punishing that as sexual harassment or date rape.
Beneath the weirdly academic verbiage – all that crap about “the male-female dichotomy of attract/resist” and so on – Farrell is advancing an idea that is really quite insidious: the notion that the popularity of rape fantasies in romance novels and in books like 50 Shades of Grey means that women actually want men to disregard their “noes.” Not only that: he seems to suggest that it’s unfair to prosecute men who rape women because, heck, for all they knew the woman is into that sort of thing.
As I pointed out in a followup question that he ignored,
I’m not sure how the fact that women read romance novels means that they don’t really mean no when they say no. That’s fantasy, not reality. I play video games in which people shoot at me; it doesn’t mean I want people to shoot me in real life.
He continues, his language growing more confusing and evasive:
the law is about dichotomy: guilty vs. innocent. male-female sexual attraction is about nuance. the court can’t begin to address the nuances of the male-female tango. the male role is punishable by law. women have not been resocialized to share the risks of rejection by expectation, only by option. the male role is being criminalized; the female increasingly has the option of calling his role courtship when she likes it, and taking him to court when she doesn’t.
The only real “tango” going on here is in Farrell’s language, in his attempts to so muddy the issue of consent that he manages to suggest that rapists are the victims of women’s “poor socialization” and caprice. In real life, the “male role” is not criminalized; men aren’t jailed for asking women out on dates, or going for a kiss at the end of the night; they’re being jailed for overriding a woman’s “noes” and raping them, though in actuality it is rare for a rapist to see the inside of a jail cell.
And that last bit – his complaint that women have “the option of calling his role courtship when she likes it, and taking him to court when she doesn’t” – seems to be little more than a deliberately confounding way of expressing his frustration that women are allowed to say no at all.
the answer is education about each sex’s fears and feelings–and that education being from early junior high school. we need to focus on making adolescence a better preparation for real love within the framework of respect for the differences in our hormones.
I confess I don’t quite know what he’s talking about here; as far as I can figure it, based on some of the things he’s written in the Myth of Male Power, the reference to “the differences in our hormones” is his way of suggesting that we should be more forgiving of boys when they make sexual “mistakes.” Boys will be boys!
the most dangerous thing that’s going on in some colleges is saying that a woman who says “yes” but is drunk can say in the morning that she was raped, because she was drunk and wasn’t responsible. this is like saying someone who drinks and gets in the car and has an accident is not responsible and shouldn’t get a DUI because she or he is drunk. we would never say the guy isn’t responsible for raping her because he’s drunk. these rules infantalize women and the female role, and criminalize men and the male role.
Well, no. They criminalize people who rape drunk people. A woman who is raped when she is drunk is not the equivalent of a drunk driver; she’s not the one doing the driving.
In his classic essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell described how political writers turned to evasive euphemism, and degraded language generally, in an attempt to disguise the sheer terribleness of the things they were trying to express.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
It’s easy enough to see that this is exactly Farrell’s game. He can’t say “men shouldn’t be jailed for raping women who say no, because a lot of women have rape fantasies, and so maybe they’re into it” even though this seems to be the most straightforward translation of his basic message.
So instead he talks about how “romance novels are still fantasizing the male-female dichotomy of attract/resist versus pursue/persist”; he complains that “ the male role is being criminalized”; he talks vaguely about creating “the framework of respect for the differences in our hormones.”
But in the end, what he’s saying is worse than Elam’s rant about “conniving bitches” with neon signs over their heads. He just knows how to make the indefensible more palatable to a general audience.
RE: Retha
I call enjoying to give pain, including emotional pain, evil.
*sigh* You just don’t get it, do you.
You’re STILL calling my husband evil. You’re STILL comparing him to my rapist. You’re STILL spitting in my face and denying me agency, all in the claim that you want to help me.
You have learned nothing. Your apology means nothing. Please, PLEASE just shut the fuck up.
Speaking as someone who believes that parts of both feminism and men’s rights activism are important if we want to achieve real gender equality, I have to say I don’t entirely agree with your interpretation of what Farrell was saying. The bit about consent and alcohol sounds like nonsense on his part, but the earlier sections about the male-female dichotomy in sexual courtship etc. were something I found more interesting. I read ‘The Myth of Male Power’ quite recently, and my impression was not that he was trying to say that it’s OK if men override women’s ‘no’s’ because some women secretly have rape fantasies. To me it seemed he was trying to say that the idea that women have a secret desire to be sexually dominated is still perpetuated in popular culture, and that being sexually dominating is still portrayed as an inherent part of conventional masculinity. I thought he was saying that as a society we don’t do a good enough job of teaching boys and men about actual proper consent, and instead we teach them that women really ‘like it rough’ and want to be ‘taken’ by a real man. In addition to this (although Farrell didn’t mention it) there’s also not very much widespread discussion about the issue of male consent to female sexual advances – this just reinforces the idea that females are sexually passive and that it’s the exclusive role of the male to penetrate (pardon the pun) her sexual defences, whether those are subtle physical cues or and outright ‘no’. Point is, I didn’t think Farrell was saying that this is how it is in reality – he was saying that this is the version of reality that society so often sells to men and boys, and therefore it’s understandable (not excusable) that some males believe that women secretly want to have their objections overridden in some for of sexual fantasy. Also I think this ties in with an overall deficiency in our society regarding alternative forms of sexuality and sexual fantasies – if we had a more open and better informed societal discourse about BDSM, role-playing, consent etc. more men (and women) would probably understand that there’s a safe and clearly consensual way to act out any domination fantasies they might hold. But yes, point was, while I definitely agree with parts of your analysis, I think perhaps Farrell’s earlier comments pertained more to what we teach men and boys about female sexuality, as opposed to how female sexuality actually is in real life.
Thanks, it’s helpful for you to preface your TL;DR comment with “I’m a complete dumbass who has no idea what I’m talking about.”
@paradoxy
Riiiight… I’ll bite. If any part of your defence of Farrell is in any way supported by his actual words, can you show them to us?
(Just to be clear, I think you’re full of shit. But anyone with such a vastly different interpretation of someone’s words to pretty much everyone else should have some very compelling evidence if they expect people to do anything but laugh at them.)
There you go again, Blockquote Mammoth. I hope you enjoyed it.
No, it was not the Blockquote Champagna, whatever you say
paradoxy, do you really, really think a man who’s written that girls only have a negative response to being raped by their fathers because society tells them it’s wrong, is actually against men forcing women?
The Blockquote Mammoth just loves you today, Luzbelitx! 😛
Damn, I love that Mammoth. And I love you kitteh. And I love Daivd. And katz.
I think I’m going to sleep now.
:cyberhugs:
Sleep well! Have a cuddly Blockquote Mammoth.
Not another false equivalency troll. I think I’d rather just have an admitted misogynist show up here.
Since I’m pretty drunk, I just want to note that it is an accomplishment that it only took me two tries to spell equivalency correctly.
I’m such a fucking genius. 😉
I’m a bit baffled ‘cos paradoxy has posted in good faith before, iirc. Not trollishly at all.
@parodoxy:
First of all, please use paragraph breaks. Pretty please?
That’s strange, since I read it quite recently, too, and that’s not the impression I got. While he did start off chapter 14 (The Politics of Rape, p. 224) with a social commentary on our justice system, he was only defending men who were jailed for rape without offering any sympathy for their victims, or solutions to how we could reduce rape in our society.
Au contraire, mon ami, WTF* is blurring the line between rape and consensual sex (p. 225-226), equating rape with something that is an inconvenience at best (p. 226-227), blaming women (and romance novels for women) for men raping women (p. 227-228), making a clear distinction between stranger rape and date rape and arguing that the former is “worse” than the latter, since a woman basically agrees to sex when agreein to a date (p. 229), undermining research on women’s submissive status in society by perpetuating the stereotypical view on dating (p. 229-230) and oh god i can’t anymore with this guy.
At no point did I find WTF actually blaming societal gender roles for this, but rather, he chooses to excuse men for acting in a manner that hurts women; if he didn’t do so, the MRM would probably not hold him to such a high standard. He, and the MRM, are all about blaming women and excusing men.
By the way, here is the full quote about “noes” and “yeses” from p. 228-229 of The Myth of Male Power:
[TW: rape, rape apologia]
I don’t know about you, but to me it appears WTF is saying that date rape is a misunderstanding, and that a man who chooses to ignore a woman’s verbal (and consequently, I assume, the nonverbal “noes” that arise once the woman realizes what is happening) should not face legal repercussions.
That… is beyond fucked up.
So yeah, parodox, you seem to have confused WTF with some actual feminist researcher. WTF is not interested in challenging gender roles in society, unless he can put at least part of the blame on women and make excuses for men.
For an example of this, see p. 226-227: WTF blames both men and women for men raping women, because men rape, and women commit, and I quote, “date robbery, unequal date rejection, unequal date responsibility, date fraud, and date lying”. He’s comparing rape to a woman not agreeing to sex after the man has paid for dinner. Just let that sink in.
*From now on, I will only refer to Warren Thomas Farrell with his full initials, because I find that fitting, not to mention utterly hilarious.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Great minds think alike! Although now I’m recovering from that great idea last night, and it is not quite as fun.
*applauds Anarchonist*
TW: All the trigger warnings.
Actually, I kind of see where parodoxy is coming from.
This is actually somewhat as I thought right up until about page 287 of Myth of Male Power. One reason is that it’s the kind of analysis reading general texts on gender / sex / culture issue have accidentally taught me to make. The assumption is generally that these behaviors being described are not conscious evil done to manipulate fools or actual cases of monstrous deceit. People just have bad ideas that are perpetuated and ingrained and result in bad outcomes. It’s a very hopeful message, in a way, because it means if you change the ideas and talk about them, people will realize that rape and stealing and murder and oppression are bad things to do.
A second is that I am not really too good with labelling things as “evil” and it tends to kind of catch me unaware – I prefer the version of the world wherein people are basically nice, and everything in my experience bears this out. Strangers have always been helpful to me, I get answers to the questions I ask, people like me, and I’ve only been in one fight where someone attacked me for no reason. So a worldview where everyone is a cruel, evil, selfish monster out to rape, murder and kill but only avoid doing that because they’re afraid of the repercussions is a worldview I have difficulty understanding.
But I want to make it very clear, and I think Anarchonist has done that too, that this idea of “Misunderstandings” and “social training” and “everyone is actually okay”? This is not what WTF argues. His arguments are evil. And his arguments are about how people inherently act, and are, and how this is unfair to men.
Look at that. Does that for one fucking minute sound like someone arguing that: ” was saying that as a society we don’t do a good enough job of teaching boys and men about actual proper consent, and instead we teach them that women really ‘like it rough’ and want to be ‘taken’ by a real man. “? Does that sound like someone arguing for a misunderstanding and a world wherein people are taught the wrong thing, or does it sound like someone arguing that this is the way the world is and sexual harassment is a form of courtship if done right?
The truth is I fucking wish that was the case. If this was the case, I wouldn’t feel like I was opening the actual Necronomicon every time I peruse a bit of MOMP to get some material for a blog post I just can’t seem to write because every time I try I just end up waking up eight hours later covered in alcohol and with a buzzing in my head where the latest conscious amnesia is nesting.
Allow me to quote Anarchonist for a bit here.
—————
And now for the bitter kicker.
This is not the case.
Arguing that this is some pretense at someone stating that this is all just “what men are taught” might work for about three seconds if you don’t think about it too hard, because it seems like that’s the case. The social roles we have now cause this situation. That’s the argument here, right?
Except there’s no mentions of any way to change that, and that [8] refers to his earlier work Why Men Are The Way They Are, wherein he proceeds to build up the arguments to underline the above statements.
Those arguments are also wrong (He lies about source material, misues movies, quotes things in half, refers to book reviews rather than the actual book, misunderstand and misapplies Erica Jung, Germaine Greer, fucking Danielle Steel). I have covered this on my blog, in a series of shitty posts I want to re-do now, but whatever. These are the listed points about how the social roles of men cause rape, and you can be forgiven for thinking that this all means that the problem is what we touch young men about young women.
Until you flip the page, at least.
Oh. I see we’ve already gotten that part. That’s what leads into the “respect her noes”. That’s what the argument is. In some books, and some movies (books publishe in 1936 and 1974), someone marries a rapist, and this means that all women like being raped. Because they read that stuff, so they must be into it. In case there’s even a sliver of fucking doubt, I can also quote the section right after “tongues still touching”, which goes on to state something that makes my brain weep.
.
Pretending that this is all someone just writing about reality as it is is taught to young men and how this is a tragedy is wrong. It is disingenuous and it is ignorant of the writing as it is. This is someone arguing that the social roles of men benefit women, and that one of the benefits is that women get to find the “best man” out of all the ones they shoot down. This is not about how some men feel some things, and how bad things can be taught to good people. I recommend nearly any book on “rape culture” for a way better exploration of the topic.
The Myth of Male Power is one long book about how it’s totes unfair that some women can say no to having sex, and how date fraud is bad, and how, if you skip the draft, you’ll get raped and get aids, and how sexual harassment legislation is outlawing jokes.
NO REALLY, ENDNOTE 25, page 294, “…, we are spending millions of dollars to censor a form of humor.[25], and that [25] endnote JUST READS:”Sexual harassment legislation does much more than censor a form of humor, but it is also doing that”.
Bask in it. BASK in that. Just take it in, read it, and just laugh for a moment. “millions of dollars to censor a form of humor”, where the note reads “I mean, it does more, but it also does that” with a complete lack of any kind of reference to any kind of actual millions, other than the millions of assfacts this book is based on.
The mildest of misters my ass.
@kittehserf
OMG that’s the cuddliest Mammoth ever! Thank you so much!
@Anachronist
WTF FTW!!
Thanks for letting me know that reading your drivel isn’t necessary with this opener.
Paragraph breaks are your friend.
Ha! I spent the night reading most of your blog posts on MOMP. You did a great job.
The effects on myself were not that different…
[CN: rape]
MRAs do not engage in any activism. They are reactionary ideologues whose claims to be a progressive movement are shaky at best and blatantly false at worst. Most of the time, they don’t even try to pretend they are progressive. They show their true colors whenever those less privileged articulate their experiences of oppression.
When a trans woman like me explains that the harassment she has received is a direct consequence of transmisogyny and therefore misogyny in general, they talk over me and cissplain and mansplain to me that I really just experience misandry. And in a shoddy attempt to reach out to me they claim that they’re fighting for me because I’m a “man” who is shamed for adopting different “gender roles” – which isn’t even close to being and accurate description of who I am.
When trans people deconstruct the category of sex in order to reveal its patriarchal and colonialist origins, MRAs smugly condemn them for daring to question a discursive construct uncritically accepted in most scientific research – claiming to be objective while ironically refusing to even analyze the discourse they so faithfully accept.
When any female rape survivor (cis or trans) asks men to not tell rape jokes around her due to her PTSD-fueled reactions to blatant trivializations of rape, she is mocked, attacked, and then told more rape jokes – often directed at her own experiences of rape – or even threatened with rape.
And finally, when colleges across the country announce that they wish to aid rape survivors by instituting stricter discipline for rapists on campus and help them anonymously report their rapes to administration (the only possible consequence for the rapists being that they can be privately reprimanded by administration and asked to read the campus policy for sexual assault), guess what fucking happens? MRAs come to dox random faculty and attempt to spam the anonymous report form simply because of the extremely small possibility of false rape accusations – accusations that in this situation have no risk of even hurting the accused.
So yeah, MRAs can go collectively hug a cactus. They should never be taken seriously unless they miraculously prove themselves to be genuinely progressive. And they probably never will.