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Warren Farrell | |
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Born | Warren Thomas Farrell June 26, 1943 Queens, New York, U.S. |
Occupation | Author |
Alma mater | NYU, UCLA, Montclair State University |
Period | Contemporary |
Genre | Psychological, social, political |
Subject | Men's/women's/fathers' issues, gender, couples' communication, child custody, boy crisis |
Literary movement | Women's movement men's movement fathers' movement |
Spouse | Ursula Farrell (divorced) Liz Dowling (2002–present) |
Children | 2 stepdaughters |
Website | |
warrenfarrell |
Warren Thomas Farrell (born June 26, 1943) is an American political scientist, 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 but has since become a leading figure of the men's rights movement. [1] [2] [3] He served on the New York City Board of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Farrell advocates for "a gender liberation movement", with "both sexes walking a mile in each other's moccasins". [4]
His books cover history, law, sociology and politics ( The Myth of Male Power ); [5] couples' communication (Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, [6] and Father and Child Reunion); [7] economic and career issues (Why Men Earn More); [8] child psychology and child custody (Father and Child Reunion); and teenage to adult psychology and socialization ( Why Men Are The Way They Are , [9] The Liberated Man [10] and Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men). [11] All of his books are related to men's and women's studies, including his March 2018 publication The Boy Crisis. [12]
Farrell was born in 1943. He is the eldest of three children born to an accountant father and housewife mother. [13] He grew up in New Jersey. [13] Farrell graduated from Midland Park High School in New Jersey in 1961. [14]
Farrell received a B.A. from Montclair State University in social sciences in 1965. [15] As a college student, Farrell was a national vice-president of the Student-National Education Association, leading President Lyndon B. Johnson to invite him to the White House Conference on Education. [16] [17]
In 1966, he received an M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in political science [15] and in 1974 a Ph.D. in the same discipline from New York University. [15] He was an assistant to the president of New York University. [18]
Farrell has taught university level courses in five disciplines (psychology; women's studies; sociology; political science; gender and parenting issues). These were at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego; the California School of Professional Psychology; in the Department of Women's Studies at San Diego State; at Brooklyn College; Georgetown University; American University, and Rutgers. [7]
When the second wave of the women's movement evolved in the late 1960s, Farrell's support of it led the National Organization for Women's New York City chapter to ask him to form a men's group. The response to that group led to his ultimately forming some 300 additional men and women's groups and becoming the only man to be elected three times to the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in N.Y.C. (1971–74). [10] In 1974, Farrell left N.O.W. in N.Y.C. and his teaching at Rutgers when his wife became a White House Fellow and he moved with her to D.C. [10] They subsequently divorced. [19]
During his feminist period, Farrell wrote op-eds for The New York Times and appeared frequently on the Today show and The Phil Donahue Show , and was featured in People, Parade and the international media. This, and his women and men's groups, one of which had been joined by John Lennon, inspired The Liberated Man. [10] The Liberated Man was written from a feminist perspective, introducing alternative family and work arrangements that could better accommodate working women and encourage care-giving men. The Liberated Man was the beginning of Farrell's development of parallels for men to the female experience: for example, to women's experience as "sex objects", Farrell labeled men's parallel experience as "success objects." [10]
As a speaker, Farrell was known for creating audience participation role-reversal experiences to get both sexes "to walk a mile in the other's moccasins." The most publicized were his "men's beauty contest" and "role-reversal date." [20] In the men's beauty contest, all the men are invited to experience "the beauty contest of everyday life that no woman can escape." In the "role-reversal date" every woman was encouraged to "risk a few of the 150 risks of rejection men typically experience between eye contact and intercourse." [21]
In a 1997 interview, Farrell stated: "Everything went well until the mid-seventies when NOW came out against the presumption of joint custody. I couldn't believe the people I thought were pioneers in equality were saying that women should have the first option to have children or not to have children — that children should not have equal rights to their dad." [22]
Farrell's books each contain personal introductions that describe his perspective on how aspects of public consciousness and his own personal development led to the book. By the mid-1980s, Farrell was writing that both the role-reversal exercises and the women and men's groups allowed him to hear women's increasing anger toward men, and also learn about men's feelings of being misrepresented. [23] He wrote Why Men Are The Way They Are [9] to answer women's questions about men in a way he hoped rang true for the men.
He distinguished between what he believed to be each sex's primary fantasies and primary needs, stating that "both sexes fell in love with members of the other sex who are the least capable of loving: women with men who are successful; men with women who are young and beautiful." [24] [25] He asserts that women feel disappointed because, "the qualities it takes to be successful at work are often in tension with the qualities it takes to be successful in love." Similarly he asserts that men feel disappointed because, "a young and beautiful woman ('genetic celebrity') often learns more about receiving, not giving, while older and less-attractive women often learn more about giving and doing for others, which is more compatible with love." [9] Due partially to Oprah Winfrey's support, Why Men Are the Way They Are became his bestselling book.[ citation needed ]
In 1993, Farrell wrote The Myth of Male Power, in which he argued that the widespread perception of men having inordinate social and economic power is false, and that men are systematically disadvantaged in many ways. The book became a foundational text of the Men's Rights Movement, and made Farrell one of its leading figures. [1] [26] [2]
The Myth of Male Power was ardently challenged by some academic feminists, whose critique is that men earn more money, and that money is power. Farrell concurs that men earn more money, and that money is one form of power. However, Farrell also adds that "men often feel obligated to earn money someone else spends while they die sooner—and feeling obligated is not power." [5] This perspective was to be more fully developed in Farrell's Why Men Earn More. [8]
Susan Faludi argued that Farrell had effectively recanted his original position as part of a generalized backlash against feminism. [27]
The increase in divorces in the 1980s and 1990s turned Farrell's writing toward two issues: the poverty of couples' communication [6] and children's loss of their father in child custody cases. [7]
In Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, [6] Farrell asserts that couples often fail to use couples' communication outside of counseling if the person receiving criticism does not know how to make her or himself feel safe. Farrell develops a method called "Cinematic Immersion" to create that safety and overcome what he posits is humans' biological propensity to respond defensively to personal criticism. [6] [28]
To address children's loss of their father in child custody cases, Farrell wrote Father and Child Reunion, [7] a meta-analysis of research about what is the optimal family arrangement for children of divorce. Father and Child Reunion's findings include some 26 ways in which children of divorce do better when three conditions prevail: equally-shared parenting (or joint custody); close parental proximity; and no bad-mouthing. [7] His research for Father and Child Reunion provided the basis for his frequently appearing in the first decade of the 21st Century as an expert witness in child custody cases on the balance between mothers' and fathers' rights needed to create the optimal family arrangement for children of divorce.
By the start of the 21st century, Farrell felt he had re-examined every substantial adult male-female issue except the pay gap (i.e., that men as a group tend to earn more money than women as a group). [8] In Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It, [8] he documents 25 differences in men and women's work-life choices which, he argues, account for most or all of the pay gap more accurately than did claims of widespread discrimination against women. Farrell writes that men chose to earn more money, while each of women's choices prioritized having a more balanced life. These 25 differences allowed Farrell to offer women 25 ways to higher pay—and accompany each with their possible trade-offs. [8] The trade-offs include working more hours and for more years; taking technical or more hazardous jobs; relocating overseas or traveling overnight. [8] This led to considerable praise for Why Men Earn More as a career book for women. [29]
Some of Farrell's findings in Why Men Earn More include his analysis of census bureau data that never-married women without children earn 13% more than their male counterparts, and that the gender pay gap is largely about married men with children who earn more due to their assuming more workplace obligations.
Themes woven throughout Why Men Earn More are the importance of assessing trade-offs; that "the road to high pay is a toll road;" the "Pay Paradox" (that "pay is about the power we forfeit to get the power of pay"); and, since men earn more, and women have more balanced lives, that men have more to learn from women than women do from men. [8]
Farrell's book, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?, published in 2008, [11] is a debate book with feminist co-author James P. Sterba. Farrell felt gender studies in universities rarely incorporated the masculine gender except to demonize it. This book was Farrell's attempt to test whether a positive perspective about men would be allowed to be incorporated into universities' gender studies curriculum even if there were a feminist rebuttal. [11] Farrell and Sterba debated 13 topics, from children's and fathers' rights, to the "Boy Crisis."
Early critiques in the New York Times Book Review by Larry McMurtry and John Leonard included disdain for Farrell's use of gender neutral language in The Liberated Man. [30] More recently, conservative and antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly labeled Farrell a "feminist apologist", though praises his research for Father and Child Reunion. [31] Kate Zernike of The Boston Globe refers to Farrell as "the sage of the men's movement", [32] and the description of him as the "Gloria Steinem of men's liberation" [33] by Carol Kleiman of the Chicago Tribune . Esquire ranked Farrell, Thomas Aquinas, and John Stuart Mill as three of history's leading male feminists. [34]
Farrell's collaborations with Ken Wilber, [35] [36] John Gray, [37] and Richard Bolles [38] have introduced his messages to more diverse and receptive audiences.
Farrell's advocacy for boys and men's issues is often criticized in the media as making him 'a leading figure of the men's rights movement'; GQ calls Farrell "The Martin Luther King of the men's movement." [39]
Farrell married Ursula (Ursie), a mathematician and IBM executive, in the 1960s. After 10 years of marriage, in 1976, he and Ursie separated and subsequently divorced. [19] [40] After what Farrell described as "twenty years of adventuresome single-hood", he married Liz Dowling in August 2002. [14] He has two step-daughters. [14] They live in Mill Valley, California. [41]
Farrell backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. [42]
During the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, Farrell ran as a Democratic candidate, [15] on a platform of fathers' rights, [43] and received 626 votes. [44] Farrell's current foci are conducting communication workshops, [45] being an expert witness [46] in child custody cases [45] and researching a forthcoming book (working title The Boy Crisis), to be co-authored with John Gray. In 2010–11, he keynoted, along with Deepak Chopra, a world conference on spirituality (the Integral Spiritual Experience), [47] addressing the evolution of love. He was then invited by the Center for World Spirituality to be one of their world leaders. [48] Farrell speaks frequently on boys, men's and gender issues, including doing a keynote in 2016 for UK Male Psychology Conference. [49]
In 2009, a call from the White House requesting Farrell to be an advisor to the White House Council on Women and Girls led to Farrell creating and chairing a commission to create a White House Council on Boys and Men. The multi-partisan commission consists of thirty-five authors and practitioners (e.g., John Gray, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Michael Gurian, Michael Thompson, Bill Pollack, Leonard Sax) of boys' and men's issues. They have completed a study that defines five components to a "boys' crisis," which was submitted as a proposal for President Obama to create a White House Council on Boys and Men. [50] In April 2015, the coalition went to Iowa to discuss their position with 2016 U.S. presidential candidates. [51]
Farrell appeared in Cassie Jaye's 2016 documentary film about the men's rights movement, The Red Pill . [52]
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern societies are patriarchal—they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.
Misandry is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men or boys.
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
The men's rights movement (MRM) is a branch of the men's movement. The MRM in particular consists of a variety of groups and individuals who focus on general social issues and specific government services which they say adversely impact, or in some cases, structurally discriminate against, men and boys. Common topics discussed within the men's rights movement include family law, reproduction, suicides, domestic violence against men, false accusations of rape, circumcision, education, conscription, social safety nets, and health policies. The men's rights movement branched off from the men's liberation movement in the early 1970s, with both groups comprising a part of the larger men's movement.
The fathers' rights movement is a social movement whose members are primarily interested in issues related to family law, including child custody and child support, that affect fathers and their children. Many of its members are fathers who desire to share the parenting of their children equally with their children's mothers—either after divorce or marital separation. The movement includes men as well as women, often the second wives of divorced fathers or other family members of men who have had some engagement with family law. Most Fathers' rights advocates argue for formal gender equality.
Equality feminism is a subset of the overall feminism movement and more specifically of the liberal feminist tradition that focuses on the basic similarities between men and women, and whose ultimate goal is the equality of both genders in all domains. This includes economic and political equality, equal access within the workplace, freedom from oppressive gender stereotyping, and an androgynous worldview.
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism and a founding member of three radical-feminist groups: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists. Within these radical movements, Firestone became known as "the firebrand" and "the fireball" for the fervor and passion she expressed towards the cause. Firestone participated in activism such as speaking out at The National Conference for New Politics in Chicago. Also while a member of various feminist groups she participated in actions including protesting a Miss America Contest, organizing a mock funeral for womanhood known as "The Burial of Traditional Womanhood", protesting sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden, organizing abortion speakouts, and disrupting abortion legislation meetings.
Nancy Julia Chodorow is an American sociologist and professor. She began her career as a professor of Women's Studies at Wellesley College in 1973, and from 1974 on taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, until 1986. She then was a professor in the departments of Sociology and Clinical Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley until she resigned in 1986, after which she taught psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance. Chodorow is often described as a leader in feminist thought, especially in the realms of psychoanalysis and psychology.
Feminist sociology is an interdisciplinary exploration of gender and power throughout society. Here, it uses conflict theory and theoretical perspectives to observe gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within social structures at large. Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality.
The men's movement is a social movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily in Western countries, which consists of groups and organizations of men and their allies who focus on gender issues and whose activities range from self-help and support to lobbying and activism.
Since the 19th century, men have taken part in significant cultural and political responses to feminism within each "wave" of the movement. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in a range of social relations, generally done through a "strategic leveraging" of male privilege. Feminist men have also argued alongside writers like bell hooks, however, that men's liberation from the socio-cultural constraints of sexism and gender roles is a necessary part of feminist activism and scholarship.
The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the Disposable Sex is a 1993 book by Warren Farrell, in which the author argues that the widespread perception of men having inordinate social and economic power is false, and that men are systematically disadvantaged in many ways.
Masculism or masculinism may variously refer to ideologies and socio-political movements that seek to eliminate sexism against men, or increase adherence to or promotion of attributes regarded as typical of males. The terms may also refer to the men's rights movement or men's movement, as well as a type of antifeminism.
The feminist movement has affected change in Western society, including women's suffrage; greater access to education; more equitable pay with men; the right to initiate divorce proceedings; the right of women to make individual decisions regarding pregnancy ; and the right to own property.
Feminism is one theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, even though many feminist movements and ideologies differ on exactly which claims and strategies are vital and justifiable to achieve equality.
Feminist views on sexuality widely vary. Many feminists, particularly radical feminists, are highly critical of what they see as sexual objectification and sexual exploitation in the media and society. Radical feminists are often opposed to the sex industry, including opposition to prostitution and pornography. Other feminists define themselves as sex-positive feminists and believe that a wide variety of expressions of female sexuality can be empowering to women when they are freely chosen. Some feminists support efforts to reform the sex industry to become less sexist, such as the feminist pornography movement.
A honey badger, or less often FeMRA, is a nickname for a woman who publicly advocates for men’s rights, particularly one who also criticizes feminism. They are said to be among the most prominent men's rights activists and to provide breadth and legitimacy to the movement, as men may be more easily criticized as advocating only for their own interests.
Both sexes are biologically programmed to fall in love with the members of the opposite sex who are the least capable of loving. Men fall in love with women who are young and therefore less mature in their relationship skills, and beautiful, which usually means men compete to take care of them; women fall in love with men who are successful without realizing that many of the qualities it takes to be successful at work are inversely related to what it takes to be successful in love.
I would give this book to every female career-chooser or career-changer on the planet.
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