Warren Farrell, the intellectual grandfather of the Men’s Rights movement, is doing an AMA on Reddit today at 1 PM Eastern time. UPDATE: It’s started, and it’s here.
AMA, in Reddit-speak, stands for Ask Me Anything. So I would encourage you to ask Mr. Farrell questions about anything he has said or written in the past that you find troubling, or even just confusing.
Here are some suggestions. Seriously, ask him any of these, as I’m not sure I’ll be able to be online when the whole thing goes down.
1) Mr Farrell, in your book The Myth of Male Power, you wrote that:
It is important that a woman’s “noes” be respected and that her “yeses” be respected. And it is also important when nonverbal “yeses” (tongues still touching) conflict with those verbal “noes” that the man not be put in jail for choosing the “yes” over the “no.” He might just be trying to become her fantasy.
Are you suggesting that if a woman clearly says no to sex, but does not stop kissing a man, that he is entitled to have sex with her anyway because she has given him a non-verbal “yes?” If not, what specifically do you mean? What sort of non-verbal “yes” would outweigh a clear verbal “no?” Why doesn’t her verbal no mean no?
Source: Myth of Male Power, page 315.
Screencap here: http://i.imgur.com/cwSoc.png
2) Mr. Farrell, regarding your research on incest in the 1970s, you told Penthouse magazine that:
“When I get my most glowing positive cases, 6 out of 200,” says Farrell, “the incest is part of the family’s open, sensual style of life, wherein sex is an outgrowth of warmth and affection. It is more likely that the father has good sex with his wife, and his wife is likely to know and approve — and in one or two cases to join in.”
Were you actually suggesting that there are “glowing, positive cases” of parent-child incest – that is, child sexual abuse? How can child sexual abuse be “glowing” or “positive” for the child?
If this is not what you meant, what did you mean?
Penthouse also quotes you as saying that you were doing your research
“because millions of people who are now refraining from touching, holding, and genitally caressing their children, when that is really a part of a caring, loving expression, are repressing the sexuality of a lot of children and themselves. Maybe this needs repressing, and maybe it doesn’t.”
As I understand it, you’ve said you were misquoted and that you did not say “genitally,” and that what you actually said was “generally” or “gently.” But even with the word replaced, you are suggesting that parents are repressing their sexuality and their children’s sexuality if they don’t “caress” their children. What did you mean by this?
Sources:
Transcript of Penthouse article: http://nafcj.net/taboo1977farrell.htm
Scanned pages of original article from Penthouse: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/site-index-frame.html#soulhttp://www.thelizlibrary.org/fathers/farrell2.htm
3) Mr. Farrell, why did you choose a photograph of a nude woman’s ass for the cover of the new edition of The Myth of Male Power? Do you really think that male power is somehow negated by female sexuality?
4) Mr. Farrell, why have you chosen to associate yourself with the website A Voice for Men, a site that frequently refers to women as “cunts,” “bitches,” and “whores?” If you are not aware of this, would you disassociate yourself from the site if given clear proof of the site’s frequent misogynistic attacks on women?
If you’re looking for more ideas on questions to ask him, check out my posts on him in the archives.
These might be good to start with:
The Myth of Warren Farrell: Farrell on Rape, Part One
Warren Farrell’s notorious comments on date rape: Not any more defensible in context than out of it
What Men’s Rights guru Warren Farrell actually said about the allegedly positive aspects of incest.
MRA founding father Warren Farrell responds to questions about his incest research with evasive non-answers. And a smiley. (About his last AMA appearance.
Warren Farrell on Unemployment, Salesmanship, and Other Things That Are Like Rape, Supposedly
Also check out the excellent Farrell’s Follies series on Reddit.
And Fibinachi has a series on Farrell as well.
Does Farrell realize that the way he structured his comment about whining versus sympathetic responses to kids makes it sound like he thinks that when boys complain about something it makes women horny? I mean, given his views on incest I guess it’s possible that he did mean that, but complete linguistic incompetence seems like the more likely explanation.
I’m fat and conventionally fairly unattractive. I’ve experienced more rejection than the average dude, I’ll wager. I pretty much expect it. I have no self-worth. That doesn’t make it a fucking human rights violation to turn me down. It’s just bad luck (and a love of eating re: being fat.)
Fear of rejection isn’t a men’s issue. It isn’t even an issue. It’s a reality. None of us is entitled to dates or sex from anyone else.
Re: the “Schrodinger’s no” gem that Auntie Alias quoted…
Dear Reddit-Dude-Who’s-Not-Actually-Here, if you’re getting a Schrodinger’s no, you have total, complete right to say, “You know, I’m not comfortable with this,” and stop. In fact, the wise thing to do is to stop. Don’t agree to have sex with anyone whom you know or suspect isn’t being forthright about what they want and what they want to do to you. If you are not sure you have the green light, assume that you don’t–for your safety and for hers.
Seriously. This stuff is not rocket science. Sex is not an accident that your hormones drag you into kicking and screaming. Self-control is a really nifty thing. Use it. Benefit from it.
And also, it might be helpful to deal with reality a bit more and shelve the far-fetched hypothetical situations.
Egads.
Then you still respect it, unless you two have agreed beforehand that “no” is not a safe-word between you two.
Contrary to popular belief, your libido is infinitely less important than not potentially raping her.
Oh, how did I miss this earlier? Yeah, what a Grand Unifying Theory, all right. Gosh, it’s like blacks and whites don’t even drink the same tap water, in the same city! Must be that naturally lower testosterone on the part of Whitey.
Or just that naturally lower brainpower, on the part of MRAsshats.
So, the whole birth control pills in the water supply lowering testosterone thing doesn’t work on black men because?
(And yes, I know that expecting logic from a racist is like expecting my cat to learn to play the piano.)
…black men don’t drink water? Beats the hell outta me.
PS: Did you say “cat playing the piano”?
Because, according to WTF, black men have higher testosterone b and so have a higher tolerance. i.e long after white men have become feminised, black insert racist dogwhistles are still able to resisting the effect of the estrogen.
My cat really will learn to play Rachmaninov before these people learn to logic.
“Black Run America (yes, yes)”
In one of Vonnegut’s novels (I think Cat’s Cradle) there’s a minor character who’s a mentally disabled elevator operator. He is depicted as having a sort of tic: he’ll say something odd (e.g., ‘babies full of rabies ‘), then grab his own buttocks and say “yes, yes!”
Wonder what made me think of that just now.
LOLwut? First off, feminists had fuck-all to do with that. Secondly, the whole “spitting on Vietnam vets” thing was a myth. Read Jerry Lembcke’s The Spitting Image, you moran. Thirdly, it was the CIA and the BRASS, not civilians, feminists and peace activists, who pissed on the returning vets (metaphorically, not literally), because this was their war, it was for their own glorification, and they didn’t like those underlings losing it on them. And they made sure the punishment kept on flowing by refusing to acknowledge the damage done by Agent Orange, PTSD, etc. — and by cutting VA services, too.
Christ, Warren, you are SUCH a fucking jackass.
Cassandra,
If Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that black people are magic. Thus, our evil slut pills cannot harm them.
If anything, I imagine it’s mostly yuppie white boys who drink nothing but bottled water and never touch the tap water.
But mostly I’m concerned about all these women who are apparently peeing into the water supply.
I’m going to need a citation on the black men have more testosterone thing. It sounds to me like an extension of the racist stereotype that black people are more primitive, savage and are sexually out of control.
Racist right wingers really need to get their reasons for hating President Obama straight. Is he a scary and angry black man who is luring all the white women into his clutches with his alphaness? Because I’ve been hearing a lot of people on the right lately saying that Vladimir Putin is alpha maling all over the pointy headed intellectual Obama who is too wimpy to scare Russia into submission.
There actually are hormones from BC and other medical waste in the water and it is changing male frogs into females and resulting in less reproduction because there’s a shortage of males. Sorry I don’t have a citation on that, I read about it years ago.
However, amphibians not identical to mammals and I have never seen anything to suggest that there are enough hormones in drinking water to effect human males, let alone change them into women entirely. Pthlates (sp?) in plastics on the hand can the human male reproductive system when baby boys put plastic toys, cups and bottles in their mouths. I haven’t MRAs get up in arms about that though. Probably because environmental and consumer safety regulations are for wussy liberals.
I’m guessing that it’s more because it’s hard to blame the existence of plastics on women.
Pthalates are indeed hormone/endocrine disruptors, as well as cancer causers; however, women didn’t invent those. And they cause just as much harm to female children as male. Not exactly a feminist conspiracy. Eco-feminists, in fact, are leading the charge AGAINST the use of pthalate in plastics.
As for birth control pills, the idea that men are emasculated by drinking Pill-laced water is laughable. It’s not like they’ve all suddenly gone impotent; Viagra has a vast marketing department, but there is no actual impotence/infertility epidemic among males. A healthy guy can get by fine without the blue boner pills. It’s not like their own bodies produce no estrogen, nor that estrogen levels don’t vary a fair bit between healthy males. Any excess, I imagine, would be excreted, as it is in women. Most of the diagnosed physical impotence in men is due to diabetes (either type) or heart disease; it’s a circulatory problem, not a hormonal one.
And it’s not like estrogen is actually emasculating, let alone in the dosages found in birth control pills today. Back in the early 1960s, when the Pill was new and not enough was known about proper dosage levels, doses were high enough to cause serious side effects, mostly stroke, weight gain, and clinical depression in those already more than usually predisposed to those conditions. Most women tolerated the Pill well, high dosage notwithstanding. But not a peep came out even then about men being “emasculated” by those hormones in the water supply, even though there must have been vastly more of them then, per capita. Maybe the odd misodge claimed it was “emasculating” for women to be freed from the fear and danger of unwanted pregnancy (and consequently, male social control), but that was not exactly a side effect of hormones in drinking water. Female reproductive autonomy, not pesky lady hormones entering the bodies of males, is the real “emasculator” here.
Plastics were invented to make bottles for flavored water and hard molded chairs.
When I first came out to my mom as trans, she was looking for possible explanations for me being trans. She one time showed me a documentary about how all the men and boys of the world are becoming emasculated because the world’s water supply is being poisoned by estrogen. Or something like that. (I did a bit of research, though, and it turned out to be nonsense.)
And speaking of birth control, my dad recently started panicking because he thought I was ordering Plan B from China in order to break it up and make my own estrogen doses using the resulting powder. Even my brother and my mom started believing that. What’s with these ridiculous moral panics about estrogen? X_X
Clearly, it’s a fear that nasty ladyhormones will TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!
Why does Warren Farrell think that his obsession with women’s asses: a) is universal and b) constitutes scientific proof of something?
From Fininachi’s post:
And he knows absolutely nothing about the Salem witch trials or the history of witch trials in general. Talking about witch trials in general, it was usually the outcasts and powerless in society that were often accused of witchcraft, women making up most of those accused and killed. With the Salem trials there was a whole confluence of politics, economics, religion and prejudice that came together during the panic Hell, ergot poisoning has even been floated as a theory explaining accusations of witchcraft. So, no, it wasn’t a case of the community automatically believing and trying to “save” the girls.
Sorry for the tangent. There’s just so much wrong.
This thread is awesome, though.
RE: Arete
OMG JTT! Haven’t thought about that guy in a loooooooong time!
I know, right? He pretty much disappeared at the turn of the millennium. Apparently he’s an okay adult? (There wasn’t any horror stories on his Wiki page anyway.) He just seems to be living his life, which I figure is a good thing for any child star.
RE: Fibinachi
No matter how garbled and odd my thoughts are: They are not this vile spawn of hatred, filth and disregard for the human race
Congratulations! You now know EXACTLY why I read and snarked fifteen chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey. Godspeed, young voyager!
RE: Ally
She one time showed me a documentary about how all the men and boys of the world are becoming emasculated because the world’s water supply is being poisoned by estrogen.
Wow, that’s up there with the “edamame made you trans” a couple other women I knew encountered.
my dad recently started panicking because he thought I was ordering Plan B from China in order to break it up and make my own estrogen doses using the resulting powder.
Your family needs to get a fucking grip on their fucking imaginations. Jesus Christ. I swear, I could make them believe War of the Worlds was a documentary.
Cassandra, I am on my phone so I have limited patience to tap out a reply, but I imagine the logic of the slut pills leading to Obama resembles the following:
Black people : estrogen :: communists : fluoride (sorry, “fluoride,” my bad),
Therefore
Communists : vodka :: black people : forties.
Calling, of course, upon the respected research of that eminence gris, Gen. Jack D. Ripper.