Warren Farrell Quotes

394 Sourced Quotes

Killing the criticizer, then, is part of our evolutionary past; listening in response to criticism is part of our evolutionary future.

Warren Farrell
The most frequent way men are raped by adult women is "birth control rape."

Warren Farrell
Somehow, women's romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said No. They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this marry the rapist theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women's most enduring romance novels.

Warren Farrell
In brief, when women batter, men's first priority is to support the women and help them change; when men batter, women's first priority is to escape the men and put them in prison.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
During the past thirty years, the women's movement has supported women to express virtually every feeling women felt. To other women. To Men. To society. Women's feelings became course curriculum, women's studies, TV specials, talk shows, and Lifetime cable. Women's feelings were called both education and entertainment. Men's were repressed until they were called ulcers.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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...

Warren Farrell
When we give trust, we receive trust. And people who trust us pay attention to us.

Warren Farrell
Hazing is both testing and training to subordinate self to the team.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
Listening in response to criticism mandates a shift in our internal psyche that marks perhaps the most important single evolutionary shift humans can make.

Warren Farrell
Both parents' rights must be in balance so children can grow up with a balance between both parents.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.'

Warren Farrell
Only when a woman shares male risks can she really begin to understand men.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.'

Warren Farrell
The first instinctive response to any criticism is a defensive response. (The quicker the response, the more defensive.)

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
Dads in the family are even more important than women in the workplace: The workplace benefits from women, but the family needs dads.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
Sitcoms routinely portray women hitting men, almost never portray men hitting women. When he fails to leave, it is not called Battered Man Syndrome ; it is called comedy.

Warren Farrell
The function of gossip is to create an in group bond by creating an out group enemy.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell