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:
Let’s take another stroll through the strange wonderland of Men Going Their Own Way, that small and bitter tribe of men who boldly declare their independence from women, then spend the rest of their lives obsessively talking about them.
Today, let’s look at the thoughtful discussion that ensued when one such fellow known as TDG asked his Brothers in Going Their Own Way why, of all the women they have Gone Their Own Way from (but not really), they tend to prefer women who are “chaste.”
Marlene Dietrich oppressing man with her trousers.
Demetri Marchessini is a retired Greek business tycoon, living in London, and has been a major donor to the right-wing, anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP). He also has some, let’s say, eccentric views about gay people, black people, women, and trousers, views so, er, eccentric that the folks in UKIP are a little embarrassed to be associated with him. Given that UKIP is filled with bigots in all varieties, that’s quite something.
In an interview last week with Britain’s Channel 4, Marchessini expounded at length on some of his more colorful views. He told interviewer Michael Crick that marital rape was impossible, because “you can’t have rape if you make love on Friday and make love on Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape. Once the woman accepts, she accepts.”
He argued that there is no such thing as homosexual love, only lust, because “they go out at nights and they pick up 5, 10, 15 different partners in one night.” Even gays in committed relationships are basically just roommates who still cruise for anonymous sex partners.
And he suggested that black slaves were better off as slaves in America than they would have been living in Africa, because if they survived the passage they lived longer.
But let’s just talk about the trouser thing. Marchessini thinks women should be banned from wearing trousers, because otherwise they just might bring about the end of western civilization.
On April 2, Army Specialist Ivan Lopez shot and killed three people on the Fort Hood military base in Texas, before turning his gun on himself; 16 others were injured. It’s not clear what caused Lopez’ killing spree, though the incident seems to have been triggered by the difficulties he encountered trying to get a 24-hour pass to attend his mother’s funeral.
But a writer for A Voice for Men, Michael Conzachi, has a novel explanation for the tragedy: the military’s excessive niceness towards lesbians and gays.
In a post entitled “What role has feminism played in the shooting at Fort Hood and its aftermath?” Conzachi sets forth his thesis:
Numerous directives from the Pentagon and the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), of which some in the military refer to the group as the “Super-Feminists” or jokingly, the “Lesbo Circle of Doom,” allow for and promote an immediate leave period of five days for same sex military couples to marry. …
How is it that a large contingent of feminist dominated military and Pentagon leadership enacts policies that favor, prioritize, and give expanded benefits for same sex couples; yet Specialist Lopez apparently was only allowed two days to bury his mother?
If that was you, and you could only get two days to attend to your mother’s death, and you see same sex military couples being allowed five days immediate leave to marry; wouldn’t that bother you a little, regardless of what your opinions are of gay and same sex couples? Where is the equality?
Yep. An unhinged man murders his fellow soldiers in cold blood. Let’s blame it on same-sex marriage and the “Lesbo Circle of Doom.”
At least Conzachi admits that his theory is only a theory, and that “whether or not we will ever learn [the shooter’s] true motives is unknown.”
Coznachi spends the rest of his post tearing down the female officer who confronted Lopez and brought an end to his killing spree.
He ends with this question — a question that he seems to have already answered to his own satisfaction:
Are the military’s priorities of same sex couple, gay, and women in combat issues harmful to males in general?
A number of those who are associated with A Voice for Men — most notably “managing editor ” Dean Esmay and “contributing editor” Karen Straughan — profess to be great Friends of the Gays; indeed Straughan describes herself as a “genderqueer, bisexual … woman”).
I can only wonder why they would want to associate themselves with a site that publishes articles suggesting that supporting the rights of same sex couples in the military to marry is “harmful to males in general.”
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.
Yesterday Warren Farrell – the intellectual grandfather of the Men’s Rights movement, the man who single-handedly came up with probably half of the terrible arguments that are endlessly rehashed daily in the manosphere – went to Reddit and proclaimed “ask me anything!”
And so we, and a lot of other people, did. And he even answered a couple of the questions I posted here yesterday – though as I sort of suspected he pointedly ignored the questions about his incest research. Still, there were so many astounding things said in that discussion, both by Farrell himself and by his various supporters, that it’s going to take a couple of posts to get to them all.
Let’s just start with the ass question, shall we? Because there was nothing quite so astounding in that whole sprawling thread, or at least the portion of it that I managed to read, as “Dr.” Farrell’s – he has a PhD in political science –answer to the ass question.
That’s right. Warren Farrell literally believes that heterosexual men are powerless in the face of SEXY FEMALE BUTTS. They are BUTT HYPNOTIZED by women’s shapely buttocks, virtual prisoners to the power of DAT ASS.
Not only that, but they are slaves as well, forced to earn more money than women so that they can “pay for women’s drinks, dinners and diamonds.” Who knew that the wage gap was caused by the ass crack?
We like big butts, and we cannot lie. But that way tyranny, I espy.
Only if men can free themselves from the TYRANNY OF THE BUTT they can “have more control over [their] lives, and therefor [sic] more real power.”
But who will write the new Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of Queen Ass?
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for horny dudes to get rid of the boners which those ladies have caused with their smokin hot dumpers and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the babies who have got back requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation, and that is, ladies we can’t think straight if we’re looking at DAT ASS all the time.
Oh, but “Dr.” Farrell is worried about the ladies, too. I mean, he said so:
it’s in women’s interests for me to confront this. many heterosexual women feel imprisoned by men’s inability to be attracted to women who are more beautiful internally even if their rear is not perfect.
Yes, you’re beautiful on the inside to m….holy crap did you see the ass on HER!?
Now, this isn’t entirely new. As I’ve noted before, Farrell makes a version of this argument in his book, talking about secretaries manipulating their bosses with their “miniskirt power, cleavage power, and flirtation power,” [p. 21] describing “female beauty” as “the world’s most potent drug,” [p. 85], and arguing that “many men feel ‘under the influence’ the moment they see a beautiful woman.” [p. 320]
But these, er, arguments weren’t the central focus of his rambling treatise. Now, at the age of 70, by not only putting a naked ass on the cover of his book, but also by defending it in such ludicrously overblown terms, he’s decided to put this unsolicited update from his penis at the center of his argument about the alleged powerlessness of men.
Yep, the closest thing that the Men’s Rights movement has to an intellectual heavyweight seems to think that the most pressing issue facing men today is how sad and mad and confused they feel because they can’t immediately have sex with every hot piece of ass that walks by (and, presumably, the women attached to these asses).
It’s really hard to find a better symbol of the sexual entitlement – and sexual resentment – that lies at the heart of the Men’s Rights movement than this.
Oh, and by the way, my new book is still available for purchase. So far I have sold no copies. Which might have something to do with the $1000 price tag, and also the fact that I haven’t actually written it. But you’ve got to admit the cover is pretty good.
In case you needed a clearer explanation of the power of women’s bodacious hineys, one Redditor by the name of Doldenberg has scienced things up for us and provided us all this useful graph. First, his brief explanation:
Being a brave Alpha from TRP, I have found the solution to the evident misandrist oppression of men by cute butt owners meaning owners of cute butts, not cute owners of butts, or butt owners of cute, or…, that is, ranking butts on an objective BMV (butt market value) scale. I’ve made the data up in my head, but it seems plausible. According to this data, the butt loses BMV when having sat on to many objects, while it’s cuteness only works as a limiting factor. I have made a handy graph[1] with supporting data and sources to explain my theory.
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 missed my talk at Northwestern on the Friend Zone, and most of you did, I go over a lot of what I said in it in my interview with Amanda Marcotte here. My segment of the podcast starts about 8 minutes in. (The rest of the podcast is interesting, too.)
The one thing missing from the podcast that my talk had was … a gazillion terrible Friend Zone memes to illustrate all my points. So here are a couple of the ones I refer to in the interview.
So why are so many white dudes so desperate for an excuse to use the n-word? Consider this white dude, who recently posted this bit of, er, wisdom in the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Is this going to become a new slogan for the Men’s Rights movement? It certainly seems to be popular amongst Men’s Rights Redditors, sporting a couple of dozen upvotes and no criticism (at least at the time I wrote this) from other MRAs. (There were a few critical comments from opponents of the Men’s Rights movement, however.)
Bear in mind that the Men’s Rights subreddit is 86% white, which is a good deal whiter than the United States as a whole, and only 1.5% black, which is way less black, according to a recent survey of its members. I’m pretty sure none of the white dudes upvoting this little slogan have obtained the proper n-word privileges. (Note: The survey in question was spammed with a number of identical responses, BUT the percentages I’m giving are based on the survey data with all the spammed entries removed, thanks to the industrious Angelica Field; see here for details.)
It’s hardly surprising that black men haven’t exactly flocked to the Men’s Rights movement, given the overt racism of a significant number of MRAs and otherManospherians. And even those MRAs who aren’t so obvious about their racism tend to be dismissive of issues that disproportionately affect men of color: MRAs almost never talk about the drug war that has put so many black men behind bars (two thirds of all those in prison for drug offenses are people of color. mostly men), nor have they ever attempted to organize or even offer any real support to campaigns against prison rape (60% of all prisoners are people of color).
This slogan isn’t likely to help the Men’s Rights movement with what the politicians like to call “minority outreach.” It might help reach a different sort of audience, however — an audience already quite fond of the n-word. When I did a Google search for the phrase “men are the new niggers,” the first result was a discussion on the Vanguard News Network Forum. I won’t link to it, because the Vanguard News Network is a virulently antisemitic, white supremacist website that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “gutturally racist.” The site’s motto: “No Jews. Just Right.”
Of course, the notion of describing men as “the new nigger” didn’t originate with white supremacists. It was clearly inspired, in a backwards way, by the John Lennon song “Woman is the Nigger of the World,” a feminist attack on misogynistic hypocrisy. While Lennon wrote the lyrics, the titular phrase originated with Yoko Ono, who deliberately used the racial slur in what was evidently an attempt to shock people into recognizing the ways in which women, like black people, were dispossessed.
It was a bad idea. Even though Ono and Lennon didn’t mean to reinforce racism by using the slur, it’s not a word that they had any cultural right to appropriate for their own purposes; not only that, but Ono’s slogan seems to implicitly define all “niggers” as men and to ignore black women, who don’t need John or Yoko to remind them that many people already see them as “niggers.” In the end the title ended up undercutting the message of the song. It can’t listen to it; it makes me cringe.
But glancing over the lyrics again, which aside from the title are essentially about the hypocritical messages sent to women by sexist society, one line in particular stands out to me, because it so deftly captures a certain kind of sexism — and even though it was written years before Warren Farrell first started going on about “disposable men,” it also captures pretty well the MRA tendency to view gender relations upside down:
While putting her down, we pretend that she’s above us
Yep, that’s what the Men’s Rights movement does, all day, every day.
And it’s that kind of delusional thinking that leads some of them to conclude not only that they are the “new niggers,” but also that using the n-word is somehow an appropriate thing for their almost all-white movement to do.
Many Men’s Rights Redditors see themselves as fighting a noble fight against genuinely evil, misandrist radical feminists on the internet. One of their most powerful weapons: the deadly downvote.
Reading through one old thread on Men’s Rights last night, I noticed how some Men’s Rights Redditors had deftly deployed their downvotes to fight off the evil feminist misandry lurking in this comment:
Outrageous! A statement that could have been ripped straight from Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto!
Kudos to the brave Redditors who saw this vile misandry for what it was.
Elsewhere in the same thread, I happily noticed, Men’s Rights Redditors were helpfully upvoting the reasonable and uplifting sentiments of decent fellows, like the Men’s Rights Redditor who goes by the name theboners, who offered a sensibly critical take on the always controversial question of whether or not it was a good idea for men to give in to “pussy privilege” and let ladies have the vote:
Oh you irresponsible women! Why do we let you do anything?
I mean, aside from letting GirlWritesWhat make YouTube videos; that’s ok.
–
It might be time for that blinking
gif to remind possibly literal-minded readers that I do not actually agree with theboners or think SweetieKat is a reincarnation of Valerie Solanas.
![DoloresCruz1982 86 points 22 hours ago (174|87) Why is a woman's butt on the cover of a book about problems faced by males in our society? permalink save report give gold reply [–]warrenfarrell [S] 2 points 20 hours ago (184|182) i assume you're referring to the profile of a woman's rear on the new ebook edition of The Myth of Male Power. first, that was my choice--i don't want to put that off on the publisher! i chose that to illustrate that the heterosexual man's attraction to the naked body of a beautiful woman takes the power out of our upper brain and transports it into our lower brain. every heterosexual male knows this. and the sooner men confront the powerlessness of being a prisoner to this instinct, we may earn less money to pay for women's drinks, dinners and diamonds, but we'll have more control over our lives, and therefor more real power. it's in women's interests for me to confront this. many heterosexual women feel imprisoned by men's inability to be attracted to women who are more beautiful internally even if their rear is not perfect.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/warrenbutt.png?resize=528%2C398&ssl=1)
Is this going to become a new slogan for the Men’s Rights movement? It certainly seems to be popular amongst Men’s Rights Redditors, sporting a couple of dozen upvotes and no criticism (at least at the time I wrote this) from other MRAs. (There were a few critical comments from opponents of the Men’s Rights movement, however.)
