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.
*not getting paid.
If this forum allowed taglines, that would be mine, all right…
Isn’t seeking validation from “commercially” (euw) attractive women really a proxy for getting validation from other men? All the alpha male/hot babe/social domination/fat shaming crap that PUAs peddle is about jockeying for position within the hierarchy. The woman is just a prop. What she thinks: Doesn’t Matter. What other men think you’re doing with your dick: Serious Business.
(Points up)
Yep. Women are essentially tokens in the game that men are playing against each other, in terms of the way PUAs (and a lot of other similarly minded men) see the world. They never will understand why women find the fact that they view us as a sort of ambulatory poker chip so offensive.
It’s all about the trophy wife and having arm candy with them. No room for humanity at all.
@budmin
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Cassandrakitty:
“. They never will understand why women find the fact that they view us as a sort of ambulatory poker chip so offensive.”
Ambulatory poker chip! Lol!
I guess this is why collectible machinery is referred to as “she”. Cars, boats, planes, “she’s a beaut!” At least the car won’t ever be called a “female.” Shit! Are cars are thought of more humanly than women!? They may even have more agency!
budmin:
o_O. That doesn’t prove that men don’t have power relative to women.
O_o. I’d have to agree that those calling themselves “MGTOWs” (who aren’t, really, going there own way and instead seem to spend most of their time spewing mosogynist bullshit online) are the human equivalent of turds in the anus of humanity; but that is a rather disgusting metaphor, don’t you think?
o_O. Are you drunk? None of that is really understandable.
You are, of course, “talking away” women’s lived experience when you handwave away all the points the others here have brought up with the whole “but men want to have sex with beautiful women and that makes men powerless!”
“Anals.”
Well, I mean, that’s where you pulled that idea from in the first place, so, okay….
Sexist men don’t seek validation from women. They seek to boost their self-esteem by feeling like they have power over women.
I’d be quite amused to see budmin’s anals explode, messy though it would be.
@weirwoodtreehugger on March 8, 2014
_”It’s all about the trophy wife and having arm candy with them. No room for humanity at all”
We the inverse of that is true also. Some women do consider themselves trophies and they do dehumanize people who they don’t think measure up.
That is also a consequence of patriarchy. Women can be sexist towards other women as well and internalize misogyny. Pretty much all feminists know this.
Kittehserf, I think they already did (all over this thread)
YES! You’re not saying anything new. It’s the same tired ole misogynist asscrap.
Shorter buddy – “Some women aren’t very nice, therefore the fact that the entire system is stacked against women is OK”.
“Men are in search of validation from a commercially attractive women.”
Funny then that I spent an evening volunteering at an event called “Men Who Cook” that specifically exists to fund raise for victims of sexual violence and children in need of advocates. The chefs were men. The band, auctioneer, announcer and several of my fellow volunteers, (including my husband and eldest son) were men. Many of the people who bought tickets and bid were men. None of them seemed to care one wit about being validated by “commercially attractive” women. They sure looked and behaved like autonomous people with their own compassion and self worth. They were there with friends and family supporting a good cause, not looking for validation. They seemed able to validate themselves just fine. What you’re doing here, sport, is projecting your own issues onto others and deciding that your lack of self worth must be gender based and your desire for but inability to get attention from hot ladies must be some form of oppression. You’re wrong. Lot’s of people want attention and sex from people they personally find attractive. That does not mean they are owed it or that they actually need it. Neither fulfilling that desire or not fulfilling it defines them as people.
I agree with the other posters here who stated that the qualifier “commercially attractive” is less about being validated by women and more about using women as a props to seek the approval of other men. Like a sports car or a designer watch, the only reason a person’s “commercial attractiveness” is important is if you need to know that other people also want what you have. It isn’t about women controlling you or about all men wanting what you want. It’s about you wanting to be the first kid on your block with the toy all the other kids want so that you can have a moment of fleeting admiration. That’s objectification of women and it is the opposite of empowering to women.
@Trans Commie you’d be hard pressed to find any society that doesn’t have a social hyarchie.
@budmin
Ah, so we’re at the “that’s the way it’s always been” stage, are we?
Which means that a social hierarchy that places women underneath men is OK.
(Come on, dude, you’re not even trying. Dance, troll-monkey.)
Same shit, different asshole, yeah?
That doesn’t really have any bearing on what I said.
Budmin’s whine boils down to “none of the systemic, legal prejudice against women, none of the inequalities enshrined in law and in society, none of that matters, because some men get all hot and bothered when they see an attractive woman!”
Ah yes, the rational, cool, straw-Vulcan sex, that’s them.
LOL! I just asked my husband if he seeks validation from commercially attractive women. He looked at me like I’d popped a cog.
This is a real OnStar call:
Him: “Commercially” attractive? Like in Vogue?
Me: Yes.
Him: *cocks eyebrow* I don’t even understand the question.
@leatapp What the men in your life are doing is fantastic but I think you’re mistaking WF’s criticism of the current system as if hes promoting it and I think you’re doing the same thing with what I’m trying to say.
Let me just say for the record that I don’t endorse using women as a cruch to bolster your ego, self worth or lack of self esteem. This however does not change how often men do it. Do you understand me?