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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

“In more than thirty years of conducting workshops, no one has ever said to me, “Warren, I want a divorce – my partner understands me.””

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 15.

“A week after you read this chapter, misandry will become apparent in commercials, in films, in everyday conversations. But the bias that is hardest to see is the bias we share.”

Warren Farrell

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

“Both parents’ rights must be in balance so children can grow up with a balance between both parents.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 126.

“Irony: While we increasingly hold people more responsible if they drink and drive, we hold women less responsible if they drink and have sex.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 320.

“I could be a much better role model by sharing more openly with him my shadow side, my faults, my mistakes, asking him to be my teacher rather than being his.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 120.

“The Female Western is the battle between the good and evil methods of getting the men who perform best.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 73.

“In order to connect and nurture, it is not just helpful to be in touch with feelings, it is necessary. So men’s first job – their next evolutionary strategy – involves being in touch with their feelings.”

Warren Farrell

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

“Gay sex meant two hours of sexual pleasure in exchange for two hours of sexual pleasure. Heterosexual sex meant two hours of sexual pleasure in exchange for a lifetime of responsibility. Heterosexuality was a bad deal! The fear behind homophobia was that no one would be providing for the next generation. Everybody would be having fun. Thus fun became a sign of immaturity; hedonism in many forms became illegal.”

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. 208.

“Teaching children to debate without teaching children to listen is divorce training.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 36.

“When either sex suppresses the expression of feelings, it’s almost always b/c they don’t feel there is a safe environment to express them.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 16.

“ITEM: The Mike Tyson trial. The hotel in which the jury is sequestered goes ablaze. Two firefighters die saving its occupants. The trial of Mike Tyson made us increasingly aware of men-as-rapists. The firefighters' deaths did not make us increasingly aware of men-as-saviors. We were more aware of one man doing harm than of two men saving…”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 36.

“By the mid-’90s, the anger at men had become so palpable that even sedate publications like The Economist were characterizing women’s vs. men’s workload as “A woman’s work is never done; a man is drunk from sun to sun.””

Warren Farrell

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

“After a conflict, women are not only more likely to turn to other womenfriends for support, but are nine times more likely to be with their children should conflict become divorce.”

Warren Farrell

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

“When I was doing a book tour in Japan for Why Men Are The Way They Are, I was told of an institution called the snack. The snack works like this: A man is coming home from work, and has had a bad day. He doesn’t feel that his wife wants to hear about it, so he pays between $50 and $80 for a snack —a sandwich and a drink and an attractive woman who will listen empathetically to him—sort of a beautiful psychologist with refreshments. No men need apply.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 198.

“The most unacknowledged spending expectation among women is the amount of time spent by single mothers caring for children, not only physically, but psychologically. It is my feeling that only a small percentage of a mother’s time is normally compensated for by child support, given what a woman could make adding these hours to workforce hours… It is why women who have never been married and never had children earn so much more in the workplace than women who have had children.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 222.

“Parade magazine announces that 40 million Soviet men were killed between 1914 and 1945. The magazine’s headline reads ‘Short End of the Stick’. Because men died? No. The women were seen as getting the short end of the stick because they were stuck with factory and street-cleaner positions the men weren’t around to do.”

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. 145.

“Only when a woman shares male risks can she really begin to understand men.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 355.

“The best way to use these lists to replace anger with love in real life is to nurture each other by doing for your partner what your partner normally does for you.”

Warren Farrell

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

“Both sexes had an unconscious investment in keeping men from expressing feelings of fear and vulnerability.”

Warren Farrell

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

“When we don't take years of experience into account, it is easy for a woman to become discouraged when she reads headlines such as 'Study of TV News Directors Finds Discrimination Against Women.' When a woman in the mid-1980's read that TV news directors who were women got paid about 27% less than men directors, it might have made her avoid the field… If, on the other hand, a headline more accurately reflecting the study's core findings, read 'Female Managers Become TV News Directors Three Times as Quickly as Men,' well, that would have made a woman feel wanted… In brief, the road to higher pay is a toll road. But at this point in history, there are female tollbooths and male tollbooths, and the toll charged to women is lower. This should encourage every woman who wishes to embark on the road to higher pay to take it while the tolls are still low, and every man who wishes to be with his children--or just wishes to support the career-focused woman he loves--to be aware that there was never a better time to be a great dad and go with your wife's flow.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 85-87.

“Here’s the pay paradox that Why Men Earn More explains: Men earn more money, therefore men have more power; and men earn more money, therefore men have less power (earning more money as an obligation, not an option). The opposite is true for women: Women earn less money, therefore women have less power; and women earn less money, therefore women have more power”

Warren Farrell

the option to raise children, or to not take a hazardous job
Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 11.

“As feminism made this transition from equal opportunity to unequal opportunism, I made my transition from supporter to critic. But in my inner psyche, there was no transition: I went from supporter of equality to supporter of equality.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 167.

“Evenings of paying to be rejected can feel like a male version of date rape.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 314.

“Since 1954, then, approximately 70,000 women have murdered; their victims include about 60,000 men, but, as we saw in the second Item of this chapter, not one woman has been executed after killing only a man. For nearly four decades now, we have become increasingly protective of women and decreasingly protective of men—even if that boy is a legal minor, as was Heath Wilkins.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 244.

“There is virtually no funding to study the validity of the more muted complaints of men: to study when a false accusation is being used as a weapon to keep the children from dad; or when the child is being bad-mouthed by the other parent; or when access to the child is being prevented; or when statistics about deadbeat dads are including men who are dead, unemployed, or denied their children; or when men are victims of domestic violence.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

“When we suggest that men are at the top because men discriminate, we miss the point. Men are at the top of the work hierarchy because work has been primarily men's responsibility.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 150.

“We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, pp. 314-315.

“The hard part (of communication) is hearing criticism so it can be easily given.”

Warren Farrell

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 38.

“The more chauvinist the country, the more it protects women. And therefore the more it limits women. Like the United States, [Italy, Spain, and Denmark] give women options without obligations. These countries are, therefore, still male chauvinist… The degree to which a country is emancipated is the degree to which it frees men from the obligation to protect women and socializes women to equally protect men.”

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. 136.

“Women do not enter a profession in significant numbers until it is physically safe. So until we care enough about men’s safety to turn the death professions into safe professions, we in effect discriminate against women. But when we overprotect women—and only women—it also leads to discrimination against women. …If [an employer works] for a large company for which quotas prevent discrimination, they find themselves increasingly hiring free-lancers rather than taking on a woman and therefore a possible sexual harassment lawsuit…”

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. 121.

“Many black men leave because they are financially responsible--not because they are emotionally irresponsible.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 348.

“Framework, (…)”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part IV: Where do we go from here

“Healed people heal people.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 312

“While recess provides the playground in which bullying may be found, it is also the laboratory for reducing bullying.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 311

“The negative symptoms of the male culture are harnessed by the prescription drug culture.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 310

“Love doesn’t eliminate defensiveness, because love creates vulnerability, and defensiveness is vulnerability’s mask.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 308

“It is exactly this men’s health void that creates your son’s men’s health opportunity.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 300

“Veterans create privilege for all those who have not had to serve.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 290

“In my forty-five years of forming men’s groups, I have never heard of a man who was actively involved in a men’s group being hospitalized for depression, or commit suicide.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 287

“With confidentiality as the key, men’s groups open the door to men opening their hearts.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 286

“There is almost no difference in the percentage of men versus women experiencing depression.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 278

“Suicide is contagious.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 276

“Whether via forced unemployment, retirement, or loss of spouse, men’s response of suicide can just be the killing of what has already been killed.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 276

“The bully who is healed is the best protection for the bullied.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 268

“You can easily feel judged and alone if you are the only one to understand that your son’s anger is the mask of his vulnerability.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 260

“Flag football is so much more about strategy. You can’t ‘take someone out’ with your body, so it’s more about your mind.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 254

“Tackle football is a body-mind sport; flag football is a mind-body sport.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 253

“We teach boys to associate being abused with being loved.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 253

“If a good woman is killed, a man is to blame.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 241

“Even if your son tries to use his power to save a woman, if he fails, that power will implode.”

Warren Farrell

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 241