Search Results for Warren Farrell
The Myth of Warren Farrell: Farrell on Rape, Part One
No book has had more influence over the Men’s Rights movement than Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power. Published in 1993, in the heyday of the early 90s antifeminist backlash, it set the agenda for the Men’s Rights movement as it’s developed over the last two decades. He’s the one who came up with the notions of “male disposability” and the “death professions.” He’s the one who got MRAs fixated on the issue of draft registration.
MRA founding father Warren Farrell responds to questions about his incest research with evasive non-answers. And a smiley.
Watch out: He has a Ph.D!
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And now back to our regularly scheduled post:
Warren Farrell, whose 1993 book The Myth of Male Power essentially set the agenda for the Men’s Rights movement we know (and don’t love) today, did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit yesterday.
Most of the questions he chose to answer were pretty much softballs, and his answers largely reiterated things he’s said before many times. But he was also asked some pointed questions about his views on incest which he chose to answer. Well, sort of. Instead of clearing up the issue, he dug his hole a little deeper.
[TRIGGER WARNING for incest/child abuse apologia.]
What Men’s Rights guru Warren Farrell actually said about the allegedly positive aspects of incest. (Note: it’s even more repugnant than that sounds.)
So there has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the recent talk that old school Men’s Rights guru Warren Farrell gave at the University of Toronto. Protesters troubled by Farrell’s repugnant views on incest and date rape, among other things, blocked the entrance to the building holding the talk; police broke up the blockade. You can find various videos of what went down on YouTube. I’m not going to try to sort out all the various claims and counterclaims about what happened.
I personally don’t approve of blocking people from giving talks, even if their ideas are repugnant. But I certainly do approve of holding people responsible for what they say, and Farrell – in addition to being wrong about nearly every aspect of relations between men and women – has said some truly awful things over the years.
Exhibit A: A notorious interview he gave Penthouse magazine in the 1970s in which he discussed a book he was researching about incest, tetatively titled The Last Taboo: The Three Faces of Incest.
Let me put a giant TRIGGER WARNING here for disturbing discussion of incest and child sexual abuse.
Check out the “Farrell’s Follies” series of posts on Reddit
Warren Farrell: His ideas are as bad as that logo
Today, just a recommendation: if you’d like to learn more about the wrongheaded and often quite bewildering opinions of Men’s Rights grandpappy Warren Farrell, take a look at the excellent Farrell’s Follies series now being posted on the AgainstMensRights subreddit. The Redditor known as feminista_throwaway has been systematically going through Farrell’s Myth of Male Power and looking in detail at Farrell’s positions on such issues as “Date Fraud,” why it’s supposedly easier to be a gay man than a straight man, why patriarchy is women’s fault, and how men and women don’t really love each other. There’s a guide to the whole series here.
Program note: I will be on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered today [UPDATE: Transcript up, audio soon]
Kids listening to the radio. Or perhaps an armoire.
So I was interviewed a while back by All Things Considered for a segment on men’s rights activism. The segment, part of their “Men in America” series, will be running today. All Things Considered starts at 4 PM — at least in my time zone (Central); you’ll have to do the time zone math to figure out when it starts for you.
You can listen online here. The segment will also be archived on the “Men in America” web page; it should go up sometime this evening.
Hopefully the segment will include some comments from me. But you never know. Should be interesting regardless.
EDIT: The transcript is up here; audio will be posted on the same page at 7 PM eastern. They included a couple of quotes from me.
I haven’t heard the segment yet, but reading the transcript i have to say the piece is pretty poor, giving MRAs in general and Warren Farrell in particular way too much credence. More on this later.
Men Going Their Own Way agree: “The economic of Sex for women is at 0%”
The price of ladies is plummeting!
Some thoughts on the economics of sex from the fellas over at MGTOWHQ.com.
It’s not looking good for the ladies, at least according to the guys who’ve decided they’re totally over women, honest, but who somehow can’t stop talking about how totally over women they are, honest.
A fellow called TheShaman offers some thoughts on the complete worthlessness of women after they hit the proverbial “wall” somewhere shy of age 40 and are suddenly transformed from swans back into ugly ducklings. He starts off with an idea cribbed directly from good old Warren Farrell before moving on to more advanced Cock Carousel Theory (CCT):
A woman, traditionally, would have used her youth and beauty as a down-payment to a man, to secure his loyalty so that he would stay with her for what could be as long as 50 years of Post-Wall woman.
Nowadays women squander their SMV wealth on bad boys, giving away all their value to Alpha Fucks, and then expect that Beta’s to provide the bucks to settle their massive debts. Especially women in the West- all of the sweetness once expected from women is gone- no ability to cook, no desire to please, no willingness to make a man’s life better. These cock carousel riders only feel like settling down and getting married when they have maybe 1-3 years of decent youth left to her.
A woman truly only has, maybe, 20 good years to her. Afterward, she becomes an aging monster, increasingly bitter over the fact that her best years are behind her.
Women- NEVER BUY.
Not all of the assembled MGTOWers are willing to agree with TheShaman’s radical proposition – that is, that women ever have any value.
As Hank Moody sees it, women are worthless long before they hit the wall:
The economic of Sex for women is at 0%. Its over for cunts, the cat is out of the bag. No sane man will pay for some used slut.
Wallkeeper, meanwhile, reminds the fellas that they’re the real prize. Hooray for fellas!
men must realize that we’re the prize, women are just a sexual fantasy, an accessory, a luxury.
a man can live without sex and without women, a woman cannot live without men.
In return for these valuable insights, I would like to offer all Men Going Their Own Way some concrete suggestions on where exactly they might go. How about one of these lovely islands, all conveniently devoid of women and other humans?
Canadian Association for Equality spokesman Adam McPhee promotes men’s rights by harassing Jessica Valenti on Twitter
Some guys aren’t freaked out by tampons.
Jessica Valenti – Guardian columnist, Feministing founder, non-man-hating feminist – has been fending off an unending torrent of harassment and abuse since she tweeted a picture of herself wearing an ironic t-shirt a couple of weeks ago.
Last weekend, a seemingly innocent tweet from her– asking her readers if they knew any countries that provided free tampons – set off yet another wave of abuse. Her question, and the cogent column she ultimately wrote on the subject, arguing that there are legitimate health concerns that justify government subsidies for tampons, inspired countless thoughtful comments from her critics. Like these:
These sorts of comments (and there were many more along these lines) are sadly typical of the sorts of things feminists – particularly those of the female variety – get whenever they happen to state their opinion about anything online. (If you click on the second one you can see the Tweeter defending his vagina remarks against assorted critics.)
But a reader pointed me to something, well, interesting about that second tweet: It came from a fellow named Adam McPhee, a self-professed “egalitarian” who just happens to be a board member, and the official spokesperson, for a group we’ve discussed here before: the Canadian Association For Equality (CAFE).
CAFE has won itself a certain notoriety in recent months. In May, you might recall, the group’s planned E-Day festival fell apart after its sponsors and some of the musicians scheduled to perform at it discovered that they had unwittingly signed on to a Men’s Rights event.
The group has also organized talks by antifeminist speakers, including the now-notorious appearance of Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto, which inspired some, well, let’s just call them counterproductive protests that we’ve been hearing about endlessly ever since.
But CAFE has been working hard to gain itself a bit of respectability. It somehow managed to win itself charity status from the Candadian government, and has raised money to start up some sort of men’s center. And it has been trying to distance itself from one formerly close ally, A Voice for Men.
Indeed, McPhee himself recently gave an interview to the Toronto Star in which he described AVFM’s harassment of some of those who protested Warren Farrell’s talk as “completely wrong.”
So it seems just a tad ironic, to say the least, to see McPhee happily harassing Jessica Valenti on Twitter.
PS: Adam, I agree with Jessica on that whole tampon thing. So feel free to Tweet me your thoughts about my gaping vagina.
The Power of Paint and Powder: Brave Men’s Rights Redditor takes on women and their evil deceptive makeup.
Evil woman preparing for battle.
Ladies, watch out! Men’s Rights Redditor warspite88 is on to you! Your painted faces don’t fool him! Your concealer cannot conceal the truth! He knows your lips aren’t really that red! He knows your eyelids aren’t really that blue!
Yes, that’s right: it’s time for another angry MRA rant explaining to us why women wearing makeup oppresses men, somehow.
In a post with the delightfully over-the-top title “Men’s rights are directly tied to the power of paint and powder. Ill explain,” warspite88 sets forth his theory:
It is my belief that women have become so beautiful through the use of makeup that most women and men are influenced dramatically and view women more as goddess and men as dogs. The power of makeup has helped to fuel a war against men’s basic human rights.
Uh, what?
Paul Elam to A Voice for Men conference goers: Don’t say terrible things about women in public, because someone might hear you
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you run a site that appeals to raving misogynists given to launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat. And let’s just say that you have gone to great trouble to organize a conference that is designed to play down the fact that a significant amount of your fanbase is made up of raving misogynists given to launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat.
Well, you probably shouldn’t post a public announcement warning the raving misogynists who will be attending your conference to refrain from launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat because someone might hear them. Because the fact that you feel it necessary to issue such a warning is kind of a giant clue that a significant number of the conference attendees are raving misogynists given to launching into anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat.
I bring this up because Paul Elam posted just such a warning on his site last night in a post that he labeled “Important Message for AVFM Conference Ticket Holders.”
