Warren Farrell Quotes

394 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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 she 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.

Warren Farrell
Circumcision in the United States is routinely performed without anesthesia, though anesthesia reduces the infant's stress and prevents infection and blood clots.

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

Warren Farrell
In brief, she is the partner to what primarily he creates; he is the visitor to what primarily she creates. To me, this wasn't equality.

Warren Farrell
The irony of primary parent laws is that on the one hand feminists were arguing for women's equal rights to jointly-created career assets that emanated from the male financial womb, but arguing against men's equal rights to jointly-created children that emanated from the woman's child-bearing womb.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
Perhaps the biggest appreciation adjustment we need is toward the millions of men and women we call stepparents. We have taken for granted especially the stepparents who are raising no children of their own, and receiving no income from a significant other, but who have nevertheless chosen to invest love, time and money in children.

Warren Farrell
The Female Western is the battle between the good and evil methods of getting the men who perform best.

Warren Farrell
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...

Warren Farrell
Humans have spent (10k+) years learning to fight and debate with the other side, and almost no time learning to listen and empathize.

Warren Farrell
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'.

Warren Farrell
If we both ignore the unique contribution of male-style parenting and jail a man who responsibly contributes it, fatherhood becomes another hazardous occupation. More precisely, it becomes the largest 100%-male hazardous occupation. And in the process, our children lose one of the greatest potential gifts of Stage II — genuine fatherhood. That's the bad news. The good news is that there are ways of creating a father and child reunion....

Warren Farrell
We are at a unique moment in history — when a woman's body is affected, we say the choice is hers; but when a boy's body is affected, we say the choice is not his — the law requires our 18 year old sons to register for the draft, and therefore potential death-if-needed.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
We often hear that mothers do the caring; fathers just do the playing. This is a false dichotomy — even a dangerous one — because fathers' particular style of play involves both a conscious focus on teaching and, as the research is now showing, is instructive to children even when it is not consciously designed to be so.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
The more a man is trained to be a man, the more he is trained to protect women and children, not hurt women and children. He is trained to volunteer to die before even a stranger is hurt – especially a woman or child.

Warren Farrell
When women entered the workplace, many men were mentors to them and, in turn, also learned to respect women's unique contributions (for example, their listening and facilitative skills). Now, as we give men responsibilities to care for children, women must be among the mentors, and we must also learn to respect men's unique contributions.

Warren Farrell
If we want our children to have a balance between their abilities to earn money and show love, it will help if both their parents model that balance. – page 114.

Warren Farrell