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Warren Farrell Quotes
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Warren Thomas Farrell is an American educator, activist and author of seven books on men's and women's issues.

Farrell initially came to prominence in the 1970s as a supporter of second wave feminism; he served on the New York City Board of the National Organization for Women . Although today he is generally considered "the father of the men's movement", he advocates that "there should be neither a women's movement blaming men, nor a men's movement blaming women, but a gender liberation movement freeing both sexes from the rigid roles of the past toward more flexible roles for their future."His books cover history, law, sociology and politics ; couples' communication ; economic and career issues ; child psychology and child custody ; and teenage to adult psychology and socialization . All of his books are related to men's and women's studies, including his March 2018 publication The Boy Crisis. Wikipedia  

✵ 26. June 1943
Warren Farrell photo
Warren Farrell: 467 quotes15 likes

Warren Farrell Quotes

“When divorces meant marriage no longer provided security for a lifetime, women adjusted by focusing on careers as empowerment. But when the sacrifice of a career met the sacrifices in a career, the fantasy of a career became the reality of trade-offs. Women developed career ambivalence.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 101.

“Women are socialized to take advantage of four informal options for emotional support: husbands; womenfriends; children; and parents. Men are socialized to take advantage of only one of these informal options: their wife or womanfriend.”

Warren Farrell

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

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

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 297.

“Life After Hate groups have successfully reversed the hatred of thousands and replaced it with empathy, love, and self-forgiveness. If the haters can learn empathy, maybe we can learn empathy toward the haters. When our only response to haters is to hate, we increase our brain’s training to hate and decrease its training to empathize. We become a bit of the enemy we hate.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 32.

“When women are at the height of their beauty power and exercise it, we call it marriage. When men are at the height of their success power and exercise it, we call it a mid-life crisis.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 103.

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

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 228.

“Helping women achieve higher pay is a core goal of this book.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. xvii.

“The 'enduring theme' [in fiction] of male competition and female competition for the hero/survivor has taken us from the fittest surviving to the brink of no one surviving. Sex roles have gone from functional to dysfunctional almost overnight. This is why the enduring theme must be questioned now.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 91.

“People Who Get Higher Pay Require Less Security. ITEM. It's 2004. I am presenting Why Men Earn More to the sales and marketing teams of my publisher (AMACOM). To illustrate financial risk as one of the ways to higher pay, I ask everyone in the room who is paid by commission to stand up. Eight men stand; no women. I then ask those paid by salary to stand: About equal numbers of men and women stand.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 107.

“Industrialization created the “Father’s Catch-22”: a dad loving his children by being away from the love of his children.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 88.

“For the first time in human history the psychology that is a prerequisite for intimacy has become the psychology that is a prerequisite for species survival.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 371.

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

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 295.

“Were we to still be circumcising the hood of the female clitoris, we would not have difficulty considering this a continuation of our tradition to keep girls sexually repressed. America’s reflexive continuation of [male] circumcision-without-research reflects the continuation of our tradition to desensitize boys to feelings of pain, to prepare them to question the disposability of their bodies no more than they would question the disposability of their foreskins.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 223.

“Who causes war? War is caused by our primal fear of not surviving. This is a two-sex fear. And because the fear is so primal, we are easily seduced into exaggerating the evil intent of anyone [who] might threaten our survival. Why? One mistake of underestimating a threat could leave everyone wiped out; many mistakes of overestimating would just leave men wiped out.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 142.

“It never occurs to most of us at a moment of disagreement with our partner to take the time to appreciate our partner’s positive character strengths as reflected in a stance we disagree with. When we do that, it allows our partner to know that no matter which decision she or he makes, our trust in their underlying character is never in question. It turns every disagreement into a potential gift of love.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 33.

“By giving women training to sue a company for a ‘hostile environment’ if someone tells a dirty joke, we are training women to run to the Government as Substitute Husband (or Father). This gets companies to fear women, but not to respect women. The best preparation we can give women to succeed in the workplace is the preparation to overcome barriers rather than to sue: successful people don’t sue, they succeed.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 351.

“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.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 311.

“There are many ways in which a woman experiences a greater sense of powerlessness than her male counterpart: the fears of pregnancy, aging, rape, date rape, and being physically overpowered; less socialization to take a career that pays enough to support a husband and children[…] Fortunately, almost all industrialized nations have acknowledged these female experiences. Unfortunately, they have acknowledged only the female experience.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 28.

“Social policy that reunites father and child must always confront itself with the question, “Are we paying dads to stay, or to go away?” If a single mother receives more money when the father isn’t around than when he is around, there will be fewer fathers around. The government will become her substitute husband.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 245.

“On a deeper level, if our sons are learning they are obscene, disgusting, and untrustworthy, is this the best preparation for fatherhood? And is it the best preparation for becoming a mother -- to feel this way about her son?”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 98.

“The worst aspect of dating from the perspective of many men is how dating can feel to a man like robbery by social custom – the social custom of him taking money out of his pocket, giving it to her, and calling it a date. To a young man, the worst dates feel like being robbed and rejected. Boys risk death to avoid rejection”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

e.g., by joining the Army
Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 314.

“In brief, we do more research on men in prison, men in the military, and men in general than we do on women for the same reason we do more research on rats than we do on humans.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 189.

“He gets sex, she gets sex; if that is considered unequal, no wonder men are afraid of commitment.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 240.

“We have restricted humans from giving ‘free’ food to bears and dolphins because we know that such feeding would make them dependent and lead to their extinction. But when it comes to our own species, we have difficulty seeing the connection between short-term kindness and long-term cruelty; we give women money to have more children, making them more dependent with each child and discouraging them from developing the tools to fend for themselves. The real discrimination against women, then, is ‘free feeding’.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 346.

“By attending to the conscious part of ourselves, we contribute to the peace of others as well as ourselves.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Interview by Jonathan Robinson (1994), p. 134.

“When a government requires a man to support a child he was tricked into creating, that government subsidizes fraud. No. It is worse than that: It subsidizes the woman using a man’s body for 18-21 years without his consent.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 143.

“Male Message 1 is subconsciously experienced by the boy like this: ‘Some girls in my class already look like movie stars. If they wanted me as much as I want them, then I’d know I was okay. They are genetic celebrities. I am a genetic groupie.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 111.

“All societies that have survived have survived based on their ability to prepare their sons to be disposable, in war and at work--and therefore as dads.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Part I.
The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power

“Blacks are six times more likely than whites to be victims of homicides.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 214.

“Humans have spent (10k+) years learning to fight and debate with the other side, and almost no time learning to listen and empathize.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 18.

“To me, God is the accumulated wisdom I've gathered throughout my life. When I pay attention, my body gives me a printout of this wisdom.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Interview by Jonathan Robinson (1994), p. 183.

“Becoming a human doing was exactly what society needed. But for an individual man, becoming a human doing was his undoing.”

Warren Farrell

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

“The worst form anger can take is that of a parent who feels her or his chance for “winning my child” is enhanced by “ruining my ex.” The law has given the most vindictive parent an invitation to play the “abuse” card. This is the “Great Temptation.””

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 199.

“The corporate Catch-22: Don't be flexible, lose good women; be flexible, lose good women… A company listening to women's desires for [flexibility and therefore] fewer promotions, giving fewer promotions to women, and then being sued for giving fewer promotions to women. Yiddish has a word for this: chutzpah.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 111-12.

“A man fears that conflict with his wife will lead to less intimacy, not more intimacy.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 17.

“If a female employee is offended, a boss would like her to tell him, not sue him.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 294.

“There are 25 differences in the way women and men behave in the workplace. These 25 differences lead to men receiving higher pay and women having better lives—or at least more balanced lives.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. xvii.

“Imagine how we would feel if I began this section saying, Today, violence against women is rightly applauded. We would know I favored the death of women; when we applaud for violence against men, we favor the death of men. We do it because we have learned that the more effectively we prepare men to sacrifice themselves, the more we are protected.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 76.

“Any guy who’s played team sports has practiced a skill I call “team sport empathy”: he’s practiced focusing on anticipating the other team’s moves. That means figuring out their way of looking at the situation.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 32.

“Unemployment to a man is the psychological equivalent of rape to a woman.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 172.

“Men are likely to be not only the warriors of war but also the warriors of peace. Almost all those who risk their lives, are put in jail, or are killed for peace are men. While some of the peace warriors—Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold—are remembered, most are forgotten. Remember Norm Morrison? After years of protesting the Vietnam war, Norm doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire on the steps of the Pentagon[…] But Norm Morrison is forgotten.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 153.

“Male-female fusion does not create women’s rights. It creates a fusion of rights.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 132.

“In brief, our genetic heritage is at odds with our genetic future. For the first time in human history, the qualities it takes to survive as a species are compatible with the qualities it takes to love.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 65.

“A paucity of funding from private and government sources would be much less a problem if billions of dollars each year were not funding feminist perspectives on men. This funding leads to Women’s Studies without Men’s Studies; to studies about deadbeat dads, but not dead broke or dead-ended dads -- or moms who deny dads access to children, or make false accusations to obtain children.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 240.

“The Ms. survey can call it a rape; a relationship counselor will call it a relationship.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 338.

“Sexual harassment legislation in its present form makes all men unequal to all women.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 288.

“Male makeup is men’s titles, status and paying for dates. Makeup is what both sexes use to bridge the gap between the power they have and the power they’d like to have. Both male and female makeup are compensations for feelings of powerlessness.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 215.

“Sex role training becomes divorce training.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 136.

“Women's scars and rituals involved beauty (piercing ears and noses, binding feet, and wearing corsets); men's involved protecting women. In cultures in which physical strength is still the best way to protect women, as among the Dodos in Uganda, each time a man kills a man, he is awarded a ritual scar; the more scars, the more he is considered eligible.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 72.

“In the future, women will increasingly want men who can nurture them and connect with them.”

Warren Farrell

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)