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.
@David – glad to be of service.
@lots of people – I didn’t realize “cheesecake” had acquired a new slang meaning and people dont recognize the old one.
@lots of other people – I was terribly fond of the Abhorsen trilogy. As for Goodkind, it just gets worse. Libertarianism is the only truth. Pacifists are evil. And sexy dominatrixes control men through enslaving lust and pain. I suggest stopping now.
Though I have to share this! So, during the whole post-Open Source Boob Project mess there was this one woman whose blog post about being harassed at conventions I read, and she told this story that pretty much sums up why I don’t go to cons. So had a broken arm that was in some sort of soft cast, and was in costume, and random dude came up and started stroking her cast-encased arm. And then he said, and I swear I’m not making this shit up, “Did you hurt your wing, little bird?”
How she managed not to laugh in his face I’m not sure.
Lucky you. Let’s just say that it gets worse. Much, much worse…
Well crap; I really dodged a bullet there then. I was hoping maybe the female characters improved as the author got older and actually, you know, talked to a few women.
This assumes he’s talked to a few women, which by other folk’s accounts, might be giving him a bit too much credit. Though there’s the possibility he’s only talked to Special Snowflakes who insist they aren’t like “those other” women.
He wrote Wizard’s First Rule when he was only 15? Hmm, I guess that would explain it, but dang, as you say, he only gets a pass on that for so long. Wikipedia pegs him as older than my mom so at this point, if he’s still writing out weirdly sexualized tomes chock full of problematic gender role garbage with a health dollop of Libertarianism to boot, I’d say he’s probably just full on terrible instead of just young and misguided.
I mean, I used to rag on Christopher Paolini for the Eragon books (also wrote when he was 15) but dang, at least there wasn’t near as much weirdly sexualized gender role-ness and libertarianism. Granted, I didn’t read the 4th book because I just couldn’t muster the energy to care about such static characters written with purple prose anymore.
XD. True story: my experience with Wizard’s first Rule caused me to actively avoid Eragon, and anything my peers were writing (I was in the 10th grade, I think). Glad it wasn’t that bad though; restores my faith in our youth and all that. 🙂
Okay, no. Wikipedia says Goodkind published his first book at almost 50, so unless my friend was a bigger frothing fanboy than wikipedia and read some biography or something that details when he actually wrote the thing, I’ma go with Goodkind’s old and didn’t even have the excuse I thought he had.
So if I can jump on the atheist and MRA overlap conversation:
So I’m not really talking about atheism or even atheists, but there seems to be a certain kind of person that is drawn to atheist because it is perceived as ‘absolute rationality’ when compared to theism. I mean there aren’t really any ideas more synonymy with the Enlightenment.
(Please tell me if this sounds snobby and elitist because I think it does, but)I feel like “there is no god/s/” is an easier concept for most people to grasp, at least easier than “you’re understanding of the world, the ideas, philosophies, moral, the codes of conduct, are all constructed.
the prestige you assign qualities, actions, behaviour, the things that give you a sense of meaning in the universe are NOT REAL!”
It’s accessible enough that people understand it but radical enough to make one feel hardcore or radical………cuz lets face it until pretty recently religion or a cosmology containing some kind of ‘divinity frequently accompanied by codes of behaviour’ has been pretty fucking central in our existence.
like, the kind of person that doesn’t realize that because their world view or ontology does not contain divinity it is not any less ‘constructed’ than those that do.
And as far as My little Pony FiM is concerned I do see where most of the criticism is coming from(there are some suspicion ethnicity-pony-race lines going on there) I do think the show is over all am improvement to the social messages often encoded into kids shows.
And the creepy part isnt men watching a show for children, thats all well and good, it’s the part where they need to sexualize/eroticize the relatively-sexless-horse-creatures from a children’s cartoon that bothers people. It’s the fucking reason bronies came up with the term ‘clomper’ so they could distinguish themselves from the people that sexualize children’s cartoon characters that lets face it (while they aren’t’t out right given ages) are supposed to be children/juveniles themselves.
@chimisaur, they’re by William Nicholson and the books are called The Wind Singer, Slaves of the Mastery and Firesong.
First book is great, but it’s the second where both the characters and the story really come into their own. The main character is amazing, also she is arguably aromantic. Her name is Kestrel and she takes no crap from anyone, is brave and strong and fiercely loyal but is also foolhardy and has a quick temper.
Also really great on showing friendship between women and women who are conventionally Feminine but are the strongest, bravest people there.
The character Sisi in the second book is probably one of my favourite characters ever, pampered, beautiful princess who learns to believe in herself and her own strength and learns that she is worth more than just her physical appearance and is kind and brave and generous and is portrayed as all this even though she is girly and naive and sometimes shallow and silly.
Abhorsen?
yes.
Yes.
YES.
THAT series is just plain amazing for the mythos it sets up and the sheer amount of detail invested into it. It’s not the “slap-on-some-magic-and-call-it-cool” kind of book, or where all the sorcery/supernatural stuff is a conveniently witty thing, but is one of – if not THE MOST – original concepts of magic that I’ve ever read.
My sisters were reading those books repeatedly throughout junior high and high school because they were so good. And now you lot have made me want to read those books again WHEN FINALS WEEK IS APPROACHING.
At least there will be time for books after finals…before there is more work…WHY…
[Sounds of rending paper, Wilhelm screams, and chaos]
And kleptonetic, you just reminded me of one of the best characters from the series. It’s a reminder to revisit those novels that will dog me over the next few days.
@this one is between perspectives
I think that makes a lot of sense about Atheists, they don’t want to see their beliefs as socially constructed but coming from somewhere outside of themselves (reason, science, etc.). Which is kind of why I think the more hardcore atheists tend to resemble devoutly religious people to an extent. Just like MRAs don’t want to see gender as a social construct that is not based on inherent biological traits.
@lightcastle –
Same here.
@this one is between perspectives –
YES! It’s simple enough that it’s all stuff humans thought up, it’s ways we come up with to operate societies. Not having deities at the centre of it doesn’t make it any better if the behaviour or rules still suck. If being rational (and oh how these guys love to equate rationality with a straw-Vulcan and put down emotions, even while wallowing in their own anger) means seeing at least half the world as lesser beings and fucktoys, I’ll take irrationality any day.
2/3 for blockquotes, not bad for this time of day. 😛
The monster must have wanted a light snack. *nod*
toiap: I mostly agree with you about MLP (from what I know; I haven’t seen it in a couple of years), but one cool thing about the show is that the characters AREN’T kids: they’re adults. They have jobs. Some even have day jobs, which they do to pay the bills even though their real love is something that doesn’t make money. That’s pretty cool as a message to give to young kids, especially girls.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I find the thought of cartoon ponies having sex nothing but completely grody. But I don’t think it’s morally wrong that people write stories on the internet where they do. In fact, while sexuality and romance thankfully aren’t in the show, sexual identity kinda is: one of the characters is sorta-maybe queer, which is also a cool thing in a cartoon for kids.
No, I think people hate bronies becaause they go out of their damn way to act like they’re an oppressed minority because they like a certain TV show. Also, that they can watch a show with pro-queer, pro-feminist morals about the importance of female friendship and refuse to acknowledge or endorse those messages.
Let’s paste this onto the right thread, shall we?
I’m sorry, but every time I see this thread’s title my brain replies “may the power of the butt compel you!” (Said in the tone of “may the power of christ compel you!”)
Aren’t there some Christian denominations in the US where people like to handle snakes during services too? Dudes are just upset that the power of the butt compels their snakes to rise and nobody is offering to handle them.
LOL! IMHO, you aren’t really missing anything by not reading the Eragon books. They’re overrated, very much kinda Star Wars/Lord of the Rings rip-offs and not terribly well written. The first and third are ok, the second is awful, no idea about the fourth. They’re extremely long-winded too, so that’s a lot of reading for not much payoff.
True story for me, I haven’t read anything by Robert Jordan (even though I’ve been told the Wheel of Time is good) because I remember that being the name of the protagonist in Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and I hated that book so, so much.
Cassandra — I think so? In any case, so much yes to why they’re upset!
Snake-handlin’ Christians believe that Jesus (or faith, or something) grants them the power to handle venomous snakes and consume poisons unharmed. Because someone decided to take a certain biblical passage literally, as fundies will. Of course, it doesn’t work quite that way. Every so often, a prominent snake-handlin’ preacher-dude gets a sign from God that he ain’t worthy. Or, in more prosaic terms: God don’t work that way, and the message hasn’t sunk into the backwoods yet.
Oh hey, Goodkind.
There’s a bit of a let’s read of the first few chapters of Wizard’s First Rule here ( http://ronanwills.wordpress.com/category/lets-read-wfr/ )
Having read it, and most other books in the series, let’s just say that they are… interesting. As for the age, it was published when the author was 45, and several interviews mention that Goodkind believes it is a “He could not have written when he was younger”. So he wrote it around 43-45.
SPOILERS of old books:
It’s a work of fiction of almost singular quality, as in, I have never read anything quite like it. It’s so jawdroppingly, stupendously and meandering and odd that it’s quite impressive. One book in the series follows completely random side characters for nigh on 700 pages – who accomplish nothing, do nothing, achieve nothing, learn nothing, experience nothing and end up having finally done nothing, at the end of which the main character Richard casually blows up 2000 people with a thought.
As in, he just kills 2000 cavalry men. Not even particularly evil cavalry men. It’s stated several times they’re only in the People’s Army because if they don’t sign up, their families get killed, their lands salted and their children turned into slavery. The main character wields almost ultimate power at that point, and can do nearly anything in all the world with a single thought, and despite all this… just kills 2000 people. No making their swords disappear. No making them stop. Not even any “Create wall of force” so only a few hundred would get harmed in the ensuing collision. No turning them momentarily blind or rendering himself invisible, all powers the character has and have used before in the preceding books.
Nope, if you oppose Richard, you die. No two ways about it.
It says a lot about the kind of philosophical perspective the book is written from when the reader is expected to agree with this action, and not, you know, rightly decry Richard for the mass-murdering lunatic he is. (And I do mean lunatic, not because mental illness means doing crime, but because Richard as presented in the books is an insane, power-mad sociopath). It says a lot about the problematic ramifications of Goodkind’s brand of Objectivism, because we’re expected to applaud the use of force as not only necessary, but righteous. The enemies, whatever the situation they are in, deserve to die for the actions they take, because the actions themselves renders them unfit to live, and so it becomes necessary to kill them, and so, Richard and pals are allowed to. No thought or introspection needed. Run down those pacifists, they’re evil.
At some point the “heroes” murder several people despite their continued assurance they will not do this. They specifically engineer a situation wherein troops under their command are given the choice of fleeing or fighting, and the people who choose to flee are hunted down and killed. Because they… choose wrong. And thus forfeited the right of their lives, as the judges of morality declare. Let me repeat that: Someone rounded up people, gave them two options, promised not to think badly of anyone picking any option, then hunted down and killed everyone who picked option B… and the person doing this is the hero we have to laud and applaud and approve of.
It doesn’t so much read as a fantasy epic as it does a study of sociopathy. Near the end, the Big Evil Villian and the Big Great Hero are indistinguishable from each other, because they both do the EXACT same things – murder, lie, cheat, kill. But Team Richard has moral right to do so, and authorial mandate to never be questioned for it, because of the Rightness of their Actions. It’s not murder if you’re an objectivist… then it’s Righteous Judgement.
Fuck, thinking back, there’s a scene wherein someone is unable to confirm sending reinforcements somewhere, because he has standing orders from his Queen to keep soldiers near the queendom. He’s just an underling, and he has been given strict orders by royal mandate. He’s incredibly sorry, but given the strictures of government, he can’t offer aid.
No matter. They talk, they tell him “It’s okay, we’ll find another solution”, then they use magic to freeze his heart as he walks out of their tent and he dies. For showing loyalty! Nevermind the fucking fact that, as acting captain, if he gave the order to march troops somewhere for reinforcements, he’d be actively subjugating the right of every soldier under his command to “Choose their own path”; because they’re foot soldiers and they have to obey their officers. No no! That stuff is a-okay when it benefits Team Richard.
Because if you don’t actively join team Richard, you are working against it, and you are judged as those who fight actively against it, and you die.
I find Goodkind’s books detestable.
“Loud and proud” atheists are insufferable.
I believe Paul Elam (of avoiceformen.com) is an atheist, but he doesn’t make it the centerpiece of his identity.
The justification I’ve seen from Paul and others low-key atheists whom I can stomach is that a secular society is more contiguous to change. If you’ve got an ambrosial God sending down precepts, well, those difficult to challenge. But in a secular society it’s must easier.
Not to say that I necessarily agree- I’m a Portestant.
Change? Yeah, right, Elam is so about change. The only changes he wants are to undo all the progress that’s been made. He fits right in with a comment I saw on Raw Story: he’s the sort of atheist who thinks the Bible was wrong about God having power over men, but right about men having power over women.
Oh, btw, contiguous means edges touching. I’ve no idea what word you were after, but that wasn’t it.