Excerpts From Myth of Male Power

Feckless · #1 19th-October-2008

Warren Farrell is talking about our situation today. As in feminist say we live in a patriarchy which Warren Farrel debunks in this book.

Quote:

Excerpts From Myth of Male Power

Introduction

• The Myth of Male Power is not a return to the 1950s man; it is a leap forward to the 2050s man and woman. P.11
• Male-female roles, functional for the species for millions of years, became dysfunctional in an evolutionary instant. P.11
• I will be saddened if this book is misused to attack the legitimate issues of the women's movement. P.13
• Feminism articulated the shadow side of men and the light side of women but neglected the shadow side of women and the light side of men. P.15
• Patriarchy and male dominance doubled as code words for male disposability. P.16
• The Myth of Male Power is not the flip side of feminism. P.18
• I am in favor of neither a women's movement nor a men's movement, but a gender transition movement. P.19
• This book’s challenge to women: Be as open to the man's experience of powerlessness as you would to the woman's. P.20

Chapter 1 - Is Male Power Really a Myth? A First Glance.... p.27

• Industrialized nations acknowledge the female experiences of powerlessness and conclude that women have the problem, men are the problem. P.27
• What any other group would call powerlessness, men have been taught to call power. P.28
• While blacks dying six years sooner than whites reflects the powerlessness of blacks, men dying 7 years sooner than women is not as powerlessness. P.30
• Suicide is one of the best indicators of powerlessness. P.31
• As boys experience the pressures of the male role, their suicide rate increases 25,000%. P.31
• MYTH. Women are more likely than men to be victims of violence.
• FACT. Men are twice as likely to be victims of violent crimes and three times more likely to be victims of murder. P.32
• US Census Bureau: Women who are heads of households have a net worth 141% that of male heads of households. P.32
• Women control consumer spending by a wide margin in virtually every consumer category. P.33
• Women's control over spending gives women control over TV programs. P.33
• As every woman has a primary role in the "female-dominated" family structure; few men have a primary role in the "male-dominated" governmental and religious structures. P.35
• Prohibition against divorce gave women security in their workplace (the home). Nothing gave men security in their workplace. P.36
• Women have the right to raise a child without the father knowing he even has a child, and can sue him for retroactive child support even 10 to 20 years later. P.36
• The average man works 61 hours per week, the average woman 56; add in housework-- husbands did 53% of the total work, wives 47%. P.37

Chapter 2 - Stage I to Stage II: How Successful Men Freed Women
(But Forgot to Free Themselves) P.42

• For thousands of years, marriages were in Stage I – survival-focused; after World War II, with Stage II – a self-fulfillment focus. P.42
• In Stage I, love meant a division of labor with a division of female and male interests. P.42
• In Stage II, love meant common interests and common values. P.42
• Her concerns were institutionalized: the Women’s Liberation Movement. P.43
• His were repressed; but when expressed, dismissed as his “male mid-life crisis.” P.43
• US Census Bureau: as early as 1960, never-married women over 45 earned more in the workplace than never-married men over 45. p.48
• Stage II Entitlement: women are entitled to compensation for past “oppression”. P.48
• Birth control created the right of women to choose and the expectation of men to trust. P.51
• “Trust me” from a man is laughable; “trust me” from a woman is the law. P.51
• The political genius of the feminist movement: emphasize expansion of rights and avoid expansion of responsibilities. P.54
• Stage II divorce laws help women transition from economic dependence to independence, but not men transition from emotional dependence to independence. P.60
• Discussions of “family values” without distinctions between Stage I and Stage II families are set-ups for deprecation rather than appreciation. P. 62
• 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. P.65

Chapter 3 - Are "Power," "Patriarchy," "Dominance," and "Sexism"
Actually Code Words for Male Disposability? P.67

• Patriarchy: "the universal political structure which privileges men at the expense of women." P.67
• If power is defined as control over one's life, then myths, legends, and bible stories were often ways of getting both sexes to forfeit power. P.67
• "Hero" comes from the Greek "ser-ow," from which comes our words servant, slave and protector. P.68
• Men's focus on winning was, historically, a focus on protection--even at the expense of themselves. P.69
• Women asking males to protect them with their strength risks having that strength protect them in one instance and used against them in another. P71
• The deeper purpose of violence against men was to prevent violence against women. P.75
• When men were not needed to kill, women were less likely to select men who killed and men were less likely to kill. P.76
• Partnership models developed not because the societies were patriarchal or matriarchal, but because they were unthreatened and self-sufficient. P.77
• Male gods were the primary gods when protection was the primary need. P.77
• Whether or not the leaders were female or male, almost 100% of the troops they sacrificed in battle were male. P.78
• Men civilized women by taking care of the killing for women. P.79
• The male tragedy: Showing our love by providing takes us away from showing our love by connecting. P.82
• In Stage I, homosexuality meant sexual pleasure w/o the cost of feeding offspring, thus endangering societal continuity. P.87
• Polygyny, was a system by which the rich man, prevented a woman from being stuck with a poor man. P.88
• Christian sanctioning of polygyny takes the form of nuns actually "marrying" Christ. P.88
• Christ's wives would not have been celibate if polygyny's primary purpose was the satisfaction of male sexual desires. P.89
• Historically, when women could live independently of men without starving, divorce was made legal and considered moral. P.89
• Marriage-as-sacrament was the female's "divine right" as long as women needed it to prevent starvation. P.90
• If boys were needed for war, the society sometimes disposed of the girls as infants and disposed of the boys in war. P.93
• In the future, with nuclear technology, choosing the killer male leads to the potential destruction of everyone. P.99

Chapter 4 - The Death Professions: "My Body, Not My Choice"

• The three male-only drafts: military; unpaid bodyguard; hazardous jobs P.106
• When not legally drafted, men feel psychologically drafted. P.106
• "Glass ceiling": the invisible barrier keeping women out of jobs with the most pay. "Glass cellar": the invisible barrier keeping men in jobs with the most hazards. P.107
• Young men are 24 times as likely to be killed in farm labor as are young women. P.110
• When a field worker is radicalized, he is taught to see the classism but remains blind to the sexism. P.111
• We call women who are nurses "helping professionals" but not police "saving professionals." P.116
• While 24 out of the 25 worst jobs are male jobs many of the lowest-paid jobs are predominantly occupied by women. P.117
• The United States has only one job safety inspector for every six fish and game inspectors. P.106
• When women complained they were being sexually harassed, the government radically expanded its protection of women by expanding its prosecution of men. P.121
• Men were left unprotected from premature death while women were protected from premature flirtation. P.121
• The over-protection of women and the under-protection of men leads to discrimination against hiring women. P.122

Chapter 5 - Hero or War Slave?: The Armed Prostitute

• Understanding men requires understanding men's relationship to the Three Ws: Women, Work, and War. P.123
• Before men can vote, they have the obligation to protect that right; women receive the right to vote without the obligation to protect that right. P.123
• The psychological draft of boys begins before, and continues after, the legal draft of boys. P.123
• Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher: when women led, it was still men left dead; equality was at the top--not at the bottom. P.125
• Wars will not end via female leaders but when men's lives are no more disposable than women's. p.126
• Increasing women's military combat options will be hailed as an advance in equality, but a true advance would require women to enter combat just as men are. P.127
• Equality involves equal options and equal obligations. P.127
• In Panama and Operation Desert Storm combined, men's risk of dying was three times greater than women's. P.130
• Women constitute 11.7% of the total military, but 12.6% of the officers. P.139
• Both sexes in the Persian Gulf received $110 per month extra combat pay--- equal pay despite unequal risks. P.130
• If a fetus has a "right to life," but eighteen years later has an "obligation to death," which sex is it? P.130
• Harassment and hazing are prerequisites to combat training in the "men's army"; but in the "women's army," they can be protested. P.132
• The Pregnant Navy Syndrome: When women on Navy ships become pregnant during work-up for deployment. P.132
• Different standards for women allows them to see themselves as more innocent and moral than men. P.135
• Depriving fathers and sons of their right to live because of their sex is the greatest possible violation of the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. P.136
• The measure of a country’s emancipation: the degree to which it frees men from the obligation to protect women and socializes women to equally protect men. P.136
• When a country goes to war, all the citizens of that country are equally innocent and equally guilty. P.142
• Men will not love themselves nor will women love men as long as the killer-protector role is disproportionately the role of the male. P.144
• War stories" are what men tell to reframe their fear. P.144
• More Vietnam veterans have committed suicide since the war ended than were killed in the Vietnam War itself. P145
• The adults of the 1990s are a generation of men criticized for what they were obligated to do by a generation of women privileged enough to escape the obligation. P.155

Chapter 6 - The Suicide Sex:

If Men Have the Power, Why Do They Commit Suicide More? P.164
• Boys commit more suicide as their sex roles become apparent. P.165
• Perform, pursue and pay: what boys learn they must do to earn equality with girls' love. P.166
• The teenage female has less demand to perform and more resources to attract love. Her body and mind are more genetic gifts. P.166
• A teenage boy's socialization is the demand to perform without the resources to perform. P.167
• Boys see no alternative to performing; each ritual highlights his inadequacy amid his search for identity; without permission to speak with his peers of his fears, his isolation and self-doubt become his suicide. P.167
• The world increasingly allows girls to be whoever they wish to be-- homemaker, mother, secretary, executive. P.167
• It’s the loss of love that devastates men. P.169
• We care for grieving women and isolate grieving men, reinforcing the atmosphere for male suicide. P.170
• Men commit suicide more often when they are unemployed or lose their life savings, so by killing himself, he is "killing the burden," making his suicide an act of love. P.171
• Women attempt suicide more often because they want to become the priority of those they love rather than always prioritizing them. P.171
• Unemployment to a man is the psychological equivalent of rape to a woman. P. 172
• Being forced into early retirement can be to a man what being "given up for a younger woman" is for a woman. P.174
• Women do not experience more depression, they report more depression. P.176
• The more successful the man is in the workplace, the more his depression must be repressed, not expressed. P.178
• We need to hear when men communicate rather than deny they are communicating because they do it imperfectly, and then deny they suffer because they don't communicate. P.179

Chapter 7 - Why Do Women Live Longer? P.180

• Since stress has become a key factor, men have died so much sooner than women. P.182
• It was an almost all-female club that took the first bus from the Industrial Revolution to the Fulfillment Revolution. P.183
• Industrialization made performing away from home the male role. P.183
• Options allow a woman to tailor her role to her personality, but if a man expects to provide well, he expects to wear a suit, not to wear what suits him. P.183
• Industrialization has broadened women’s options and deepened men's mold. P.184
• The Put-Down Trade is our adolescent son's rehearsal for taking criticism as an adult. P.183
• When demands to perform outpace the resources to perform, men become the disposable sex. P.187
• No group of men is more a victim of the demands to perform without the resources to perform than the black boy and his dad. P.187
• While the black male lives nine fewer years than the black female, we hear more about the double jeopardy of racism and sexism encountered by the black female. P.187
• There is no governmental agency focusing on health which spends as much on men's health as on women's health. P.189
• 85% of the NIH research budget is spent on non-gender-specific health issues (or basic science); 10% on women's health; 5% on men's health. P.189
• We do more research on men in prison, in the military, and in general than on women for the same reasons we do more research on rats than we do on humans. P.189
• Almost three-quarters of women who die of heart attacks are 75 or older; by this time, the average man has been dead for three years. P.191
• Breast cancer receives over 600% more funding than prostate cancer despite men being almost as likely to die from prostate cancer. P193
• We keep ourselves open to new ways of understanding (and helping) women, but fail to use the same mindset to better understand (and help) men. P.197

Chapter 8 - The Insanity Track

• 87% of wives of vice-presidents and above work inside, not outside the home. P.199
• Conversely, almost all the husbands of female executives work full time outside the home. P.199
• The married male executive has a wife who is a financial burden. A married female executive has a husband who is a financial buffer. P.199
• His profession is more an obligation while hers is more an opportunity. P.199
• Black men, Indian men, and gay men have all have something in common: They do not provide an economic security blanket for women. P.206
• When homeless men lost their ability to protect, they also lost everyone they loved and joined an almost all-male club on the street. P.209
• The entrance of females, flexible work hours, and less training made "career track" compatible with "sanity track."P.212

Chapter 9 - Violence Against Whom?... P.214

• Forcible rape constitutes less than 6% of all violent crimes; violent crimes of which men are the primary victims constitute the remaining 94%. P.214
• Wives report that they were more likely to assault their husbands than their husbands were to assault them. P.214
• Blacks are six times more likely than whites to be victims of homicides. P214
• We see this last "Item" as a reflection of black powerlessness; but not men's greater likelihood of being victims of violence as a reflection of male powerlessness. P215
• Blacks do not commit proportionately more crimes than whites because blacks have more power. P.215
• Most of us would think of girl children as the victim of sexual abuse about nine out of ten times. Reality: it is one boy to 1.7 girls. P.217
• We overlook men who need help because historically woman-as-victim attracts men; man-as-victim repulses women. P.217
• When we commit violence against an infant girl, we call it child abuse; when we commit violence against an infant boy, we call it circumcision. P.221
• Circumcision in the United States is routinely performed without anesthesia, though anesthesia reduces the infant's stress and prevents infection and blood clots. P.221
• The average American child watches over 40,000 people killed on TV prior to high school graduation… 97% are men. P.223
• We don't call the westerns or war movies "violence against men"--we call them "entertainment." P.223
• Women-in-jeopardy movies are modern-day training films teaching women to select the best protectors while weeding out the rest. P.225
• And we call the woman "victim" and the man "powerful." P.226
• Movies in the 90’s left us feeling that the only man worth preserving is the man who emerges as he is dying. P.227
• 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. P.228

Chapter 10 - If We Cared As Much About Saving Males As Saving Whales, Then.... p.229

• Men are not only women's unpaid bodyguards, they actually pay to be a woman's bodyguard. P. 230
• Women will risk their lives to protect children, but rarely risk their lives to protect an adult man. P.230
• One grand fallacy of the women's movement: Expecting work to mean "power" and "self-fulfillment." P.232
• Men know employers pay to use their body during work in exchange for freeing their body after work. P.232
• Most men don’t even think about the freedom to look within until after their families are economically secure. P.233
• If he’s been able to satisfy his family enough to look within, he fears discovering the prostitute he has become in the process of providing for others. P.233
• Conservatives justify the protection of women and the disposability of men by calling it sex roles. P.234
• Liberals call it sexism if it hurts women, but blame men if it hurts men. P.234
• The underlying justification is the unquestioned assumption of woman-as-victim. P.234
PART III
Government-as-Substitute Husband: An Overview P.235
• Laws are made with such attention to protecting women that, if a man's constitutional rights conflict with a woman's protection, his rights disintegrate before her protection disintegrates. P.237
• Divorces led to bodies of men (called legislatures) protecting women collectively as other men (called husbands) failed to protect women individually. P.238
• The legal bias for special protection for women has begun to wreak havoc with the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. P.238

Chapter 11 - How the System Protects Women, Or...
Two Different Laws We Live In P.241

• Seeing is believing: a look at how men are sentenced to unequal time for equal crime. P.241
• Women almost always receive lower bail for equal crimes. P.242
• When men are in charge, men do more time; when women are in charge….. men do more time. P243
• Twenty-three Americans have been executed and later found innocent; all 23 were men. P.243
• Any given man in prison is still 1000% as likely as any given woman to die via suicide, homicide, or execution. P.244
• "Government" commissions on gender bias are feminist commissions. P. 246
• The "protect-the-woman" instinct in family law: women have the right to children but men have to fight for children. P.249
• If we hold the married man accountable for finances gone legally awry, then the married woman should be held accountable for children who go awry. P.250

Chapter 12 - Women Who Kill Too Much and the Courts That Free Them:
The Twelve "Female-Only" Defenses P.254

• Each violates the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection to both sexes under the law. P.254
• #1. The "Innocent Woman Defense"/"Innocent Woman Principle P. 255
• #2. The “PMS Defense”: paves the way for the "TP Defense"--the "Testosterone Poisoning Defense” P.261
• #3.The "Husband Defense": quintessential "learned helplessness”. P.261
• #4. The “Battered Woman Syndrome" Defense: Pre-meditated murder is now self-defense--but only if a woman is accused; and only if a man is murdered. P.262
• #5. The "Depressed Mother" Defense: Baby Blues and Terrible Twos P.271
• #6. "The Mothers Don't Kill" Defense P.271
• #7. The "Children Need Their Mother" Defense: More a rationalization to free women than a prioritization to love children. P.272
• #8. The “Blame the Father, Understand the Mother” Defense P.273
• #9. The “My Child My Right to Abuse It” Defense: A million crack-addicted children have been born since 1987; only 60 of the mothers have faced criminal charges. P.274
• #10. The "Plea Bargain" Defense: Women are seen as more innocent, their testimony more valued, leading prosecutors to offer them the plea bargain in crimes committed jointly by a woman and a man. P.275
• #11. The “Svengali Defense”: Men have always exercised malevolent influence over women, and women seem to be soft touches for it. P.276
• #12. The “Contract Killing Defense”
• We now consider it liberal to favor a woman exercising the death penalty and to oppose the government exercising the death penalty. P.280
• Contract killings never get recorded as a woman killing a man. P.281
• We can decrease abuse and murder when we get that for both sexes, abuse does not derive from power, but powerlessness. P.282

Chapter 13 - The Politics of Sex P.284

• Sexual harassment in the workplace confuses rewards for performance with rewards for attractiveness and sexual availability. P.284-5
• It confuses male and female socialization for approval at the expense of both men and women. P.286
• Sexual harassment legislation feels unfair to men because if they sued over an ethnic joke, or over a woman discussing pornography or asking them out, they’d be laughed out of the company. P.289
• Sexual harassment legislation in its present form makes all men unequal to all women. P.288
• 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. P. 288
• When sexual initiative by a man works, it's called courtship. When it doesn't, it's called harassment. P.293
• If a female employee is offended, a boss would like her to tell him, not sue him. P.294
• Hazing is both testing and training to subordinate self to the team. P.295
• If a woman isn't being hazed, she's not being tested; therefore, she is not being trusted. P.295
• Sexual Harassment Legislation often creates a hostile environment, an environment of female-as-child, one that makes even female employers more desirous of hiring men. P.297
• When a driver bribes a cop, both are charged with bribery; so when a female has sex with a professor, shouldn’t both be charged with bribery? P.302
• Solutions: P.306
• Feeling sexually harassed? Tell the man directly.
• Seek an understanding of the other sex's best intent.
• Share responsibility for taking sexual initiatives.
• Encourage women to share the expectation of risking the first advances.
• Raise the level of discussion to sexual contact via the perspective of a gender transition movement.

Chapter 14 - The Politics of Rape P.309

• “Rape is a manifestation of male political and economic power.”
• 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?
• Rape does not derive from power, but from powerlessness. P.310
• Myth: Rape has nothing to do with sexual attraction—it’s an act of violence, "proven" by the fact that women of every age are raped.
• Being at the age of greatest sexual attraction makes the chances of being raped at least 8400% greater than being over fifty.
• Minimizing the role of sexual attraction in rape denies our responsibility for reinforcing men's addiction to female sexual beauty and then depriving men of what we've helped addict them to. P311
• The "Male Sexual Catch-22": He is sexually rejected until he proves himself worthy of trust by "not going after sex," but sexually ignored until he "goes after sex." P.313
• Nearly 40% of college women acknowledged they said "no" to sex even "when they meant yes.” P.314
• 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. P.315
• Both sexes participate in unwanted sexual activity. P.317
• Laws with broad definitions of rape are like laws making 55 mile per hour speed limits for men and no speed limits for women.
• Revised estimation of rape frequency: one in 25 women is a victim of a completed rape in a lifetime, about one in 23 women is a victim of an attempted rape in a lifetime. P.317
• Irony: While we increasingly hold people more responsible if they drink and drive, we hold women less responsible if they drink and have sex. P.320
• The Air Force investigated 556 cases of alleged rape; 27% of the women eventually admitted they had lied; a later investigation revealed 60% were false allegations. P.322
• The Washington Post discovered Prince George County and Fairfax County had recorded 30% and 40% false or "unfounded," respectively. P.323
• Despite evidence proving extensive false rape accusations, feminists persuaded the courts and the public that women had no motivation to lie about rape. P. 332
• Rape shield laws support the rape of the falsely accused. P.332
• The most frequent way men are raped by adult women is "birth control rape." P.335
• As many males might be raped in jails and prisons each year as females are raped outside of prison. P.336
• We do not yet understand that when we neglect men, we rape women. P.336
• Spousal rape legislation is blackmail waiting to happen. P.338
• A false accusation of rape must subject the accuser to the same imprisonment a convicted rapist would receive. P.339
• The solution to all this is not criminalization but resocialization. P.340

Chapter 15 - From Husband Sam to Uncle Sam:
Government as Substitute Husband

• Employers are NOT prohibited from practicing sex discrimination in hiring and promoting employees. P. 344
• While male-only clubs in areas of male dominance were being declared illegal, female- only clubs in areas of female dominance were being subsidized. P.345
• Like communism, feminism went from being revolutionary to dictating politically-correct ideology. P.345
• The result: not patriarchy or matriarchy but victimarchy. P346
• The government provides more than what a poor man provides--enough so that she "marries" the government rather than the poor man. P.347
• The government becomes a substitute husband, the poor man becomes disposable. P.347
• Many black men leave because they are financially responsible--not because they are emotionally irresponsible. P.348
• When a government subsidy deprives the child of its dad the government is really subsidizing child abuse. P.348
• Feminists consistently demonstrate that a woman’s right to choose is primary while a child’s best interest is secondary. P.349

CONCLUSION P.355

• The wound that unifies all men is the wound of their disposability. P.355
• Stage II societies created the technology for our species to survive without killing but also created the technology to end our species if we do kill. P.355
• Both sexes do not equally share the hazardous jobs and the risks of dying; we still socialize men to be our killers, therefore unlovable... therefore disposable. P.355
• Only the power of the women's movement necessitates the temporary corrective of a men's movement. P.355
• The Stage I-II framework, by not denying either sex's power or burdens, frees us to move from a battle between the sexes to love between the sexes; from a women's movement to a gender transition movement. P.358
• The hero's journey was a Stage I journey and effectively men’s boot-camp for male disposability. P.358
• The "Four Incentives to Protect Women" and get men to call it "glory" to die. P. 361
• addiction to female beauty and sex;
• deprivation of the beautiful woman and sex with her until the man guarantees economic security in return;
• status, praise, and "bribes" for protecting women, especially if he risks his life or dies doing it; and
• the combination of ritual and religion (e.g., circumcision) that desensitize men to pain, and music and religion to stimulate men to endure pain.
• Stage II elementary schools need more male teachers than female.P.361
• A Stage II school balances messages of sexual caution with messages of sexual joy. P.362
• The men’s movement will become more political because 1) political structures are formed and forming, 2) the political agendas are concrete, and 3) men’s pain motivates. P.364
• When men discover they have been deprived of their fathers, they start asking if they are also being deprived of being fathers. P.364
• Because the personal is political discovery of fathering needs leads to fathers discovering their first right, sharing childcare while his wife does her financial share. P364
• Because men's issues are issues of life and death, men need an Equal Life Opportunity Commission (ELOC). P.365
• First ELOC agenda: Eliminate the “Ten Glass Cellars of Male Disposability”. P. 366
• The men's movement will be the longest of all movements because it is is proposing an evolutionary shift in the system itself. P.369
• Getting men to ask for help for themselves will be the hardest challenge for the men’s movement. P.369
• The challenge of The Myth of Male Power, then, is to care enough about men to spend as much of the next quarter century helping men become Stage II men as we did the last quarter century helping women become Stage II women. P.371

THE MYTH OF MALE POWER by WARREN FARRELL, Ph.D

Feckless · #2 19th-October-2008

Quotations

"Women are human beings, men are human doings"
"The most important thing to understand about men is their desire to be understood..."
(Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say)

Farrell's "Top Ten Social Solutions with Budget Saving Results" that he claims transcend Democratic and Republican Party lines:
1. a men's birth control pill and a paternity fraud bill;
2. universal prenatal care;
3. listening skills taught from first grade, with simultaneous retraining of parents;
4. equal father and mother involvement, especially if there is divorce;
5. more male teachers;
6. stressing female empowerment rather than victim power;
7. keeping taxes on businesses low;
8. schools that are friendlier to boys;
9. a commission on the status of men and men's health;
10. restraining the Government-as-Substitute-Husband.
(From Farrell's campaign statement)

Feckless · #3 19th-October-2008

Quote:

Bert: You’ve been on a lot of radio and TV shows. What has been the reaction to your book, and how have those shows gone?
Warren: There are a lot of ways to judge the reaction. The mail that I have been getting, about 400 letters so far, has run about 65% male and 35% female. And it’s been about 100% positive. I need to acknowledge, of course, that this is a self-selective group that has chosen to write. The most frequent comment from men is that I have articulated for them something that they, themselves, have felt at some level, but have been unable to articulate. A lot of men have also said that I’ve helped them to understand their fathers or their sons better.
In particular, my analysis of the origins of homosexuality has helped a lot of fathers to be a lot more compassionate towards their homosexual sons. One man just wrote me a very touching letter saying that for all of his son’s life he has ostracized his son because he was gay. Now he realizes why he was doing that, and can reach out to his son. His letter made me cry.
About a third of the women react so strongly to the title that, for them, the idea that male power is a myth just makes them angry. It means that they have to confront their victim power and their entitlement power. They don’t even want to touch it. They respond almost reflexively negatively, without reading a word of it. Another third of the women get into the book a ways, then have various stages of dealing with themselves. They realize they’re getting defensive. They put it down for a while, then they go back to it and struggle with it. Another third of the women get through the whole book, and the further they get into it, the better they understand their fathers or husbands. They say, "He never expressed his feelings. He was always focused on his job, meaning that he didn’t love me." Now, she says that he couldn’t express his feelings, because if he got in touch with them, he wouldn’t have been able to work so hard at a job he liked so little, in order to love me. She’s re-framing the very same behavior, taking it from a lack of love to love. That comment I’ve gotten quite a few times from women.
Bert: That’s consistent with one of the themes of your book, that stage 1 behavior required stifling all of that, so you could keep your nose to the grindstone.
Warren: Precisely. In fact, along those lines, the section I had on the dysfunctional family has seemed to be the most helpful section to both female and male therapists. I suggest that we not call the adults dysfunctional, but call them stage 1 functional. That distinction has really been helpful for a lot of therapists. They help their clients by saying, "Well, O.K., your family hit you, and that was functional for stage 1, but it’s no longer functional for stage 2." Rather than making their parents wrong, they make their parents right for their time, but also allows them the freedom to make the transition to the current time, where the hitting behavior or the critical behavior no longer is functional.
Bert: One response I’m getting to your book from a lot of women is that some inherently disbelieve a lot of the facts and statistics cited. They wonder if the statistics from only one side are being presented.
Warren: I was very careful in the book to double-check my data, the sources of it, and even where the sources got their sources from. I didn’t just cite a government study, but I looked at how the study was done, to make sure it was responsible. So the more a person questions the data, if they check the extensive footnotes, the more they will find themselves reassured as to the accuracy of the source.
Bert: Let me pursue this a bit further. The statistics you cite seem to fly in the face of public perceptions or the "politically correct" perspective. People don’t seem to want to hear anything that refutes the common beliefs.
Warren: That’s an absolutely 100% natural reaction. There's never been any major social change that has occurred without challenging public perceptions. During the civil rights movement people felt that blacks were inferior and nobody wanted to deal with issues like integrated schools or integrated bathrooms. The same was true of women at the beginning of the feminist movement. But what I’m challenging in the book is much deeper than the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. My book challenges the very fundamental biological instinct, our need to protect women and our need to have men be the protectors. The more one knows about biology and cross-cultural anthropology, the more one sees how pervasive that instinct is. I’m really calling for a major paradigm shift. That’s always going to meet resistance. It shouldn’t meet such resistance that one can’t keep an open mind. But every time we’re challenged it should always meet at least the resistance of suspicion. Otherwise, we would be easily manipulated, and change from day to day. (chuckle.)
But there is a difference between the resistance of suspicion and the resistance of disbelief, or not even allowing yourself to open yourself to new information.
The other part of this issue is whether the data are a fair and balanced perspective. Maybe I’ve found a study here that counters the prevailing norm. But is this a fair representation, or have I been such a good researcher that I have taken a needle out of the haystack? The answer is that I’m trying to present the information that got left out of our public perceptions. For example, we’ve heard that women work 15 hours ore per week inside the home,. I’m presenting a fair piece of information that got left out, that men work 22 hours more per week outside the home. We’ve heard that breast cancer is neglected. I’m presenting another, very fair piece of information, not contradicting that breast cancer has been neglected, but contradicting that it has been neglected in comparison to men’s health problems. I point out that men die almost as often of prostate cancer, but breast cancer gets 660% as much funding.
Bert: This ties very neatly into my next question. Recognizing that men’s powerlessness is being labeled power is seen by some women as an attempt by men to seek to hold power at the expense of women’s power and women’s gains.
Warren: Yes, and I’m saying it’s part of our old thinking to think that there has to be a win-lose situation. That when either sex wins, both sexes win, and that when either sex tries to defeat the other, both sexes lose.
Now, let me be more practical with this. The fundamental mistake of the feminist movement was to take the female area of sacrifice, raising the children, and call that sacrifice, and take the male area of sacrifice, raising money, and call that power. I think this is the most succinct statement of what my book is about.
Bert: So you are not disagreeing that raising children is a sacrifice, or denigrating that sacrifice, but merely trying to have people recognize the other sacrifice.
Warren: Yes, and not having that sacrifice being turned around and labeled as power instead. It’s like saying that because women have the option to raise the child, they have manipulated the world to get themselves in charge of the home while men went out and died for them. It would be like taking women’s area of sacrifice, and calling that sacrifice power. I’m saying that both approaches are equally wrong. You’re 100% right, I’m acknowledging the areas of female sacrifice. You don’t have to blind yourself to the areas of female sacrifice in order to see the areas of male sacrifice.
Bert: What about the media reactions? I recall when the New York Times touted Robert Bly’s evening with Deborah Tannen as the "battle between the sexes," but when they praised each other’s work the media lost all interest in covering it.
Warren: My experience with the media has been fascinating. First of all, it’s been a fabulous learning and growing experience for me! (chuckle.) I have become so much more articulate about these issues, and I’ve also seen dozens of layers of insights that I’ve never had before, not only about the issues, but about how the media works.
Secondly, it’s been fascinating to me that I’m writing a book that is perhaps the rough equivalent to what The Feminist Mystique was for women, but four out of five of the people who interview me are feminists. Mostly female feminists, but roughly half of the males that interview me are reflexive feminists. The rest are more open-minded, including open-minded feminist men. Can you imagine what would happen if Betty Friedan’s book were being reviewed today, and four out of the five reviewers were men who are avowed male chauvinists? It would be like expecting Rush Limbaugh to give Betty Friedan a fair hearing. There’s no attempt on the part of the media to have one interview by a man, and one by a woman.
Many of these women have been quite fair. Even some of the ones who call themselves fairly strong feminists, when they have read the book, have acknowledged that they’ve learned a great deal. They’ve also acknowledged that they were very resistant to it, and went through a huge amount of anguish in the process of reading the book. Many of them were quite open-minded and fair, and really struggled in the process of writing an article about me.
And then, there have been others where the name of the game has been entertainment. For example, on Crossfire there was no attempt to understand, just an attempt to put two chickens, the feminist and me, up against each other and hope for as much blood as possible. That was basically the only purpose of the program.
Bert: I thought cock-fighting was illegal in most states.
Warren: It is, except where you have human beings in place of chickens.
Bert: Well, chickens are more valuable!
Warren: Exactly right. It’s like bullfighting. The objection to bullfighting was not that the man might get hurt, but that the bull might get hurt. So that that type of psychological drawing of blood was very much my experience on Crossfire. In my half hour on Crossfire I never got a single chance to even say my fundamental thesis.
That’s one type of problem. The other is like Sonia Friedman on Sonia Live. And the woman who substituted for John London on Good Morning America. Sonia Friedman just could not hear me. She could hardly hear out any single thought that I offered, without interrupting and becoming angry at it. There was also the Los Angeles Times woman who did a real distortion number on the interview. That interview got syndicated all over the country.
On the other side of the spectrum has been an excellent excepts in Playboy and the New York Times Syndicate. They’ve been circulating everywhere, from the San Jose Mercury to the New York Post.
Bert: Some of the mythopoetic reaction to the press has been that men are supposed to be feeling and expressive now, yet when men do this in men’s gatherings the media exposure has been to focus on the drumming and the seemingly nonsensical, and overlook that men are actually getting in touch with their feelings.
Warren: I 100% agree with that media propensity. It’s a sick part of our society, to be honest with you. There’s nothing that is more constructive and necessary for men to do than to be able to express their feelings with other men. No one single behavior is more important than that. When that behavior is mocked and ridiculed, it’s just coming from a very traditional place, and when feminist women mock it, they’re coming from a place of fear. Fear that men will speak up and that women will lose their victim power and entitlement power.
Bert: What do you see as your relation between your work and the mythopoetic work?
Warren: I see them both as one-two punches, or better yet, one-two hugs. (chuckle) They are really inseparable, for two reasons. One is that I want every man who does work on social change to simultaneously to be doing work on themselves. My basic belief is that movements in the past have been made up of unhealthy people. Yet few healthy changes have occurred without movement. If we’re going to make any real changes in the future, what we need to be doing is have men do their internal work at the same time they’re doing their external work. Internal work and external work, when they’re done simultaneously, reinforce each other.
At the same time, men who do their internal work, but are afraid to effect social change really are oftentimes shrinking away from being effective in the world, and usually shrinking away from the courage it takes to confront the women in their life. And that’s the degree to which they need to do more internal work.
Bert: The Mendocino conference reflected this concern about balancing inner and outer work. The thrust seems to be shifting to myth, poetry, community and justice. The idea is that, aside from doing inner work, we need to be more inclusive, for example with gays and men of color, and making men’s work visible in the community.
Warren: Yes, I think it is. I would say that the contribution of a book like mine would be to help us straighten out the misunderstandings of the last twenty-five years. To help us see where men’s health is neglected, even as we see that women’s health is neglected. To help us be aware, not just to see that women work 16 hours more per week in the home, but that men work 22 hours more a week outside the home. To help us see not only that men have higher gross incomes, but to help us understand that women have higher net worth. It is helping us to understand both sides of the problem, so that we have a balanced view.
That is difficult, however, in a "politically correct" environment, especially when there is an instinctual background to protect women. Men have all their emotional eggs in the basket of women. They fear female withdrawal. The enormous fear that men need to confront in order to say these types of things is the fear of withdrawal of the affection of some women. The degree to which the mythopoetic men’s movement hesitates to enter into this arena, is the degree to which they need to ask themselves the question "Am I staying with myth and poetry for fear of receiving the female withdrawal of approval that will come if I speak of these everyday, nitty-gritty issues that deal with what’s really going on between us at home?" That would be the shadow side of the mythopoetic movement, and that would be the next level of growth to confront. Now, this is not mean that every person that is involved in myth, poetry and internal work has these fears. But it does mean that everyone needs to check out whether there’s a part of them that fears entering into this arena. The only person who can answer that question is the individual.
Bert: You say in your book that if men are not being heard, it may not be that women are closed to hearing them, but that men are not speaking out.
Warren: Yes, there’s only one phrase that I repeat three times in the book, and that’s that women cannot hear what men do not say. The first job of men is to do the reading and do the homework, to find out what their side of the story is. What’s been left out for the past twenty-five years? The second job is to discuss this openly, lovingly and supportingly with other men. To see how it's affecting our everyday lives, our lives with our fathers, and our job choices. The third job is to confront the part of us that fears mentioning these things to women, for fear that they will respond negatively to us. And then the next step is getting the courage to do it, risking that rejection, and weeding out women who can’t hear us. Then the last step is listening, in return. Listening as lovingly to women’s responses as we wanted them to listen to our appealings.
Bert: That feeds into a problem in the book Women Respond to the Men’s Movement. The women authors had a tendency to say, "I’m wounded, but you’re not," or "my wound is worse than your wound." As opposed to acknowledging each other’s wounds.
Warren: Precisely. And understanding that each other’s wounds were our parents’ and our grandparents’ wounds, and that they didn’t even have the luxury of questioning these things. Our ability to call these things wounds is part of our privilege. That’s the first sign of freedom. The group that is most free is the group that will talk the most about wounds, the most about depression. The group that is the most survival-focused and most imprisoned doesn’t have the opportunity to afford a psychologist to talk about what’s going on inside. That’s where men are at, and where poor people are at.
Bert: That’s like the point in your book that we’ve done a wonderful job of taking women from stage 1 survival to stage 2 self-fulfillment, and worried less about men being able to reach stage 2.
Warren: Yes, exactly, what I’m saying successful men have played an important role in freeing women, but forgot to free themselves in the process.
Bert: Sometimes there is the tendency to view men as the source of the problem and women as the source of the problem. There has been the talk of the Goddess culture prior to patriarchy, but there’s a dark side of the Goddess, a Goddess of slaying and death as well as of new life.
Warren: All of history was focused on survival issues prior to recently, whether there was a God or Goddess culture. There is one difference: many of the Goddess cultures arose in cultures like Crete, Tahiti or central Malaysia, where there was adequate food, adequate water, and no fear of attack. The survival needs were taken care of, so you didn’t need men to do the protecting.
Bert: They are, in effect, the precursor of the stage 2 culture that you are talking about creating, where the survival needs are met and both men and women are free to focus on self-fulfillment.
Warren: Exactly. There were exceptions to the rule. When you had a fear of attack, or needed food or water, and had to go get somebody else’s, that’s when you got the men to do the killing and the protecting. But men had to often seek killer and protector gods. And the reasons that these were male gods is that they symbolized the male role of protecting.
When we have women saying that men cause war, it would be like saying that women cause juvenile delinquency. That would be missing the fact that we assigned women to bring up children, and we assigned men to play the role of warrior and protector, from the age of age of three or four. They didn’t make a choice to do that; that was simply their role.
The beautiful princess never fell in love with the Conscientious Objector. She always fell in love with some form of provider or the other, the prince or the warrior. And the warrior killed. So, basically, women defined love as falling in love with men who killed.
Bert: And men knew what it took to get the eye of the woman they wanted.
Warren: That’s true whether you’re talking about Africa or the United States, and whether you’re talking about birds or elephant seals. That’s why in the woods the beautiful bird will be the male bird. The predator will see the colorful male bird and satisfy its appetite by eating it, then leave the female alone because it’s full.
That’s why I call men the disposable sex. Our jobs were to make ourselves disposable, so women and children in the community would be protected. That’s why the word "hero" comes from the words for servant, slave and protector.
Bert: Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers?
Warren: Perhaps that it’s time for us men to understand why issues like sexual harassment and date rape are sexist framings of deeper issues, of how males and females have played out the sexual games. We need understanding of that from both sides in order to understand how we can most constructively change our male-female sexual games, find ways of coming together, and eliminate the destructive dimensions of both of those games.

http://www.menweb.org/farreliv.htm

Tyrael · #4 19th-October-2008

Hm interesting. I glossed over it and I wonder what is the essential reason that he calls "male power a myth".

Male power is not a myth in the sense that it does not exist or never existed. Men dragged humanity out of the bushes into advanced civilized societies, created by men with their bare hands. Males made it possible for humans to evolve otherwise we'd have stayed a basic biological creature.

How then can male power be a myth? Or does he refer to the recent history situation where the government and co. give men the short end of the stick?

What should we do with this information? Make it a sticky, merge, move the thread?

Feckless · #5 19th-October-2008

He is talking about our situation today. As in feminist say we live in a patriarchy which Warren Farrel debunks in this book.

Tyrael · #6 20th-October-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feckless

He is talking about our situation today. As in feminist say we live in a patriarchy which Warren Farrel debunks in this book.

Ah okay thanks for explaining. That makes sense. This applies to virtually all western countries. Not just america.

Marx · #7 20th-October-2008

Books directory would be a good place

**Percy** · #8 20th-October-2008

It sounds as though you haven't read the book, Tyrael. In it he dissects all aspects of what male 'power' is considered to be, but particularly in relation to women.

Timocrat · #9 20th-October-2008

Read and have his book. As he says in his book he was as we call them today a pink shirted "this is what a feminist looks like" Mangina before he changed sides. It is good to have such men change sides, as they show what's under the make up and all of the other side. Yet he can be no leader for the movement, as a former facist or communist could never be allowed to lead all those men who weren't never dooped and pussy-whipped into doing what their mommies and girlfriends told them!

**Percy** · #10 20th-October-2008

I don't agree with that last part, Timo. People who change sides like that can become very effective leaders. Look at St Paul.

Armies since the dawn of time have sought those who were once the enemy and welcomed them into the fold when they 'saw the light'. A chap like Farrell had already shown leadership qualities in NOW and those qualities are transferrable to our context. He has done more for the MRM than most.

Timocrat · #11 20th-October-2008

You have the right to follow former members of the other side Percy, just as I can choose not to and prefer the harder elements on our side that were never on the other side.

As for St. Paul I'm in fact one of those who believes that man should still be called Saul, and prefer the ideas of James and Jesus over Saul and his distortions. If the Romans hadn't killed off the other school of thought we might not have so many "sin a lot repent a lot" Christians leading us today, as that ends up with so many women fitting that bill and dominating the churches to the exclusion of all those inflexible men who don't want to change the word of "God."

Many scholars believe that is what Saul did. The easiest example is "eating the body of the Christ". This is a pure pagan belief (like from the Cybele & Attic Goddess religion) which funny enough was from Sauls's hometown and region and allowed him to convert many. Stealing holidays from the pagans to get them to belong is pure "end justicfy the means" which we have locked horns on, but at least this doesn't forfit the ideas of Jesus/God as spoken, but to do as Saul and change Christian principles and beliefs to win convert is of the like we see today in Earth Mother Cults.

The other school of thought said you must leave your old ways behind for real! You can make mistakes( we are all imperfect, yes), but if you go back wholesale to bad ways again you were done and shun. You can go back on your rebirth to be rebirth again and again, like Hollywood types. Theology is not fashion to be taken up sometimes when it is easy, or changed to fit a fashion as women in the church do al the time these days.

James and Jesus were better men than Saul the killer of Christians and the ideas of Christians. Saul was all ambition, and once you see that you will see the ends justify the means in his sales pitch to the Goddess worshipers of his home region. You best find another example with me for Saul will hurt your rebirth leader argument with me.

Tyrael · #12 20th-October-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marx

Books directory would be a good place

Not a lot of people use the books directory. Maybe it should be in facts & figures.

shaazam · #13 20th-October-2008

I say male power comes from their creative inventiveness and ability to organise circumstances

what have wimmin ever invented !

they excel in complaining and bad grace

and want to jump on the gravy train created by men

me too !!

they holler

any young man reading excerpts from the turgid load of tripe above about the "myth"

should condider whether they ever want to sign the feminit peonage contract

the victory cry of feminits after successful attempts of emasculation

¡Le partimos los cojones!

to bad they miscued at Duke Lacrosse which was an object lesson for men on how despicable and base wimmin can be

**bachelor tom** · #14 20th-October-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timocrat

You have the right to follow former members of the other side Percy, just as I can choose not to and prefer the harder elements on our side that were never on the other side.

As for St. Paul I'm in fact one of those who believes that man should still be called Saul, and prefer the ideas of James and Jesus over Saul and his distortions. If the Romans hadn't killed off the other school of thought we might not have so many "sin a lot repent a lot" Christians leading us today, as that ends up with so many women fitting that bill and dominating the churches to the exclusion of all those inflexible men who don't want to change the word of "God."

Many scholars believe that is what Saul did. The easiest example is "eating the body of the Christ". This is a pure pagan belief (like from the Cybele & Attic Goddess religion) which funny enough was from Saul's hometown and region and allowed him to convert many. Stealing holidays from the pagans to get them to belong is pure "end justisfy the means" which we have locked horns on, but at least this doesn't forfeit the ideas of Jesus/God as spoken, but to do as Saul and change Christian principles and beliefs to win convert is of the like we see today in Earth Mother Cults.

The other school of thought said you must leave your old ways behind for real! You can make mistakes (we are all imperfect, yes), but if you go back wholesale to bad ways again you were done and shun. You can go back on your rebirth to be rebirth again and again, like Hollywood types. Theology is not fashion to be taken up sometimes when it is easy, or changed to fit a fashion as women in the church do al the time these days.

James and Jesus were better men than Saul the killer of Christians and the ideas of Christians. Saul was all ambition, and once you see that you will see the ends justify the means in his sales pitch to the Goddess worshipers of his home region. You best find another example with me for Saul will hurt your rebirth leader argument with me.

I work with a woman who saw Mel Gibson's Passion five times, which makes me wonder about how much some women enjoy seeing a man suffer.

Jesus is anti-macho: he accepts arrest, torture and execution with complete passivity in spite of his innocence. Maybe this was the end state of Old Testament psychology, the Suffering Servant martyr-complex. Judea self-destructed after two hopeless revolts against Rome, complete with suicidal terrorists and assassins.

James and the others were apocalypticists, but pacifist, as compared with the Zealots who were apocalyptic and violent. Like Paul, they all expected the Day of the Lord imminently. Their teaching was meant to be interim, not permanent. Whether Paul learned ideas from Syria or Asia Minor or Samaria, he didn't expect the movement to last long, certainly not centuries.

Once their generation was gone the failed apocalyptic message morphed into gnosticism and Catholicism, ie escapism and institutionalism.

Tyrael · #15 27th-October-2008

The core problem is that Men's Issues are not Institutionalized yet, while women's issues are. Men need to appoint a representative for men.

Also need to make the government stop fulfilling husband roles.

Warren Farrell makes some excellent points with 10 tips on how to fix the situation. Two most important are:

9. a commission on the status of men and men's health;
10. restraining the Government-as-Substitute-Husband

Quote:

Farrell's "Top Ten Social Solutions with Budget Saving Results" that he claims transcend Democratic and Republican Party lines:
1. a men's birth control pill and a paternity fraud bill;
2. universal prenatal care;
3. listening skills taught from first grade, with simultaneous retraining of parents;
4. equal father and mother involvement, especially if there is divorce;
5. more male teachers;
6. stressing female empowerment rather than victim power;
7. keeping taxes on businesses low;
8. schools that are friendlier to boys;
9. a commission on the status of men and men's health;
10. restraining the Government-as-Substitute-Husband.
(From Farrell's campaign statement)

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