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.
Indeed, so pervasive has his influence been that if you see an MRA making a dumb argument anywhere on the Internet, the chances are probably more than 50-50 that it originated in the pages of Farrell’s book. Despite its age, and its eccentricity, The Myth of Male Power is still the first book recommended to MRA newbies in the sidebar of the Men’s Rights subreddit, the most active MRA hangout online.
It’s a book that deserves a lot more attention than I have been giving it on this blog. Sure, I’ve written about Farrell’s strange and creepy notions about incest, as set forth in a notorious interview in Penthouse in the 1970s, and about his recent attempts to explain away these views. But I haven’t devoted any blog posts to his most influential work. I intend to rectify that now, with a series of posts on some of Farrell’s chief arguments and assertions.
I will start with several posts on Farrell’s views on rape, which has been the subject of much controversy of late. This part will deal with his general statements on rape and sexuality; another will explore in more detail his views on date rape (did he really describe it as “exciting?”); and still another will look at the vast assortment of things he has inappropriately compared to rape.
Pinning down what Farrell “really believes” about rape – and indeed, about almost anything– is difficult. Farrell’s arguments, such as they are, are slippery and evasive. Instead of setting forth a clear argument about rape, Farrell instead provides us with a series of jumbled metaphors and strange comparisons. Instead of trying to summarize them – many of them defy summary — let’s just go through them one by one.
Farrell supporters will likely suggest that these quotes are taken “out of context,” to which I can only say: Check his book to see for yourself. None of his troubling quotes are any less troubling, or for that matter any clearer, in context, and many don’t have much of a context. Farrell writes in a rambling, free-associational style, and many of the “arguments” he makes in the following quotes seem to come from out of the blue, and are never developed further (though some, as you will see, are referenced again in later quotes).
Page numbers given are from the 1993 hardcover edition of The Myth of Male Power.
All that out of the way, let’s jump right in:
Near the start of his book , Farrell sets the tone for what will come by suggesting that men suffer as much sexual trauma from women’s mixed signals as women do from rape:
Feminism has taught women to sue men for sexual harassment or date rape when men initiate with the wrong person or with the wrong timing; no one has taught men to sue women for sexual trauma for saying “yes,” then “no,” then “yes.” … Men [are] still expected to initiate, but now, if they [do] it badly, they could go to jail. (p. 16)
Here, he elaborates on the notion that rape is a matter of bad timing, of “tak[ing] risks too quickly.”
In the past, both sexes were anxious about sex and pregnancy. Now the pill minimizes her anxiety and condoms increase his. Now the pimple faced boy must still risk rejection while also overcoming his own fear of herpes and AIDS and reassuring her there is nothing to fear. He must still do the sexual risk-taking, but now he can be put in jail if he takes risks too quickly or be called a wimp if he doesn’t take them quickly enough . (p. 168)
Here, Farrell falls back on the old “rape is misunderstanding” canard, and somehow manages to compare sexual activity –- from kissing up to and including rape — to eating a bag of potato chips.
It is also possible for a woman to go back to a man’s room, tell him she doesn’t want to have intercourse, mean it, start kissing, have intercourse, and then wish she hadn’t in the morning. How? Kissing is like eating potato chips. Before we know it, we’ve gone further than we said we would. (p. 311)
Here, he seems to seriously suggest that juries could do a better job judging rape cases if they were sexually aroused.
The problem with every judgment of sexual behavior is that it is made by people who aren’t being stimulated as they are making the judgment. A jury that sees a woman in a sterile courtroom, asks her what she wanted, and then assumes that anything else she did was the responsibility of the man is insulting not only the woman but the power of sex. (p. 312)
And then he returns to the potato chip metaphor.
A man being sued after a woman has more sex than intended is like Lay’s being sued after someone has more potato chips than intended. In brief, date rape can be a crime, a misunderstanding, or buyer’s remorse. (p. 312)
Farrell repeatedly tries to absolve men of sexual wrongdoing by suggesting that they are literally intoxicated by female beauty.
Sexually, of course, the sexes aren’t equal. It is exactly a woman’s greater sexual power that often makes a man so fearful of being rejected by her that he buys himself drinks to reduce his fear. In essence, her sexual power often leads to him drinking; his sexual power rarely leads to her drinking. If anything is evidence of her power over him, it is his being expected to spend his money to buy her drinks without her reciprocating. …
It is men – far more than women – whose mental capacities are diminished when they are “under the influence” of a beautiful woman. (p. 320)
But Farrell thinks it’s “sexist” – against men – to put men in jail for “selling sex” to intoxicated women:
As long as society tells men to be the salespersons of sex, it is sexist for society to put only men in jail if they sell well. We don’t put other salespersons in jail for buying clients drinks and successfully transforming a “no” into a “maybe” into a “yes.” If the client makes a choice to drink too much and the “yes” turns out to be a bad decision, it is the client who gets fired, not the salesperson. (p. 321)
We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of Warren Farrell’s equally daft and disturbing views on sex and rape. Stay tuned.
@Katz:
Good summation.
@Thread:
Something has been bugging me, and since I’m stuck house sitting for a few hours yet, I’m going to kill a bit of time by explaining what exactly. So bear with me as I try to put it into words.
There’s an idea here that makes a sensation of ice slither down my spine. It’s not… really the badly mangled analogue of rape as some kind of transaction wherein someone hasn’t “sold” sex well enough and the buyer later on “regrets” it. That’s just the same old idea of women having no agency and heroic, manly men conquering the defenses of chaste virgins with their witty words and vigorous bodies.
Juxtaposition:
There’s something else here.
Other people have mentioned it as well? The emotional comparison between date rape and indecisiveness is really, really strange. The idea that risk taking (and condoms making people more anxious) is a male trait, and that in these times, men are somehow punished if they take risks too early or too soon?
I’m just going to say it:
Does Warren Farrel know what pain is?
Read all of that again. Does Warren Farrel know what pain is? Can he concieve of things being painful? Is he capable of conceptualizing of a situation in which an experience is harmful, painful, agonizing, disruptive and traumatic?
Sex is like chips, right? If you “Have too much” or eat “too many” it’s just a kind of thing that happens, no harm, no foul except a slightly longer run the next day or a few more push ups to burn off the extra calories or maybe just some more lettuce for dinner. It doesn’t leave a lasting impact, it doesn’t matter and you’ll be okay.
It’s the same thing with the quote from an earlier post – “Either men see these experiences differently, or I am getting selective reporting from women” – or for that matter, the entire “I have found that many people are being told their lives have been ruined by incest when in fact it has not”.
It’s like this weird notion is right behind his opinions as copied here and shaping them. As if he is literally thinking: “Women cannot get hurt from sexual violence and neither can men, rape is no more harmful than someone being rejected and date rape is just the same as someone being indecisive about your advances.”
But rape is nothing like potato chips, you do not accidentally fall on someone’s dick or slip into their vagina or… I’m not very imaginative, so fill in your various activities here? Wake up and suddenly found out you’ve just brought someone to orgasm with your mouth? It’s a pretty conscious act, as far as I’m aware. Or at least it’s an act that requires an active transgression of someones personal space.
This secondary thought behind it all, that women are somehow just not going to really suffer that much, or that rape is a thing so neglectably small in scope and consequence that it can be compared with a serious, somber tone to someone saying “I’m not interested in sleeping with you” is absolutely mindboggling. At least if it was a case of a clear cut “Women are all just incapable of feeling emotion”, I could understand. Or a “They just lie about rape to get money from the government”. But in all fairness, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone sort of, kind of hint that rape is not a painful experience.
It ties into this weird transactional view of sexual relationships. Imagine I’m your friend, and that’s not hard, because I’m both lovely and charming. Now imagine we are going to see a movie. For some reason I’ve concinved you to go watch Hot Fuzz with me, because it’s my favorite movie and they’re showing it on account of the universe being weird.
So far, so good.
Except when we get to the cinema, and we sit in our seats, and the movie starts, you find out I’ve actually taken you to a showing of The Holy Mountain
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_k8oaeHsnc )
Followed by a showing of The Room
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCj8sPCWfUw )
Followed by Sharktopus
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U87zVkIXNI0 )
And when you try to leave, you find out the doors are locked. ANd that there’s no one else in the cinema. And that I’ve brought 40 litres of popcorn and am damn, dear, dedicated to get to the end of this 6 hour marathon of utter insanity.
Reasonably enough, you beat me to death after going insane some 40 minutes into this madness.
But later on, when you’re talking to the police, and they tell you: “Well, if you didn’t want to watch a movie with Fibi, you know he has weird movie tastes, why’d you go to the cinema with him?” what would you actually say?
There is no world I can concieve of where the answer to that question is not: “What the hell does that have to do with anything? We agreed to go watch one movie, and instead I got locked in a cinema with a marathon of bad puppet shows!”
So again, can Warren Farrell concieve of pain and something being uncomfortable? If someone gets someone else drunk, and not just plastered, but black out barely conscious drunk and pressures that person into sleeping with them through a constant bombardment of “Oh come on, it’ll be fine” and “We can stop any time” and “I don’t mind that you’re unconscious”, then there is no world that isn’t rape in. And it has nothing to do with chips, because one person does not accidentally misunderstand a “No” and think it means “Sure, fuck me”
And it’s just so… It’s a kind of poison? That eats at the back of your mind?
It’s such a confusing set of ideas I’m honestly baffled the more I think about them.
Not caught up but “Once googled ‘sexing kittens’ when my cat had her babies” ya flip ’em over!
Sorry, sexing kittens and puppies is so very much easier than sexing fish, where you just plain can’t tell until maturity most of the time (and let’s not touch the species that change genders!)
It was just called “searching” then, which is probably why “googling” caught on, much better ring to it. Any one else remember when google and yahoo and dogpile and everything else where actual competitors? Oh the 90s!
And Pell, a list of shit watched here, including everything my mother, brother, and father watch:
Simpsons
Family Guy
American Dad
Bob’s Burgers
Bones
The Following
New Girl
The Mindy Project (yes my mother has terrible taste)
Criminal Minds
The Americans
American Idol
Doctor Who
Fox News
Ancient Aliens
Have fun kid, I’m particularly curious how you’ll make Ancient Aliens into misandry.
@Neuroticbeagle:
In order:
“MRA, Troll, MRA, MRA, Aldous Huxley (Satire, Brave New World) and George Orwell (Satire, 1984)”
Oh and I go on record that The Following is a bad train wreck? I want to look away and can’t. So glad the season is over!
I can’t imagine someone not knowing what pain is; I think algae growing on whale shit just doesn’t give a fuck about other people’s pain. This is what makes the mras truly disgusting- they are not ignorant (about pain anyways- grammar on the other hand is a different story) they are just evil.
Fibinachi Thanks for the answers. I got most of them right! (I know satire – troll vs mra is a bit more difficult).
How do you tell a dog that it is a quarter to four o’clock in the morning- NOT breakfast time?
You know, I’ve never actually read “The Myth of male power”. I did listen to the audio book which was framed like an interview but the article above indicates that there is much wrong in the actual book that the audio version (which I believe is the version most people in the MRM are familiar with) conveniently left out.
Does anybody here know where I can find a readable copy of the book (preferably free online or used)?
Fibi – two internets for you, one for the game show (I recognised ’em! I did I did I did!) and one for asking those questions. I wonder the same thing when the “rape is no big deal” thing comes up over and over again. Don’t these specimens grasp the idea of physical pain (let alone that “trauma” does not mean “being turned down”) at all? I won’t say anything more detailed than that, given how many rape survivors are reading this. I just wonder is it ignorance – willfull, probably – or outright malice, in that they know what pain is but either don’t care, don’t think it’s important when they’re talking about women, or actively enjoy the idea?
Whichever the answer is, they should have to stand in a queue listening to the music they hate most, on a floor made of legos, forever.
Breakfast time is when dog is hungry, you cruel mummy!
@archaeoholmes,
My guess would be that Pell’s gone through so many sock puppets that he’s run out of ideas on how to be so utterly ridiculous.
@Kittehs I have a beagle! I’d be feeding her 24/7 if I fed her whenever she was hungry.
http://i.imgur.com/l04GrOi.jpg
@neuroticbeagle, and how is this a problem? That’s your purpose in life, isn’t it?
MISDOGRY!
@Kittehs LOL. My Mama (the dog’s name is Mama) agrees with you. She also says hi to your kitties.
@Kittehs You’ll be happy to know she won. I just fed her, the little brat.
At least she doesn’t demand that I make her a sandwich.
@neuroticbeagle, I lol’d when I read that. Dog power!
I passed on Mama’s hello to the kitties. Fribs is nowhere to be seen (probably out doing her own feedmefeedmefeedme thing in the kitchen) and Mads tilted her ears back slightly to indicate yes, she knew I was talking to her, but that was it.
Speaking of brats …
Ok. Getting off the computer now. Byes!
Niters to both of you! 🙂
@Kittehs I think cats and dogs are in cahoots to control us. The cats vs dog thing a complete fabrication in order to throw us off track. Unlike the menz, we cannot control them with our magic vaginas, so we are completely at their mercy. Look how easily they took over the internets! The mras shouldn’t be worried about the feminists- they should be worried about the furrinists!
ok. Now I have to go- the royal furry one needs to use the outdoors. bye (for reals this time)
That’s the best theory EVER.
Niters!
OMG, how man-centric is Farrell? Every comment is from a (heterosexual cis-) man’s perspective with no thought to what anyone else’s might be. Even the jury who should be “stimulated” is implicitly heterosexual male.
We’ve seen the studies that show the proportion of men who will admit to being rapists as long as it’s anonymous and worded so that it doesn’t mention rape specifically. Where are the carefully worded studies looking to see the proportion of women who have had this “buyer’s remorse” leading to false rape accusation? I think it’s time one was done. Because I’d be willing to put forwards a small donation to get the truth documented, once and for all. On the basis that I’m betting the truth is that this pretty much never happens!
Come on MRAs, money where your mouths are. Find yourselves an acredited neutral sociologist, set up a kickstarter to fund the research, and you’ll find feminists will donate, too. Even, and heres the shocker, if your acredited, neutral sociologist is a man!
Maybe the jury for murder trials should watch Saw 3 as part of their decision process/
Another 1993 publication: Detecting the Scope of Rape – a review of prevalence research methods by well known researcher Mary P Koss where she states:
@pear tree,
“Nitram, actually that is what I was trying to say. Rape culture means that in court cases the victim is judged on whether she fought enough. In the end it doesn’t matter at all if the victim is too drunk to give meaningful consent in cases where no consent is…..”
Why are you directing this at me? Did you mistake me for cat woman? Which would make me sad 🙁
And for the record I am very clear on rape culture and consent. 🙂
@Tamen:
Sorry, that was a little “apropos nothing”. What’s the connect to the thread I’m missing here?