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.
Curse my horrible need to eat and pay the rent! It totally deprived me of the opportunity to come and play whack-a-troll! Wow. Petulant troll is petulant. It’s a good thing Derick’s mom made him go to bed; he was really getting cranky there.
Kittehs, I just wanted to make a quick second of Ophelia’s excellent points. I was an enthusiastic early adopter of the Kindle and now I’m still an uber-fan, even when Amazon annoys me.
I had a first gen, a second gen, and a third gen without the keyboard, and I also had a Fire to test. Over all, I use mine to collect anything I would otherwise buy in paperback, because I’ve moved across country and I needed to rethink the number of books I was holding on to. Oh, and after a while I started getting the newspaper on it and I love that – no more Collier brothers style piles in my apartment and the e-ink reading experience is very pleasant, very much like paper. I still have my second gen and I prefer it, but when it gives up the ghost, I’m gonna get a paperwhite version. Much clearer text and higher contrast!
I really didn’t like the Fire, though the housemate I traded with loves it. I prefer the non-backlit screen (I find staring at a screen too much in the evening keeps me from sleeping well) but it’s a preference thing. Video and the like on a Fire is quite good, actually, and magazines can look awesome. Very crisp, very clear.
Yes, your Amazon books can only be looked at on the Kindle or on a Kindle app for your computer or ipod. But any epub or mobi file can be read on the Kindle, and there is a staggering array of free stuff available as well from places like Project Gutenberg. You get an email account with your Kindle that you can use to transfer non-Amazon files to the device, but the USB really is easy, exactly like a memory key.
The lending library is a good feature, though the range of books they have isn’t the greatest. Still, I read all of Michael Lewis’ books that way!
Gillian, hi, and thanks! That’s exactly what I need to know, plus I’d forgotten all about Project Gutenberg! So that’s sorted: it’s a Kindle for me, come the time.
🙂
I’m sorry to hear that. Why do you think you might need to go for the surgery?
Oh wow, Kindles are only $89 – that’s very doable!
Aaliyah – thank you! 🙂
I’ve been having knee and leg pain generally for months, and an MRI showed I’ve a torn meniscus and, more seriously, a cartilage fissure in my left leg. The meniscus tear is small and will heal itself eventually (plus surgery isn’t a good option for it anyway) but the fissure’s more of a problem. I’ve an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon at the end of the month, so we’ll see what he says. Hopefully it’ll just be the day surgery thing where they inject glue into the fissure. My boss had that and it only took him a week to recover from it.
That last little bit of Derick’s fuckery, trying to establish some magical distinction between forced rape and involuntary (but not forced or maybe forced but not violent, or purple cactus with siren lemon) rape really brought back the whole “legitimate” rape nonsense for me.
Because there’s rape, see, and it’s awful and terrible, and any decent, virtuous person is going to fight to the last second to keep it from happening, and that’s how you know it was rape (which is a good thing, because the body shuts down so you can’t get pregnant, either!). Otherwise, you’re just a slut with buyer’s remorse and it’s totes unfair to have someone put in jail where they can’t eat cheetos and play Call of Duty until their mom comes home and makes them do their homework.
Because it’s only “Psychological Damage,” and you can’t prove it anyway, and so how can you justify punishing someone for breaking the law?
Argh… MRAs make me come over all stabby lately. More so than usual, I mean.
“purple cactus with siren lemon”
Where do I get one of these?
My boss had that and he was off his feet for three days and on a cane for two weeks and then back to normal. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you!
I’ve recently started running again and I’m starting having problems with my knees again. A few years back I got pretty sick, for which the treatment, in part, was massive doses of prednisone, which lead to my needing to EAT ALL THE THINGS for a while there, so now I’m a bit heavier and trying to get back to my running schedule is causing agita.
So I’ll sit here with ice on my knees and send you my best wishes (meanwhile, Adora thinks that icepacks are OMG THE SCARIEST THING EVAR!! – she keeps coming up to sit next to me on the couch and hit the plastic rapidly with her paw making this ‘bapbapbapbap’ sound, and then she needs to lick the condensation droplets off her paw…)
By the way, “MISDOGRY!” totally made my evening, and made up for my reading Derick and Tamen’s nonsense. (Okay, I skimmed Tamen, because it tripped my wall-o-text defense threshold).
Thanks, gillyrosebee!
LOL at Adora. Cats, what can one say?
Owch, knee surgery! I hope it goes well.
Yeah, I wasn’t interested in Tamen’s blather either. First, I don’t do statistics (hell, I hardly do addition), second, WALL OF TEXT.
Btw I’m assuming Adora’s a kitty … if not, was that more misdogry?
I thought neuroticbeagle’s cat and dog conspiracy theory was the best ever. Furrinists! Furluminati!
Thanks, katz!
.
Oh dear. That sounds awful. =[ I hope the surgery goes well. I know how terrible knee and leg problems can be because my father’s right kneecap has been permanently damaged ever since he got run into by a car. (He was trying to get a car out of a sand mound by shifting around the car from the front, and the driver accidentally accelerated at the wrong time and so hit his knee very hard.) At least your condition doesn’t sound like that.
@Fade (and Marie, and whoever was looking into learning conversational French) I’d suggest Rosetta Stone. Lots of libraries have it, so you can try it out, and it’s pretty easy and effective. I did my Russian and French the old fashioned way because grad school (shudders) and my Latin because of the Ursulines (more shudders), but where I live now is smack dab in the middle of little Brazil and I think it would be a great idea to understand my neighbors, so I’m using it to pick up a bit of Portuguese just for my own edification.
Though I am concerned that this might damage my ability to be considered part of the femispiracy, since we’re supposed to be monolingual, right? Or is that just us Murricans?
Ow, Aaliyah, that sounds nasty. It’s certainly much worse than my stuff, though it will likely deteriorate if nothing’s done, and it does mean I’ve a higher risk of getting osteoarthritis in the knee. The pain isn’t too bad, mostly; it slows me down and I have to be careful walking, and wear a knee brace, but it does respond to over-the-counter ibuprofen. What bugs me is that it means I’m going to have to fiddle my food intake again, since I can’t get any serious walking done. I don’t want to lose weight – I’ve just gone to a D cup, only took half a flamin’ century – but I don’t want to gain it, either.
Just a cyborg body from the waist down would be ideal. Everything above there’s fine, it’s the innards and legs that have gone all stupid. 😛
Oh, I checked out rosetta stone for level 1 greek* and I liked it, especially for getting some basics down before learning more out of books
Right now, I am saving up for level 2, but they are moniez cost.
*not learning french, lol XD
Priceless!
Yep, Evie and Adora are my brats… I mean cats. Four year old tortie siblings.
Doh, I forgot to reply to this bit XD I think the MRAs want almost all women to be monolingual, since when they do the creepy fetishizing stuff on east asian women they always treat a lack of understanding of english as a plus side.
Tortieeeeeeeeeeeees!
Have you pictures you’d like to share?
(Assuming you haven’t already and my CRS isn’t kicking in.)
@katz! I was hoping you were around!
…because the ice cream is endless, but if a woman gets some, then it is time to panic.
Which reminded me of this, after a while http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/women/
Specifically this (apologies in advance for the wallishness of it…)
emphasis mine
wow. reading that was intense. i’m about to try a sleeping pill, so i should probably get away from the interweb.
@canuck_with_pluck – you should tell your doctor that.
@ophelia et al. – there is a restaurant in nyc that has literal tentacle erotica on the wall.
😀 brave new world
i feel like everyone i know, it’s always assumed 1984 is a million times better. i don’t know if this is common opinion.
@Kittehs, I thought I might have a while back. I don’t have an image host right now, but I’ll try to work on that!
Merci, gillyrosebee! One can never have too many kitty pics.
In the meantime, here are Fribbie and Maddie.
OMG! They’re both adorable, but Maddie totally has that “paint me like one of your French girls” look about her! She reminds me of Ingres’ Odalisque, with added pure kitteh joy!
Fribbie is lovely too, that soft tortie coloring is always beautiful. Mine are the darker version, as if a couple of marmalade tabbies got into some coal dust or laser toner.