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.
So, in response to us quoting a famous and well-respected MRA provided with full context to expose for the misogynistic shithead he is, you think that it’s only fair to selectively quote a feminist without any context to accuse her of having beliefs she never actually had.
Sure, go ahead.
Re: Aaliyah
I’m always surprised they choose freaking DWORKIN, of all people. Just for once, I’d like an MRA troll to bring up Janice Raymond or something. You know, switch things up a bit.
LBT: Glossed as not relevant, and I didn’t want you to think telling us that you were having some difficulty with the topic was what I was referring to.
Well, sometimes they bring up Mary Daly instead, and they cherry-pick quotes from her just like Dworkin. It’s quite amusing.
Margaret Sanger too and they often don’t even use the truly repugnant shit these women said. They quotemine offensive sentiments from context in which they’re justified or even humane.
MRAs, would you please, PLEASE bring the appalling positions of women to us IN CONTEXT so we can denounce them instead of having to point out your intellectual dishonesty?
Well, if you keep commenting on my ideological forefathers and operating a comment section, I’m going to comment on various aspects of the ensuing discussion. But what you want is an echo chamber. I get it. So you use verbiage like “boundary violation” and “creepy” and “rapey.” David can ban me if he likes, but apparently my discourse is thought to further discredit PUA, which is a miscalculation that the website Mondoweiss made to its detriment with respect to my advocacy of Zionism. PUA seminars unleash 100s of men who believe this stuff implicitly, 99% of them with less self-reflection than myself and certainly with less consumer care than I provide my students, like this article by a friend of mine. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/date-set-match-dating-now/2013/may/4/drunk-dating-when-yes-means-no
It’s hard to regard women’s preferences as a filter rather than a wall when you have to take the initiative and ask 100, 200, or 300 women out to get 1 yes, as many men have to do when they compound being short, or a specific ethnic type, or socially awkward with the visible effort involved in overcoming their fears. Making this effort invisible, removing the social awkwardness, are laudable goals. Removing the transactional element from society’s “meat markets” might also work, if pretty young women didn’t like the free drinks so much.
I realize this is pretty lurid for here but the link is SFW (trigger warning: alcohol consumption, objectification, revealing clothing, PUA, sexism) and a respectable effort to impose a “no drunk sex” rule. It is absolutist because it recommends the man saying “No” when the false “Yes” is too enthusiastic, too verbalized, in the context of someone whose control of everything else (body, speech, balance) is too obviously slipping. There is a lot wrong with the article from a feminist perspective, but this is a fedora-clad guarantee that someone is circulating a strict opposition to drunk sex in the PUA community.
I won’t stop talking at you and you can’t make me! Also, I am hated by multiple communities for multiple reasons. The one constant is that nobody likes me.
(Shorter Eurosabra)
Bob Goblin:
Step 2 is blank. And step 3 is the result that the Gnomes explicitly don’t get. The whole point is that they fail, because the plan is chained non-sequiturs. Thus, either you fail or you misrepresent your method as analogous to the Gnomes’ when it is not. And practically anything can get someone laid somewhere sometime.
The one constant is that those communities that hate me are marginal and I continue to indoctrinate hundreds in the real world and send them forth to work their magic.
And having a lazy eye. Don’t ever forget the lazy eye.
On a more general note, if you really are asking 100/200/300 women out in the hope that you might get just one saying yes, you’re doing it wrong.
Of course, to those of us familiar with your incessant advocacy of your pathetic and demonstrably disastrous modus operandi, this won’t exactly come as news, but will the penny ever drop for you personally?
Oh GAWD, not the lazy eye! That just won’t do!
I’ve gotta say, there are easily 299 men I’d be interested in who would reject me before one would be down. I don’t approach dating as a numbers game though or an attempt to get consent to look at someone’s peepee.
Wetherby, those are beginners and not myself I describe. And there are physical things that cannot be overcome: one of my most charming friends has Tin Man’s disease, he really does have to approach hundreds of women to get any positive response in a dating context.
Hey Euro,
I see what you are doing there. You’re trying to get me to engage in a contest about who gets more “action.” Sorry, not interested.
Google “self-deprecating humor.” Followed by “irony.” And again, work on those reading comprehension skills: the whole point of what I’ve posted on this thread is that I have a healthy, active and fulfilling sex life without needing to be a misogynist twit, or needing any kind of “game” or “method.”
On a more general note, if you really are asking 100/200/300 women out in the hope that you might get just one saying yes, you’re doing it wrong.
Ha ha. Yep.
Funny, Eurosabra’s talking about men (oh, but not himself! never suggest it’s himself, it’s just figures he pulled out of his arse) being rejected by hundreds of women, yet at the same time dismisses all the communities, plural, who despise him and his crew as “marginal”. Does this mean those hundreds and hundreds of of women rejecting him and his jackass rapemongers aren’t real? Or they’re somehow more marginal than the one woman who says yes? It’s amusing that HUNDREDS are such dreadful and yet unimportant numbers when it’s people telling PUAs to go fuck themselves*, but they’re really important and wonderful numbers when it comes to the idiots Eurosabra claims to have suckered into his little scheme.
*because that way there’s a reasonable chance everyone involved would enjoy it
Funnily enough, I’ve found this too. As have the vast majority of my male friends. Why, it’s almost as though there might be something in our “game”/”method” – you know, the one that says “treat women as intelligent and interesting human beings, have two-way conversations with them (including much two-way laughter) and make them feel genuinely good about themselves, and they might have sex with you – but even if they don’t, you’ll probably still have had a good time”.
And a further bonus, which I can guarantee that you’ll never get from PUA, is that you might even come across a genuine life partner – with the even more pleasing result that you can give up the dating lottery altogether while maintaining and indeed improving on your sex life.
And you know the most amazing thing about this technique? Your looks really don’t matter that much in the wider scheme of things – one of my own partners was quite seriously (and visibly) disabled, but had a ready wit that could rival that of anyone here and her Facebook one-liners still get me laughing like the proverbial drain. The only absolute requirement is that you have a personality that doesn’t justifiably attract adjectives like “loathsome”, “skin-crawling” and “astonishingly oblivious”, which may be where Eurosabra is going wrong.
It’s weird.
There’s parts of that that are actually decent.
A coy flirtation with some sort of reasonable approximation of meaningful content. Long sentence.
Transactional meat markets don’t happen just because young women like free drinks. Everyone like free drinks. They’re free.You talking markets? Then per definition? Free = infinite demand. No two ways about it. What people don’t like is the notion where “free” suddenly equated “Won’t cost you any physical currency, but will cost you other stuff”.
Woah, wait, that wouldn’t be free, that’d be a barter system, some kind of exchange of individual favors in a specific way! Interaction of different markets, assumed to exist, with a basis outside of hard currency and into a much more nominal realm of affection, expectation, socialization, flirtation and denigration – (why denigration? Because you only slam young women, and the assumption is they steal stuff that was free).
Which, by way, dropping the parenthesis, still isn’t free. It had value. And you are trading in values here.
It’d be me offering someone a drink that wasn’t free because while I’m paying for it my expectation is that she will pay for … it. But I don’t, because who buys free drinks to random strangers? People who like strangers, or free drinks, or people who are really trying to game the system and then the drink is no longer free. And I’m a misanthrope. Humbug. Argh!
Thanks for the link. it’s actually a good effort. But as you write, a lot wrong with it. Still! Actually decent. Not that I’m some gatekeeper of approval.
And that’s the strange bit here, because, well, while I can disagree by degrees and talk about some problematic approaches, it’s a basically okay thing.
But let’s not pretend the problem here is with drunken strangers or meeting women. I mean, those are good points to bring up? Sure? But the problem here is that you made, in your quest to meet women, your lack of success their fault. And when you buy them free drinks, you made their assumption the fucking drink was free, a mis-pass on their part, some manipulative little trick to con you out of a valuable item.
If, in the course of your journeys, to meet people, you had to meet 301 people to find one who accept you for you…
… Why is that a problem with the 300 people you met who didn’t accept you? Were they not allowed to?
Oh dear.
Just want to say that I love this website and the commenters on here are amazing! Thanks for making my night at work fly by.
“And when you buy them free drinks, you made their assumption the fucking drink was free, a mis-pass on their part, some manipulative little trick to con you out of a valuable item. ”
I suspect that if “Can I buy you a drink” was translated to mean “You are required to have sex with me” nobody would accept a drink ever again. Ceiling Cat save us, that’s a fraction of what a sex worker would require in an actual transaction (I’m not talking about exploitation situations but someone who’s actually free to make their own choice about the work).
It all goes back to the idea that women are obliged to fall on our backs for whatever scumbag MRA or PUA (never anyone we might actually fancy – heaven forbid!) gets a glimmer of a boner over us. When we say No we’re wrong. When we say Yes to someone else we’re even more wrong. When we do the asking we’re sluts, though that doesn’t stop said MRAs and PUAs whining that they have to do all the chasing and come up with all these elaborate schemes to force us into the role they demand.
May all their shoes be lined with legos forevermore, and thank the gods my life has kept me clear of such creatures, and with someone who at his worst was a better person than all of them put together.
Why is boundary violation in quotes? Do you not think people should be able to set boundaries or something?
You know, once I asked a guy out and he said “sorry, i’ve already got a date”. I felt bad over it for two seconds and then got on with my life.
Also, wtf?!?! Pretty young women are at fault for disgusting PUAs because they socialize
This sucks for your friend. However, I have to wonder if getting laid is as high priority for him as it is for you. I have fibromyalgia, and frankly my order for importance is thus:
1)stop aching
2) long enough to get school done
3) is there any way I can increase my meds so it’s possible to do school and a job at the same time
…..
999) getting laid
Eurosabra, go the fuck away. We get some pretty gross dudes posting here, but you’re the only one that makes me want to take a Silkwood shower after reading your bullshit.
“If you’re having back problems,
I feel bad for you Fade
You’ve got 999 problems
But at least misogyny ain’t one”
or:
If you’re having misogyny problems
I feel “bad” for you son!
I’ve got 99 problems
But that ain’t even one
or:
If they’re having social problems
I feel bad for them, that ain’t fun
I too, gots lots of problems
But the free drinks ain’t one
or:
If you’re having girl problems
I feel bad for you son
I’ve got 99 problems
But at least the misunderstanding of the constant expectation that they should sleep with me on account of my guile, tricks and wallet ain’t one
Emo-sabra: “Could if you wished” is sex that did not happen, and therefore beta.
The fuck…? I thought alphas were the ones allowed to have standards, and betas just take what they can get?
So, “I could have, but didn’t feel the urge,” ought to be pure alpha. But you can’t have that; since you can’t admit that being a feminist isn’t incompatible with being alpha.
Eurosabra: It’s hard to regard women’s preferences as a filter rather than a wall when you have to take the initiative and ask 100, 200, or 300 women out to get 1 yes, and, The one constant is that those communities that hate me are marginal
So which is it, the people who hate you are marginal, or you have to “mildly” gaslight people because you are so unfuckable (what with being short, and living where the women are shallow, and the depression you think such a hurdle, and all the other litanies of your woe; to which you think we care to listen AGAIN).
I continue to indoctrinate
Telling use of words. Not teach, educate or demonstrate, but “indoctrinate”. Now, speaking as an educator (hundreds of interrogators, which is the relevant category of my students) I don’t believe you.
It’s possible there are hundreds of people whom you have lectured, but PUA is an, “approach technique”. I can state, categorically, that if one has a good approach technique one can find women who want to sleep with you.
Want is the big difference between legitmate wooing, and PUA, “seduction”. On the occaisions I’ve been looking for a relatively no-strings romp/to intiate an ongoing sexual relationship I’ve had to find women who wanted to sleep with me. Not trick them into doing it, find them, and find out if my interest in them was at all reciprocal.
That’s an approach issue. Finding ways to talk about things which both interest them, and make it apparent that I am also interesting. It’s not about finding ways to “make them want me”, or to, “overcome their resitance”.
I’m not “a hunk”. I’m slim, I have large glasses. I have oddball interests, and I tend to talk too much. Yes, I have self-confidence. I am smart, and I know what I’m good at.
I have NEVER had to ask the huge numbers of women you say you have to approach to get one to sleep with you.
You, by your own admission, are a shitty PUA (this is independent of your being a shitty person; see again, “mild gaslighting”). Seriously, if your ability to assess a target is so shitty that you get to the, “shot down” phase (i.e. the ‘yes/no’ aspect of the interaction), you are doing it wrong.
Even if you are saying you have to assess that many, before you start the gaslightig and the rest of your Game, you are still shitty. I mean fuck dude, when I was in my teens I was a lot worse at reading signals and I was still batting in the upper .400s when I made a pitch. If you look at the women I Was interested in, and then tried to assess interest in, I was still probably batting about .250.
You, in a word, Suck.
And you admit to sucking at the thing you profess to be teaching to others.
Eurosabra:“Wetherby, those are beginners and not myself I describe.”
Bullshit. This isn’t the first time you’ve told us you have to approach 1-200 women to get a yes, and this being short, or a specific ethnic type, or socially awkward with the visible effort involved in overcoming their fears, is how you consistently describe yourself.
Keep on with the gaslighting.