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.
There are! And they’re chained, poor things – symbol of what the marriage is like.
They are both chained- if it is a true symbol of marriage shouldn’t just the male beagle be chained and the feeeemale beagle be in control?
RE: CassandraSays
Fantasy/sci-fi loving guys and gender roles – that sure is a conversation. Not a very cheerful one, though.
I know! And as someone who loves those things, it bugs me so much, because there’s a genre TAILOR-MADE to fuck with gender roles!
RE: DefJam
I believe Paul Elam (of avoiceformen.com)
Guys, I’m starting to suspect he’s doing this on purpose now and is in fact a Poe. I mean, come on, is there anyone on this site who’s been here longer than a week who DOESN’T know where Paul Elam digitally hails?
If you’ve got an ambrosial God sending down precepts, well, those difficult to challenge.
Tell that to the Jews.
RE: StarStorm
I am so pleased that Manboobzers know about the g0ys. They hurt way too good not to share, in my opinion!
Proving that a conservative eighteenth-century painter was light years ahead of the MRM in his thinking! 😛
There really is no one like Hogarth for graphically illustrating the horrors and injustices of his world, is there? That was right around the time when coverture was formally enshrined in English law, was it not?
“The Day My Bum Went Psycho” sounds like something I wish MY bum had done when a former boyfriend told me it was too big. That would have been AWESOME.
So true about Hogarth. I saw Marriage A La Mode in London (or Edinburgh? Brain fart) and it was just horrific.
I don’t know when coverture was formalised, but it seems to have been around at least since the Conquest. That creepy specimen Blackstone talked about it at the end of the 18th century.
Well, I just looked it up, and it seems you’re correct…Wikipedia sayeth:
Well, all hail my Saxon ancestors, then. Their women were also mighty warriors, and no meek “shieldmaidens”.
Now that’s interesting. It maketh me to wonder afresh why Elizabeth I was a “virgin” queen, then. If she was legally exempt, then there must have been another reason why she chose never to marry. Maybe her understanding of the law was not Blackstonian?
Oh! On the other hand,
…which would be in line with my earlier hunch.
Now I haz a puzzlement.
I think there were tons of reasons for Elizabeth not to marry. If she chose an Englishman, it’d get all the not-chosen nobility’s backs up over one family being raised up (look at how unpopular the Howard/Boleyn and Seymour clans had been in her father’s time). If she chose a foreigner, she’d have the same potential problems Mary had when she married Phillip of Spain, even if the religious element hadn’t come into it. Who knows if she really wanted to tie herself to a man who’d have all sorts of cultural, if not legal, rights over her, or expectations, at least? Plus, it was one hell of a diplomatic weapon, at least while she was young enough to potentially have children.
That’s without even going into the personal reasons, which nobody on this side can know about, of course. (Fuck I hope that tosser Freud never wrote about her; can you imagine?)
Well, to my knowledge, Freud was not an anglophile (or a necrophile), so probably that was of no interest to him. He dealt in living people, for good or ill…mostly ill, since he didn’t want to believe that child sexual abuse was as common as we now know it is.
And yes, that other part makes sense to me. As does the fact that she had quite an eye for handsome young courtiers, acquired at will. I imagine getting married would have obliged her to give that up, at least pro forma.
“Not a necrophile” is about the only good thing I can think of about old Sigmund, and how negative is that? 😛
(Do you read Dead Philosophers in Heaven? He makes regular appearances there.)
Yes, it’s not like Elizabeth was deprived of male eye candy in general. Rob Dudley, Kit Hatton, etc, etc …
Enh, I am unable to hate Sigmund Freud due to an interesting story I read about him trying to teach his son to fight back against oppression by beating the shit out of some anti-Semites giving them hassle. He had a lot of fucked up ideas and shit… but I can’t hate someone who wanted to protect his child.
Alas, no. Where do I look?
I wouldn’t say I hate him. I hate his theories, which are terrible and have had the worst influence on psychiatry and psychology for decades. Very woman-blamey shit in there, especially all that Oedipal crap. Unfortunately, the tone of the times was such that it passed unremarked for the longest time. If not for feminism, I think it still would be taught as something close to gospel.
Oh, I can hate Freud, all right, and hate his empathy-bypass followers.
Bina – Dead Philosophers in Heaven!
That’s bang on!
The only thing I’ve ever felt the least twinge of penis envy about is that guys can pee standing up. And maybe write their names in the snow that way. But as for the rest, even wanking…nope.
There are some hilarious comics in that strip. Poor old Nietszche cops it all the time – this is my favourite.
With penis envy, well, apart from the privileges that go with being a man (something ol’ Sigmund seems to have conveniently overlooked), the only reason I’d have wanted one – in the sense of wanting to be male – was when I thought it would improve my chances with Louis. Turned out not to matter, of course. 🙂
“I know! And as someone who loves those things, it bugs me so much, because there’s a genre TAILOR-MADE to fuck with gender roles!”
Talk about it. Speculative fiction and fantasy have it in their blood, in their very name. It’s so weird that so much of both genres seems to lack basic imagination.
Apparently it’s more imaginable to have elves and dragons and whatnot in fantasy than it is to either have a decent female protagonist (that doesn’t conform to gender roles), or to have some other race that isn’t white take major roles in the story. *rolls eyes*
Alice: Well, obviously. A woman being a warrior wouldn’t be realistic! (I have had that conversation SO many times.)
Did someone say “dead philosophers?”
katz – OH GODS YES. I’ve had this conversation with fuckheads who think that “write what you know” means that every single damned protagonist is a straight white dude, and that we should all stop complaining about how writers need to expand their horizons and consider other perspectives ’cause REASONS.
Elves and dragons: more realistic than a black woman protagonist! *roll eyeballs*
Ally – ::fistbump:: for the Bruces’ Philosophers Song!
The “write what you know” issue could also be resolved by there being more people publishing sf/fantasy novels who aren’t straight white men.
(Cue horrified screeching.)
@CassandraSays: The sad thing is that even when someone who isn’t a straight white man writes a very successful fantasy series about people who aren’t straight, white males, the Hollywood adaptations are all about (surprise, surprise) straight white males. Case in point: the oh-so-white godawful adaptation of one of the best fantasy series out there, Earthsea.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s words on the subject: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Earthsea.html