Warren Farrell - The Myth of Male Power (1993)

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If a woman isn't being hazed, she's not being tested; therefore, she is not being trusted.

Warren Farrell
Humans 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.

Warren Farrell
Many black men leave because they are financially responsible—not because they are emotionally irresponsible.

Warren Farrell
Feminism justified female victim power by convincing the world that we lived in a sexist, male-dominated, and patriarchal world.

Warren Farrell
If women had to promise to provide for a man for a lifetime before he removed his veil and showed her his smile, would we think of this as a system of female privilege?

Warren Farrell
Women attempt suicide more often because they want to become the priority of those they love rather than always prioritizing them.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
Divorces led to bodies of men (called legislatures) protecting women collectively as other men (called husbands) failed to protect women individually.

Warren Farrell
[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.

Warren Farrell
Sexual Harassment Legislation often creates a hostile environment, an environment of female-as-child.

Warren Farrell
Sexual harassment in the workplace confuses rewards for performance with rewards for attractiveness and sexual availability.

Warren Farrell
Sexual harassment legislation in its present form makes all men unequal to all women.

Warren Farrell
We can decrease abuse and murder when we get that for both sexes, abuse does not derive from power, but powerlessness.

Warren Farrell
Feminism has taught women to sue men for sexual harassment or date rape when men initiate with the wrong person or with the wrong timing; no one has taught men to sue women for sexual trauma for saying yes, then no, then yes. … Men [are] still expected to initiate, but now, if they [do] it badly, they could go to jail.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
In one decade, women had gotten more protection against offensive jokes in the workplace than men had gotten in centuries against being killed in the workplace.

Warren Farrell
The sexist perception that violence by anyone against only women is anti-woman while violence by a woman against only men is just generic violence creates a political demand for laws that are even more protective of women.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
In the past, both sexes were anxious about sex and pregnancy. Now the pill minimizes her anxiety and condoms increase his. Now the pimple faced boy must still risk rejection while also overcoming his own fear of herpes and AIDS and reassuring her there is nothing to fear. He must still do the sexual risk-taking, but now he can be put in jail if he takes risks too quickly or be called a wimp if he doesn't take them quickly enough.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
We often hear, Rape is rape, right? No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance.

Warren Farrell
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?

Warren Farrell
The solution to all this is not criminalization but resocialization.

Warren Farrell
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'...

Warren Farrell
When a government subsidy deprives the child of its dad the government is really subsidizing child abuse.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell
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.

Warren Farrell