URL: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/warren-farrell/warren-farrell7.htm
Warren
Farrell on: Empowerment Feminism
Apparently, Warren Farrell has persisted
in shmearing his vomitus around the internet protesting, among other things,
the publication of the information put out on these webpages. Dean Hughson
(see his entry on what has affectionately come to be known as The
Pig Page) recently forwarded the following drivel to the Witchhunt
listserve. It appears to be an email directly from Warren Farrell written
in May 2000. It is reproduced here in the entirety in the blue
text. liznotes comments are interspersed in gray
text.
Forwarded
Message:
Subj: [witchhunt] Warren Farrell reformatted
Date: 8/15/00 10:08:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: dean@primenet.com (Dean Hughson)
To: witchhunt@eGroups.com (witchhunt)
Michelle
was nice enough to make this clean and better to read. Thanks. Dean
Subject: Re:
A statement you allegedly made
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 13:10:22 -0700
From: Warren Farrell <wfarrell@home.com>
Organization: @Home Network
Dear
Thanks for going
directly to the source. Since I have been writing in support of what I
call empowerment feminism, but in opposition to what I call victim feminism,
I have been a target of the efforts of Liz Kates and Trish Wilson to personally
attack almost all the father's rights advocates. In my case, they have
been successful in making some people fearful of looking at the research
I have done in areas such as domestic violence (in Women Can't Hear What
Men Don't Say, by Tarcher/Putnam, 1999).
(Getting in the
ubiquitous book plug.)
Since the fear
starts with the accusation of my being pro-incest, as it did at your roundtable,
I appreciate the opportunity to separate the truth from the fiction. Highlights
first: I have never been pro-incest.
Are you anti-incest?
Or merely "pro-choice" in the matter?
In the Penthouse
article, the word "genitally" should be "generally".
Weren't you claiming
just a few months ago that the "genitally" word was supposed
to be "gently?" Now it's "generally." What happened?
Finally get ahold of Nobile's tape or something and there were three syllables?
(Lots
of really smart people must find it unbelievable that he could have said
"genitally" in the context of a PENTHOUSE article about parents
fucking children...)
Is this a misquote,
too, where you supposedly said:
"the
incest is part of the family's open, sensual style of life, wherein sex
is an outgrowth of warmth and affection..."
?
I have let Liz
Kates know this in writing.
You didn't! Send
me a copy; I'd like to see it.
This does, though,
imply that I did do a study about incest. That is correct. I conducted
it in the '70s after Random House published The Liberated Man, a pro-feminist
book based on my years on the Board of N.O.W. in New York City.
Are you also
trying to imply here that this... "study" somehow
was the follow-up to your "liberated man" ideas, or that Random
House asked you to do this... "study"?
(And:
do you have some kind of difficulty correctly stating the name of the local
chapter for whom you were a director? Still? We are getting tired of your
implying that you sat on "the" national ? "B"oard
of NOW, in dangling-misplaced-modifier New-York-City.)
I never published
the findings on incest despite having a contract with Bantam books to do
so in book form.
When was this?
After those other publishers turned it down?
As a result,
the topic of incest is not the subject of any of my writing. All four of
my books -- as well as my experiential workshops -- are attempts to get
both sexes to understand the other.
"Experiential
workshops?" What's that? Sounds like where incest practitioners talk
about their experiences...
(The bad news
is that this is not likely to be achieved in my lifetime. The good news
is I guess I'll always be fully employed!) My forthcoming work is to be
titled [bleep].
It is very much on what is in the best interests of the child. Incest is
not a topic in the book. Now, some more detail...
(Plug for another
book...)
I refrained from
publishing the incest findings because I feared that what I found would
be distorted and misused. (It's a bit ironic that it still is, even though
I did not publish it!) I allowed myself the one interview with Penthouse
to get a sense of whether the message would be distorted in print, or after
print, or both.
Poppycock.
Why would you
have tested the media waters, so to speak, in a publication such as Penthouse,
and not, oh say... Newsweek or the New York Times, or, hell,
Psychology Today...?
When I saw that
the answer was both, I gave up a multi-year research effort.
Odd... you allegedly
gave it all up in... 1977? And yet in 1983 there you were still
yammering about incest at this supposed "sexologists'" convention...
?
Obviously this
cost me considerably. You may wish to know my motivation for undertaking
the incest study.
Money?
It evolved from
reading in Ms. and other sources in the early '70s that incest was like
terminal cancer. This attitude seemed to me to hold out no hope for a cure.
I wondered whether therapists, by seeing the most difficult cases, were
creating this conclusion in the same way we had about homosexuality being
a disease by looking largely at a patient population that was unhappy.
This might almost
make sense if at the time you had been a psychologist. Or even therapist
of some sort.
But you weren't
then, and you aren't now. Your Ph.D. is in political science. (Political
scientists generally don't drop their field of scholarship for YEARS to
gather up anecdotes about sex perverts, suddenly concerned about helping
real psychologists' with their therapeutic approaches because of something
they read in Ms. Magazine. Since there's no apparent professional
connection here... )
I felt that if
a non-patient population had a larger variety of experiences, we might
have information to better help people who were traumatized.
Uh huh...
So I put ads
in papers soliciting anonymous over-the-phone intensive interviews from
people experiencing any form of incest, from cousin-cousin and brother-sister
to father-daughter and mother-son, asking them to rank their experience
as positive, negative or mixed. I created lie detector tests that I built
into the interviews.
Is that where
you got this therapy-assisting gem? (Farrell quote from the same Penthouse
article):
"the
writer happened to be at his beach house alone with his attractive fifteen-year-old
daughter.... His wife's appendix operation had curtailed his sex for the
previous five months... the women on the beach and a few beers had led
him into special temptation. When the daughter emerged from the bathroom
in a towel, he greeted her in the nude and erect... he told his daughter
he missed sex. Without further prompting, she fellated him...Two weeks
later the daughter walked around the house naked until the father approached
her. That day he deflowered her to their mutual satisfaction. But
the father was careful not to push things. He did not want to hurt his
daughter, who seemed to have an active sex life with boys her own age.
Hey! -- did you
write this down for Nobile, or is he just really really fast with the pen
and steno pad, getting it all accurately while you talked? Where's the
interview tape, Warren?
Some of the ads
I placed solicited experiences perceived either as positive or negative;
other ads solicited only positive, until I attained enough people who perceived
their relationship as positive to have numbers large enough to make comparisons
to the negative (since the negative ones were obviously more easily attainable).
(Does the man's
research and statistical acumen stun you or what...)
The focus of
the book was broadening the base of therapeutic options for interventions
that could reverse trauma. The Kinsey Institute ranked it as, by far, the
best and most responsible study ever done on the subject.
Would this be
the same Kinsey Institute
that has been accused of using as "research," data compiled by
pedophiles in the course of sexually abusing infants and children?
However, in the
process of always being asked about the positive experiences, the deeper
purpose of the study often got lost.
"When
the daughter emerged from the bathroom in a towel, he greeted her in the
nude and erect..."
Did you actually
speak these words to Philip Nobile in the interview, or did you just give
him a little carte blanche to have fun with your pornography, I mean, research
findings?
I saw this happen
in the Penthouse interview, and sometimes I contributed to the process
by not being media savvy enough. I felt that if I did not publish the material,
I would be able to limit the exposure of the information to in-depth workshops
with only professionals.
Really. So what
sort of "professionals" were supposed to get your now-secret
positive incest research? What kind of workshops?
So that is what
I did.
Can we find out
a little more about these "in-depth workshops" on positive incest?
What professionals now possess this "widened base of therapeutic options?"
As I mentioned
above, my most recent work has included an examination of all the domestic
violence research and the outlining of approaches that can minimize violence
by anyone. I have just returned from training therapists in Ireland, mostly
directors of women's shelters, on these approaches.
You've been "training
therapists" have you? "Mostly directors of women's shelters."
Battered women. In Ireland. Special...
The [bleep;
sorry no advertising here] book examines research
from around the world on the effects on children when brought up only by
moms vs only by dads; it looks at what dads and moms tend to contribute
that is unique--and why--and what needs to change legally and psychologically
to make dads as much a part of the home in the 21st century as women became
to the workplace in the 20th century. Obviously sending mothers out of
the family without bringing dads into the family leaves children with a
parenting vacuum.
"Parenting
vacuum." Tempting... I'll resist, and direct the rest of you to
Myths and Facts about
Motherhood and Marriage, and
Myths and Facts about
Fathers and Family.
Sincerely, Warren
Farrell, Ph.D.
