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.
The crossover tween MRAs and atheists has long puzzled me, but just earlier today something occurred to me: I imagine most of those guys were also jealous nerds who couldn’t get dates with the girls they liked back in school, and it embittered them about women.
Alternatively, it might be that they looked for girls with an interest in science and atheism and couldn’t find any; I remember in junior high overhearing many girls who seemed to be going out of their way to flaunt that they never read books (which a lot of boys bragged of too). Not finding any science-interested girls at their schools, perhaps these atheists came to the conclusion that all women were like that.
Maybe some of it is just that media tends to stereotype devout religious faith as a feminine thing, from New Ages healers to Christian housewives. Conversely, it’s common to depict scientists as men. Maybe those guys subconsciously believe this is true and reinforce it as much as possible.
I love how they don’t notices that the patriarchy is to blame for the first one, and the second sounds like a fair description for many of them.
I’m definitely seeing a Spanish Inquisition sketch here.
“Nobody expects the Men’s Rights Movement! Our chief weapon is no self-reflection … no self-reflection and no irony … no irony and no self-reflection … our two weapons are no irony and no self-reflection … and sheer inconsistency … Our three weapons are no self-reflection, sense of irony, or consistency … and an almost fanatical devotion to Paul Elam … Our four …no … amongst our weapons … amongst our weaponry … are such elements as no irony or self-reflection … I’ll come in again.”
@ Rabu I do think there’s a connection between science and dudes whether it’s explicit or otherwise. Especially when they go so far as to replace God with Science as if it holds all the answers to everything. When you do that you aren’t really shaking the foundations of that dogmatic belief so much as replacing one with the other.
It’s really frustrating when a lot of their “problems” are things feminism also takes issue with. It doesn’t really help our cause (except if you ignore reality) to think equating men with “feminine” traits turns them into “manginas” (I noticed they avoided the use of that praticular trademarked term)
(giggle)
Or that other Monty Python Sketch, the Olympics of upper-class twits…
wordsp1nner: I read Sabriel awhile ago and loved it! I had no idea it was part of a trilogy! Now I have something new for my reading list….
sparky:
The next two are Lireal and Abhorsen–they are more like one book split in two.
Is it evil if I say that this makes me really happy? Let it all hang out, misogynist dudes, and make it nice and clear to the general public just what your movement is actually about.
Men have no power because women oppress them by being sexy? Yeah, go with that as a marketing plan. I’ll start making the popcorn right now.
Given that I didn’t listen to the radio show, I’m not sure. I can only surmise that it is always feminism’s fault. I’m not convinced that they’d be self-reflexive enough to realize that demeaning men who watch My Little Pony is a product of patriarchy or that a feminist created the show.
Their point was simply that men are shamed whether they act feminine or masculine (and apparently women aren’t I dunno?). They didn’t offer any insight as to who they were going to pin this one on.
Oh, yes! 😀
So I decided to delve into the radio show to get clarification (turns out I was pretty accurate). The Honey Badger’s think because initially unnamed feminists critiqued My Little Pony for being sexist and racist that that’s why men who started watching the show had to defend their sexuality. And apparently it’s feminism’s fault that bronies like brony porn. Because it’s men who watch it apparently we assume it has to be dark and creepy, or something.
Pretty sure they make their own porn FYI and women also participate in naughty fantasies about fictional characters. (its just a bit less mainstream ’cause, well, it’s animals).
It’s really hard to follow their logic TBH. It’s all loopy double-speak that somehow means feminists are at fault. I don’t think they were saying that men watched it because feminists critiqued it, but that because feminists decided the show was sexist bronies had to defend their sexuality for watching it. I have no idea how that makes sense.
They were trying to downplay the porn side actually. They were saying that society has focused on the creepiness of bronies because it’s associated with creepy porn only because it’s men that are watching the show. But that seems illogical to me, it’s because they are watching a show for children that has animals, and also THERE IS PORN! You can’t just ignore it. But, it is problematic when people assume a brony is into the porn aspect, I’m sure it’s more of a subgroup.
It’s just weird that they think all of the criticism is coming from WOMEN!
Oh, yes. Now I remember that piece–the one where she claimed that the guard ponies around the ruler were slaves (WTF? Does she think the secret service is full of slaves?) and had dark skin, ergo it was racist–completely missing the really racist bits* (which, IRC, hadn’t aired yet).
*Somebody pointed out that the major problems with representing POC as non-ponies is that it implies that all the ponies are white the same way having one female transformer implies the others are male. All the stereotypes and other… issues… with the presentation compound the FAIL.
They also just equated dildos with a stuffed pony with a hole in it….
Who or what are these Honey Badgers? Just some other MRA group?
One person, Kathleen Richter, writing for the magazine Ms. assumed Friendship is Magic called it racist, sexist and smarts-shaming based on (I think) the opening animation and a very brief synopsis, an article which readers ridiculed and then-showrunner Lauren Faust (who apparently is a regular reader of Ms.) penned a rebuttal that Ms. also published. That was it. There is far more ridicule of Friendship is Magic from conservative groups like Moonbattery and Big Hollywood who are anti-feminist as well.
Also, I’m attracted to women and looking at that photo doesn’t make me think “oh noes, I am now powerless and must do your bidding, oh sexy assed one!”, it just makes me think “yep, that’s the build that boyshorts look great on”, and also makes me happy because I enjoy looking at sexy people.
I can’t even imagine feeling oppressed by your own arousal. No wonder they’re in such a bad mood all the time.
Because of course there’s nothing creepy about children’s show + cartoon ponies + people making pornography about it. Noooooo.
Honey Badgers are the FeMRA on AVFM
Eh, I don’t care if bronies make porn about the show, as long as they don’t put it where kids might encounter it. What’s annoying is that they seem to be determined to pretend that since they like the show that means that it wasn’t really intended for little girls.
… Now I need to read the conservative critiques of MLP. I think it should be hilarious.
Like, there are legit problems with MLP (mostly the racism) but its strength is in having lots of female characters with diverse personalities that are all okay, which is… awesome. And unusual.
I’m so glad David did a story on these proposed Farrel covers because I thought they, and the AVfM comments about them, were so fucking … telling.
Hmm. I always thought the main characters were young adults because they all live on their own and have jobs and such, and some of them have younger siblings who are legit children.
But I just turned 23, so that might be narcissism.
Wait, so they’re seriously arguing that feminism caused MLP porn? Seriously?
My brain cannot compute.
Well, in that case, the MRM caused femdom porn. Just because.
(Yes, I know that this is absurd, but so was the original argument.)
I think this crystallised for me at least part of the root of where MRAs get their terrible ideas from. I always thought it odd that in (bad) noir the hero would go weak at the knees from the transparent manipulations of the femme fatale. Surely there aren’t men that are so obsessed with sex that they’d do anything for someone showing a bit of leg? Apparently there are.
Institutional oppression and power dynamics be damned…Elam feels uncomfortable when faced with a nearly-naked women, ergo he’s totally powerless. OMG. I find it absolutely fascinating that the MRAs conception of what oppression is, is a totally individual, internal experience they have at the sight of another human being who is passive. Right, like…their reaction to a woman’s existence is something they take as evidence of this woman’s power over them…even though even in their own description of what they believe is oppressive, these MRAs are still actually taking on an active roll and the woman is still taking on a passive roll.
Hoping the above made sense…
Anyway…I find it supremely hilarious that Kevin Wayne has been kicked out of the AVfM club. The man’s been a bit of a thorn in my side for the past couple months…hounding my blog with comments I’ve deleted and then posting on his own blog about it.