Warren Farrell (born June 26, 1943) is an American author of seven books on men's and women's issues. His books cover twelve fields: history, law, sociology and politics (The Myth of Male Power); couples’ communication (Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say); economic and career issues (Why Men Earn More); child psychology and child custody (Father and Child Reunion); and teenage to adult psychology and socialization (Why Men Are the Way they Are and The Liberated Man). All of his books are related to women and men’s studies; consistent to his books since the early 90's has been a call for a gender transition movement.[1]

Sourced edit

"Why Men Are the Way They Are" (1988) edit

  • “Most women’s ideal is to not be sexual until nine conditions are met: physical attraction; respect; emotional compatibility; intelligence; singleness; success (or “potential”); being asked out; being paid for; and the man risking rejection by initiating the first kiss…. Men want sex as long as only one condition is met—physical attraction.”
    • P. 13
  • "The problem is that by the time they have sex, he’s also fulfilled her conditions for a long term relationship, but she has not necessarily fulfilled any more than one of his conditions for a long term relationship. So they have sex, he doesn’t call in the morning and she misinterprets that as being the male version of "he saw; he came; he conquered; he’s gone."
    • Chapter 1
  • “The best-selling magazines to men are Playboy and Penthouse. These represent men’s primary fantasy: access to as many beautiful women as desired without risk of rejection. The best-selling magazines to women are Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle, representing the female primary fantasy: better homes and gardens and a family circle.”
    • P. 18
  • “Commitment often means that a woman achieves her primary fantasy, while a man gives his up. In exchange for forfeiting his primary fantasy, what does he hope to fulfill? His primary need: intimacy.”
    • P.150
  • Cosmopolitan is the best-selling magazine to single women. Cosmo tells single women how they can get a man to commit and achieve her primary fantasy of better homes and gardens. It’s the single female’s version of Playboy. Pornography is the male primary fantasy--access to as many beautiful women as desired without risk of rejection--at a price he can afford!”
    • P. 18
  • “Women read relationship books more than men in part because, historically, relationship books were women’s source of income—so relationship books were also business books. Men read business books more than women in part because, historically, being good at business was a prerequisite to having a relationship—so business books were also relationship books.”
    • Chapter 1
  • “How can I call security a woman's primary fantasy if I am saying it is also her primary need? Because while her primary need is the security of a home and a family circle, her primary fantasy is that someone else will earn enough to pay for them. Hence the focus of 2 billion women on the latest royal wedding."
    • P. 16
  • "When women's consciousness was raised, women ended up seeing housework as their "shit work"; when men's consciousness is raised, risking sexual rejection will be seen as the male "shit work"."
    • P. 123
  • "Alan Alda is loved not because he's sensitive, but because he's successful and sensitive."
    • P. 134
  • "One danger of a man succeeding is that it teaches his wife and daughter not to worry about success."
    • P. 148
  • "A man cannot tell whether a woman is in love with him or his security blanket until she is financially and psychologically independent enough to leave. Until a woman has learned how to leave, even she cannot be sure she has learned to love."
    • P. 182
  • "A single woman who supports herself is called a career woman, while a single man who supports himself is called a playboy…Ironically, a woman who commits and becomes financially dependent is considered more mature than a man who does not commit but is financially independent."
    • P. 154
  • “When men give lines, women learn to not trust men. When women wear makeup, men learn to not trust women. Male “lines” and female makeup are divorce training.”
    • P. 71-72
  • “Male makeup is men’s titles, status and paying for dates. Makeup is what both sexes use to bridge the gap between the power they have and the power they’d like to have. Both male and female makeup are compensations for feelings of powerlessness."
    • P. 215
  • "Both sexes work on their "lines" before they appear onstage. His lines are a lifetime of work; her introductory 'line' is her appearance--or her lack of lines. Just as careers give men power, so beauty gives women power. But just as the comparison between herself and the most beautiful women makes a woman feel powerless, so the comparison between himself and the most successful men makes a man feel powerless."
    • P. 106
  • “Men give the same lines to different women for the same reason women wear the same perfume for different men; we all try the things that work.”
    • P. 246
  • "When men in relationships have more money, we say they have the power. When women in relationships have more money, we say they are being used."
    • P. 218
  • "Unless a woman asks men out (the first time) as often as men ask her out, then the assertion "He asked me out, therefore he pays" is just a double jeopardy of the male role: he must not only do the asking, he must pay extra for risking extra rejection."
    • P. 277
  • "Until recently, the question was 'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' It should have been changed to 'Why can't both sexes be more like the best parts of each other?' Instead, the pendulum swung to the 1960s feminist lapel button "Adam Was a First Draft." True enough. So are we all."
    • P. 310
  • "Men will not change as long as women ‘marry up.’ Men won't change until we have a perspective on how powerless power makes us. A woman cannot help a man change until she has a perspective on how powerless power makes men.
    • P. 314
  • "For the first time in human history the psychology that is a prerequisite for intimacy has become the psychology that is a prerequisite for species survival."
    • P. 371
  • "When divorces meant marriage no longer provided security for a lifetime, women adjusted by focusing on careers as empowerment. But when the sacrifice of a career met the sacrifices in a career, the fantasy of a career became the reality of trade-offs. Women developed career ambivalence.”
    • P. 101
  • "From the male perspective, when commitment is associated with diamonds and mortgages, promises of love can feel like promises of payment."
    • P. 103
  • "[M]en who work to make it as computer whizzes or owners of black Porsches[...] are confused when they're told they are not vulnerable enough. We can't fall in love with men who appear invulnerable and expect vulnerability. Why did he want a black Porsche? Because he never saw an ugly woman get out of one."
    • P. 106
  • “Fear of emotional contact with men out of fear of being a “sexual suspect” makes boys, ironically, even more powerless before girls. Homophobia is like telling the United States it will be a “sissy nation” if it doesn’t get all its oil from OPEC.”
    • P. 128
  • “The rules of sexism do not free men from the terror of violence; they only keep men from complaining about it.”
    • P. 232
  • “He gets sex, she gets sex; if that is considered unequal, no wonder men are afraid of commitment.”
    • P. 240
  • “I would suggest that just as women who make it in the world of business need male business mentors, perhaps men who make it in the world of emotions will need female emotional mentors.”
    • P. 317
  • “Our choice of partners is one of the clearest statements about our choice of values.”
    • P. 341
  • “Only when a woman shares male risks can she really begin to understand men.”
    • P. 355
  • “Our love for children is so immediate in part because we feel their powerlessness immediately; conversely, part of the way we deny our love for men is by denying men’s powerlessness. Too often we have confused love for men with respect for them, especially for their power to take care of us---which is really just love for ourselves.”
    • P. 360
  • "Was it possible for the sexes to hear each other without saying, "My powerlessness is greater than your powerlessness"? It was becoming obvious each sex had a unique experience of both power and powerlessness. In my mind's eye I began to visualize a "listening matrix" as a framework within which we could hear these different experiences. It looked like this:

LISTENING MATRIX edit

Female experience of powerlessness Male experience of powerlessness
Female experience of power Male experience of power

As I looked more carefully at the listening matrix I saw that during the past twenty years we had taken a magnifying glass to the first of these four quadrants, the female experience of powerlessness. I saw I was subconsciously making a false assumption: The more deeply I understood women's experience of powerlessness, the more I assumed men had the power women did not have. In fact, what I was understanding was the female experience of male power."

    • P. xx-xxi
  • "Sexism is discounting the female experience of powerlessness; the new sexism is discounting the male experience of powerlessness."
    • P. 194
  • "Is loving men contradictory to feminism? Hardly. Every true feminist, I believe, is deepened and matured by being also a masculinist--a person who understands the male search for equality and approval as the male experiences it. As is every masculinist deepened by being a feminist (a person who understands the female search for equality and approval as the female experiences it."
    • P. 368
  • "Ralph had lost real power by trying to gain the appearance of power. He was a leader. But he was following "a program for leaders"; therefore, he was a follower... he was, as he put it, a "high-level mediocre.""
    • P. 9
  • "In San Diego there is a highly popular course called "How to Marry Money." Note that the marriage is to money--not to a person. I inquired about the percentage of men attending... 'The course is really for women,' [the instructor replied,] 'it's not relevant to men.'"
    • P. 43
  • "The 'enduring theme' [in fiction] of male competition and female competition for the hero/survivor has taken us from the fittest surviving to the brink of no one surviving. Sex roles have gone from functional to dysfunctional almost overnight. This is why the enduring theme must be questioned now."
    • P. 91
  • "Perhaps the most prevailing expectation of men is our Superman expectation: the fear we are merely Clark Kents who won't be accepted unless we are a Superman.”
    • P. 96
  • “Together, we came to understand how we beg men to express feelings, but then when men do express feelings, we call it sexism, male chauvinism, or backlash."
    • P. XXVII
  • “He and she become selective at different points; she can be selective when he wants his primary fantasy — sex; he can be selective when she wants her primary fantasy — commitment."
    • P.105
  • “Male Message 1 is subconsciously experienced by the boy like this: ‘Some girls in my class already look like movie stars. If they wanted me as much as I want them, then I’d know I was okay. They are genetic celebrities. I am a genetic groupie.’”
    • P. 111
  • “Men tuned into women but not tuned into their own hurts usually retained the attitude that women needed special protection.”
    • P. xxii
  • “Women’s vulnerability confessing their desire to see men as a success object is matched by men’s confession of compulsiveness of sexual desire for women.”
    • P. xxvi
  • “The Female Western is the battle between the good and evil methods of getting the men who perform best.”
    • P. 73
  • “From evening soaps to preteen romances, [the message is that] inner values are for losers.”
    • P. 73
  • “When women are at the height of their beauty power and exercise it, we call it marriage. When men are at the height of their success power and exercise it, we call it a mid-life crisis.”
    • P. 103
  • “[Success as panacea and trap:] The less a man is willing to give up a sex object, the more he’ll be trapped into becoming a success object.”
    • P. 134
  • “Sex role training becomes divorce training.”
    • P. 136
  • “So while in men’s magazines success is a power tool to get sex and love, and therefore the “look of success” is crucial, in women’s magazines love and sex are power tools to get success—and therefore both the “look of love” and the sexual tease/promise are crucial.”
    • P. 78-9

"The Myth of Male Power" (1993, 2000) edit

Farrell's theory on the evolution of gender roles edit

Stage I Roles Stage II Goals*
MARRIAGE MARRIAGE (or Long-Term Relationship)


Survival Fulfillment


Role mates: women and men married to create a "whole" Soul mates: "whole" persons marry to create synergy


Division of roles Commonality of roles


Woman raises children; man raises money Both sexes raise children; both sexes raise money


Children obligatory Children a choice


Women expected to risk life in childbirth; men expected to risk life in war Childbirth ideally risk-free; war ideally eliminated


'Till Death Do Us Part 'Till Unhappiness Do We Stay Together


Neither party can end contract Either party can end contract


Women-as-property; men-as-less-than-property (expected to die before property was lost) Sexes equally responsible for self and other


Both sexes subservient to needs of family Both sexes balance needs of family with needs of self


Love emanates from mutual dependence Love emanates from choice


Love less conditional Love more conditional (no verbal or physical abuse; expectations of mutual respect, common values…)


CHOICE OF PARTNERS CHOICE OF PARTNERS


Parental influence is primary Parental influence is secondary


Women expected to marry their source of income (“marry up”) Neither sex expected to provide more than half the income


PREMARITAL CONDITIONS PREMARITAL CONDITIONS


Men deprived of female sex and beauty until they supply security Neither sex deprived more than the other


SOURCE: Warren Farrell, The Myth of Male Power, (N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1993), Chp. 2 *Stage II goals are the ideal; most of these goals are not yet reality for most couples.
  • "The weakness of men is the facade of strength; the strength of women is the facade of weakness."
  • "In post offices throughout the United States, Selective Service posters [reading "A Man's Gotta Do What A Man's Gotta Do] remind men that only they must register for the draft. If the Post Office had a poster saying "A Jew's Gotta Do What A Jew's Gotta Do..." or if "A Woman's Gotta Do..." were written across the body of a pregnant woman..."
    • p. 28
  • "There are many ways in which a woman experiences a greater sense of powerlessness than her male counterpart: the fears of pregnancy, aging, rape, date rape, and being physically overpowered; less socialization to take a career that pays enough to support a husband and children[...] Fortunately, almost all industrialized nations have acknowledged these female experiences. Unfortunately, they have acknowledged only the female experience."
    • p. 28
  • "If power means having control over one's own life, then perhaps there is no better ranking of the impact of sex roles and racism on power over our own lives than life expectancy."
    • p.30
  • "ITEM: The Mike Tyson trial. The hotel in which the jury is sequestered goes ablaze. Two firefighters die saving its occupants. The trial of Mike Tyson made us increasingly aware of men-as-rapists. The firefighters' deaths did not make us increasingly aware of men-as-saviors. We were more aware of one man doing harm than of two men saving..."
    • p. 36
  • "It would be hard to find a single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50 percent of the vote got away with calling itself the victim... Women are the only 'oppressed' group to share the same parents as the 'oppressor'; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the 'oppressor'; to own more of the culture's luxury items than the 'oppressor'..."
    • p. 40
  • "In Stage I, divorces were not allowed, so men's [sexual] affairs did not put women's economic security in jeopardy; in Stage II, affairs could lead to divorce, so men's affairs did place women's economic security in jeopardy. We did not want political leaders who would be role models for behavior that would put women's economic security in jeopardy."
    • p. 63
  • "In brief, our genetic heritage is at odds with our genetic future. For the first time in human history, the qualities it takes to survive as a species are compatible with the qualities it takes to love."
    • p. 65
  • "For thousands of years, most marriages were in Stage I--survival-focused. After World War II, marriages increasingly flirted with Stage II--a self-fulfillment focus... Love's definition is in a transition."
    • p. 42
  • "Women's liberation and the male midlife crisis were the same search--for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, love. But while women's liberation was thought of as promoting identity, the male midlife crisis was thought of as an identity crisis."
    • p. 44
  • “During the years I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women [chapter] in New York City, the most resistant audiences I ever faced in the process of doing corporate workshops on equality in the workplace were not male executives—they were the wives of male executives. As long as her income came from her husband, she was not feeling generous when affirmative action let another woman have a head start vying for her husband’s (her) income.”
    • p. 46
  • "Women's scars and rituals involved beauty (piercing ears and noses, binding feet, and wearing corsets); men's involved protecting women. In cultures in which physical strength is still the best way to protect women, as among the Dodos in Uganda, each time a man kills a man, he is awarded a ritual scar; the more scars, the more he is considered eligible."
    • p. 72
  • "Today, violence against women is rightly abhorred. But we call violence against men entertainment. Think of football, boxing, wrestling... All are games used to sugarcoat violence against men, originally in need of sugarcoating so "our team"--or "our society"--could bribe its best protectors to sacrifice themselves."
    • p. 75
  • "Imagine how we would feel if I began this section saying, "Today, violence against women is rightly applauded." We would know I favored the death of women; when we applaud for violence against men, we favor the death of men. We do it because we have learned that the more effectively we prepare men to sacrifice themselves, the more we are protected."
    • p. 76
  • “Men often become nonviolent in societies that (1) have adequate amounts of food, (2) have adequate amounts of water, and (3) perceive themselves as isolated from attack. For example, the Tahitian men, the Minoan men on Crete, and the Central Malaysian Semai were nonviolent during the period in their history when all three of these conditions prevailed.” 77
  • “It is often said that women are a civilizing balance to the innately warlike male. By taking care of the killing for women it could be said that men civilized women. When survival was the issue, men killing to protect what women bore was the male form of nurturance.”
    • p. 79
  • How, then, can patriarchy be defined? Perhaps it can best be defined as the male area of dominance, responsibility, and subservience in a culture, reinforced by both sexes for the purpose of serving both sexes’ survival needs. How can matriarchy be defined? As the female area of dominance, responsibility, and subservience in a culture, reinforced by both sexes for the purpose of serving both sexes’ survival needs.”
    • 98
  • “Every day, almost as many men are killed at work as were killed during the average day in Vietnam. For men, there are, in essence, three male-only drafts: the draft of men to all the wars; the draft of Everyman to unpaid bodyguard; the draft of men to all the hazardous jobs—or ‘death professions.’”
    • p. 105
  • “No movement calls [migrant workers] oppressed for providing money for women from whom they are receiving neither cooking nor cleaning; for providing their wives with homes while they sleep on the ground.”
    • p. 111
  • “When mining… and other death professions are discussed in feminist publications, they are portrayed as examples of the male power system, as “male-only clubs.” However, when Ms. Magazine profiled female miners, the emphasis was on how the woman was ‘forced’ to take a job in the mines because it paid the best, and how taking such a job was the only way she could support her family.”
    • p. 116
  • “Letting men die is a money-saving device. Safety costs money… as one safety official put it, ‘When everything is hurry, hurry, hurry, when you start pressuring people and taking shortcuts, things can go wrong. And then people die.’ No. And then men die.”
    • p. 119
  • “Women do not enter a profession in significant numbers until it is physically safe. So until we care enough about men’s safety to turn the death professions into safe professions, we in effect discriminate against women. But when we overprotect women—and only women—it also leads to discrimination against women. …If [an employer works] for a large company for which quotas prevent discrimination, they find themselves increasingly hiring free-lancers rather than taking on a woman and therefore a possible sexual harassment lawsuit…”
    • p. 121
  • “The more chauvinist the country, the more it protects women. And therefore the more it limits women. Like the United States, [Italy, Spain, and Denmark] give women options without obligations. These countries are, therefore, still male chauvinist… The degree to which a country is emancipated is the degree to which it frees men from the obligation to protect women and socializes women to equally protect men.”
    • p. 136
  • “Who causes war? War is caused by our primal fear of not surviving. This is a two-sex fear. And because the fear is so primal, we are easily seduced into exaggerating the evil intent of anyone [who] might threaten our survival. Why? One mistake of underestimating a threat could leave everyone wiped out; many mistakes of overestimating would just leave men wiped out.”
    • p. 142
  • “Parade magazine announces that 40 million Soviet men were killed between 1914 and 1945. The magazine’s headline reads ‘Short End of the Stick’. Because men died? No. The women were seen as getting the short end of the stick because they were stuck with factory and street-cleaner positions the men weren’t around to do.”

pp. 145

  • “Men are likely to be not only the warriors of war but also the warriors of peace. Almost all those who risk their lives, are put in jail, or are killed for peace are men. While some of the peace warriors—Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold—are remembered, most are forgotten. Remember Norm Morrison? After years of protesting the Vietnam war, Norm doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire on the steps of the Pentagon[…] But Norm Morrison is forgotten.”
    • p. 153
  • “By the 1970s, the American woman was being called ‘liberated’ or ‘superwoman’ while the American man was being called ‘baby killer’ if he fought in Vietnam, ‘traitor’ if he protested, or ‘apathetic’ if he did neither. Even men who came home paraplegics were literally spit on.”
    • p. 155
  • “What makes a teenage boy’s anxiety so overwhelming is that a teenage boy’s socialization is the demand to perform without the resources to perform. As a result, not only are his risks many, but his failures many. And so apparent… Second, the biggest winners—the football players—are receiving love via self-abuse. For some boys, receiving love via self-abuse creates anxiety. But losing love creates even more anxiety.”
    • p. 167
  • “Even a 30-year-old man whose wife dies is eleven times more likely to commit suicide than a 30-year-old man whose wife is living. At age 30, when men can bury themselves in their jobs and are physically and financially attractive to women, the loss of the one woman a man loves is so devastating it is often not softened even by the opportunities for many women… in brief, it is the loss of love that devastates men.”
    • p. 169
  • “[T]he men who are successful have become the most dependent on success to attract love. When this man loses his success, he often fears he will lose love.”
    • p. 172
  • “The reporting of depression is often associated with the dependency of women on men. But it is dependency on men successful enough to allow a woman the time to think about more than survival. Which is why, when we think about women who report depression, we think of middle-class women, not working-class women. The working-class woman is too worried about survival to report depression. Depression is a diagnosis that tends to increase among those with the luxury of worrying about something other than survival. The more a person is in Stage II, the more that person can afford to focus on depression.”
    • p. 177
  • “When a man is forced into early retirement, he is often being ‘given up for a younger man.’ Being forced into early retirement can be to a man what being ‘given up for a younger woman’ is for a woman… Why do many men get more upset by retirement than women do from the “empty nest”—when their children leave home? When females retire from children, they can try a career; when a man retires from a career, his children are gone.”
    • p. 174
  • “When women and men have approximately equal life expectancies, it seems to be because women die not only in childbirth (fewer than thought) but about equal from… diseases; poor sanitation and water; inadequate healthcare; and diseases of malnutrition. In industrialized societies, early deaths are caused more by diseases triggered by stress, which breaks down the immune system. It is since stress has become the key factor that men have died so much sooner than women.”
    • p. 182
  • “The New England Journal of Medicine has recently reported that speaking about one’s faults creates abnormalities in the pulsations of our heart. Tiny abnormalities? No. Abnormalities as great as those produced by riding a stationary bicycle to the point of either exhaustion or chest pain. Perhaps [the criticisms men exchange beginning with adolescence], then, contribute to men being four times more likely than women to suffer heart disease before age fifty. In essence, our sons might be practicing heart-disease training.”
    • p. 186
  • “In brief, we do more research on men in prison, men in the military, and men in general than we do on women for the same reason we do more research on rats than we do on humans.”
    • p. 189
  • “Although a government study found that men’s health was much worse than women’s health or the health of any minority group, headlines around the country read: ‘Minorities Face Large Health Care Gap.’ They did not say: ‘Men Face Large Health Care Gap.’ Why? Because we associate the sacrifice of men’s lives with the saving of the rest of us, and this association leads us to carry in our unconscious an incentive not to care about men living longer.”
    • p. 196
  • “When birth control pills were available in Europe but not in the United States, American women created an uproar about how the unwillingness to make the pill available showed a contempt for the lives of women… When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released birth control pills with high dosages of hormones that were later found to be unnecessarily high, they were attacked for not caring about women enough to do the necessary tests.”
    • p. 195
  • “Unfortunately, the process of gaining money in [a man’s] life usually meant alienating the wife in his life. Sometimes this leads to a legal divorce, but more often to a psychological divorce. Which is why a survey of doctors’ wives reported in Medical/Mrs. Found the doctors’ wives harboring hostility that was ‘stunning to behold.’ Yet the wives remained married to the doctors. Why? More than anything else, the wives said, they wanted security from marriage… the men, then, were often prostitutes to an illusion of emotional security. At least their wives had the reality of economic security.”
    • p. 203
  • “Gay sex meant two hours of sexual pleasure in exchange for two hours of sexual pleasure. Heterosexual sex meant two hours of sexual pleasure in exchange for a lifetime of responsibility. Heterosexuality was a bad deal! The fear behind homophobia was that no one would be providing for the next generation. Everybody would be having fun. Thus “fun” became a sign of immaturity; “hedonism” in many forms became illegal.”
    • p. 208
  • “Why do we resist giving help to homeless men? In part because we don’t understand how our pressure on men to support families often forces men to take transient jobs that are but a step away from homelessness (the death-of-a-salesman jobs, the migrant worker jobs…) and in part because we respond differently to men who fail [than women who fail].”
    • p. 209
  • “Men’s immediate path from the Insanity Track to the Sanity Track is in demanding that both sexes have the freedom to strike a balance between homeplace and workplace. Men must expect their wives to financially support them to be fathers as much as they now financially support their wives to be mothers. Women must have our approval to marry the warrior of love rather than the warrior of money.”
    • p. 212
  • “As females enter the workplace, will our tendency to protect women create rules that will also protect men? Yes and no. Yes, when, for example, the new concern for doctors working fewer than eighty hours per week also affects men. No, when working-class jobs get divided into the males taking the hazardous jobs… and women taking safer jobs. And in professional careers, if males take irregular hours and specialties such as surgery, while females take regular hours and specialties like psychiatry, then we will only reinforce the female-protected class and the male-disposable class.”
    • p. 213
  • “When we hear men are the greater victims of crime, we tend to say, ‘Well, it’s men hurting other men.’ When we hear that blacks are the greater victims, we consider it racist to say, ‘Well, it’s blacks hurting blacks.’ The victim is a victim no matter who the perpetrator was.”
    • p. 215
  • “Crime, especially crime involving money, reflects the gap between the expectation to provide and the ability to provide… If we really want men to commit crime as infrequently as women, we can start by not expecting men to provide for women more than we expect women to provide for men.”
    • p. 215-216
  • “Were we to still be circumcising the hood of the female clitoris, we would not have difficulty considering this a continuation of our tradition to keep girls sexually repressed. America’s reflexive continuation of [male] circumcision-without-research reflects the continuation of our tradition to desensitize boys to feelings of pain, to prepare them to question the disposability of their bodies no more than they would question the disposability of their foreskins.”
    • p. 223
  • “Women-in-jeopardy movies are, in essence, the updated versions of men dying to save the princess from the dragon to earn her love. They are modern-day training films for teaching women to select the best protectors while weeding out the rest. And then we call the woman ‘victim’ and the man ‘powerful.’”
    • p. 226
  • “I am often asked why men don’t get as worked up as they might about women—particularly poor women—having to use their bodies as prostitutes. Because most men unconsciously experience themselves as prostitutes every day—the miner, the firefighter, the construction worker, the logger, the soldier, the meatpacker—these men are prostitutes in the direct sense: they sacrifice their bodies for money and for their families.”
    • p. 233
  • “A man convicted of murder is twenty times more likely than a woman convicted of murder to receive the death penalty... Since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty, 120 men—and only 1 woman—have actually been executed. The woman, from North Carolina, said she preferred to be executed… In North Carolina, a man who commits second-degree murder receives a sentence on average of 12.6 years longer than a woman who commits second-degree murder.”
    • p. 240
  • “In the case of a man and a woman [accused of commiting a crime together], both will often agree to the man taking the rap—despite the man being more likely to receive a longer sentence and more likely to be raped in prison. If blacks were agreeing to do that for whites, the black community would be smart enough to call that ‘learned subservience.’”
    • p. 243
  • “Since 1954, then, approximately 70,000 women have murdered; their victims include about 60,000 men, but, as we saw in the second Item of this chapter, not one woman has been executed after killing only a man. For nearly four decades now, we have become increasingly protective of women and decreasingly protective of men—even if that boy is a legal minor, as was Heath Wilkins.”
    • p. 244
  • “Neither men nor women are exempt from killing loved ones. The difference is in what happens to them when they do. Twelve distinct female-only defenses allow a woman who commits a premeditated murder to have the charges dropped or significantly reduced. No man has successfully used any of these defenses in similar circumstances.”
    • p. 254
  • “[This is] the basis of the “Innocent Woman Defense”—the “Innocent Woman Principle”: Women are believed when they say they are innocent of violence and most easily doubted when they say they are guilty of violence.”
    • p. 255
  • Farrell’s other eleven defenses are “The PMS Defense”; “The Husband Defense” (Warren, I don’t quite know how to summarize this one—not sure I get it); “The ‘Battered Woman Syndrome’ Defense, aka Learned Helplessness; “‘The Depressed Mother’ Defense”; “The ‘Mothers Don’t Kill’ Defense”; “The ‘Children Need Their Mother’ Defense”; “The ‘Blame-The-Father, Understand-The-Mother’ Defense”; “The ‘My Child, My Right To Abuse It’ Defense”; “The Plea Bargain Defense”; “The Svengali Defense”; and “The Contract Killing Defense."
    • Chapter 12
  • “Veterans of every war suffer Battered Man Syndrome in the form of posttraumatic stress disorder. The emotional consequences are also with them for years. But if a sufferer killed Admiral Zumwalt for ordering the spraying of Agent Orange, he would be convicted for murder. Men who suffer Battered Man Syndrome are not allowed to attack their abuser and call it self-defense.”
    • p. 264
  • “[A man’s actions] are illegal if a woman decides [it creates a hostile environment], and if a man committed the ‘offense’… Who defines ‘hostile environment’? The woman. Not even the man’s intent makes a legal difference. In all other criminal behavior, intent makes all the difference. Even in homicide. Sexual harassment legislation in its present form makes all man unequal to all women. It is in blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection without regard of sex. Thus the political will to protect only women prevails over the constitutional mandate to protect both sexes equally.”
    • p. 288
  • “In a sense, sexual harassment lawsuits are just the latest version of the female selection process—allowing her to select for men who care enough for her to put their career at risk; who have enough finesse to initiate without becoming a jerk and enough guts to initiate despite a potential lawsuit… In the past, though, the process of his overcoming her barriers was called ‘courtship.’ Now it is called either ‘courtship’ or ‘sexual harassment’.”
    • p. 291
  • “When a man is attracted to a woman, being expected to take the sexual initiative does not increase his power, it increases his paralysis. The possibility of a lawsuit just intensifies the paralysis. Ironically, the more dangerous the waters, the more [telling dirty jokes] serves as a way of testing the waters: if she laughs, maybe she’s interested; if she looks disgusted, maybe she’s not. He would feel much more powerful if she took responsibility for testing the waters.”
    • p. 294
  • “[T]here are really seven different [kinds of] sexual interactions occurring in the workplace… Sexual blackmail. A boss threatens to fire an employee unless she or he is sexual… Sexual bribery. An executive promises a promotion in exchange for sex. This can be explicit or implicit… Workplace prostitution. An employee is sexual in exchange for a promotion; a salesperson is sexual to win a sale. The sex can be given or just promised… Workplace incest. Consensual sex among employees. The workplace, like the family, has lines of authority which sexual bonding tends to blur… Sexual harassment. Repeated sexual advances at work after an employee has said ‘no’… Workplace flirtation. Suggestive dress, flirtations eye contact, a combination of touching and eye signals… Workplace porn. Pinups, lewd jokes, and sexual innuendos made in groups…"
    • p. 297-9
  • “Early feminists sensed this: they were strong opponents of protective legislation. They knew that as long as the princess was protected from the pea, women would be deprived of equality. The modern-day woman’s ‘pea under the mattress’ is the rough spots in the workplace. When today’s feminists are proponents of protective legislation, they oppose equality. Sexual harassment legislation is sexist because it makes only the man responsible for the male role in the sexual dance.”
    • p. 307
  • Myth. Rape is a manifestation of male political and economic power. Fact. Any given black man is three times as likely to be reported a rapist as a white man. Do blacks suddenly have more political and economic power? Maybe rape does not derive from power, but rather from powerlessness.”
    • p. 310
  • “The truth is that both sexes participate in unwanted sexual activity. A feminist who was brave enough to ask these broad-based questions of both sexes astonished herself to discover that 94 percent of the men (as well as 98 percent of the women) said they had an unwanted sexual activity by the time they were in college. Even more surprising was her finding, reported in the Journal of Sex Research, that 63 percent of the men and 46 percent of the women said they had experienced unwanted intercourse. By feminist definitions of rape as unwanted sex, virtually everybody has been raped. And that’s how rape begins to look like an epidemic. It’s also how rape gets trivialized.”
    • p. 317
  • “As long as society tells men to be the salespersons of sex, it is sexist for society to put only men in jail if they sell well. We don’t put other salespersons in jail for buying clients drinks and successfully transforming a “no” into a “maybe” into a “yes”. If the client makes a choice to drink too much and the “yes” turns out to be a bad decision, it is the client who gets fired, not the salesperson. We expect adults to take responsibility.”
    • p. 321
  • “Most rapes of men occur in prison. But even outside of prison, about 9 percent of reported rapes are against men (probably mostly by men, but no one knows for sure). Even rape outside of prison, then, is about as significant an issue for men as AIDS is for women—about 10 percent of the people dying of AIDS are women. Do we hear more about men being raped or about women getting AIDS?”
    • p. 335
  • “And if we choose to retain laws against date rape, then a false accusation of rape must subject the accuser to the same imprisonment a convicted rapist would receive. In China false accusations of any crime are rare—if the accusation proves false, the accuser receives the punishment.”
    • p. 339
  • “The Government as Substitute Husband did for women what labor unions still have not accomplished for men. And men pay dues for labor unions; the taxpayer pays the dues for feminism. Feminism and government soon become taxpayer-supported women’s unions.”
    • p. 344
  • “We have restricted humans from giving ‘free’ food to bears and dolphins because we know that such feeding would make them dependent and lead to their extinction. But when it comes to our own species, we have difficulty seeing the connection between short-term kindness and long-term cruelty; we give women money to have more children, making them more dependent with each child and discouraging them from developing the tools to fend for themselves. The real discrimination against women, then, is ‘free feeding’.”
    • p. 346
  • “By giving women training to sue a company for a ‘hostile environment’ if someone tells a dirty joke, we are training women to run to the Government as Substitute Husband (or Father). This gets companies to fear women, but not to respect women. The best preparation we can give women to succeed in the workplace is the preparation to overcome barriers rather than to sue: successful people don’t sue, they succeed.”
    • p. 351
  • “Ideally there should not be a men’s movement but a gender transition movement; only the power of the women’s movement necessitates the temporary corrective of a men’s movement. And this creates a special challenge for men: There are few political movements filled with healthy people, yet few healthy changes have occurred without political movements.”
    • p. 356
  • “With men, we blame the victim. We blame men because we have camouflaged men’s victimization by teaching men to also be the victimizer. Men’s victimizer status camouflages men’s victim status.”
    • p. 357
  • “[H]umans tend to start the process of change by acknowledging themselves—thus blacks asserted black pride and black is beautiful; women declared “I am woman, I am strong”; men are saying “I am man, I am okay.” After a quarter of a century of male bashing, that’s not a bad start.”
    • p. 361

"Why Men Earn More" (2005) edit

  • "Helping women achieve higher pay is a core goal of this book."
    • p. xvii
  • "There are 25 differences in the way women and men behave in the workplace. These 25 differences lead to men receiving higher pay and women having better lives—or at least more balanced lives."
    • p. xvii
  • "A person working 45 hours per week averages 44% more income than someone working 40 hours per week. That’s 44% more income for 13% more time."
    • p. xviii
  • “If an employer had to pay a man one dollar for the same work a woman could do for 59 cents, why would anyone hire a man?"
    • p. xix
  • "In 1969, nationwide, female professors who had never been married and never published earned 145% of their counterpart male colleagues."
    • p. xxii
  • "Survey 2001: Men who never married, never had a child, worked full time and were college educated earn only 85% of what women with the same criteria earn."
    • p. xxii
  • "A part-time working woman makes $1.10 for every dollar made by her male counterpart."
    • p. xxii
  • "Our focus on discrimination against women during the past 30 years has blinded us to opportunities for women."
    • p. xxiv
  • "I define power as “control over one’s life. Pay is not about power. Pay is about giving up power to get the power of pay."
    • p. xxiv
  • "Self-help books for those who believe “You can have it all” often advise, “Follow your bliss and money will follow.” With the collapse of the stock markets the reality of trade-offs is more like, “When you follow your bliss, it’s money you’ll miss.”"
    • p. 3
  • "Perhaps the best reason to consider the hard sciences is that, well, one study suggests science, engineering, medicine, and dentistry graduates live longer than arts graduates (or law grads). So whatever money you make you can keep a bit longer."
    • P. 18
  • "Do women avoid fields like engineering because of the tendency of male-dominated fields to discriminate against women? Probably not. Prior to the women's movement, engineering was no more male-dominated than medicine and law. And women have entered medicine and law by the droves. When women enter male-dominated fields, they tend to enter the more glamorous occupations. And the media reinforces this. There was L.A. Law, but no L.A. Engineering. ER doesn't mean Engineering Room. Women receive six layers of encouragement to enter fields involving engineering, computers, and math and science: first, better starting salaries than men's; second, special programs for girls in high school; third, female-only government scholarships; fourth, female-only corporate grants and scholarships; fifth, the advertising that reaches out to women to create a more female-supportive atmosphere; and sixth, special grants for science programs at leading women's colleges."
    • P. 25
  • "There is what might be called a Catch-22 of hazardous occupations: The more hazardous the job, the more men; the more men, the less we care about making the job safer. The Catch-22 of hazardous occupations creates a 'glass cellar' which few women wish to enter. Women are alienated not just out of the fear of being hurt on the job, but by an atmosphere that can make a hazardous job more hazardous than it needs to be."
    • P. 27
  • "Your daughter says, 'Dad. Mom. I want to join the armed services.' You look at her beautiful face, her life flashes before your eyes, and you see a body bag. Now's the time to let her know the biggest military secret: She can join the military and be as safe-from-death as shoe would be at home. How? In the war in Iraq, not a single woman has been killed in the Air Force. Nor has a single woman been killed in the Marines. And only one has died in the Navy. Your only job is to keep her out of the Army."
    • P. 30
  • "Whether in a South African coal mine, on an Alaskan fishing boat, or in the American military, men's protective instinct toward women, and women's protective instinct toward themselves (and children) keeps men more disposable than women. Here's an example of the dynamic at work in the military. At the military's SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) schools, concern about the well-being of women was so prevalent among male students that trainers now work to desensitize men to sexual assault and other abuse of women lest their sensitivity be used against them in war. We think of women in the military as being safer in part because they are still prohibited from the most dangerous assignments. But this prohibition is just a reflection of the traditional male's instinct to protect women."
    • P. 33
  • "Choosing safety is a choice of life over career."
    • P. 35
  • "On oilrigs men who only work an 8-hour day are contemptuously called "nine-to-fivers." In stark contrast, women are more likely not to take risks, even when the risks are minimal. What's the message to our sons? Our praise of our sons when they risk physical danger teaches them that a willingness to be physically abused creates love. Abuse-as-love? Yes."
    • P. 39
  • "While we call role models 'leaders', most 'leaders' are really followers. Most 'leaders' follow their bribes. And we are the people who offer the bribes. We in essence give men two bribes to risk their lives: pay and praise... A man who self-selects for a death profession expects his body to be used in exchange for pay. The unspoken motto of the death professions is 'My body, not my choice.'"
    • P. 40
  • "The money men make from their willingness to work the least desirable hours is not a sign of discrimination against women, but a sign of the willingness of mostly married men to lose sleep to support the family as their wife loses sleep to feed the child. A willingness to do the uncomfortable shifts is one reason married men earn more than twice what never-married men earn. Men's contribution, made at night, need not be lost in the dark."
    • P. 69
  • "When we don't take years of experience into account, it is easy for a woman to become discouraged when she reads headlines such as 'Study of TV News Directors Finds Discrimination Against Women.' When a woman in the mid-1980's read that TV news directors who were women got paid about 27% less than men directors, it might have made her avoid the field... If, on the other hand, a headline more accurately reflecting the study's core findings, read 'Female Managers Become TV News Directors Three Times as Quickly as Men,' well, that would have made a woman feel wanted... In brief, the road to higher pay is a toll road. But at this point in history, there are female tollbooths and male tollbooths, and the toll charged to women is lower. This should encourage every woman who wishes to embark on the road to higher pay to take it while the tolls are still low, and every man who wishes to be with his children--or just wishes to support the career-focused woman he loves--to be aware that there was never a better time to be a great dad and go with your wife's flow."
    • P. 85-87
  • "People who get higher pay are more willing to relocate--especially to undesirable locations at the company's behest... A corporate secretary may change companies in the same town; a corporate executive is more likely to change towns with the same company. A talented corporate secretary sees an invitation to relocate as an invitation; a future corporate executive sees an invitation to relocate as an opportunity--and an obligation."
    • P. 93-94
  • "When we look at the pay of men and women who do work equal hours, two discoveries are quite astonishing:

--When women and men work less than 40 hours a week, the women earn more than the men; --When men and women work more than 40, the men earn more than the women."

    • P. 79
  • "Women today are less than half as likely as men to work in excess of 50 hours per week. (Again, working women put in more hours at home.) It is rarer still for women to sustain that commitment for 20 years and then, without having burned out, increase her hours still more as a CEO. But exactly because it is rare, women who are willing stand out as more exceptional. Women, as it turns out, are far more 'European'--working to live rather than living to work. But the glass ceiling is rarely cracked by healthy, balanced people who work to live."
    • P. 82
  • "Single women often fear that the men they are going out with wouldn't be comfortable with less career and more child. Perhaps. If a woman selects a man with a lot of career ambition, she'll get what she selected. The solution? Choose among men who would love to be married to a career woman who valued his being home full-time with the children for a few years. Can't find these men? State your interest on your Match.com profile--the Internet's the best net to catch the right fish. You'll be surprised."
    • P. 83-4


  • "People Who Get Higher Pay Require Less Security. ITEM. It's 2004. I am presenting Why Men Earn More to the sales and marketing teams of my publisher (AMACOM). To illustrate financial risk as one of the ways to higher pay, I ask everyone in the room who is paid by commission to stand up. Eight men stand; no women. I then ask those paid by salary to stand: About equal numbers of men and women stand."
    • P. 107
  • "The United States follows the pattern of men taking the financial risks even within a given field. Women physicians are three times as likely as men to work for the government or an HMO; men physicians are much more likely to be self-employed in a solo practice."
    • P. 108
  • "The corporate Catch-22: "Don't be flexible, lose good women; be flexible, lose good women... A company listening to women's desires for [flexibility and therefore] fewer promotions, giving fewer promotions to women, and then being sued for giving fewer promotions to women. Yiddish has a word for this: chutzpah."
    • P. 111-12
  • "At this moment in history, millions of 'working dads' are desiring to do what they do not feel they have the right to do: be more devoted as a dad, less devoted as a worker. This feeling is far more ubiquitous among men executives than women executives in many areas of the world because, for instance, Asia-Pacific women executives today are more than six times as likely to not have children than men executives are. The Asia-Pacific executive man is about six times as likely to be a working dad as an executive woman is to be a working mom."
    • P. 113
  • "For thousands of years women chose men based on their ability to provide. The more women increase their mastery of the workplace, the more they open themselves to partnership with a new type of man. It is my hope that Part One has begun a paradigm shift in the way we view men. As we saw women doing financially better than men in male-dominated professions, it hopefully offers a more generous view of the male attitude toward women in the workplace. As we contemplate making sacrifices to earn more, it is my hope we appreciate the sacrifices men have made to nurture the family by being their family's 'financial womb.' Especially the sacrifices of 'working dads' and of dads' 'invisible juggling act'."
    • P. 122
  • "Men may be way behind in creating choices for themselves, but have actually been quiet supporters of the choices women want for themselves."
    • P. 123
  • "The deeper purpose of a more positive attitude toward men is a better life for the children who are parented by the men who are their dads and stepdads; less shame for our sons who will become men; and, for our daughters, a deeper understanding of men's desire to please that leaves them feeling their willingness to please is not unrequited but returned--allowing our daughters to feel less lonely and more loved. If we earn more and love less, we pay for a home in which we do not live."
    • P. 123
  • "In a sense, in the area of child care, children's relationships with parents' working has come full circle. We have gone from the mom-and-pop store (or mom-and-pop farm), with its integration of child care and work, to children-at-home and dad-at-work; to the mom-plus-daddy working at home, with its integration of childcare and work again. From mom-and-pop back to mom-and-pop."
    • P. 131
  • "The belief that women are discriminated against in the workplace reinforces a couple's tendency to have the woman stay at home. It is the tendency for women to stay at home that makes the workplace value her less. then, shortly after she is married, it begins to make sense for her to move for her husband's career, not for her husband to move for her career. Conversely, it makes sense for them to invest in his medical, law, or engineering degree--rather than hers... ironically, then, a reality has been created from a false reality. And, ironically, women's careers are hurt via comments meant to prod a society into helping women's careers. The road to hell is paved..."
    • P. 145
  • "When we suggest that men are at the top because men discriminate, we miss the point. Men are at the top of the work hierarchy because work has been primarily men's responsibility."
    • P. 150
  • "If organized team sports develop managerial skills for a corporate setting, pickup team sports are more like training to be an entrepreneur... Pickup team sports are still about 99% male. That is, this form of preparation to be an entrepreneur is about 99% male socialization. I believe this is one of many contributors to why men who run their own business earn twice what their female counterparts earn."
    • P. 156
  • "Both sexes allow men dentists inside our mouths, but, well, have you ever let a man who is a dental hygienist inside your mouth? The man must earn his way to our private places in a way not required of a woman--he must become the doctor or the dentist, or forget it."
    • P. 181
  • "Women's greater social desirability and beauty power afford opportunities for creating both measurable and invisible income. While the opportunities are available to almost all women and some men, they are available in abundance to the "genetic celebrity"... a woman so beautiful that men do more than look and talk--they follow her."
    • P. 191
  • "Throughout history, men learned that survival, respect and women’s love were all achieved by “making a killing” –whether killing animals, killing enemies, or “making a killing on Wall Street”. Women received the money that men produced by loving. Men came to feel themselves as unlovable without the money, property or the heroism it took to make them equal to a woman’s love. Women came to associate men spending money on them as a statement of how much they were valued—even loved-- by the man. Her ability to love became her source of security: “a diamond is a girl’s best friend.” Essentially this dynamic is true in almost all societies and all classes throughout history."
    • P. 135
  • "When I was doing a book tour in Japan for Why Men Are The Way They Are, I was told of an institution called the “snack.” The “snack” works like this: A man is coming home from work, and has had a bad day. He doesn’t feel that his wife wants to hear about it, so he pays between $50 and $80 for a “snack”—a sandwich and a drink and an attractive woman who will listen empathetically to him—sort of a beautiful psychologist with refreshments. No men need apply."
    • P. 198
  • "A study of attorneys found that the attorneys whose pictures were judged independently to be the better-looking ones were able to earn about 12% more per year than the less good-looking ones. The better-looking attorneys worked longer hours, but even when that and dozens of other variables were controlled for, the better-looking attorneys were able to bill significantly more per hour. Needless to say, the male attorneys were ranked as much less attractive than the women, increasing the gap in women’s pay over men’s. The bigger the gap in looks, the bigger was the gap in pay. The more time passed, the more the gap widened. Sometimes life isn’t fair."
    • P. 199-200
  • "Women’s genetic celebrity power magnifies men’s protector instinct. It inspires the government-as-substitute-husband. Men’s addiction to the genetic celebrity is either invisible or in the denial stage—thus we either don’t see it, or when confronted, deny it."
    • P. 207
  • "Test this out on yourself. Imagine that for a month you have neither had your garbage picked up nor an opportunity to read about new anthropological discoveries. Which would you pay more money to remedy? A society that functions effectively adjusts the pay until the supply matches the need. Failure to make these adjustments not only leaves streets filled with garbage, but also leaves unemployment lines filled with anthropologists."
    • P. 211
  • "Unemployment, of course, sends the economy into a recession, creating more unemployment. Ironically, unemployment hurts women more than men. Feminists argue that’s because of sex discrimination: “women are the last to be hired and the first to be fired.” Correct on the outcome; wrong on the reason. We hire first what we need most, and we fire first what we need least. That’s why you hire the garbage collector first, and fire him last. Men may be hired first and fired last because more men are willing to do society’s dirty work and hazardous work for a lower price."
    • P. 212
  • “The most unacknowledged spending expectation among women is the amount of time spent by single mothers caring for children, not only physically, but psychologically. It is my feeling that only a small percentage of a mother’s time is normally compensated for by child support, given what a woman could make adding these hours to workforce hours… It is why women who have never been married and never had children earn so much more in the workplace than women who have had children."
    • P. 222

Miscellaneous edit

  • "The fundamental feminist false assumption: Female powerlessness meant male power.
    • Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988)
  • Strict ideology is for women what macho is for men.
    • Why Men Are the Way They Are
  • The most important thing to understand about men is their desire to be understood.
    • Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)
  • The weakness of men is the facade of strength: the strength of women is the facade of weakness..
    • The Myth of Male Power (2001)

External links edit

 
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References edit

  1. His books since the early 90's with this theme are: The Myth of Male Power (N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, 1993); Woman Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (N.Y.:Penguin/Putnam, 1999); Father and Child Reunion (N.Y.: Penguin/Putnam, 2001); Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap - and What Women Can Do About It (N.Y.: AMACON, 2005); Warren Farrell and James Sterba, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2008)