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.
Alan, you have just as much right to decline sex as anyone. If you are not comfortable sleeping with someone who’s drunk (which, IMO, is pretty wise), then you are not under any circumstances obligated to.
If your partner cannot respect that…yeah, that’s a problem. A very serious problem. Have you tried talking to her about it when she’s sober? If she still doesn’t honor your no, and is unwilling to find a solution that will make you both happy… Well, that unfortunately says a lot about her safety as a partner.
That was hardly the point of my post. I understand that’s the minimum acceptable behaviour to be a decent human being. I’m not trying to garner praise. But my experience of meeting that minimum acceptable behaviour hasn’t always been “not hard.”
When you’re being yelled at after turning down numerous advances—“we’ve been married for four years! You wouldn’t be raping me just because I’ve had a bottle of wine, you idiot!”—it can make you feel like utter shit, because you can see that it’s hurting your partner and making them feel rejected.
My ex-wife liked to have sex after she’d been drinking. I always refused, because drunken consent isn’t consent. It’s not a small reason as to why she’s now “ex.” I’ve never met another person, outside of feminist circles, that agrees that no-one should have sex after consuming any alcohol. Those wider cultural expectations helped to end my marriage, which led to me suffering depression. It stings to see the harm of that culture flippantly dismissed with “it’s not hard,” because it can be really hard.
@lili fugit
I’m not a consumer of of mass-marketed romance novels now
However, in the 80s/90s, which I suspect is the vintage WTF would be referencing, they were littered with depictions of rape as supposedly romantic sex, usually with the charming idea that the woman orgasmed by the end so therefore it was not really rape. Jennifer Blake, Judth McNaught, Katherine Woodwies, Jude Devereux all used it regularly as a way to ensure the virgin heroine could be blamelessly “seduced” and then go on to have lots of soft-porn sex with the hero.
Even Georgette Heyer, whose books are normally so chaste, had one in The Conqueror.
And any misters reading this:
Yes, I read all those books and, at the time, enjoyed them (although Whitney by Judth McNaught successfully put me off the genre by having her hero violently rape her heroine on their wedding night & spend the rest of the book justifying it as a moment of forgivable jealous misunderstanding). No, I have no wish to be raped. No, I do not consent to sex with you.
@Alan, I’m sorry that you have had these experiences. It must have been very difficult and distressing. I don’t think that Gen meant that it isn’t that hard to do, in certain circumstances, but that it isn’t that hard a concept to understand.
And I’m sorry to have snarked. I read your post as a derail. Sorry.
katz:
Um, no. I’ve been drunk and had people who were also drunk, and it definitely was not rape because both of us were very enthusiastic about having sex with each other.
If someone is too drunk to consent – i.e. has reduced motor control, can’t form coherent sentences, has a limited sense of where they are or what’s going on, is physically ill, or is straight up passed out – then having sex with them is obviously rape, even if you are also somewhat drunk.
I totally understand and respect the desire to avoid any combination of sex and alcohol to ensure that there is no chance of raping or sexually assaulting someone. But it does not follow that all drunk sex is therefore rape. Alcohol, despite what the rape apologists would like us to believe, does not cause rape. Ignoring consent causes rape.
Alan Boyle:
Also massively disagree with this, otherwise the multiple lovely experiences I’ve had of having sex after sharing a bottle of wine with a partner were actually rape. “I personally refuse to have sex with anyone that’s been drinking, due to the consent issue.” is a totally valid choice that you get to make and enforce, and that should be respected. But that does not generalize to “drunk people are incapable of giving consent.”
Alcohol doesn’t just flush all reason and logic out of your mind after the first glass. Drunk people are still able to act on their desires. It takes a lot of alcohol to push the average person into a place where they literally don’t know where they are or what they want, and that stage is usually accompanied by visible physical signs, like the ones mention above.
@Kootiepatra
Yes, it’s an issue that’s now pretty much resolved between me and my current partner. I’m not sure she understands my position, but she accepts it, and we work around it. That didn’t work as well (i.e. at all) in my previous relationship.
@titianblue
Thanks, and don’t worry. I daresay you’re right about Gen’s intended meaning, so I can see why my post may have looked like a derail. It wasn’t intended as such. I just wanted to share my thoughts/experiences on how I first read that particular comment.
So, I see where you were trying to go with this argument and all, but you know that female dommes exist, right? “Woman who’s into BSDM” and “submissive woman” aren’t actually synonyms.
@tinyorc, it’s the good old “how drunk is too drunk” isn’t it? And it’s a lot easier to with someone you know well to have agreed that you’re both just a little tipsy but still fully able to consent.
While I understand and respect Alan’s personal “no alcohol” stance, it is not my own.
Yeah, I’m not on board with the “no sex after alcohol at all, ever” idea, either. When someone is trying to make the “well, zie wasn’t that drunk” argument about an encounter where consent was already in question it’s usually pretty obviously self-serving bullshit, though.
For me, inserting alcohol as a huge deciding factor in consent actually muddies the issue. Saying “drunk people can’t consent” strips them of their agency, and you can’t strip some drunk people of their agency without stripping all drunk people of their agency, which is exactly what rape apologists want. (“He didn’t know what he was doing, he was druuuuuuunk!” “Blurred lines!” “Mixed signals!”) And if both parties were drunk, then we get into the messy territory of who had more to drink, were they really that drunk, and who remembers what… which all is just a derail, because the levels of drunkenness are not what should be up for debate, it’s the presence or absence of consent.
It makes much more sense to say:
“Unconscious people can’t consent.”
“People who are incoherent can’t consent.”
“People who are disorientated and confused can’t consent.”
This covers people who are too drunk to consent, but it also covers people who are hopped up on pain meds, delirious with fever, sleeping people, concussed people, those suffering from conditions that periodically leave them disorientated, etc. It removes alcohol from the centre of the conversation, it refocuses it on “Being sensitive to the other person’s current mental state is an important part of good consent.”
I’m not sure if I’m getting my point across accurately here but basically, there is a huge difference between “Sex with someone too drunk to consent is rape” and “Sex with any person at any level of inebriation is rape.”
@tinyorc
You’re correct, and I shouldn’t generalize. “Drunken consent isn’t consent I’m comfortable accepting” is more what I’m getting at. And I haven’t always had that position, and I may change my mind, but right now that’s how I’m comfortable navigating these particular waters.
So Farrell is saying that he believes engaging in any sexual activity with someone entitles that person to do whatever other sexual thing comes to their fucking minds? People can’t consent to kissing and not consent to, say, PIV?
It’s like saying “Yeah, okay, so I punched my buddy in the face, but you don’t understand. I thought he wanted it. I asked him if he wanted to box, and he said no, but he kept playing basketball with me. They’re both competitive physical activities!”
That always gets left out of the conversation too, doesn’t it? Even if someone appears to be willing to have sex you still always have the option of saying “this situation feels too ethically muddy to me, so no, let’s not”.
I never understood the people who make the drunk sex issue so complicated. It all hinges on this idea that if two people are attracted to each other, not having sex right then and there is a Bad Thing. And by extension, people want gold stars for not having sex, like it’s ‘difficult’, except that the majority of everyone’s time is spent not having sex.
Sobering up is a process that takes hours. Mere hours, in the scheme of things. Someone who truly is attracted will still be attracted when sober. It’s a trivial thing to ask for to protect people from being raped, sort of like how people think asking a driver to wait a few hours before driving after having a beer is no big deal when weighed against avoiding potential accidents. It’s only ‘frustrating’ for someone if they’re so immature and single-mindedly impatient, they actually can’t find anything else to do for a few hours.
I’m amorous when buzzed with my boyfriend. It would be pretty weird not to be, seeing as drinking doesn’t change my personality and I love the guy. However, it’s not hard for him to wait a few hours while we sober up doing other activities.
So I never read Fifty Shades of Grey or romance novels, but when I was a teenager I loved movies like Natural Born Killers. By Warren Farrell logic, would that mean some guy would be excused shooting me to “become my fantasy”? Or do my individual tastes not count because of gender?
But if she emotionally manipulated you into sex you didn’t want, then she’d be raping you.
Whether you don’t like sex with drunk people because of consent issues, or it turns you off for other reasons, wife or no, she has no right to force herself on you when you say no.
Yeah, I have to say, the ex’s behavior sounds belligerent and abusive. Doesn’t matter what your reasons for saying no are, and the other person can think they’re foolish reasons if they want, but that doesn’t give them a right to try to bully you out of your decision.
Define “drunk”.
A person who can walk, talk, and otherwise function is capable of consent. A person who is unconscious is not. Having a few drinks does not remove your agency.
@RubyRubyRuby
“I just have to comment about BDSM/kink, which is definitely rape culture and patriarchy, and inherently anti-feminist, even if women partake in BDSM and seem to enjoy themselves. What a coincidence, women have been taught since birth that we are “naturally submissive” and that male aggression or sexual violence against us is “sexy” and how sex is supposed to be. Furthermore, women choosing to do something, participating in something, or consenting to something such as BDSM, does not automatically make it a feminist choice or activity when said activity promotes patriarchy and is harmful to women as a whole.”
This whole paragraph makes 0 fucking sense. You’re assuming that all women who like BDSM are masochists, when that isn’t even remotely the case. Example: I’ve been a domme for the past few years, and I’ve never been submissive.
“BDSM sexualizes violence, and since sexualized violence is the most pressing issue facing women world wide, I hardly view BDSM as a liberating choice for women. It is damaging and does nothing except reinforce the same male dom/sub female roles that Warren Farrell is talking about. We must be critical about the choices we make and how patriarchal influence has shaped our lives.”
The rest of your post was just full of lies, wasn’t it?
“Looking at a beaten and battered woman and feeling sexually aroused will never be anything but a sign of sociopathy, and getting a group of these men together and praising them for their “courage” in admitting their true nature is dangerous to women. Getting women who want to be abused and dehumanized (and I view sexual masochism as similar to people who want to cut or otherwise harm themselves — a sign of mental instability/trauma) and introducing them to these men, setting them up and facilitating their abuse, is, obviously harmful.”
It was. Wow.
Super-special extra thanks for calling my fiancee mentally unstable, by the way. I really enjoyed that part!
Do shut up. You don’t have any idea of what you’re talking about.
@libarbarian, tinyorc did a pretty good job of defining “drunk” above.
But I’m hesitant to do too much in the way of rules-lawyering here. I’m comfortable having a nuanced discussion of this with people here, but frankly with MRAs I think we need to keep things simple. People who think Warren Farrell is a cool guy will have no problem coming up with reasons why “in this case” it isn’t rape because…
zippydoo:
I find this really reductive and patronising. If two drunk people are attracted to each other and want to have sex right now, then that’s awesome and they should get to do that. No one risking raping anyone because they are both very attracted to each other and want to have sex right now. Drunk sex is not rape, and drunk sex is not “risking” rape as long as all parties are consenting enthusiastically.
The point of drunk sex is not “Oh no, what if this person isn’t attracted to me when I’m sober?” (or at least, this shouldn’t be the point). The point of drunk sex is that it can be a lot of fun. Also, drunk sex does not always happen in context of a relationship where you can hang around together while you sober up. It often happens in the context of one night stands and casual sex, and alcohol is a driving factor because it lowers inhibitions. And it’s fun. And it’s still not rape! Because drunk people tend to be quite good at communicating their desires (“I want to dance!” “I want another shot!” “I want disgusting take-out food!” “I want to go home!”) so if a loud clear “I want sex with you!” is coming from both parties, then consent has been established.
zippydoo:
Thanks for that! Not everyone’s experiences sexual desire in the same way, nor can all frustration be attributed to immaturity and single-minded impatience.
This is where the drunk driving metaphor breaks down. The reason we don’t let people who’ve had even one beer (at least where I’m from) drive a car is that when you’re hurtling around a populated area in a several tonne hunk of metal, even a two-second lapse in attention or judgement could kill several people instantaneously. Your reflexes are also impaired, and even if the impairment is almost imperceptible, that half-second response time could save lives if something unexpected happens.
The difference between sex and rape is not dependent on half-second response times. It is dependent on communication. If two people are conscious, coherent and communicating their enthusiastic consent to each other throughout the encounter, then they are not risking rape.
I’m tried writing dub-con cross-species fantasy animal orgies before. Do I even want to know what that means I’ve consented to according to MRA logic?
I see cloudiah’s point, and don’t want to give misogynists any perceived wiggle room. At the same time, though, I found zippydoo’s comment really snide and patronizing too. Let’s say Mr C and I go out to dinner, have a cocktail each and a few glasses of wine, walk home, start kissing, and decide that we’d like to have sex. At that point we’re both probably going to fail a blood alcohol test and shouldn’t be driving, but neither of us is impaired to the point where we don’t know what we’re doing, and we’ve known each other for almost 20 years and can read each other’s responses very well. Why should we wait until the next day to have sex just because you don’t approve of us having it at that point in time?
Farrell brought up something I’ve been wondering about, scary as that is. What if two people have sex and they’re both drunk? Is it still rape? Who’s the rapist?