Warren Farrell
American educator, activist and author of seven books on men's and women's issues.
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.
Industrialization created the Father’s Catch-22 : a dad loving his children by being away from the love of his children.
[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.
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’.
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'...
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.
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.
Alan Alda is loved not because he's sensitive, but because he's successful and sensitive.
The more our children see men being paid to take responsibility for children, the more respectable it will be for men to do work compatible with their role as dads.
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.
I feel awed by the mystery of being both so finite and yet so infinite, so much and so little, so conscious and yet, so coincidental.
When I lose my larger sense of supporting people to be their best, I lessen my contact with the God inside me.
[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.
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.
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.
Feminists often discuss women having two jobs: work and children. True. But no one discusses those divorced and remarried men who have three jobs: work, and two sets of children to nurture and financially support.
Raising children was not designed for single parents. (Which is why divorce was such a taboo prior to birth control.)
Just as the Depression left a generation of dads feeling they never had enough money, so father deprivation is leaving a generation of sons and daughters with different psychic wounds.
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.
When we add the devaluation of male values to the demonizing of male sexuality, many boys feel like a pervert before they know who they are.