Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power, published twenty years ago, defined much of the agenda for what’s become the contemporary Men’s Rights movement. If you hear a Men’s Rights activist prattle on about “male disposability”or “death professions” or complain about draft registration (even though the draft itself has been dead for decades), you’ve got Farrell to thank, or blame.
So when Farrell decided to release a new ebook edition of his most famous book, it was perhaps not all that surprising that he decided to turn to the folks at A Voice for Men, probably the most influential Men’s Rights site around, for advice on a picture to use for a new cover.
But what was surprising was the pictures he asked the AVFMers to choose from, three sexually charged, and slightly NSFW, pics highlighting what Farrell evidently sees as the key female challenges to male power: their vaginas, tits and ass.
I’m not speaking metaphorically: one of the pictures shows a nude woman’s pelvic area, her vulva both highlighted and hidden by what is essentially a merkin made of moss; a second picture shows the ass of a young, topless woman in her underpants slaving over a hot stove, and the third shows a famous picture of Marilyn Monroe, also topless.
AVFM’s Paul Elam explained the, er, logic of these images:
Imagine the juxtaposition of the title, “Myth of Male Power” over one of these images. The cover alone will challenge the idea of male power in men and women alike on a gut level.
By “on a gut level” he apparently means “in men’s pants.”
You sort of have to see them to see how utterly tacky they are; here’s the one of the butt, which either Farrell or Elam helpfully captioned “Where’s the power?”
You can find the others on AVFM here; if you don’t want to give them the pageviews, you can find them here.
You couldn’t really ask for better symbols of the essential misogyny of the Men’s Rights movement today — or of its obsession with blaming women (and women’s sexuality in particular) for the restrictions on male power that so chafe the hides of MRAs. Farrell, in the past, generally avoided demonizing female sexuality quite so obviously and directly, but these days he’s apparently been spending too much time amongst the A Voice for Menners.
Farrell’s choices for potential covers also tell us a good deal about him as well; in the past he’s essentially been able to hide his crackpot pseudoscholarship behind a certain veneer or respectability — releasing his books through major publishing houses, touting his PhD — but here he seems to be falling to his natural level, amongst the self-publishers of crappy e-books with stock-photo covers.
While some AVFMers had other suggestions — perhaps a picture of the Wicked Witch? — most seemed to think that the pictures were perfect for his book. Tom Golden — along with most of the voters in the poll — preferred Marilyn and her tits:
Others were more taken with the ass pic. Alek wrote:
And Elam, while voting for the moss-encrusted vulva himself, was apparently also quite, er, affected by dat ass. (Those with especially sensitive stomachs may wish to skip the following quote, as it contains an unsolicited update from his boner.)
So there you have it: Two of the most influential figures in the Men’s Rights movement — indeed, arguably the two most influential figures — actually believe that men are oppressed by women’s butts.
Indeed, Elam is apparently so overwhelmed by the sight of an attractive ass that he considers it a literal threat to his life.
Adding to the creepiness factor here: Farrell is 70 years old, making him literally old enough to be grandfather of the model in her underpants. Elam is in his late 50s.
Now, the weird tackiness of the images Farrell chose for his book cover did not go entirely unnoticed at AVFM. There were critics — including, amazingly, AVFM’s own John Hembling, who was a little baffled by the idea of using a sexualized picture of a woman on the cover of Farrell’s book about men, and asked if Farrell was possibly trolling them.
One MRA blogger, Kevin Wayne, posted a link to his blog, where he excoriated all three choices as “Budweiser Ad rejects” and begged Farrell to try something else:
This is just going to backfire. Don’t we have enough issues of being branded as a bunch of no-necks wanting to take women back to the 1950’s?
Elam, while gentle in his handling of Hembling’s criticism, threw a fit over Wayne’s post, banning him from AVFM and bashing him — on AVFM and on Wayne’s own site — as a do-nothing newcomer to Men’s Rights who was too “borderline retarded” to understand the profound deeper meaning behind Farrell’s T&A pics.
Farrell himself seems to have been a a bit more willing to listen to the critics. Indeed, he’s asked AVFM’s readers to submit some more pictures to choose from. There will be a runoff between the winner of the first AVFM poll (Marilyn and her tits) several of the new pics.
So far there hasn’t exactly been a flood of submissions. They’ve included a painting of Diogenes, a painting of Lilith, a photo of a homeless man, and this:
Yeah, that’ll work great.
Wheeee!
I love this comment from TNC’s article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/raymond-chandlers-private-dick/265589/#comment-719630498
I asked my husband which of the photos best represented the oppression of men. He picked #1, because “it represents that men are powerless to stop women from growing out of their lawns.”
I personally hope they go with the butt pic, because it’s such a perfectly MRA perspective to look at a picture of a headless woman frying bacon in her underwear and say, “Good God, women have too much power! We let them use STOVES now?”
Cooking-in-knickers woman also has a tattoo, which proves beyond a doubt that feminism has gone too far.
1) if your nether regions smell fishies than my fish tanks, get thee to a doctor
2) yes, vaginas tend to get a bit bloody monthly, t’is a fact of life, get over it
2b) how is equating nature with a natural process gross?
Other things — as I understand it, eco-feminism isn’t so much about how women are more connected to nature, but about how abusing nature and abusing women are linked evils. I may be wrong on that one, but I can see the logic behind western culture treating nature and (cis) women as consumable objects to use as you see fit with little regard for the woman // planet. But we’ll be here all day if I start ranting about environmentalism!
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
After four pages of comments, am I the first one to notice the picture on Kevin Wayne’s blog with the following caption?
Athena, the Roman goddess…
Athena, the Roman goddess of war…
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. No wonder that guy is impressed by Fiddlebogen.
(For those who don’t know: Athena was an Ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and just, wisely conducted war, among other things (just look at the list in Wikipedia!). The Greeks also had a separate god of macho warfare – Ares, a dude, who took delight in fighting no matter the cause. Athena was the patron god and namesake of the polis Athens, and the capital city of the modern Greek state retains the name.
She was also a virgin who wouldn’t return the advances of any man, god or mortal, which makes Kevin Wayne’s choice of her as the Goddess-embodiment-singled-out-to-hate hilariously indicative.)
Honestly, with these guys, if they stated that they believed Zeus to be the Russian Orthodox patron saint of celibacy I wouldn’t even blink in surprise. They really are that clueless about everything. It stops surprising you eventually.
… Does he have the copyright for using the Monroe picture? (Or any of them, actually)
This.
The fact that their blessed figurehead Farrell wants to use images of sexy women for the cover hammers it home even further, IMHO. The whole ‘movement’ is about sad, scared, angry boners. What a waste of time and energy. I finally get why they prefer trying to make things worse for women though, rather than trying to improve things for men. (Seriously, I finally get it – I’ve never really been able to wrap my head around it til now). They felt sexually powerless/vulnerable at east once and got stuck there, and figure women somehow did it to them, and they want revenge.
There are only cis white thin young heterosexual people in the world. Got it. Thank you, MRAs.
Heh.
I found it hilariously ironic in the same vein that there’s a huge spa-brothel (House of Sad Boners!) in Berlin called “Artemis”. Another virgin goddess, protectress of women and girls, no less. And one who was so adamant about guarding her virginity that she turned a voyeur into a stag, so that her hunting-dogs could tear him apart for the sin of lustfully spying on her while she bathed.
Gawd, what is it with these Sad Boners? It’s like they have to kidnap, appropriate, and sexualize every woman, even virgin figures of mythology. Do these guys never THINK? With their larger heads, I mean?
I have LITERALLY (Chris Traeger) never read something this stupid in my entire life…
Their case I think their dicks might be the larger head. Gods know the upper one is suffering from a lack of usage and is thus probably shriveled.
Oh boy Guest, you should check out the archives, this is tame for them!
lightcastle, thanks for posting that Coates piece.
This disscussion is fantastic. It’s really helping me pull together a lot of stuff about MRAs and sexuality.
One thing I’m wondering: since they’re all so in thrall to a mere picture of a butt, what if I could learn to draw really sexy butts? Could I use them to hypnotize MRAs and make them do my bidding?
My figure drawings are in DA if you want butts to practice drawing!
The holidays ambuscaded me; I’ve been painting our basement in fits and starts; the babies have had irregular sleeping patterns lately; and last week I got violently ill for 48 hours and sore in my torso for the 48 hours after that. My temperature got up to 101.7 F (38.7 C, I am informed) but came right back down again after I took Tylenol. And I wasn’t eating anything for about 24 hours.
Beloved has had back pains from lifting Bundles Of Joy for the last week. They’re both over 20 pounds now (approx. 9 kg).
I’m about ready for the US to adopt the SI, really, if only because Celsius is easier to spell than Fahrenheit.
This guy’s way ahead of you.
The word you’re looking for is “inert,” synonyms for which, interestingly, are inanimate, insentient, and by extension: powerless. They’ve come full circle with their visual bullshittery. One almost would almost have to admire the artistry of it, if this was anything like intentional on their part (the miracle being, of course, it’s not).
The Abhorsen series remains one of my very favourite Fantasy series.
Really, really great books for young girls to read, and one of the most original Fantasy worlds I’ve ever read.
I feel that most of the time, the best and most original fantasy is being written for teenagers, so much Fantasy for an adult readership just feels like Tolkein rip-offs, whereas YA stuff seems to have more new ideas.
Has anyone read the Wind on Fire trilogy? Now there is excellent YA fantasy, with brilliant female characters.
Ohoh I LOVED Sabriel as a kid! Now I’m a little sad “Kibeth” didn’t even occur to me when we were naming puppysaur – I must be getting old 🙁
I’m bad with series names: you got a book name/author for the Wind on Fire trilogy?
Re: Abhorsen trilogy, it’s actually nine gates in the river of death. There are seven charters who make up the charter magic used in the world (and thus, seven bells of a necromancer or abhorsen), but nine gates.
It’s possible I’ve re-read it a time or two (and am re-reading it on my lunch breaks now).
The Disreputable Dog is the best. I wanted to name my dog that when we got her, but couldn’t figure a good way to shorten it. I thought of naming her Kibeth, but she didn’t answer to it and it was too hard for my sister to pronounce.
Since discussion of fantasy series has been brought up, I’ll note that the MRA “zomg, men are rendered completely helpless and servile in the presence of butts that are pleasing to them” thing, reminds me a lot of the roles of some women in Terry Goodkind’s books. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read past “Wizard’s First Rule” so I don’t know what the other twenty some odd books in the series are like, but I didn’t read past that one because it left such a bad taste in my mouth. I think I disliked it so much because the Confessors (an order of magical women) could enslave people with a single touch, and that concept sounded far too close to the concept the MRAs seem to have of women for my liking.
Also (spoiler for anyone who hasn’t and wants to read the novel) the end of that book really solidified my problem with that because the Confessor Kahlan and the protagonist Richard fall in love, but are all sadface about not being able to consummate it because to touch each other = enslavement. Until the end when Richard is all supposedly not subject to her magic because he loves her and would be her slave anyway (paraphrasing here because I’ve no desire to re-read the book). Blech. Gross gross gross. Conceptualizing romantic love as “enslavement” for one (or more) of the lovers strikes me is all kinds of problematic.
Yeah, super-gross. I didn’t make it halfway into that book – I kind of got squicked out and mentioned to the friend that loaned it to me that it felt a lot like drawn-out a juvenile sex/power fantasy, and he (I have no idea if this is true) informed me that Goodkind wrote that thing as a 15 year old. And all of the sense was made that day. Still, 15 year old author or no, I had no desire to finish the book, and from your reaction kleptonetic, it looks like I didn’t miss much!
Lucky you. Let’s just say that it gets worse. Much, much worse…
Fantasy/sci-fi loving guys and gender roles – that sure is a conversation. Not a very cheerful one, though.