Warren Farrell’s notorious comments on date rape: Not any more defensible in context than out of it

NOTE: This is the second installment of The Myth of Warren Farrell, a continuing series examining Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power, the most influential book in the Men’s Rights canon. You can see the first post here.

Men’s Rights elder Warren Farrell has been accused of being a “rape apologist,” largely because of one now-notorious sentence he wrote in The Myth of Male Power:

We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting.

This sentence is at least as puzzling as it is disturbing. Calling date rape “exciting” is pretty foul. But what on earth is “date fraud?”

To find out, let’s do what Farrell’s supporters insist we always do with his more troubling remarks: look at it in context to see if it is somehow more defensible – or, at the very least, to see if we can discern what exactly is is he even meant.

Looking at the sentence in context in  The Myth of Male Power, we find that it appears in the midst of a long discussion not only of date rape but also of a number of other dating-related behaviors that Farrell claims traumatize men in the same way date rape traumatizes women. So let’s back up a bit to let him spell out his basic premises — and define what “date fraud” is in the first place:

While the label “date rape” has helped women articulate the most dramatic aspect of dating from women’s perspective, men have no labels to help them articulate the most traumatic aspects of dating from their perspective. Now, of course, the most traumatic aspect is the possibility of being accused of date rape by a woman to whom he thought he was making love. If men did label the worst aspects of the traditional male role, though, they might label them “date robbery,” “date rejection,” “date responsibility,” “date fraud,” and “date lying.” (p.313, The Myth of Male Power, 1993 hardcover edition)

He proceeds from here to some Men’s Rights subreddit-style man-whinging:

The worst aspect of dating from the perspective of many men is how dating can feel to a man like robbery by social custom – the social custom of him taking money out of his pocket, giving it to her, and calling it a date. To a young man, the worst dates feel like being robbed and rejected. Boys risk death to avoid rejection (e.g., by joining the Army).(p. 314)

I think Farrell is confusing “the Army” with “the French Foreign Legion” and real life with Laurel and Hardy movies.

Evenings of paying to be rejected can feel like a male version of date rape. (p. 314)

Yep. Paying for a woman’s dinner and having a pleasant conversation with her, only to have her refuse to have sex with you, is in Farrell’s mind just like being raped.

Having dealt with date robbery and rejection, Farrell  moves on to date fraud and lying:

If a man ignoring a woman’s verbal “no” is committing date rape, then a woman who says “no” with her verbal language but “yes” with her body language is committing date fraud. And a woman who continues to be sexual even after she says “no” is committing date lying.

Do women still do this? Two feminists found the answer is yes. Nearly 40 percent of college women acknowledged they had said “no” to sex even “when they meant yes.” In my own work with over 150,000 men and women – about half of whom are single – the answer is also yes. Almost all single women acknowledge they have agreed to go back to a guy’s place “just to talk” but were nevertheless responsive to his first kiss. Almost all acknowledge they’ve recently said something like “That’s far enough for now,” even as her lips are still kissing and her tongue is still touching his. (P 314)

Uh, Dr. Farrell, I’m pretty sure that women are still allowed to say no to sex even if they are kissing a man. Either partner, of whatever gender, is allowed to stop sexual activity at whatever point they want to, for whatever reason they want to. That how consent works.

And now we come to Farrell’s famous quote:

We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting. (pp. 314-315)

It still doesn’t make sense to me, but that combination of “date rape” and “exciting” makes me queasy.

Perhaps the rest of Farrell’s paragraph will help to elucidate what he means:

Somehow, women’s romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said “No”. They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this “marry the rapist” theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women’s most enduring romance novels. (p. 315) 

Oh, so because some women enjoy fictionalized rape fantasies, real non-fictional date rape is therefore “exciting?”

Farrell follows this up, confusingly, with two sentences that utterly contradict one another:

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. (p. 315)

Three things. First: If the “conflict” is as Farrell sketched it out above — a woman saying “that’s far enough for now,” while kissing with “tongues still touching” — there is no conflict. Kissing, with tongues or without, does not give a man permission to put his penis in a woman. Reciprocal kissing gives you permission for … reciprocal kissing.

Second: when the alleged nonverbal “yeses” and the verbal “noes” conflict – or you think they do – here’s an idea: RESPECT THE VERBAL NOES. Err on the side of NOT-RAPE. If she says no, assume she means no, until she uses ACTUAL WORDS to say yes. Strange but true: woman can actually USE HUMAN LANGUAGE to express what they want. If a guy doesn’t respect a woman’s verbal “noes” because he thinks — or pretends to himself — that she’s saying “yes” with her body, how exactly can the law distinguish this from rape?

“Your honor, it’s true she told me no, but her elbows were saying “yes.””

Also: if your gal and you want to play out “nonconsensual” fantasies, that’s fine; lots of people do that — consensually. You just need to work out the basic rules and safewords in advance. There are entire subcultures of people devoted to this who will be happy to fill you in on the details. Really. They are very chatty.

Third: Do you all find it as creepy as I do that Farrell tends to sketch out these various rapey scenarios in the steamy prose of a second-rate romance novelist?

If you’re an MRA convinced I’m somehow misquoting Farrell here, here’s a screencap of most of the passages I just quoted which someone on the Men’s Rights subreddit helpfully posted some time ago. Or you could get hold of Farrell’s book and check for yourself.

Oh, but I’m not done yet. I’ve got even more context to provide.

Farrell tries his best to draw some sort of distinction between date rape and stranger-with-a-knife-rape:

We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance. (p. 315)

So going on a date with someone and ostensibly making a “choice to explore sexual possibilities” means that it’s ok for people to force sex on you against your will later in the evening? Uh, Dr. Farrell, how exactly is this not rape? How does the fact that two people went to a movie beforehand turn coerced sex into not-real-rape?

You’ll have to ask Dr. Farrell that question, as his explanation makes no sense whatsoever to me.

A few pages down the road, Farrell warns about the dangers of “date rape” legislation in hyperbolic terms, arguing, bizarrely, that it will lead to more rape.

If the law tries to legislate our “yeses” and “noes” it will produce “the straitjacket generation” – a generation afraid to flirt, fearful of finding its love notes in a court suit. Date rape legislation will force suitors and courting to give way to courts and suing.

The empowerment of women lies not in the protection of females from date rape, but in resocializing both sexes to share date initiative taking and date paying so that both date rape and date fraud are minimized. We cannot end date rape by calling men “wimps” when they don’t initiate quickly enough, “rapists” when they do it too quickly, and “jerks” when they do it badly. If we increase the performance pressure only for men, we will reinforce men’s need to objectify women – which will lead to more rape. Men will be our rapists as long as men are our initiators.…

Laws on date rape create a climate of date hate. (p.340)

I don’t even know where to start with all that. That is just one giant steaming heap of nonsense. To put it as politely as I can.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, Farrell also thinks that a lot of  what’s called spousal rape is really “mercy sex,” because people who are married to one another often have sex when they don’t want to — and that’s the way it should be, since “all good relationships require ‘giving in,’ especially when our partner feels strongly.” Sex you don’t want is just part of what makes a happy marriage happy!

The Ms. survey can call it a rape; a relationship counselor will call it a relationship.

Spousal rape legislation is blackmail waiting to happen. (p. 338)

So, does putting Farrell’s “we called it exciting” quote in context transform it into something innocent and understandable and not-rapey?

I think it’s pretty clear that the answer is no.

But not everyone agrees with me on that. When someone on the Man’s Rights subreddit recently provided some of the context for Farrell’s quote, the assembled Men’s Righsters mostly thought what he was saying sounded fine to them, arguing that he brings up some very legitimate points, attacking feminists for quote mining, suggesting that “feminists don’t reality” and that the Feminist machine slanders anyone who gets in their way. Heck, one fellow even suggested that he had gotten the distinct impression that Feminists want to create more instances of “rape-by-misunderstanding” in order to punish men. Oh, and then one of them attacked my previous post on Farrell’s disturbing views on incest.