Men’s Rights Activists tend to be fairly blunt; when they express a noxious opinion – and oh so many of their opinions are noxious – they do it in the most obnoxious possible way. It isn’t enough for Paul Elam of A Voice for Men to blame victims of rape; he also has to call them “STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH[es]” wearing the equivalent of PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign[s] glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.”
Warren Farrell is different. He takes a softer approach. He would never call a woman a bitch or a whore or a cunt. When he speaks, he manages to sound gentle and caring. He talks about the importance of listening to others. He sometimes even manages to give the impression that he cares as much about women as he does about men.
And yet his ideas are as noxious as Elam’s. He is as much of a victim blamer as any slur-spouting MGTOWer complaining about “stuck-up cunts” on an internet message board.
It’s just that he does his victim blaming with such carefully evasive language that he’s able to hide the noxiousness of his ideas – and to avoid taking responsibility for them when he’s challenged on them.
So it wasn’t surprising that a lot of the questions directed at him during his Reddit Ask Me Anything session the other day were attempts to pin down the real meaning of some of his more troubling pronouncements over the years.
A Redditor by the name of fiskitall asked Farrell about a quote from his Myth of Male Power that I also had hoped to see him clarify:
It is important that a woman’s “noes” be respected and her “yeses” be respected. And it is also important when her 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.
Though worded with characteristic evasiveness, Farrell seems to be suggesting that men should not be prosecuted for raping women who explicitly tell them “no” if they think that these women are somehow giving them a “nonverbal” go-ahead. His “tongues still touching line” suggests specifically that he thinks a woman who kisses a man is essentially consenting to sex.
So how does he explain this quote? He starts off by trying to explain the bit at the end about fantasy:
the quote comes from the politics of sex chapter of The Myth of Male Power. The point that “He might just be trying to become her fantasy” comes after a discussion of how romance novels and, in my 2014 edition, books like 50 Shades of Grey–books that are the female fantasy–are rarely titled, “He Stopped When I Said ‘No.'” The point is that women’s romance novels are still fantasizing the male-female dichotomy of attract/resist versus pursue/persist, and the law is increasingly punishing that as sexual harassment or date rape.
Beneath the weirdly academic verbiage – all that crap about “the male-female dichotomy of attract/resist” and so on – Farrell is advancing an idea that is really quite insidious: the notion that the popularity of rape fantasies in romance novels and in books like 50 Shades of Grey means that women actually want men to disregard their “noes.” Not only that: he seems to suggest that it’s unfair to prosecute men who rape women because, heck, for all they knew the woman is into that sort of thing.
As I pointed out in a followup question that he ignored,
I’m not sure how the fact that women read romance novels means that they don’t really mean no when they say no. That’s fantasy, not reality. I play video games in which people shoot at me; it doesn’t mean I want people to shoot me in real life.
He continues, his language growing more confusing and evasive:
the law is about dichotomy: guilty vs. innocent. male-female sexual attraction is about nuance. the court can’t begin to address the nuances of the male-female tango. the male role is punishable by law. women have not been resocialized to share the risks of rejection by expectation, only by option. the male role is being criminalized; the female increasingly has the option of calling his role courtship when she likes it, and taking him to court when she doesn’t.
The only real “tango” going on here is in Farrell’s language, in his attempts to so muddy the issue of consent that he manages to suggest that rapists are the victims of women’s “poor socialization” and caprice. In real life, the “male role” is not criminalized; men aren’t jailed for asking women out on dates, or going for a kiss at the end of the night; they’re being jailed for overriding a woman’s “noes” and raping them, though in actuality it is rare for a rapist to see the inside of a jail cell.
And that last bit – his complaint that women have “the option of calling his role courtship when she likes it, and taking him to court when she doesn’t” – seems to be little more than a deliberately confounding way of expressing his frustration that women are allowed to say no at all.
the answer is education about each sex’s fears and feelings–and that education being from early junior high school. we need to focus on making adolescence a better preparation for real love within the framework of respect for the differences in our hormones.
I confess I don’t quite know what he’s talking about here; as far as I can figure it, based on some of the things he’s written in the Myth of Male Power, the reference to “the differences in our hormones” is his way of suggesting that we should be more forgiving of boys when they make sexual “mistakes.” Boys will be boys!
the most dangerous thing that’s going on in some colleges is saying that a woman who says “yes” but is drunk can say in the morning that she was raped, because she was drunk and wasn’t responsible. this is like saying someone who drinks and gets in the car and has an accident is not responsible and shouldn’t get a DUI because she or he is drunk. we would never say the guy isn’t responsible for raping her because he’s drunk. these rules infantalize women and the female role, and criminalize men and the male role.
Well, no. They criminalize people who rape drunk people. A woman who is raped when she is drunk is not the equivalent of a drunk driver; she’s not the one doing the driving.
In his classic essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell described how political writers turned to evasive euphemism, and degraded language generally, in an attempt to disguise the sheer terribleness of the things they were trying to express.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
It’s easy enough to see that this is exactly Farrell’s game. He can’t say “men shouldn’t be jailed for raping women who say no, because a lot of women have rape fantasies, and so maybe they’re into it” even though this seems to be the most straightforward translation of his basic message.
So instead he talks about how “romance novels are still fantasizing the male-female dichotomy of attract/resist versus pursue/persist”; he complains that “ the male role is being criminalized”; he talks vaguely about creating “the framework of respect for the differences in our hormones.”
But in the end, what he’s saying is worse than Elam’s rant about “conniving bitches” with neon signs over their heads. He just knows how to make the indefensible more palatable to a general audience.
Absolutely awful comments from Farrell there – full of the same sort of victim-blaming rhetoric we see on the very worst MRA sites.
Farrell must be so tired after all that tap-dancing around what he really means. He’s a million times worse than Elam.
I know I posted it already, but for those who missed it, you can see this logic in action with my blog post, where I analyzed and hacked apart the “love letters” written to me by my rapist. He was also fond of this kind of waffling logic, which as long as you ignore what he was doing sounds like he’s just dealing with relationship compatibility issues, when in actuality, he was raping a child on a weekly basis for a year.
If the “male role” is to essentially flip a coin on whether you’re a rapist or not—and that’s reading Farrell charitably— THEN WHY WOULD YOU BE COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW IT’S BAD TO GO TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR BEING A RAPIST. The only reason for that is to continue being able to enjoy the relative power of the “male role”.
At least this confirms that his shitty old book is still up to date. I don’t even want to speculate on his psychological motives for making these arguments, but it reflects a complete lack of empathy.
Looking at the new cover of his book, I don’t think he’s trying to reach anyone who doesn’t already take him seriously.
I can’t even begin to explain how much Warren Farrell and those who defend his stupidity infuriate me. I have seen people defend these claims time and time again, and I always have to fight back a massive urge to yell “FUCK YOU” to them at the top of my lungs. Like, how can people not see how horrible this is? The rape apologia here is so damn obvious, yet I still see people try to defend this. D:
Oh, but male power is a myth, because DAT ASS! DAT ASS has all the power, because it makes him do all those coin-flippy things.
Ghaaaah.
I don’t understand what is wrong with this option, especially since “his role” appears to be defined as sexing the woman. If she doesn’t want to have sex with him and he goes ahead anyway, Farrell thinks she shouldn’t have the right to take him to court. He is disgusting.
And for FSM’s sake, I read that entire comment thread you linked to here, and see a bunch of regular misters being rape apologists. Ick.
People really need to get over the accidental rape excuse. If there’s any doubt in your mind that the other person is really consenting, stop and clarify things. IT’S NOT THAT HARD MISTERS!
Accidental rape? Is that like where he slips on a banana peel and somehow, as he’s flying through the air, his erect dick pops out of his pants and spears the first woman he lands upon? What a strange concept.
The really odious thing about lines like “her words said no but her body said yes” or “some women have rape fantasies” is that they’re trying to reframe rape as the man doing the woman a favor. It’s like a masterclass in gaslighting.
Oh yeah, he’s just trying to “be her fantasy”. He forgets that some fantasies were explicitly never meant to be realized, and that unless someone explicitly ASKS you to do that, you should assume nothing about her wanting it.
For some brain bleach, here is a funny stand-up joke about what Farrell is talking about, but without rape apologia:
Those are the worse arguments for defense of rape those people use. There also exist lots of people who watch horror movies or movies about serial killers etc. Does that mean that those people wouldn’t mind to be tortured, murdered etc ? Maybe in the world of Warren Farrell and the likes…Are those people really so awful, that they can’t grasp the simple fact that rape is a very serious crime and that women in general don’t want to be raped?
“Accidental rape” is bullshit. I have had casual partners ask me if I was okay when I started panting hard or when I got, um, loud. Didn’t ruin the moment, but they knew I was consenting, and I knew they cared enough to ask, which in turn made me feel that much safer with them, which only makes the sex better too. I’ve asked if partners were okay when their expressions seemed to be in pain or when they suddenly gasped. It’s just something you do if you actually give a shit about the person you’re boinking (and you should, regardless of the relationship or lack their of) and you’re not sure if they’re having a good time or not. On the other hand, the only questions my rapist asked were if I’d done x activity before promptly attempting to do it no matter what my answer was. This was a guy I was totally down to having sex with. It’s just that he saw me as a receptacle for some things he wanted to try rather than a person to share an activity with.
If in doubt, clarify. It’s really not that hard. The person who doesn’t bother and is later accused of rape is no more deserving of sympathy than the stranger in the bushes.
Yes, Alex. My partner and I were making love once and when he called out loudly with an expression of pain on his face I immediately stopped and asked if he was ok. I did not just keep going, assuming that he was into it. Turns out he had hurt a tendon in his neck and was suffering from a massive headache. So yeah, we stopped the sex because he was no longer into it.
Farrell is such a blowhard. Besides being a terrible person he is also a shit writer.
Warren Farrel and his ilk are EXACTLY the reason why I wrote this post:
http://damsel-in-de-tech.blogspot.com/2014/02/lets-change-discourse-on-protecting-men.html
If they’re so terribly concerned about men being falsely accused of rape, then why not teach men safety advice the same way we teach it to women? Why not teach men that if they’re not sure that it’s a matter of their own safety to stop? Is it because, gasp, this isn’t about protecting men but giving them thin cover to continue to rape?
While it’s totally true that “books” like 50 Shades and all the rest do send the message that women enjoy being dominated and raped, that’s because those books are entirely part of the broader rape culture, whether the “writers” who write them know that or not, or are just expressing their own personal turn-ons that publishers pick up and think “oh yes, this’ll do nicely” because those PUBLISHERS are also part of a broader rape culture whether they know it or not.
(Romance novels, btw, absolutely NEVER depict anything most of us would consider rape. There’s a very precise formula all romance novels follow, including the fact that the female lead must do the pursuing and get her man. It’s not expressed in a feminist context, but rape and domination almost never play a role in the classic romance novel as mass marketed today.)
And I’ve never once heard of an instance where a female was drunk and SAID YES, and after she sobered up changed her mind because of regret and actually got a man arrested. Never once. It’s that whole SAID YES thing. You absolutely can get drunk and give consent– you can even have a blast, and afterwards go WTF was I thinking? But my point is, the law in general doesn’t get that a woman was raped when she’s been attacked in a dark alley by a complete stranger. The law can’t grasp gang rape of passed out girls who presumably were never sober enough to say yes in the first place. So I feel pretty safe in assuring all of those folks out there who have done it with a drunk chick who said YES! that they’re perfectly safe. No one expects you to carry around a breathalizer. Hell, no one expects YOU to be sober enough to judge if that YES! was said soberly enough.
I’m not advocating for drunken stupid sex. Well, okay, maybe I am, but I’m saying that a clear YES from a drunk person is Consent, but imperfect, so maybe think twice about that or get a little coffee into your date first. A clear NO is still Not Consent. A BLERRRRGH? is absolutely Not Consent. You should be able to tell the difference.
The MRA: Choose your extremist misogyny.
Rage
Manipulation
Sophism
Which is all very well – exceeeeeept….
from that same chapter:
and the chapter on the politics of sex of Myth of Male Power references
What’s with the fucking
flashdancingincest?Huh, he must be referencing this half a paragraph inbetween all the mentions of how sexual harassment legislation harms equality.. (It makes hiring women more expensive, and since by nature, any company that hires a woman must protect her from all the men, it makes hiring costs exorbitant)
Huh.
It must be all those romances novels a href=”http://fibinaut.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/fotmomp-romance-is-dead/”>Warren Farrell consistently gets wrong, misinterprets or just doesn’t know anything about
I think the best thing about Farrell are his initials.
@Lili Fugit: Eh, not so sure about 50 shades’s popularity being a symptom of rape culture… More of a symbol of how our patriarchal culture suppresses sex drives. I really don’t think a women having sexual fantasies of being dominated means she is buying into the patriarchy. :
“Enough guts to initiate despite a potential lawsuit”? Warren, you stupid fucker…that’s not “guts”, that’s idiocy. If what you’re “initiating” is potentially illegal, that’s a big flashing WARNING sign. A major red flag. A “do not pass enter, do not collect $200, go directly to jail” card. It’s not a female “selection” process. We don’t WANT guys to do illegal shit to us. Why the hell do you think it’s illegal?
Jesus H. Christ, that is so stupid that it makes me want to strangle a lightpost.
In an odd coincidence, I just read Orwell’s Politics and the English language for class.
…and can we please stop with the drunk driving/rape comparison, misogynists? It’s been pointed out over and over that it doesn’t make sense. Besides, the amount of rapists who actually see jail time is pretty freakin’ minimal, so stop acting like ‘taking back consent’ is a thing. If you have sex with someone who is too drunk to say yes or no, is rape. Stop trying to make excuses for yourself and go get a fleshlight, since you don’t seem to need your partner to respond or enjoy themselves in any way. Which means no woman should want to have sex with you, since it’d be terrible.
And LBT I read your post and while it was hard to read it helped me process some old memories and I hope a lot of others get to read it; emotional manipulation is a scary thing because it’s hard to even recognize when it happens. Thanks so much for writing it. (And for your comics, because I’ve never read anything like them and I’m learning things!)
Yeah, for me too, it’s the insidious shit like this, that to the unfocused sounds like it could be coming from a thoughtful analysis, that really makes my skin crawl.
Your use of that Orwell quote is perfect.
And LBT, thank you for sharing that. I admire you for overcoming that pitiful manipulative #$&%”#'”%$”# trying to make you feel like feeling manipulated was your own fault.