The Man Boobz Pledge Drive continues. See here for more details, or click below to donate.
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.]
Some backstory: As longtime readers of this blog know, Farrell spent several years in the 1970s researching a book about incest, which ultimately never appeared. In 1977, Farrell gave an interview to, of all things, Penthouse magazine, in which he tried to explain his “findings” and his views on the topic generally. The interview revealed that Farrell at the time had some exceedingly creepy views on incest and child sexual abuse.
If you haven’t read my post on the subject, going through the interview in detail, I suggest you take a few moments to read it now. (Here’s a transcript of the entire Penthouse article; in my post you can find links to high-quality scans of the original magazine pages – in case anyone still doubts he said what he indeed said.)
In short, Farrell believed there were “positive” aspects to incest that weren’t being talked about because society deemed the topic “taboo.” Indeed, the working title of Farrell’s book was The Last Taboo: The Three Faces of Incest.
In the past, Farrell has been, to say the least, a bit evasive when it comes to clarifying what he meant by some of the most troubling comments in the Penthouse interview, and would seem to prefer that all evidence of his interest in the issue of incest vanish down Orwell’s famous memory hole.
On Reddit, Farrell was presented with a perfect opportunity to set the record straight, both on his views on incest and child sexual abuse generally as well as on a number of specific quotes. (Note: as you’ll see, most of the first quote listed is the Penthouse author’s paraphrase, but the rest are all directly from Farrell.)
In his response, Farrell addresses none of the quotes directly, and his comments raise more questions than they answer.
“Excellent questions,” he says, before going on to answer none of them. Let’s break down his non-answer.
bottom-line, i did this research when my research skills as a new Ph.D. were in the foreground and my raising two daughters was in the future. had i and my wife helped raise two daughters first, the intellectual interest would have evaporated. life teaches; children teach you more. 🙂
He starts off by mentioning his Ph.D., though he doesn’t mention that it was in political science and not psychology. Moreover, his discussions of his research in the Penthouse interview suggest that his methodology was anything but scientific.
His reference to his daughters seems to suggest that if he had had children he would have realized that there really was no “positive” aspect to incest. One might have assumed he would have picked up on this when the overwhelming majority of the women he interviewed “admitted to having negative attitudes toward their incest,” as the Penthouse article delicately puts it.
Farrell ends this paragraph with a smiley, as if the years he spent trying to find examples of “positive” incest were all just a harmless misunderstanding.
now, for some depth. i haven’t published anything on this research because i saw from the article from which you are quoting how easy it was to have the things i said about the way the people i interviewed felt be confused with what i felt.
This is completely disingenuous. It’s not uncommon to find sexual abusers who’ve convinced themselves that the abuse they inflicted upon children was a good thing for their victims, and most people who write about the subject have no problem distinguishing their views from the abusers and abuse apologists they report on.
No, the really disturbing things about Farrell’s interview are the statements in which he expresses his own opinions on the subject. For example, this quote (referenced in the questions on Reddit), in which he describes some of what he evidently sees as the negative aspects of the incest “taboo.”
[M]illions of people … are now refraining from touching, holding, and genitally caressing their children, when that is really a part of a caring, loving expression, are repressing the sexuality of a lot of children and themselves. Maybe this needs repressing, and maybe it doesn’t. My book should at least begin the exploration.
You can see that whole quote in context in the original article here. Farrell now claims that he didn’t say “genitally” but “generally,” though if you replace that one word in that quote it’s scarcely any better.
The Penthouse article also contains this astounding quote from him:
“When I get my most glowing positive cases, 6 out of 200,” says Farrell, “the incest is part of the family’s open, sensual style of life, wherein sex is an outgrowth of warmth and affection. It is more likely that the father has good sex with his wife, and his wife is likely to know and approve — and in one or two cases to join in.”
And this:
“Incest is like a magnifying glass,” he summarizes. “In some circumstances it magnifies the beauty of a relationship, and in others it magnifies the trauma.”
In some circumstances it magnifies the beauty. Farrell gives absolutely no indication here that he is explaining someone else’s views; it seems to be what he himself believes. And until and unless he specifically addresses this quote it is hard to read it any other way.
Let’s go back to Farrell’s “answer.”
i have always been opposed to incest, and still am … .
That’s true, at least to an extent. In the Penthouse article, even though he seems to agree with many of the abusers’ rationalizations for their abuse, he does state specifically that he’s
not recommending incest between parent and child, and especially not between father and daughter.
But then he goes on to say this:
The great majority of fathers can grasp the dynamics of positive incest ‘intellectually’. But in a society that encourages looking at women in almost purely sexual terms, I don’t believe they can translate this understanding into practice.
As far as I can figure it, he’s saying that he’s opposed to father-daughter incest because in today’s sexist society it’s … hard for fathers to do incest properly? If that can be seen as being “opposed to incest” I guess he is opposed. I would love some clarification from Farrell on this point.
Back to Farrell’s answers on Reddit. After sort of, kind of, suggesting maybe his research was a bad idea (in that part above about his daughters) he returns to defending it:
but i was trying to be a good researcher and ask people about their experience without the bias of assuming it was negative or positive.
Really? Seeing abuse as abuse is “bias?” Would you consider it reasonable to study, say, murder, or violent assault, or even someone falling to their death off a mountain “without the bias of assuming it was negative or positive?” Or is it just sexual abuse of young girls and boys that merits such “objectivity?”
And yes, though Farrell now portrays himself as an advocate for both men and boys, he told the Penthouse interviewer that “boys don’t seem to suffer” from sexual abuse — sorry, incest. (That quote is a paraphrase of Farrell’s views from the Penthouse author.)
And then comes this amazing bit, in which he suggests that his interest in challenging the “taboo” of incest was in some ways inspired by the gay liberation movement of the 1970s – because on some level the sexual abuse of children is roughly similar to gay sex between consenting adults?
i had learned this from the misinformation we had gotten about gay people by working from the starting assumption of its dysfunction.
Amazing, just amazing.
You might think that Reddit’s Men’s Rightsers would be appalled by Farrell’s creepy non-answer. Nope. Most of them seem to think he addressed all possible concerns with the issue, with one poster getting dozens of upvotes for suggesting that MRAs bookmark “Dr Farrell’s response to the incest (mis)quote … for easy reference!”
It wasn’t a misquote, and his “response” was worse than no response at all.
The apologies for Farrell’s non-answer aren’t surprising. Other MRAs who are familiar with the interview have also gone to great lengths to explain it away; indeed, one of Farrell’s fans went as far as suggesting that “Penthouse was not always “pornographic” and to characterise it as that is just to demonise and imply that the article as being far more overtly sexual that it was.”
I will repeat what I said last time I wrote about Farrell: if he disagrees with any of my conclusions here, or feels he wishes to clarify or explicitly repudiate anything or everything in the Penthouse article, I’m offering him a chance to explain himself here in a post on this blog — in his own words, unedited.
LOL!
So does this.
@ostara321
Everything you said times a thousand!
As for the therapy thing, on reddit I saw that he considers therapy seeing a guy once a month for 10-15 minutes to give him a quick update on how he’s feeling and to prescribe him more meds. Apparently this is normal in his country for people with low incomes and what he does because he can’t afford extensive therapy. Besides the obvious thought that he knows better than everyone else in general, no wonder he doesn’t believe in therapy. That is not therapy at all!!
I remember giving up on government funded therapy years ago because all I was able to do was see someone every other week for an hour, which just wasn’t consistent enough to feel like I could open up and get to the root of my problems. Plus I had a $25 copay and had to drive an hour total every time, which, for someone who was making minimum wage and couldn’t find full time work, that was a lot of money. So I stopped going. I wanted to go and go more often but it just wasn’t financially possible. So yeah, the real fight here is for more comprehensive, government funded mental health help for all countries. That’s what he needs to be petitioning for, and something people would actually get behind.
People who are low income and suffering from depression get stuck in this rut because they just can’t afford therapy, meds, time off work to heal (and to make sure the side effects of meds aren’t going to put you in danger!), etc. So it just creates this cycle of being stuck at dead end jobs because they’re not mentally healthy enough to progress and can’t make enough money to get the help they need. If the guy wasn’t actively harming other people with what he has done I’d actually feel bad for him because I know what the struggle for mental health is like. Oh well, dude doesn’t seem to want the help that he really needs so there’s nothing anyone can do for him until he admits what to himself what the real problem here is
Even in Oz the funding isn’t great for mental health care, at least as I’ve experienced it, and I know we’re better off than plenty of countries. Medicare (our government health scheme that covers everyone for the basics) pays the bulk of the fees for ten hour-long sessions with a psychologist in one year. Used to be twelve sessions, but they cut back. That’s a damn sight better than a lot of places and I am NOT complaining, but I’m lucky enough to be able to pay the up-front fees. I doubt any psychologists bulk-bill. I pay $160 per session (it was $180 but he lowered the rate when he learned I work part time). Medicare covers $125 of that, but I have to claim it by snail-mail – eedjits don’t have that schedule online. So if someone with little or no cash in hand needed this sort of therapy, they’d be stuck.
Damn, I thought mine was bad. I don’t know about America as a whole, what I was attending was a local thing. I’m not sure if I could take advantage of something like what I had anywhere else, or if it’s be better in another area. Either way, the system needs reform big time.
Mine at least is covered by Medicare – I don’t have to pay a private insurer for it. I only took out private insurance because I’d have had a tax slug otherwise, and it’s only about $15 a fortnight after the rebate. Plus the clinic I attend is ten minutes’ walk from work, so there’s no godawful travelling involved. Given I have a five-hour daily commute, that’s important!
This is completely accurate. I saw a few years ago an article about a family who came here to AZ from LA after Hurricane Katrina. And the newspaper was just tsk tsking over the fact that this family, who were give so many material things, were now living in squalor. One sentence leaped out at me: “the mother spends much of her days sleeping.” As that is a symptom of atypical depression-I thought “did anyone even check to see if they could have mental health care in addition to all of their nice new toys?” Because they just went through an incredibly traumatic experience and if no one bothered, how dare you Mr. or Ms reporter be all affronted that these people did not suddenly become huge successes.
It is hard enough to drag yourself to work if you are feeling depressed, much less to make the effort to become a manager or higher. So too many people just veg out at home with the TV and/or just drink themselves to oblivion because they simply do not have the abilities to do anything about it.
Oh, but of course it’s peeeeerrrrrfectly A-OK when a feminist endorses pedophilia, right?
*Sad trombone for the sad non-sequitur necro-troll*
this is stupid. i think his answer is quite reasonable… you’re going to hear what you want.
fuck, people are stupid and self serving too often.
you don’t know what you’re talking about… yes, you should ask people about their experience without shaming it if your goal is to research the topic. that is not condoning it. if you tell someone, “you’re an abusive piece of shit, but tell me honestly why you did it” … um, yeah.
i can only assume the damaged people who read and love your bullshit because they need justification to their already existing narrative they’re sticking to that helps them stay right where they are. i need to stop reading shit that just makes me lose more faith in humans… ugh.
warren farrell is not perfect but he brings forth much amazing insight that can be a part of the discussion.
«Other MRAs who are familiar with the interview have also gone to great lengths to explain it away; indeed, one of Farrell’s fans went as far as suggesting that “Penthouse was not always ‘pornographic’ and to characterise it as that is just to demonise and imply that the article as being far more overtly sexual that it was.»
Penthouse wasn’t always pornographic. Especially in the 70s, the common excuse for reading porn mags – you know, that one “only read it for the articles” – could actually be true. Playboy, for instance, once combined erotica with actual journalistic interview. It made a famous interview with Martin Luther King and an infamous one with Jimmy Carter.
In addition, Philip Nobile, the author of the article on Warren Farrell, is, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Nobile), a jornalist (and other stuff) with a long curriculum.
According to Quackwatch, a medical skeptical and anti-alternative-medicine (alt med) website owned by Stephen Barrett, Penthouse had a hand in promoting alt med (http://www.cancertreatmentwatch.org/reports/hydrazine.shtml) and conspiracy theories by Gary Null (http://www.ncahf.org/digest10/10-44.html). Yes, these are wrong, but they are examples of how Penthouse and such magazines were not just about porn.
On another note, I wouldn’t trust The Liz Library very much. Beyond its anti-father and anti-Warren-Farrell bile, she also peddles anti-Alfred-Kinsey and anti-Kinsey-Institute claptrap by Judith Reisman herself (you know, that homophobic doctor of communications and not of psychology, which makes Liz a hypocrite since Warren Farrell is also not a doctor of psychology but one of politics – at least according to Liz -, but at least he received a recommendation from the Kinsey Institute), anti-psychology screeds from the Scientologists’ puppet “Citizens’ Committee on Human Rights” and I also suspect that she still believes that satanists are organized to rape children and committ one million child sacrifices a year (you know what I am talking about – that’s right, satanic ritual abuse).
Oh, and I forgot to say another thing. Sometimes it is implied, or even openly stated, that Warren Farrell got kicked out of NOW because of the incest research. Actually, he sums it all up in this quote:
“Everything went well until the mid-seventies when NOW came out against the presumption of joint custody [of children following divorces]. I couldn’t believe the people I thought were pioneers in equality were saying that women should have the first option to have children or not to have children–that children should not have equal rights to their dad.”
What a brave little necro-troll you are!
A necro-troll found a good thread
Last used in July (it was dead)
But he didn’t care
And he says it’s not fair
To quote what it was Farrell said.
Jesus, we got TWO necro trolls here. What is it about Farrell that brings these guys out of the woodwork?
In other news, I was honestly really happy to see, hanging in my bus, an ad about “no means no,” showing a man as the victim with his perp undefined. Hurray, actually acknowledging male victims! Actually getting shit done! You know, the crap the MRM has completely failed to do.
And Casey, if you gloss over someone’s bullshit for their good stuff, you are setting yourself up for deep, deep disappointment.
Jose, you don’t have to trust the Liz library; they have posted high-quality scans of the original article. You can go look at them and see that he did indeed say all these things. AFAIK, he has only claimed that they misquoted literally one word of what he said, and if you go back and look at my original post on this, you can see that it doesn’t really change the meaning of that statement very much — ie, it’s stil; very creepy.
I’m just commenting so I can tick the little “Notify me of follow-up comments via email” box, and to say Jose’s comments about not trusting the Liz Library strike me as carrying the same weight as those MRAs who say they won’t trust any research coming out of Sweden… Dude, impeach the scan itself if you can, otherwise accept it regardless of the source.
I wouldn’t call anything Warren Farrell has ever contributed to anything amazing. More importantly, I’d call advocating sexual violence against children more than imperfect. It’s monstrous. Glossing over it is obscene.
Something funny I’ve discovered. There are two different schools (probably more) on Warren Farrell within the MRM that I’ve encountered and they’re both fucking wrong. There are the ones that want us to be nice to him. Then there are the ones who want us to believe he’s not major presence in the MRM and his thoughts don’t carry weight and they’re full aware he’s disgusting. How the blue fuck does either party reconcile that while both claiming to rep for the MRM?
David: “Jose, you don’t have to trust the Liz library; they have posted high-quality scans of the original article. You can go look at them and see that he did indeed say all these things. AFAIK, he has only claimed that they misquoted literally one word of what he said, and if you go back and look at my original post on this, you can see that it doesn’t really change the meaning of that statement very much — ie, it’s stil; very creepy.”
Not really, if you consider the following points:
– “incest” is not really synonymous with rape, but some of those cases he reported are definitely rape, don’t get me wrong;
– the word “generally” or “gently” instead of “genitally” in the “caress” quote does change a lot the meaning of the sentence. Case in point, the meaning of the word “caress”, which means, according to The Free Dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/caress), “A gentle touch or gesture of fondness, tenderness, or love”, so it was probably:
a) a misquote by the journalist; and,
b) a warning of Warren Farrell’s against considering fathers who are actively involved in their children’s rearing to be able to hold their children without considering themselves molestors;
– that quote about “incest being part of the family’s sensual life” or something: it’s only 6 in 200 which, according to my calculator, is 0,(3)%, i.e. where the 3 repetes itself indefinitely and it’s less than 1% (BTW, this is one of the quotes mined by Liz);
– in some cases, victims of rape might say that “they liked it” or “it wasn’t so bad”, but let’s not forget something: how a victim feels does not determine whether he/she was raped or not and a victim’s feelings might be a weird way of the victim defending him/herself from extra psychological suffering. This was the “bias” that Farrell was talking about (well, that one and the obvious one of the rapist liking to rape);
– he didn’t publish the book because he was afraid it could be used to defend some rapist’s point – doesn’t it prove something about the “non-creepiness” of Warren Farrell?
And the reason I talked about the Liz Library is because you seem to quote it a lot and it contains its own lot of creepiness (starting right there where Liz quotes Judith Reisman and states that Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute used stats of pedophiles on their research). I don’t really dispute the scans, just the legitimacy this might give to a homophobe. Maybe you were also influenced by Liz’s version of the story when you went to get the scans.
P.S. 1: I think Philip Noble is still alive, and he should have his say on this. Maybe if you care to do such research, and I’ll try it next time I can, we can share results.
P.S. 2: Calling people “necro-trolls” is its own kind of creepy.
How dare you use such shaming language.
“- that quote about “incest being part of the family’s sensual life” or something: it’s only 6 in 200 which, according to my calculator, is 0,(3)%, i.e. where the 3 repetes itself indefinitely and it’s less than 1% (BTW, this is one of the quotes mined by Liz);”
Just what did math do to you to deserve such torture?!
6 in 200 is 3 in 100 is 3%
That math could only have been easily if it was 2 + 2
*easier
I got distracted by a cat and a toy lost under my door.
World’s smallest violin for being called a necro-troll, pooor Jose.
Why are you defending Farrell, who essentially said that girls who didn’t like being raped by their fathers (and yes, that incest IS rape) were just conned into not liking it by society?
Fuck that and fuck Farrell and fuck anyone defending Mr Pro Incest And Pedophilia.
Oh boo-hoo. You came into a dead thread and started trolling, this isn’t a difficult concept.
Of course, neither is 6/200, but you still fucked that up.
Jose, I don’t quote the Liz Library “a lot.” I refer to them on this issue because they’ve put this information online.
Here’s the “genitally caressing” quote with the disputed word replaced by the one he claims he really said — though he’s also said he originaly said “gently.”
What’s still very creepy to me about this statement — particularly in the context of an interview about incest — is the suggestion that parents who don’t “touch, hold and generally caress” their children are “repressing their sexuality.”
Maybe it’s possible to read that comment in a non-creepy way, but the rest of them? Not a chance.
He had an opportunity to deal with all of these issues frankly in the Reddit AMA and he responded with evasive nonsense.
“Gently caressing” sounds fucking creepy to me when it’s talking about parents and children. So does “generally caressing”. Caressing itself has a very strong sexual implication to me, and that he’d use it of parent-child contact is side-eye material even before he talks about parents sexually repressing their kids … or is it the parents’ own sexuality he’s whining is being repressed?
Why couldn’t he talk about parents cuddling their kids? Oh, that’s right, because it’s about Daddy’s boner, and what’s good for Daddy’s boner is good for his children.