Warren Farrell, as a sort of “elder statesman” of the Men’s Rights movement, may have gained a sort of weird respectability simply by being around as long as he has, and because he’s published books with major publishers. But the myth of Farrell’s intellectual respectability shatters pretty quickly once one takes a good, honest, and unbiased look at what he has actually written, in The Myth of Male Power and elsewhere.
We’ve already taken a look at some of the strange and troubling things he wrote about rape in that book. Farrell is also fond of rape as a metaphor, and regularly compares things that men endure to rape, as a way of bolstering his overall thesis that it is men, not women, who are the “disposable sex,” and who truly suffer.
Here are some of the things that Farrell argues are equivalent to rape:
Draft registration. In Farrell’s view, the fact that young men are required to sign what is in essence a meaningless piece of paper is a kind of mass rape of men.
How, exactly? Well, you see, young men who refuse to register for the draft when they turn 18 can be barred from government jobs and can – in theory at least – face a stiff fine and prison time. Never mind that most young men sign without fear, because the draft is about as likely to return to fashion as raccoon coats. Farrell imagines what might hypothetically happen if they don’t:
Once in prison, your son’s nubile, young body combined with his reputation for not fighting makes him a perfect candidate for homosexual rape and, therefore, AIDS. In brief, he is subject to being killed. …
Do male-only draft registration and combat requirements amount, then, to the legalized rape of men? Yes. (p. 135, Myth of Male Power, 1993 hardcover edition)
Farrell offers no evidence that any of this ever actually happened to anyone who refused to register for the draft since it was reinstated in 1980, but in his mind, evidently, the hypothetical rape of men is as terrible an injustice as the real rape of women.
Unemployment: In Farrell’s view, unemployment – at least for men – is essentially the same as rape.
Many women report that rape leaves them feeling humiliated, violated helpless, angry, guilty, self blaming, depressive, lower in self-esteem, and suicidal. Their vulnerability leaves them feeling powerless, as if the whole world were an elephant and they are an ant. Similarly, men who are fired or experience any of “the three unemployment’s – underemployment, unemployment, and the fear of unemployment” – often feel humiliated, violated, helpless, angry, guilty, self blaming, depressive, lower in self-esteem, and suicidal.their vulnerability leaves them feeling powerless, as if the whole world were an elephant and they are an ant. (p. 173)
Oh, it gets worse:
Unemployment deprives men of that which has given many men the respect and love of women; rape violates the body that has given many women the appreciation and love of men. Few men feel they chose unemployment, just as few women feel they chose to be raped. (p. 173)
Huh. Don’t women get fired, too? And aren’t some men raped? Well, sure, but women who lose their jobs don’t really count.
Of course, unemployment affects women and rape also affects men. But the unemployed man is the subject of ridicule. … Despite the similarity between the unemployment of men and the rape of women, no one would dare joke about the worthlessness of a raped woman.” (p. 173)
Well, I guess he hadn’t met Paul Elam. Or Ferdinand Bardamu Matt Forney. Or this dude. Or about fifty million other examples I could dig up if I felt it was worth it.
Indeed, it’s so extremely unlikely that Farrell has never run across someone joking about rape victims that I can only assume that either he has some sort of short-term memory problem akin to Leonard in Memento or he’s lying.
While comparing draft registration and unemployment with rape in order to suggest how much men suffer, Farrell also compares rape with trivial or harmless things in a way that minimizes the suffering of female rape victims:
For example, Farrell compares rape with successful salesmanship:
We are still requiring men to be the sexual salespersons but now defining them as rapists when they do it well. (p. 316)
He also compares rape laws with traffic signs.
Laws with broad definitions of rape are like laws making fifty-five-miles-per-hour speed limits for men and no speed limits for women. (p. 318)
More on Farrell to come.
NOTE: A draft version of this went up accidentally earlier; I fixed a few things in it, none of them substantive.
Heh. I notice that men have money to display to attract women, and women just have their bodies to display to attract men. Nice little jab in there that unemployed men don’t get respect, and nor do raped women. This is very “illuminating” on what Farrell really thinks is valuable.
And the salesmanship stuff? In many countries, one cannot form a contract with anyone under 18, under duress, by coercion, with someone without the proper mental capacity (drunk or mentally ill) or in the case of salesmen who come to you to solicit, without a cooling off period of 10 days or more. He really should check up on what his consumer rights are before he starts going on about how consent is *really* all different. It never fails to amaze me how so many MRAs fail to understand their own analogies, and throw them around in *complete* ignorance.
Interesting that his comparison stands on the assumption that women’s self-worth comes from her body and men’s from his personality.
Also, unpalatable, wtf comparisons. I got more for Farrell’s next book. Murder is like failing a driving test. Theft is like baking a cake at 400F instead of 375 and finding it a bit dry. Falling off the stairs is like taking a glass of water and finding it a bit cloudy and thinking “mmh, I wonder if it’s just air bubbles”. Shitty metaphors are like gardening and finding you forgot to label your seedlings and then you realize that you will have a surprise garden this year.
I have more.
His Wikipedia article is a little sketchy on the details, but doesn’t he have a degree in psych? The only way anyone, much less anyone with a psych degree, could draw this comparison would be if they were lying or completely devoid of empathy (for women, or for anyone).
To paraphrase Buffy: is this guy even made of human parts?
…How many times does he make the elephant/ant analogy?
Oh no. Women are NEVER ridiculed for being unemployed. Especially in the MRM…
Everyone knows “welfare queen” refers to men, right?
You know, I am here for this: WE SHOULD HAVE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO BE FORCED TO SIGN THE SAME MEANINGLESS PIECE OF PAPER!!! ELEVENTY
and i realize those caps were super unnecesary.
I do have to admit, though, if I thought there was any chance of my brother being drafted, I would totally sign that piece of paper because he’s my baby brother and 🙁 🙁
The rest of his stuff was too disgusting to even touch with a ten foot pole.
I think this fits in a Warren Farrel thread generally. A friend linked a story of an 8-year-old girl being pursued by a boy of the same age. She was not interested and eventually the teacher and parents got involved.
The comments are filled with MRAish responses. Lovely entitlement.
http://www.rolereboot.org/sex-and-relationships/details/2013-04-the-problem-with-puppy-love
Homosexual rape? I find it amusing how he says that despite the fact that most male rapists are heterosexual, even the ones who rape other men.
Does he have any idea what countless rape victims go through? I probably don’t need to ask.
Holy shit.
This dude is actually saying that rape is traumatizing because women want their bodies to be appreciated by men. Yeah, let’s just forget about the horror of being violated, humiliated, and dehumanized through rape. That has nothing to do with trauma!
What the fuck?
Wow. Not only is he implying that men suffer more from unemployment than women suffer from rape (*vomit*), but he’s also saying that no one trivializes or erases the experiences of female rape victims.
Does he have any fucking clue how rape culture marginalizes rape victims?
I know this is Farrell, but he never fails to shock me. This fucking guy.
The sections on prison rape and unemployment remind me of Owly in the way they dwell on weird details (“your son’s nubile body”) and the way they try to prove some revolting thesis with a breathless recitation of meaningless parallels. It’s like Owly’s whole thing is doing the worst things Farrell does.
Does Farrell ever mention Cyrillic? Hmm…
“Your son’s nubile body” is reminiscent of driversuz.
“Unemployment deprives men of that which has given many men the respect and love of women; rape violates the body that has given many women the appreciation and love of men. Few men feel they chose unemployment, just as few women feel they chose to be raped. (p. 173)”
God he’s so full of shit. I guess women never lose their jobs and men never get raped. Something tells me I won’t be able to stomach many more warren Farrell articles… May he step on Legos for eternity
@emilygoddess
“To paraphrase Buffy: is this guy even made of human parts?”
Marie doubts he is. X(
I find it kind of interesting that Farrell apparently believes raped women lose something that “has given many women the appreciation and love of men”. It’s like for a moment he almost, -almost-, acknowledges that he and men like him value women only when they are the sole “users” of them and view rape victims as “damaged goods” because of it. Imagine what a moment of clarity that would’ve been for the movement as a whole! No more soft, “I LOVE women because they’re so simple and adorable~” bullshit to wade through, just open acknowledgement of their true feelings.
Ugh, I know it was 1993, but really? Gay = AIDS, and AIDS = gay? And he’ll probably say he only meant “homosexual” as an adjective for the rape itself, but he’s heavily implying (and confirming the prejudices of people who believe) that prison rape is perpetrated by gay men. And gay men are always looking for young men to prey on. Seriously, there’s so much homophobia in this one little nugget.
And of course, rape is just the natural consequence of imprisonment. But that’s not an argument for reforming the prison system, or a way for men to sympathize with women re: fear of rape! No, it just means we shouldn’t pass any laws that might land men in jail, because rape is terrible (when it happens to men).
Anyone have a gif of someone running around screaming? That’s me when I read Farrell’s utter crap.
It’s weird how when he thinks about the possibility of a man getting raped in prison he immediately jumps to the possibility that he could catch an STD and die, so it’s a serious thing.
But when he thinks about women getting raped, he only thinks about how it degrades their value like used cars, so it’s sort of an inconvenience.
Even if he has zero human empathy, he’s gotta realize that women can catch deadly STDs from rape, too. What the fucking fuck.
@emily, What you said. You made that point better than I did.
@Zanana the Pegging Queen:
Nah, his logic is sound (HAHAHAH—focus, Fibi, focus).
Men are people. So men can, if raped, catch a sexual disease as a consequence. Men can also feel pain, experience agony, have a hard time, be sick, and generally end up in dire straits as a reaction to things that happen to them, because Men can feel, think, they sapient, salient creatures with individual proclivities.
Now women, on the other hand, don’t suffer all that from rape, because, at base, women aren’t people – they’re goods. A slight downturn in their over all value and a two-for-one-sale on sundays is the worst thing that could possible come about as a consequence of rape.
That’s also why its a dreadful, terrible and traumatic experience of a man loses his job – think of the poor guy!
But the same thing obviously doesn’t apply to a woman, it doesn’t feel bad or suffer because of it.
See? Within his premises, his logic is sound! From anywhere else it’s an alien fuckspace. What the fucking fuck indeed.
Besides the whole squidgy “men have to convince women to have sex with them” overtones, the comparison of rape to “good” salesmanship is just wrong–if rape is like anything having to do with sales, it would be like a salesman who takes your money by force, which we normally call thievery.
The comments on that role reboot page are just terrible. “The story doesn’t explicitly say that she said no, therefore she was just playing hard-to-get the little whore.” The story itself reminds me of two of the things that happened to my sister when she worked at a Chuck-E-Cheese ripoff place. Once, a young boy came by and flirted with her, and his mother came up and asked my sister to wink back next time he came up. (She didn’t.) Then a thirty year-old man asked for her phone number (she was around 17 or 18 at the time).
I mentioned this on the last thread, but I published my first rav pattern. I’m hoping to make some money off it, but I know there are a lot of knitters here and I’m offering it free to Manboobzers. Just use the coupon code manboobz when you check out.
Here it is:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/thesis
As someone who’s been unemployed to the point where homelessness has been a valid concern over the past year, and someone who’s been raped… no. Just, no.
I mean, asides from all the WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU, see, when you’re unemployed, you can usually revert to an employed state. Once you have a job again, you are employed. Pretty much EVERYONE has been unemployed at some point, but once you have a job again, you are no longer unemployed.
Not so with rape. You might HEAL from the experience, you might go on, but it is an experience you have had and it can’t be removed.
Seriously, the hell IS this shit?
Also, I’d be more than happy to sign up for the draft, but I can’t, because I’m trans. (Or, well, I can, but nobody’d take me.)
Also ‘nubile young body’? Did Deadpool just steal his keyboard in the middle of things?
Hi LBT! Long time, no see. =D
I hope things for you are okay or getting better! Hugs if you want them, too.
RE: Aaliyah
Hey! Yeah, sorry, brain has been… unwell. (The past week, I discovered that what I thought was a little issue actually turned into TWENTY YEARS of issue. So I’m likely to be pretty sick in the head for a long time.) On the plus side, I just closed my writeathon, and my artwork is now on a T-shirt!
@hellkell
“Anyone have a gif of someone running around screaming? That’s me when I read Farrell’s utter crap.”
I did, on my computer 😉 what about nope octopus? That’s how i feel.
@LBT
Hope you feel better soon 🙁 and Jedi hugs if you want them.
People wanting the nope octopus: here you go