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.
Please tell us more about the other, non-definitive power(s).
“Offered women more security and entitlements.”
Right. As woman capable of getting pregnant, I have less legal control over my organs than a corpse. I feel very entitled
This sounds like my little brother repeating my father’s bullshit statements about politics without the least idea of what or who is he talking about.
Go back to your hole, grown-ups are talking.
Yep, that’s definitely what Hilary Clinton would say. Funny how in this scenario she sounds like Paul Elam, I wonder if it’s like all of the commenters here being David in disguise.
Hilary Clinton, secret MRA, who talks entirely in misogynist dogwhistles. Only the MRM could produce a troll this stupid.
Are you on drugs?
Yes, a required and invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound before a legal procedure or not getting my basic healthcare needs covered makes me feel so secure and entitled.
Grow a brain.
Budmin:
“@cassandrakitty illegitimate as in not sanctioned by the state, prosecutable by law and morally repugnant.”
Well if the only power men have over women is violence, yet illegitimate due to above reasons, than how is women’s sexual power over men (assuming there is) any more legitimate? It’s also, u stated, not sanctioned by the state, prosecutable by law and morally repugnant. If men’s violence toward women is a non power, then women’s sexual power is equally a non power in your definition.
@Luzbelitx status and wealth comes to mind but even then it’s up to the women to say how long her subservience will be tolerated.
I did like the “out campaigned buy men” part. Nice little acknowledgement of how important money is in running a political campaign, that.
(Yes, I realize that I’m crediting budmin with far more wisdom than he actually has here.)
Do you even read the simple-minded shit you type?
I’m starting to think budmin’s kink is being told how stupid he is in public.
Unless, let’s say, she has no “beauty” o “youth” to keep the spell working, amirite?
Citation needed.
Since you mentioned American politicians, US politics will be what my answer centers on.
How do giant subsidies to big agribusiness, the military industrial complex and fossil fuel industries benefit women? How does our lack of universal single payer healthcare and lack of required paid maternity leave benefit women? How do labor laws that make it next to impossible to unionize retail, food service and hospitality industries benefit women?
The US government looks out for the interest of the wealthy and big business (which is male dominated). It doesn’t look out for the interests of women. Except extremely wealthy women.
Again I ask, are you serious? Please tell me this is some sort of performance art.
I think he may just be the Dunning-Kruger poster child.
@Nitram Good question. This kind’a brings to light my concerns with some of the more myopic aspects of Warren Farrel’s writing.
It’s not about sex or pussy or friend zones and whatnot. It’s about validation. Men are in search of validation from a commercially attractive women. That’s our undoing and something that I’d love to see disappear from the anals of human existence. #MGTOW.
Hilary Clinton lost the 2008 primaries because Obama was more exciting and had the persona of a Washington outsider. She’s more popular than she’s ever been and it’s almost certain she’ll run away with the Democratic nomination if she runs in 2016. That scares the shit out the MRM I’m sure.
How dare they be expected to have to look at, let alone be led by a woman that is over 25 and therefore unfuckable? Oh the horror.
budmin: when, exactly, are you going to go your own way? You won’t get your validation, and you sure as shit won’t be missed.
“Validation from commercially attractive women. ” That’s it in a nutshell, and if these whiners don’t get it, they’re taking their balls and going. GOING, ladies.
My lack-of-selfawareness-o-meter just exploded.
Oh, is it validation that you want here? Sorry, but I think we’re pretty much united in our belief that you’re a pathetic waste of oxygen.
I
‘ll repeat the Margaret Atwood quote. “Men are afraid women are going to laugh at them. Women are afraid men are going to kill them.” Which is truly scarier?
Also, this isn’t twitter so what’s with the hashtag? And anals? Haha! Did you mean annals? Did you know that when red squiggles appear under a word it means you misspelled?
I guess if commercially attractive women won’t agree to give you the anals that means they’re refusing you the validation that you need. Poor baby.
Well said.
@budmin
Yep, fighting gender-related wealth and status inequality is as simple as all women saying “I no longer tolerate being subservient.”
And if you think male violence against women is considered “illegitimate” by society, the reality really isn’t that simple. Female rape victims are often accused of tempting men, lying in order to preserve sexual modesty, and even deserving to be raped. One of the reasons rape victims are reluctant to report to the police is that the interrogation process is systemically biased against rape victims. On top of all of that, the main kind of rapist that is seen as evil is the stereotypical angry stranger who attacked a woman perceived as a modest virgin.
The main problem with Farrell’s point is that he’s assuming that feeling powerful is the only yardstick for determining power in society. Why can’t you see the simplicity of that?
No, you are.
If you were any smart at all you’d know a hell lot of men do not. And that not all of them are this creepy pheromone-dependent apes that Farell describes.
Actually, none of them are, not even yourself.
That’s just a bullshit story Farell made up to make money out of your miserable lives.