Warren Farrell
American educator, activist and author of seven books on men's and women's issues.
Nothing threatens a father’s involvement in the family more than his obligation to be the family’s financial womb, creating The Father’s ‘Catch-22’ : loving the family by being away from the family. It is the irony of traditional fatherhood: being a father by not being a father.
One danger of a man succeeding is that it teaches his wife and daughter not to worry about success.
Here’s the pay paradox that Why Men Earn More explains: Men earn more money, therefore men have more power; and men earn more money, therefore men have less power (earning more money as an obligation, not an option). The opposite is true for women: Women earn less money, therefore women have less power; and women earn less money, therefore women have more power (the option to raise children, or to not take a hazardous job).
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.
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.
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.
Men are the Rosie-the-Riveters of parenting: They’re brought in only when needed, and considered disposable thereafter.
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.
[With respect to child custody] a woman has no right to a unilateral choice that affects the rest of a man’s life any more than a man would have the right to a unilateral choice that affects the rest of a woman’s life.
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?
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.
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.
By starving our children of men, we have made them more vulnerable to the very abuse we are trying to prevent.
On a deeper level, if our sons are learning they are obscene, disgusting, and untrustworthy, is this the best preparation for fatherhood? And is it the best preparation for becoming a mother -- to feel this way about her son?
Our choice of partners is one of the clearest statements about our choice of values.
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.
To me, God is the accumulated wisdom I've gathered throughout my life. When I pay attention, my body gives me a printout of this wisdom.
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.
[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.
Men for whom divorce means walking out of their children’s lives except when they choose to see the children are the male equivalent of the adolescent feminists: men who want options without obligations. Morally, they have no right to walk out. A law that allows that is similarly immoral. Primary Parent laws are just such laws.