Excerpts From Myth of Male Power |
Warren Farrell is talking about our situation today. As in feminist say we live in a patriarchy which Warren Farrel debunks in this book.
THE MYTH OF MALE POWER by WARREN FARRELL, Ph.D
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| 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 |
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