You may remember the embarrassing spectacle a couple of months back when Warren Farrell asked the readers of A Voice for Men to help him pick out a cover picture for a new ebook version of The Myth of Male Power, the 21-year-old crackpot bestseller that more or less provided the, er, intellectual foundation for today’s Men’s Rights movement.
It wasn’t just embarrassing because AVFM is a noxious hate site that regularly calls women c*nts and whores and helps to organize informal campaigns of harassment directed at individual women. It was also embarrassing because all three of the pictures were sexualized images focusing on specific female body parts. You can guess which three, and you’d be right: tits, ass, and vagina (the latter tastefully covered in a merkin made of moss).
Well, Farrell ended up rejecting all of these images in favor of … a different picture of a woman’s butt. Yep, the screenshot above features the actual cover of the recently released ebook version of The Myth of Male Power. (You can see it in its full sized-glory over on Amazon.)
The implicit message of the cover couldn’t be clearer: men may seem to run the world, but women can control and exploit them through the power of their sexuality. Male power is undercut by … butt power.
Am I reading too much into a cover image? Farrell doesn’t really believe this nonsense, does he?
Well, in the introduction to the ebook, Farrell writes:
In case you’re wondering, “genetic celebrity” is Farrell’s term of art for any attractive woman.
But golly, you say, the fact that a dude feels “powerless” because he can’t have sex with every woman with a nice butt that happens to wander across his field of vision doesn’t actually mean that men are powerless or that male power is a myth. Well, Farrell has an answer to this as well. And by “answer” I mean, well, whatever this is:
Got that? I’m not sure there’s anything there to get; it’s nothing more than hand-waving to distract attention from the nonsensical nature of his previous statements. In case any Men’s Rights activist ever brings Warren Farrell up as an example of a respectable, “academic” MRA, you may wish to point out that almost nothing Farrell writes ever actually makes any fucking sense.
In the book itself, Farrell repeatedly suggested that male power can be undone almost completely by the sexual power of women. In one oft-quoted passage, he wrote about the effect that a “secretary’s miniskirt power, cleavage power and flirtation power” allegedly has on their male bosses. (Myth of Male Power, p. 21)
While that statement has earned a certain notoriety for its sheer ridiculousness, Farrell went further elsewhere in the book, essentially arguing that men are as addicted to female “beauty” as drug addicts are to the drug of their choice — and as helpless.
“Sexually, of course, the sexes aren’t equal,” Farrell wrote. “[M]any men feel ‘under the influence the moment they see a beautiful woman.” (p. 320, emphasis in original.)
This sort of temporary “intoxication,” Farrell argued, leads men into shackling themselves to these temporarily sexy tyrants for the rest of their lives — thus agreeing to support them (he suggested implicitly) even after they get old and ugly. (p. 85.)
In Farrell’s original book, this “argument,” such as it is, was merely one of many that he thought undercut the alleged “myth of male power.” Now, with the butt on the cover, he’s put it front and center. Or, more precisely, rear and center.
Warren Farrell, you’re an ass, man.
Oh, awkward segue here, I just wanted to show off the cover to the new edition of my classic book, The Myth of Human Power.
It will soon be available for one million dollars in cash in unmarked bills, upon delivery of which I will sit down and write it for you. It will probably be pretty short and not very convincing.
“As if women don’t feel the same in the presence of handsome men.”
Right. I’ve never stared, transfixed at a gorgeous man. Nope. Never. I’m way too cool for that.
http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n396/funsunman1985/K-O/CelebMarkRuffalo.jpg
‘0.0’
Ruffalo does to panties what the Ark of the Covenant does to Nazi faces.
‘But I’m not privileged because I don’t feel privileged!”
Dude, that’s how privilege fucking works. God these guys need to be slapped in the face with a dead fish.
(I’ll say it should be a small fish, because I don’t actually believe in violence, but fuck sometimes MRAs make me forget that.)
Cue Python: “Sit on my face, and tell me that you love me …”
Jayzuz, the underwear industry must love him! “I need to buy some more knickers. All my old ones melted.”
Also hi to all delurkers, new commenters, and returned commenters! ::waves::
Adding “THIS” to the comments asking if this mold-brained malidiot* has ever heard of the word love.
*Stolen from malidiocy, a shortening of malignant idiocy, as seen on Raw Story. Describes MRAs perfectly.
I’m not so sure that wouldn’t be an accurate description.
Warren “sticky pages” Farrell.
And hey, he’s welcome to spend as much time as he wants indulging in mental masturbation about his kink. It’s just when he wants to rearrange society in order to better indulge his fetish for pretending that women are controlling him with their bodies that we run into some problems.
Given Farrell’s atrocious words on date rape, I think the thought of him writing erotic fiction makes me shudder.
(Formerly known as Ally S)
I was just going to say, new nym, commenter-formerly-known-as-Ally! 🙂
It’s my train-user mind, but the new one does make me think more of a public transport company than what trans actually means in this context.
@kitteh
I chose this nym because I like being more low-profile. Quite a few people know me by my nickname. The other reason I chose it is that it seems to describe me extensively in just two words (hopefully that doesn’t make me too pretentious). The association you made is amusing, though. =P
Unattractive women? What are those? Oh. OH, you mean those lower life forms that the feminists are trying so hard to defend the existence of and turn everyone else into? Ohhhh okay.
Oh BTW, I mean EVERYBODY! They tell women it’s okay to be fat, hairy imitation men! And they also want to feminize men, make our sons lower themselves to the status of females! The horror, the horror!
Someone has to do something! Hey, don’t look at me. I’m too busy ranting on the Internet about how attractive women oppress me with their asses!
Ally – yup, it certainly puts out two important elements of who you are and what matters to you, and to me it reads more gender-neutral, which is probably a good bit of cover for internet stuff in general.
You can come and do the socialist (I know, that’s not communist, let along anarchist) thing with our transport if you like. It desperately needs to be nationalised and got working again! 😛
This has nothing to do with anything, but I really want to share this video of the adorable grizzly bears at my local zoo. Lets look at the bears as feminism and the pumpkin as the MRM shall we?
Grizzly Pumpkin Smashers is the name of my new band.
If the bears are feminism and the pumpkins are the MRM, does this mean I get to use it as a trampoline? Because those bears seem to be having a lot of fun bouncing on those pumpkins.
As I was reading this on the laptop, Cat A jumped on my chest and started waving her bum in my face while doing that bread-kneading thing on the keyboard. Cat B is already curled up on my lap.
Now Cat A is trying to grab my hand off the keyboard and groom with it…
Yes I am oppressed by cats’ rear ends! I need your book.
No money, but I can send you 7 or 8 discarded cats whiskers.
Katz, you are just awesome.
@janetframed, WF to English translator:
Hetero men like women’s butts. I think having one on my cover will get them to buy my book. Especially if I remind them of how great women’s butts are. This picture is a bit arty so I think I can get away with it.
Attractive women never try to pick up men …
… so they don’t have to worry about creeping or sexually harassing.
If a man sexually harasses a woman, there are sometimes bad consequences for the man. This is dreadful.
It is so difficult for a man not to sexually harass women to whom he is attracted. It is not fair that the attractive women aren’t made accountable for this somehow.
– attractive women should also suffer the financial, physical and emotional pain that a man suffers every time he is rejected by an attractive woman. Or, you know, when he’s prosecuted for sexually harassing her.
I know how to start spelling “humililiated”, I’m just not sure when to stop … 😉
Last time I looked, “not getting laid (by all the pretty hot women)” wasn’t the most additive thing. Kinda thought opiates were. Maybe amphetamines. Cocaine? Actual drugs? But hey. Prove my B. Pharm (Hons) wrong MRAs!
And, I’m with everyone else. Cats are our overlords & human power is the myth. Now. Must go cuddle bubbies.
By this logic, powerful men must have gotten that way because they are asexual and immune to the charms of Dat Ass. All those trophy wives and mistresses are just for show. Conversely, if you’re a marginal, unemployed MRM keyboard warrior with nothing to contribute to human society, it’s totally because you can’t quit mainlining Grade A tush, and not because you can’t string two coherent thoughts together. Maybe we should start rehab clinics for these poor, addicted souls?
As for genetic celebrities, they’re too busy evading DNA tabloid micro-paparazzi (“The Nuclear Enquirer”) and doing fundraisers for mitochondria to “initiate”. It’s exhausting being famous at the molecular level.
@theladyzombie:
Right? Like, if Warren Farrell were trying to write a book about the power dynamics between men and women you would think he wouldn’t just compare men to a small minority of women. Course he was actually writing a book about how it isn’t fair that women he wants to have sex with don’t always have sex with him, so his choice to completely ignore women he isn’t attracted to makes perfect sense.
@emilygoddess:
I want to get this framed.
Y’know, while we’re talking about the myth of male power, can I just mention that we’re coming up fairly soon upon the 100th anniversary of women demanding and getting the vote here in America?
It’s going to be a presidential election year.
…
I think we all know what we have to do.
The cake wakes me up at 5 am. Do I want to get up at 5 am. No. But I do anyway so the cat can be fed. And then when he gets what he wants he ignores me. Who has the real power I ask you?
She doesn’t have to worry about people feeling she deserves to be physically hurt, financially hurt, and/or emotionally humiliated because her initiation was awkward.
No, the woman only has to worry about all of that before, during, and after an encounter with a MRA. It isn’t fair, they get off scot free!
*an MRA, sorry. Braining is hard with toddlers in the room.