Warren Farrell on Knowledge

"Whether or not we know our dad, we have a relationship with him. The relationship in our mind is our relationship."

"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."

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

"A key measure of emotional intelligence is knowing that every virtue taken to its extreme becomes a vice."

"For me, the massiveness of what I don’t know is one way I experience God. It creates in me a feeling of humility and a sense of gratitude."

"When we add the devaluation of male values to the demonizing of male sexuality, many boys feel like a pervert before they know who they are."

"The motto for the evolved boy is “When the going gets tough, tune in to know when to tough it out."

"Exercise helps build the muscle of a child’s brain even more effectively than studying."

"Together, we came to understand how we beg men to express feelings, but then when men do express feelings, we call it sexism, male chauvinism, or backlash."

"When men give lines, women learn to not trust men. When women wear makeup, men learn to not trust women. Male lines and female makeup are divorce training."

"Your son learns the “hero paradox”: to value himself by not valuing himself."

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

"A family that knows how to play together has the tools to stay together."

"We do not yet understand that when we neglect men, we rape women."

"Men learn to call pain “glory”; women learn to call the police."

"Empathy for women is an attribute of masculinity. When men play the protector role they are trying to save a woman from grief or pain. If they had no glimpse of her grief or pain, they wouldn’t know when to protect."

"These are the social bribes that, if your son absorbs them before the point where he is old enough and mature enough to understand their purpose, can make your son a slave to the safety of others with little regard for the safety of himself."

"Why do we resist giving help to homeless men? In part because we don’t understand how our pressure on men to support families often forces men to take transient jobs that are but a step away from homelessness and in part because we respond differently to men who fail ."

"umans tend to start the process of change by acknowledging themselves—thus blacks asserted black pride and black is beautiful; women declared I am woman, I am strong ; men are saying I am man, I am okay. After a quarter of a century of male bashing, that’s not a bad start."

"When both sexes are offered pay should they assess the feelings of others accurately, the empathy gender gap disappears! The implication? The capacity for empathy and emotional intelligence is latent inside boys and men; we just have to let guys know we’ll value them for focusing on it."

"When a woman appears to express fear, we cannot assure her without at least releasing her from responsibility; when we interpret the same emotion in a man as anger, we want to blame him and be certain he acknowledges responsibility. We want to find her guiltless; we want to find him guilty."

"It is also possible for a woman to go back to a man’s room, tell him she doesn’t want to have intercourse, mean it, start kissing, have intercourse, and then wish she hadn’t in the morning. How? Kissing is like eating potato chips. Before we know it, we’ve gone further than we said we would."

"In brief, part of the need for funding comes from the need to create balance to a third of a century of funding an “attitude” toward men. And part comes from the need to study how both sexes can make a transition from those rigid roles to more flexible roads with a clear enough road map to not go over too many cliffs along the way..."

"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."

"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."