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.
I think my question might have been buried by trolls (my first time posting here, so I understand I needed to get moderated before my post went through), so I’ll ask again: was this Warren guy seriously in reality ever an actual part of the actual feminist movement, as he seems to claim? Was he really a Board member of NOW once upon a time? These things are so hard to believe . . .
About 20 minutes ago, I was just downstairs talking to my youngest sister about how I’m going to receive a lot of criticism at the reunion; I’ll have much longer hair by then, and they’re probably going to tell me that I look too much like a girl.
She responded with “I don’t care if you look like a girl – be confident!”
I wish she knew how happy I was to hear those words from her. Even though I know it’s just hair. I would have told her why I was happy, but I didn’t for obvious reasons. Also, that’s not the first time she’s said something like that. A while ago, after I was forced to get a haircut, she told me that she thinks I look better with long hair. I feel like I’m going to cry now.
@freemage – yes
warell is so incapable of empathy it’s…what a privilege to categorically/selectively misunderstand trauma.
co-opting trauma is a big mra mo. wah, what about teh menz?
such a simple point that i forget
grumpycatisagirl, yeah, he really was a feminist, at least for a little while. The NOW thing is partly true. He was on the board of the New York city CHAPTER of NOW for a couple of years, not the national organization, though he always words it in such away that it somehow gives everyone the impression he was on the board of the national organization.
I’ve been going through a bunch of his books, including his 70s feminist book, “the liberated man,” but unfortunately I can’t tell you anything about it because it’s so boring that every time I try to read it my eyes glaze over and I immediately forget what I’ve read. His next book, why men are the way they are, written in the 80s, is filled with MRAish bullshit, though he hadn’t worked out the full MRA schtick he displays in Myth of Male Power.
If I can ever make it through The Liberated Man, I will be looking closely for signs of nascent MRA shitlordism.
does the manosphere get mad about advertising for mother’s day? do they think that women really benefit from that advertising campaign?
Aaliyah — aww, your poor pretty kitty! Also, your sister is awesome.
Adam definitely gets a 10/10 would laugh hysterically again.
Grumpycatisagirl — excellent nym, and it doesn’t seem you’ve gotten the welcome package yet, so there it is!
Aww, Argenti, that is so nice. Thank you!
I just read the latest Oglaf and it describes the MRM perfectly. (SFW)
I am tempted to invent a drinking game for it.
Whoops, I woke the
krakenblockquote monster!The legal aspect of the thing is secondary, what really matters is what are the consequences of telling of 4-years-old boy that he’s a rapist because he kissed a girl without having ensured priorly that she was enthusiastically consenting.
Will the boy thank his father for the rest of his life for having made him understand that treating women as people means that he have to be very careful to not rape innocently women by putting their lips to theirs? Will he be so perturbed at the idea of him, with his threatening lips, being such an inherent threat to women that he’ll refrain from having non-neutral contact with them and develop a kink of watching porn where women are slapped and humiliated and enjoy a silent symbolic vengeance against these women he’s too afraid to touch? Will he became a PUA who objectify women because they’re less scary that way and try to fuck as many women as possible, avoiding any kind of emotional bond and only using them as a mean to attain narcissistic validation in order to prove to himself that he’s not afraid of women? Will he transform himself into these kinds of male feminists who bully and harass other men and accuse them of being creepy rapey assholes who deserve to be rejected by women in order to avoid confronting their own fears of being monsters and rejected by women? Will this kind of education can be a factor that can make him really want to rape women and doing it concretely?
Some interesting questions which we’ll maybe be able to respond to in twenty years. I know it’s all very victim-blaming and privilege-denying but it would be interesting to analyze what the feminist method of teaching how to treat women as human beings and healthy masculinity produce on the minds of boys.
So, I’m guessing that Brz didn’t take the kindergarden “don’t pull little Chantal’s pigtails, she doesn’t like it” conversation with his teacher very well.
from brz’s citation
Trust Brz to miss the point even when it’s on something like the Good Men Project.
The point being that the boy didn’t ask her if she wanted a kiss, and she didn’t like it, and didn’t want to be his “girlfriend” any more afterward. And that his father then explained to the kid that you don’t do things to people without asking. It isn’t difficult, Brz. A four-year-old was able to process it, but apparently you can’t.
holy balls, good night, you are a pestilence
Thank you for your supply of daily straw men, Brz. Now kindly fuck off.
brz: if someone tells me not to take things without asking, i become a rapist. logic.
oy, i have insomnia and i thought i’d found the golden ticket. also fibinachi’s comments make my day
In the article:
From the article:
“My son, all of four years old, is chewing his last strawberry mouthful as I finish my definition of rape and sexual assault, and my explanation of why forcing himself onto a girl—even his “girlfriend”, even just a kiss—is wrong. He gets it. His brain is far from fully-developed, but he nods as my sentence trails off and my hands fall back down to the table. “Okay, daddy. I won’t do it anymore,” he says. He slides off of his chair and gallops back to his cartoons.”
From Brzzzzzz:
”
I think I’m fully able to weight the amount of symbolical violence and projection which are at play here. I won’t go as far as saying that it constitutes a case of child abuse but I seriously hope that one day these people will be exposed for all the bad they’d done on defenseless kids .
You don’t know if the boy was “able to process it”, neither do I.”
Lying sack of fish-shit, refusing to consider that teaching a child not to take without asking, not to do things to other people without asking, is at all worthwhile. Oh noes, it’s child abuse to tell a little boy not to kiss a little girl without asking first!
But then we know from previous postings that Brzz thinks the ideal society is one in which he is able to abuse and insult people as he wishes, so no wonder he’s up in arms about a child being taught to have consideration for others.
@Brz, you could teach your son to take whatever he likes, and to ignore the express wishes of other people. Then, in twenty years, you can see how *that* turns out – when you’re visiting him in gaol.
Some interesting questions which we’ll maybe be able to respond to in twenty years. I know it’s all very victim-blaming and privilege-denying but it would be interesting to analyze what the feminist method of teaching how to treat women as human beings and healthy masculinity produce on the minds of boys.
Why wait twenty years? As I said way upthread, the movement against date rape has been going on since the 1990s. Warren Farrell made his terrifying prediction of a dateless future back in 1993. The “straitjacket generation” that’s supposedly unable to flirt or send mash notes (first they came for the rapists, and I said nothing…then they came for the Hallmark cards…) is us.
So let’s analyze. Are most men today pick-up artists who hate women, are into violent porn, and “really want to rape women and do it concretely”? I don’t think so. Most men are pretty cool.