In Case You Missed It…
This is the latest in my quotes collection series. Check out the full collection here.
In this installment, we’ll explore the work of Warren Farrell, a thinker whose career has been as controversial as it is influential. Once a rising star in the feminist movement - he was elected three times to the board of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in New York - Farrell gradually came to believe that feminism, for all its achievements, only told half the story. It amplified women’s grievances but silenced men’s. When he began speaking publicly about men’s issues in the 1980s, he was swiftly cast out of the movement he’d helped lead.
Since then, in books like The Myth of Male Power, Farrell has challenged received wisdom on gender, insisting that both sexes face their own forms of constraint and exploitation.
The 10 quotes below capture the essence of Farrell’s philosophy. You might not always agree with him - I don’t - but he does have a knack for prodding readers to rethink some of their deepest assumptions about men, women, and power.
“I am a men’s liberationist (or ‘masculist’) when men’s liberation is defined as equal opportunity and equal responsibility for both sexes. I am a feminist when feminism favors equal opportunities and responsibilities for both sexes. I oppose both movements when either says ‘our sex is the oppressed sex, therefore, we deserve rights’. That’s not gender liberation but gender entitlement. Ultimately, I am in favor of neither a women’s movement nor a men’s movement but a gender transition movement.”
“I define power as control over ones life. A balanced life is far superior to the male definition of power: earning money someone else spends while he dies sooner.”
“If men are paid more for the same work, why would anyone hire a man?”
“We always look at the ‘Fortune 500,’ and we say, men in power, but we don’t look at the glass cellar as opposed to the glass ceiling and say, men also are the homeless, men are also the ones that are the garbage collectors. Men are also the ones dying in construction sites that aren’t properly supervised for safety hazards.”
“Whether or not the leaders were female or male, almost 100% of the troops they sacrificed in battle were male.”
Enjoying this quotes collection so far? Consider subscribing to The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter for more of the same only different.
“During wartime, experimental drugs were often tried on men. If a drug failed, the man died. But if a drug succeeded, it was used to save both women and men, but without women dying to develop it. Men were similarly used as guinea pigs in the development of emergency procedures, microwave ovens (a man was inadvertently ‘cooked’ during the testing process), and other advances that served both sexes. Later it was labeled sexism that physicians studied men more than women. No one labeled it sexism because men were used as guinea pigs more than women.”
“Women are the only ‘oppressed’ group to share the same parents as the ‘oppressor’; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the ‘oppressor’; to own more of the culture’s luxury items than the ‘oppressor’; the only ‘oppressed’ group whose ‘unpaid labor’ enables them to buy most of the fifty billion dollars’ worth of cosmetics sold each year; the only ‘oppressed’ group that spends more on high fashion, brand-name clothing than their ‘oppressors’; the only ‘oppressed’ group that watches more TV during every time category than their ‘oppressors.’”
“The equivalent of a woman being treated as a sex object is a man being treated as a success object.”
“The low percentage of women in STEM fields is depicted as very troubling, but the fact that males account for only 43% of all college students is not.”
“When a successful woman meets a successful man they appear on the surface to be equals, but if they marry and consider children she almost invariably considers three options. Option one: work full time; option two: mother full time; and option three: some combination of working and mothering. He also considers three slightly different options. Option one: work full time; option two: work full time; and option three: work full time - or even work overtime or two jobs. So we are living in an era of a multi-option women and the no-option man.”
Follow me on Twitter/X for more psychology, evolution, science, and philosophy.
Coming Soon to The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter…
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Theory (check out the rest of the “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series here)
Beyond g: The Genetics of Specific Cognitive Abilities
Some big news about the new book I’m writing, A Billion Years of Sex Differences…
How You Can Support the Newsletter
The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter is read in 158 countries. If you like what I’m doing with the newsletter, and would like to support my work, there are several ways you can do it.
Like and Restack: Click the buttons at the top or bottom of the page to boost the post’s visibility on Substack.
Share: Send the post to friends or share it on social media.
Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: A paid subscription will get you:
If you could do any of the above, I’d be very grateful. The newsletter is growing fast, and I’ve got lots of ideas about how to develop and improve it over the coming months and years. The help of readers like you is what makes this possible.
Thanks!
Steve Stewart-Williams
Related Reading From the Archive
The Other Half
When it comes to gender inequality, the conversation typically runs in one direction. We talk - quite rightly - about the disadvantages women face, from the glass ceiling to sexual harassment. What gets far less attention is that not all gender gaps tilt against women. In some domains, it’s men who are falling behind - and sometimes drastically so.
The Other Half Revisited
Back in April, I published a post titled The Other Half: Six Gender Gaps We Rarely Talk About, which highlighted some underdiscussed disadvantages faced by men. It struck a nerve. Since then, I’ve come across a bunch of new examples - enough to justify a second collection.
When I was in graduate school for mathematics, the fact that men outnumbered women 20 to 1 was not a fact welcomed by us men, or at least the ones who weren't gay.
I don’t want to be THAT woman, femanazi or whatever, but I cringed at a few of these. Seems both sexes have public pundits who exaggerate the grievances.