Men’s Rights activists — or a good portion of them, anyway — seem to suffer from what we might call “Male Responsibility Bypass Syndrome.” Whatever terrible things a man (or a group of men) has been shown to have done, MRAs have a remarkable ability to find a woman to blame for it.
Nowhere is this clearer than when it comes to excusing violence. If a man is violent, MRAs tend to argue, it’s because he was provoked by a woman unaware that “equal rights mean equal lefts.” Or it’s the fault of his mother for not raising him right. Or the fault of his female ancestors for “choosing” violent men to “mate” with.
And if a stepfather abuses a child, it’s the fault of the mother for inviting him into the home. Take this generously upvoted comment from DavidByron2 in the Men’s Rights subreddit, who attempts to give a “scientific” — that is, an Evo Psych — excuse for the abuse:
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?
Misogynists also like to remain anonymous when they make terrible jokes
Time for a little quiz!
Who posted comments online in which he (or she) declared that:
“Sluts are just whores in training.”
“Women look at 2 bulges on a man, one in the front of the pants or second one in the back pocket. Whichever one is bigger, they can do without the other.”
“What’s the most used line in Arkansas: daddy get off me you are crushing my cigarettes.”
Female college students are “sororostutes.”
Women expect special treatment because of their “golden vajay jays”
Not the model for a happy and successful relationship
Apparently hoping to gin up another flood of hate-traffic to his blog, the attention-seeking human stain whose name rhymes with Batt Gorney has posted what is essentially a how-to guide for would-be abusive boyfriends under the charming title “How to Crush a Girl’s Self-Esteem.”
“Gorney” has conveniently arranged his suggestions into a numbered list, so let’s proceed through them one by one. (If you’re triggered by explicit discussions of psychological and physical abuse, please stop reading now.)
So a fellow over at Roosh Valizadeh’s Return of Kings blog has come up with a new way for men to “dominate” the women in their lives. And it’s inspired by … prison rape.
Let’s let him explain. The RoK writer who calls himself raywolf was allegedly hanging out with an alleged old friend of his who’d allegedly just gotten out of prison after 20 years for his part in an armed robbery in which a security guard was killed.
His friend “Jake” was apparently a bit taken aback by the changes that have taken place over the last several decades. Surprised by the ubiquity of tattoos amongst the general population, and by what he saw as a lot of “masculinized” women out there, he concluded that life outside of prison these days is a lot like life inside prison.
And this brings us to the prison rape. Or, as Jake prefers to call it, eliding entirely the issue of consent, sodomy:
So if you’ve ever wondered what sort of activism that Men’s Rights, er, Activists do when they do do activism, take a look at this little ACTION ALERT from A Voice for Men.
You may recall Paul Elam getting all worked up the other day because Facebook, responding to a campaign launched by a coalition of feminist activists and groups, announced it was going to try to do a better job removing “gender-based” hate speech from its site. You know, like this [TRIGGER WARNING] sort of thing.
Naturally, Elam and other MRAs interpreted Facebook’s announcement as the first step in the End of Male Speech on the Internet, or something.
Anyway, now the MRAs are ACTIVATING! AVFM has announced that it’s going after the groups that signed onto the feminist Facebook protest. Because, well, I’m not sure I get why exactly.
Here’s their explanation:
It’s time for action. The AVFM community has scrambled to look beyond the fine print of WAM!’s ultimatum to Facebook and into the signatories. We are finding that some of them are tax-exempt, and even government funded. We now know that government funded institutions have endorsed a harmful double standard that results in the censorship of men.
But, if we discover that even one cent of government money touched WAM!’s campaign, we will be exposing a whole new dimension of hypocrisy.
Uh, ok. I’m just really having a hard time finding the hypocrisy here. If you look at the names of the groups that signed onto the open letter, you’ll find a number of general feminist groups, groups concerned with the representation of women/gender in the media, and groups organized against sexual assault and other forms of violence.
They didn’t sign a petition demanding that all men posting on the internet be banned or, I dunno, kicked in the balls. They signed onto an open letter demanding that Facebook remove
groups, pages and images that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about.
That doesn’t seem hypocritical to me. It seems rather in line with what these groups promote.
And the only men who will be censored will be men posting this sort of hateful shit. If women post this sort of shit, they’ll be banned too.
Apparently, AVFM and its “activist” fans are so divorced from reality that they think they’re going to be able to publicly embarrass rape survivor support groups … for standing up against crude, hateful rape jokes on Facebook featuring images of brutalized victims.
Tom Martin would be right at home in Second Life, apparently.
I realize that I may be the only one who’s really all that interested in sectarian infighting amongst the MRAs, but an old friend of ours has weighed in on the recent battles over the A Voice for Men satellite group MRA London, and I’ve learned some interesting things as a result.
British barrister Barbara Hewson caused a bit of a stir last week when she called for the age of consent in Britain to be lowered to 13 so as to end the alleged “persecution of old men” like those arrested in the wake of the recent Jimmy Savile scandal, which revealed a widespread culture of sexual exploitation of underage girls (and some boys) at the BBC in the 1970s.
Now one female Men’s Rights Activist connected to hate site A Voice for Men has done Hewson one better, arguing that the real culprits in these scandals weren’t the predatory adult men but the girls they victimized.
The Man Boobz Pledge Drive continues. See here for more details, or click below to donate.
And now back to our regularly scheduled post:
Warren Farrell, whose 1993 book The Myth of Male Power essentially set the agenda for the Men’s Rights movement we know (and don’t love) today, did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit yesterday.
Most of the questions he chose to answer were pretty much softballs, and his answers largely reiterated things he’s said before many times. But he was also asked some pointed questions about his views on incest which he chose to answer. Well, sort of. Instead of clearing up the issue, he dug his hole a little deeper.
[TRIGGER WARNING for incest/child abuse apologia.]
Life is tough for dudes in our evil misandryarchy. Even dudes who just want to help littler dudes find themselves blocked by evil women.
Take, for example, the sad tale of a public-spirited MGTOWer who calls himself TheDisgruntledGentleman, and his thwarted attempt to join the Big Brother/Big Sister program. No, not the TV show, or the creepy dystopian leader/voyeur from 1984 — the mentoring program that pairs adults with at-risk kids. Let’s let him explain:
