Radio 3Fourteen - The Myth of Male Power

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00:00:28.000 This is

00:00:35.960 Radio 314 on the

00:00:37.840 Red Ice Radio Network.

00:00:45.820 Hello ladies and gentlemen, this is Lana.

00:00:48.380 I wanted to let our Red Ice listeners

00:00:49.880 know that we've been offline this week due to

00:00:51.960 a lightning strike that affected our

00:00:53.880 internet. In fact, this interview

00:00:55.800 that you're about to hear was recorded by our

00:00:57.540 portable studio at a friend's house.

00:00:59.780 That's how dedicated we are.

00:01:01.600 Anyway, we're back online and we're working to

00:01:03.480 upload new Red Ice programs for this week,

00:01:05.480 which will be available as soon as possible.

00:01:07.940 The following program is not a

00:01:09.560 topic that you hear discussed often,

00:01:11.680 if ever. We're going to discuss

00:01:13.600 the myth of male power.

00:01:16.120 Want to blame all the problems in the world

00:01:17.700 on men? Then I highly recommend 0.97

00:01:19.620 you stick around and listen to this talk.

00:01:21.740 My guest is Dr. Warren

00:01:23.380 Farrell. He's the author of seven books

00:01:25.460 on men's and women's issues.

00:01:27.340 He came to prominence in the 1970s.

00:01:29.740 Originally, he championed the cause

00:01:31.600 of feminism, serving on the 0.93

00:01:33.400 New York City Board of the National

00:01:35.480 Organization of Women.

00:01:37.380 Now, when Now took anti-male

00:01:39.840 and anti-father positions,

00:01:41.520 he began advocacy for boys,

00:01:43.800 men, and fathers. He's now

00:01:45.520 recognized as one of the most important

00:01:47.400 figures in the modern men's movement.

00:01:49.840 Yes, it's a movement and we'll discuss

00:01:51.740 why. Farrell is currently the chair

00:01:53.860 of the commission to create a

00:01:55.620 White House Council on Boys to

00:01:57.700 Men. Warren has taught at the university

00:01:59.640 level in five disciplines and

00:02:01.500 appeared on more than 1,000 TV and

00:02:03.620 radio shows. He's been featured

00:02:05.440 repeatedly in Forbes, the New York

00:02:07.320 Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

00:02:09.680 Welcome, Warren. Thanks for coming to

00:02:10.940 the program.

00:02:12.200 I'm looking forward to our dialogue.

00:02:14.780 Well, you have a very interesting

00:02:16.780 background. You once taught women's 0.99

00:02:18.400 studies and gender studies, and now

00:02:20.180 you're one of the prominent voices of

00:02:21.940 the men's rights movement. At what

00:02:23.720 point did you wake up and say, hmm, 0.99

00:02:25.400 feminists are a little crazy? Okay, 1.00

00:02:27.680 those are my words.

00:02:29.300 Yeah, I never woke up and said they

00:02:30.460 were crazy. I think what changed my,

00:02:33.600 there were two things that had a little

00:02:35.120 bit of a perspective shift for me. One

00:02:37.820 was when, so for example, I was on the

00:02:40.320 board of directors of the National

00:02:41.240 Organization for Women in New York

00:02:42.800 City, and we're sitting at a board

00:02:44.080 meeting in the early 70s, and the topic

00:02:50.040 comes up of, you know, of our position

00:02:54.220 on children being involved with their

00:02:56.620 parents after divorce. And so from an

00:02:59.980 equality perspective, it's really clear

00:03:03.800 what we, what our position should be. Our

00:03:06.580 position should be that, you know,

00:03:07.740 children should have an equal amount of

00:03:09.480 time with both parents after divorce. The

00:03:12.180 the children are not the more the right

00:03:14.420 of the mother or the father any more

00:03:16.100 than a job is more the right of a, of a

00:03:18.320 man or a woman. And so that was, you

00:03:21.240 know, from, from my perspective as being

00:03:23.320 on the board of now, and they're, they

00:03:26.140 being the most mainstream and largest and

00:03:29.160 most powerful feminist organization, it 1.00

00:03:31.760 was crystal clear. And for most of the

00:03:34.080 people on now's board, it was as well, but

00:03:37.020 there was a, there was a cognitive dissonance

00:03:39.020 experience happening, which was many of the

00:03:41.880 women, um, who, many women were writing 0.95

00:03:44.140 now, um, and saying, we are, you know, we're

00:03:47.020 now members and we believe in a lot of

00:03:50.040 what you're doing, but I just got a

00:03:51.640 divorce and I don't want my father, the 1.00

00:03:54.500 father of the child to be equally involved

00:03:57.620 with the children after divorce. I think I

00:04:00.900 know my children the best. I've been the

00:04:03.280 one that's been the primary parent. I feel

00:04:05.940 I need to move to a new area for a new job. I've

00:04:09.020 met or, and or I've met a new man and I, I

00:04:12.320 want to have a new life with him and start

00:04:14.620 over again. We've had so much bad stuff

00:04:16.380 between us. And so now we're dealing with

00:04:20.200 politics. Um, and so the, the political

00:04:23.480 decision for, for now was, I don't want, we 0.99

00:04:27.480 don't want to, to contract. If, if we

00:04:30.520 alienate this woman, uh, then she will not,

00:04:33.800 no longer be a now member and she'll have a 0.91

00:04:35.700 reason to speak up against, um, now because

00:04:38.580 we're taking away a right of a woman to 1.00

00:04:42.120 have the option to have the child, to make

00:04:44.840 the decision as to what's best for the, for

00:04:46.840 the, for the, our children. And so, um, and

00:04:51.120 so I'm saying, well, wait a minute, that's

00:04:53.220 the same, you know, and, and they're, and

00:04:55.120 they're beginning to say, uh, well, you

00:04:57.680 know, women, mothers do know the best and

00:04:59.960 mothers have a more of a natural, you know, 0.82

00:05:01.720 um, instinct with the children. And I'm

00:05:03.860 saying, wait a minute, you know, if I

00:05:05.920 said men do know the, you know, the best

00:05:08.680 about, um, how to run a company or how to

00:05:11.020 run a, you know, how to be a doctor or how

00:05:12.500 to be a lawyer and then have a natural

00:05:14.520 instinct to be a doctor, a lawyer, or run a

00:05:16.180 company, you'd have my head and you're

00:05:18.540 sure that's everything that you're, that's

00:05:19.900 everything you're opposed to. And so I

00:05:22.660 thought that I was, you know, I was a PhD

00:05:24.460 student at the time and I thought I was

00:05:26.060 making a lot of sense. And I thought that

00:05:28.440 I would be responded to, you know, by

00:05:30.180 people like Gloria Steinem and Betty

00:05:31.700 Friedan, both of whom, by the way, were

00:05:33.800 saying what the world needs is more

00:05:36.080 fathers, um, in the home and more, more

00:05:39.740 women at work. And I and Betty and Gloria

00:05:43.560 all agreed on that. And so, um, but, but

00:05:46.820 the board of now was beginning to see the

00:05:49.340 politics of that. And they moved in long

00:05:52.220 story short, they moved in the direction

00:05:54.020 of saying, um, we, we are a national

00:05:57.000 organization for women and whatever, and,

00:06:00.500 and taking away a right of a woman to be 1.00

00:06:04.860 the primary, um, parent, um, and to make

00:06:08.840 the decision as to what she thinks is the

00:06:10.560 best for the child, something that we are

00:06:12.280 not as a national organization for women

00:06:14.300 doing. So it was no longer a national

00:06:16.660 organization for equality. It was a

00:06:18.920 national organization for women and whether

00:06:20.920 or not that, that accentuated the amount of

00:06:24.640 power decision-making that the child, that

00:06:26.920 the mother had and without regard for the 1.00

00:06:30.700 single most important question, which is

00:06:33.120 what is best for the children. And so, um,

00:06:36.020 yes, no one was, you know, asking that

00:06:38.320 question except what I did. Um, I was sort

00:06:41.800 of ostracized and pushed away. And the

00:06:44.520 other person to give credit, you know, where

00:06:46.120 credit is due is, um, the, um, a woman named

00:06:50.720 Karen DeCroix, who was a former president

00:06:52.800 of, uh, the national organization for

00:06:54.460 women. She, um, stood much less strongly, but

00:06:59.280 she, she also basically held my position 1.00

00:07:01.980 that children probably do best with both

00:07:04.380 parents. And I said, probably because in

00:07:06.080 that time we didn't know for sure what we

00:07:08.740 know now, which is we know when I did the

00:07:11.180 research for a book called father and

00:07:12.700 child reunion, I discovered really clearly

00:07:15.400 that, that children, boys and girls do

00:07:18.800 better in more than 30 different areas of

00:07:21.700 growth and development and social health

00:07:23.840 and psychological health and, um, physical

00:07:26.700 health and also, um, academically in every

00:07:29.160 single area when they have about an equal

00:07:32.560 amount of father and mother when they're

00:07:34.200 raised in an intact family. And so I didn't,

00:07:37.280 I had, we had the beginnings of the

00:07:39.040 research to indicate that, um, back in the

00:07:41.520 early seventies, um, and that, and, but we

00:07:44.480 didn't have clear cut research, um, to

00:07:47.280 indicate that. And so, but as I began to do

00:07:49.820 the research and began to bring it to the

00:07:51.400 board of now and, and, and began to mention

00:07:54.440 it to, in my speaking engagements, instead

00:07:57.300 of the speaking engagement and saying, wow,

00:07:59.200 that's fascinating. We all, we all want

00:08:01.100 what's best for the children. Uh, the

00:08:03.680 audiences in the speaking engagements, you

00:08:05.600 know, the, the, the standing ovations

00:08:07.220 turned into sitting ovations, the sitting

00:08:09.520 ovations, um, that you, the standing

00:08:11.820 ovations that used to lead to three or four

00:08:14.480 or five speaking engagements per speaking

00:08:16.340 engagement were now leading to two and

00:08:18.600 then one and then zero. So I was, I was

00:08:21.920 beginning to see, you know, when I mentioned

00:08:23.460 to you offline here before that, you know,

00:08:25.820 if I was politically correct, I would have

00:08:27.420 a lot more money. I began to realize at

00:08:30.520 that time that I had a choice to make. And

00:08:32.480 that is, you know, do I, do I remain

00:08:34.480 politically correct, uh, and make a lot

00:08:36.720 more money or do I say what I feel is most

00:08:39.260 honest and lose all those speaking

00:08:41.640 engagements, so to speak.

00:08:42.600 Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I want to get into

00:08:44.320 political correctness later with you and

00:08:46.220 how that's affecting young boys growing

00:08:47.660 up and men today, but you mentioned

00:08:49.220 Gloria Steinem. Now, what do you make 0.66

00:08:51.820 of it? She admitted she was a CIA operative

00:08:53.820 working for a CIA front organization. So

00:08:56.320 what side was she playing for?

00:08:58.540 Did she, um, ever admit that?

00:09:00.620 Yeah, apparently she did.

00:09:02.160 It was just rumored that she admitted that.

00:09:03.460 Apparently she did admit it. I need to go

00:09:05.140 watch the program or, or read the article

00:09:07.780 myself, but, uh, Independent Research

00:09:10.320 Service was a CIA front organization.

00:09:12.600 And, and apparently several other people

00:09:14.180 outed her as well.

00:09:16.280 Mm-hmm. I don't, it, that seems unlikely,

00:09:19.380 um, because of the fact that she is

00:09:22.000 extremely anti-hierarchical and I can't

00:09:24.480 imagine anything more hierarchical than the

00:09:26.320 CIA and the, you know, and the military,

00:09:29.600 you know, they're all based on hierarchies.

00:09:31.000 And Gloria is, you know, very, very, um, she's

00:09:35.080 very much the, you know, anti, the, you know,

00:09:38.640 the male power structure. And she, Gloria is 0.99

00:09:41.560 far more radical than, um, than Betty Friedan

00:09:44.660 was. Betty Friedan really, in her book,

00:09:46.680 Second Stage, she wrote, you know, the, the

00:09:49.300 second stage needs to be men getting on board 0.98

00:09:51.740 and, and getting liberated themselves. And that

00:09:55.580 book, of course, made her unpopular among

00:09:57.420 feminists for a while. And then, and then 1.00

00:09:59.180 she went back to being, um, popular again.

00:10:01.640 And that book just sort of disappeared. And

00:10:03.140 most people don't even know that it's

00:10:04.480 written. But the, but Gloria is, um, was

00:10:08.040 always very, she always differentiated

00:10:10.120 between us and the enemy. And the enemy

00:10:12.400 was, you know, the, you know, the patriarchy

00:10:14.700 and the enemy was, um, the men that didn't

00:10:16.780 agree, um, with, um, the feminist, um, 0.98

00:10:19.500 politically correct ideology. And she was, she

00:10:21.820 was much more narrow-minded that way, even

00:10:24.640 though as a person, she was by far and

00:10:27.300 away a much wonder, more kind and caring

00:10:30.340 and, uh, facilitative and non-egocentric

00:10:33.400 human being than, than Betty was.

00:10:35.140 Okay. Well, believe it or not, I've heard

00:10:37.200 feminists and minorities argue that we 1.00

00:10:39.220 need to level the playing field and have

00:10:41.000 our chance because men have had their day. 0.67

00:10:43.000 So what do you think about that statement?

00:10:45.620 Yeah, that's a very important question

00:10:47.260 because behind almost all the support of

00:10:51.580 feminism is an underlying belief in 1.00

00:10:53.660 exactly what you just said, which is

00:10:55.120 basically that we've lived in a

00:10:56.380 patriarchal world in which men have made 0.84

00:10:58.960 the rules to benefit men at the expense 0.87

00:11:00.800 of women. And, um, and here's what the

00:11:03.840 world would look like if men made the 1.00

00:11:05.600 rules to benefit men at the expense of

00:11:07.660 women. Men would make sure that every 1.00

00:11:10.380 girl and young woman was trained to really 0.95

00:11:13.760 desire a lot of sex. 0.93

00:11:16.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.50

00:11:17.660 From the age of about 13 on and that, and

00:11:22.120 that the younger she was involved with men

00:11:24.860 sexually indesirous of that, the more

00:11:27.160 feminine she would be considered being and 0.91

00:11:28.980 the more moral she would be. And that

00:11:31.380 because women wanted it so much, um, and

00:11:34.240 men, if anything, we would be trained to

00:11:36.580 sort of keep our sexual desires in

00:11:38.660 relatively short supply. So we would reverse

00:11:41.460 the power balance between men and women. And

00:11:44.060 so men, so women would be paying for men on 1.00

00:11:46.460 dates and women would be paying for drinks 1.00

00:11:48.520 for men to get, to get men high and, and, um,

00:11:52.220 easy. Um, and women would be paying for the, 1.00

00:11:55.840 that's just the dinners and the dates, but

00:11:57.160 the expenses on driving and buying us flowers.

00:11:59.680 And if they were lucky enough to continue

00:12:02.580 winning their, our approval to pay for us

00:12:05.720 at every single step, they would be lucky

00:12:07.880 enough to buy us diamonds, um, and, and for

00:12:10.700 which we would reciprocate with no diamonds at

00:12:12.480 all. Um, and so this is, you know, this is,

00:12:16.020 and that's just in the sexual area. We would

00:12:17.940 then change the draft laws. And so that

00:12:20.580 there would be in the United States today,

00:12:22.620 there's male only draft registration. If you

00:12:24.760 don't register for the draft when you're 18

00:12:26.420 before the age of consent, by some people's

00:12:28.980 definition, um, is you, you, you are subject

00:12:32.920 to a quarter of a million dollar fine, um, to a

00:12:36.060 year or two in prison. You can never work for

00:12:39.260 the government, for a university, for anything

00:12:41.200 that gets federal money. Um, and that's just

00:12:44.320 for not signing up, registering for the draft,

00:12:47.120 um, at the age of 18. So if you have ambivalence

00:12:50.260 about the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the

00:12:52.600 Vietnam War before that, you, you were

00:12:55.500 potentially, you would be on a watch list of

00:12:58.920 suspicious characters and you're, you could

00:13:02.000 expect that your, um, you, that your, um,

00:13:06.060 taxes would be investigated much more

00:13:08.040 frequently and so on. Now, so we would set up a

00:13:11.140 system where only women, if we had a 1.00

00:13:13.140 patriarchy, patriarchal system set up that

00:13:15.300 only benefited men at the expense of women, we 0.99

00:13:18.220 would have female only draft registration and 0.85

00:13:20.660 females, you know, operating in combat zones 1.00

00:13:23.420 to the point that females died in, in, in battle

00:13:26.400 at, at a ratio of 27 to one, which is, which is

00:13:29.880 what it is now in reverse. And so we would be

00:13:32.480 doing lots of things like that, um, to make

00:13:36.620 life, we would have seven offices of men, federal

00:13:40.160 offices of men's health and no office, federal

00:13:42.580 offices of women's health, as opposed to having 0.98

00:13:45.000 what is in reality the case, seven offices of

00:13:47.980 federal offices of women's health and no

00:13:50.020 offices of, uh, men's health. Uh, we would, uh, we

00:13:53.880 would be astounded and, and, and advertise the

00:13:56.960 fact that, that men over 85, um, uh, commit suicide at

00:14:01.940 1,350, um, the rate of women over 85. Um, and, and, and,

00:14:07.900 but right now, um, the system that's set up, we don't

00:14:11.860 even know that men over 85 commit suicide at

00:14:15.100 1,350, the rate of, of women over 85. So, and we would

00:14:20.400 go on and on. We would make sure that, that the, that

00:14:22.880 the hazardous jobs were jobs that women took so that, 1.00

00:14:26.280 that women were the ones, uh, risking their lives in,

00:14:28.960 in coal mines and, um, and, and, and working in

00:14:32.680 sewers and cleaning them out and, um, you know,

00:14:35.200 working on oil rigs and so on. This is the way the

00:14:37.940 world would look if the world was a patriarchy, which

00:14:40.520 meant that it was set up by men to benefit men at the

00:14:44.820 expense of women. Then what the way the world was set 0.90

00:14:48.800 up in the system had nothing to do with patriarchy

00:14:51.760 per se. What it had to do was the needs to survive. And

00:14:55.880 in the needs to survive, neither our mother nor our

00:14:58.640 father had rights. Um, they had responsibilities,

00:15:01.960 they had obligations. If we talked to, you know, when

00:15:04.340 I talked to my father about the, you know, when I

00:15:06.520 was at the beginning of the feminist movement, yeah, he

00:15:09.020 would say things like, you know, I just had this

00:15:13.340 problem with this, this word rights. Um, it's sort

00:15:16.340 of like we, our life was not Warren about rights. It

00:15:20.400 was about responsibilities. It was about obligations. You

00:15:23.300 know, and it was like, you know, it was just

00:15:24.860 something, it was, it was like a fingernail that a

00:15:27.240 chalkboard from his perspective. And he saw the

00:15:30.920 future of people who talked about rights, of the

00:15:33.540 future of the people who talk about rights with

00:15:35.360 entitlement. And entitlement was not what created a

00:15:38.620 good human being. It was not what created good

00:15:40.820 relationships. It's not what created a strong

00:15:43.100 country.

00:15:43.880 I completely agree with that. I, it bugs me when I

00:15:46.180 keep hearing rights. You're not born with any

00:15:47.920 rights. You're just born.

00:15:49.620 Totally, totally. I mean, you're not even born with a 0.73

00:15:52.000 right to live. You're, you're, you're born, period.

00:15:56.360 Exactly.

00:15:57.160 That's it.

00:15:57.920 Well, today you can easily say that men,

00:15:59.900 specifically, I'd say white, straight men are the

00:16:02.060 worst treated demographic today from affirmative 0.92

00:16:04.380 action to college admission and scholarships, to

00:16:07.580 portrayal in media and TV, to courts that side with

00:16:10.140 women in custody cases. And then of course, there's no 0.60

00:16:12.580 protection under hate speech laws for this

00:16:14.380 demographic. Yet somehow this discrimination is

00:16:17.080 okay. And feminists actually wonder why there's a 1.00

00:16:19.460 men's rights movement that's growing in numbers. So

00:16:22.060 if men are the force and power, why are they being

00:16:23.800 so discriminated against, right?

00:16:26.220 Yes. Well, they're being discriminated against in

00:16:28.320 part because they are believed to be the ones that

00:16:31.700 have the power. So until you understand, and, and, and

00:16:35.780 so people who believe in equality of opportunity,

00:16:39.220 confuse equality of opportunity with equality of

00:16:43.020 outcome. And they, you know, they say if everything

00:16:45.780 isn't equal, it must be because the white males have 0.98

00:16:49.440 made a system that doesn't allow us to become, or this

00:16:52.740 group or that group to be equal to another group. And

00:16:55.540 that would be a little bit like saying, you know, that,

00:16:57.560 you know, the NBA, the National Basketball Association,

00:17:00.980 it really discriminates against whites because there are

00:17:03.680 more percentage of whites in the NBA than there are

00:17:06.500 blacks in relation to the population. And so, you know, 0.99

00:17:10.460 we, and so the deeper question that always needs to be

00:17:14.620 asked is, um, do men have power? And if, if they do, and we 0.73

00:17:21.560 want a world that is egalitarian, that has equal, at least equal

00:17:24.880 opportunity for everybody, um, is, is, is the fact that more men

00:17:30.920 are in positions like Congress or the Senate, uh, Senate or, um, on

00:17:36.440 the, um, Supreme Court or in CEOs, does this mean men have more

00:17:41.100 power? And from, if you define power as influence in institutions

00:17:48.300 outside of the family, men clearly have more power and white 0.75

00:17:53.900 males clearly have a disproportional amount, um, of that 1.00

00:17:57.840 power. The, um, but if you define power differently as having

00:18:02.700 control over your own life, being able to make the choices that

00:18:07.200 you want with your life, having the encouragement to go inside

00:18:10.840 of yourself, uh, when you're a child and decide who you are and

00:18:14.380 what you're motivated by, and then being honored by the rest

00:18:17.760 of society for the choices that you make, then we're talking

00:18:21.400 about a totally different game. So for example, when a woman 1.00

00:18:25.600 and a man, um, are married in their middle class, uh, and

00:18:28.880 above, um, and they have a child and the, um, the, the woman

00:18:33.460 generally generates in that situation three decisions. Um,

00:18:37.160 do I want to be full-time involved with the children or the

00:18:39.600 child? Do I want to be full-time involved with the workplace

00:18:43.060 or do I want to do some combination of both? Uh, the man has

00:18:47.020 three options also. Um, option one is to work full-time. Option

00:18:51.580 two is to work full-time and option three is to work full-time

00:18:55.640 or, you know, if he's a working class man, work two jobs, or

00:18:59.460 if he's a corporate man, you know, working overtime at the job

00:19:03.080 that he, that he has. And so the, so he will then, so then

00:19:07.980 let's look at what happens. So let's say the woman says, I

00:19:11.160 really want to be home with the children. And 40% of women 0.96

00:19:14.220 say that. And among women who are married and are middle-class 1.00

00:19:19.720 women, the much higher percentages of women say, I want to be 1.00

00:19:23.280 home with the children full-time. That's, that's their desire.

00:19:27.020 That's their choice. Um, and so the, so when that decision is

00:19:31.920 made, first of all, the man is usually not even a part of that

00:19:35.380 decision-making process. So that's the first really major

00:19:38.840 inequality. If the, a man and a woman are supposedly equal in 0.98

00:19:43.980 having children, then both of them should have as much say as

00:19:47.100 to who wants to work full-time, who wants to work part-time, who

00:19:49.580 wants to be full-time involved with the children. But normally

00:19:52.760 speaking, the woman generates a choice among those three options. And 1.00

00:19:56.580 the man sits back and supports her choice. And then based on her

00:20:00.500 choice, she, he then figures out whether he needs to work more

00:20:04.260 hours than he did. So if she chooses to stay home full-time

00:20:08.060 with the children, now they have one source of income rather

00:20:10.940 than two. And so he will, statistically speaking, begin to

00:20:14.960 make more than he's ever made before. So the feminist look at 1.00

00:20:19.500 his now making more than he's ever made before as just one more

00:20:24.380 example of a man earning more than a woman and therefore having more 0.53

00:20:28.300 power than a woman because he advances more quickly through 1.00

00:20:31.340 whatever hierarchy he's a part of. But if you look at power as control

00:20:35.160 over your own life, that man is actually has less power than a woman 1.00

00:20:39.760 because he never had a chance to make a decision as to whether he

00:20:43.500 wanted to be full-time involved with the workplace at home or some

00:20:46.280 combination of both. And he's now feeling obligated to earn money that

00:20:50.440 somebody else will spend, the family will spend, while he will probably be

00:20:54.420 more stressed and die sooner. And feeling obligated to earn money that

00:20:58.020 somebody else spends while you die sooner is not my definition of power.

00:21:02.400 My definition. So what men have learned to call power is learning how to

00:21:07.480 climb each rung of a ladder to get to the top of that ladder. And feminists 1.00

00:21:14.480 have said, ah, there's more men at the top of that ladder than there are

00:21:18.780 women. Men have more power. And what I'm saying in the myth of male 0.96

00:21:22.720 power is, excuse me, until you have the choice of which wall you put that

00:21:29.740 ladder on, which the wall of being a corporate male, the wall of working for

00:21:34.860 the government, the wall of working for a public, a law firm that's publicly,

00:21:41.160 does public service, a law firm that doesn't do public service, you being an

00:21:45.400 artist, a writer, or being supported by a woman economically while you take care

00:21:49.440 of the children. Those would be examples of the different walls. Until you have a

00:21:54.300 choice of which wall you want to put that ladder on, you don't have power. If all

00:22:00.540 your social pressures and your willingness of a woman to marry you is based on your

00:22:08.060 willingness to put the ladder on the wall of money producing, then you don't have that

00:22:15.460 choice to feel like you're valued, loved, cared for, and respected as a man, not just

00:22:21.660 by women, but by your parents and by male peers at your 20th high school

00:22:26.380 anniversary reunion. And so that's the questions that are not being asked. That's the

00:22:32.020 questions that are core to the under, until that re-examination of what I, or in the

00:22:39.480 myth of male power that I talk about, the re-examination of what power is, occurs, we

00:22:46.520 will always believe that the white male is the, is the, the usurper of more power when

00:22:55.800 in fact he's the one at this point in history that has the least amount of choice

00:23:00.120 and their belief power. Yeah, definitely. Well, feminists and Marxists, they love to 1.00

00:23:04.520 blame men for colonialism, slavery, racism, war, corrupt governments, you know, all this

00:23:09.080 stuff, and they leave out all the good stuff. But how do you respond to those who try and

00:23:12.420 blame men for events in history or current political problems? Because that's a common

00:23:16.260 theme I keep hearing. You know, that's as, that's as accurate and as inaccurate as

00:23:21.540 blaming mothers for all the problems in history, because as the Catholic Church says, give me the

00:23:26.340 child for the first five years, and I'll give you the adult. And, you know, you can, you

00:23:31.800 can say that, that, that the mother who had the responsibility for the primary, the socialization

00:23:39.340 of the child in those first five years was responsible for training boys to be more likely

00:23:45.640 to go to war, training girls to be more likely to be at home. You know, they were, mothers were

00:23:52.220 oftentimes the, the, the, the dictators of what, what morality was in a culture and so

00:23:57.480 on. Or you could say that it had nothing to do, you know, with mothers per se and fathers

00:24:02.980 per se, that we, that, that, that the really controlling force was the need to survive. And

00:24:09.860 to survive, we, you know, almost everything, almost all the decisions we made in the world

00:24:15.840 were ones based on that, that, that, that parameter. And the people who didn't make that

00:24:22.040 with, with, with survival in mind, didn't survive. So they're not here today, you know, to talk

00:24:30.520 about it. And, and so, yeah, so whenever you look at something through one ideology of, if

00:24:38.240 you, if you start out with men have the power, then it appears that men have been in charge

00:24:44.460 of everything. If you started out from a different ideology that, that because mothers had the 0.98

00:24:49.920 control over the children for the most part in most countries, in most places, in most

00:24:54.340 points in history for the first five years, therefore they had the power. But in maybe

00:25:00.080 upper class, upper class homes, nannies had the power then by that type of logic. So there

00:25:06.080 was, you know, we, and it's, but the, but the issue was not men or women. The, the point

00:25:13.620 that feminists miss is that men love women. Men were willing to die for women. Men are

00:25:21.440 willing to die before women are even hurt. That's why men in the 19th century who were

00:25:27.040 called gentlemen had to wear a sword so that if their fiance, anybody who became their fiance

00:25:32.780 or more serious, their, their wife, they, if that fiance was even insulted, they were expected

00:25:40.220 to take a sword and to challenge the man who insulted their wife or their, their fiance to

00:25:45.380 a duel. Um, and so we, we sort of talk about, you know, women were property. Well, that's 0.95

00:25:51.420 true. Women were often treated as property and men were expected to, to die to protect their

00:25:57.460 property. Um, and so in a way that put men at a lower position than the women did, you 0.79

00:26:02.920 know, and men weren't at all lovable by women or respected by men until they had property. 0.97

00:26:07.980 And so it was to look at it as, um, to look at it without understanding the, the role of

00:26:13.620 survival in the process is to pretty much guarantee that you're, you're going to misunderstand

00:26:17.880 everything. And unfortunately the people in the world who know the least about men, who

00:26:23.340 have the least compassion for men, who understand the least about male, female relationships are

00:26:29.600 the, are the leading feminists in the world. And unfortunately they're located at our top 1.00

00:26:34.820 universities. Um, and they're, they're teaching gender studies courses. Um, and they're, so we

00:26:40.820 have the people who know the least about men teaching courses on male, female, gender at the

00:26:47.640 top universities in the world. Well, most of those teachers, they don't even like men. They don't even

00:26:51.860 have sex with men. So I mean, I don't, I don't know the data on that, but the most important thing

00:26:58.280 is whether they like or dislike or have, or don't have sex with men is that they do not

00:27:03.020 have a way of looking at men that helps boys and men and women and girls love each other.

00:27:11.520 And that is where that's, you know, you know, to paraphrase John Lennon, it's all, you know,

00:27:17.420 um, it's all, it's really all about love. Well, just the other day I was reading some,

00:27:21.700 I say insane gender studies courses being taught. One I saw was, and was how to be gay, 1.00

00:27:27.920 male homosexuality and initiation. Another one was encouraging the feminization of men for the 0.96

00:27:33.180 fate of the planet. So is there a push to feminize men at this time? Yes, there is. And part of that

00:27:40.640 push is good. And part of that push is bad. Um, you know, our gender, our, our traditional gender

00:27:45.780 roles were very narrow and confining and women didn't have nearly as much opportunity to, you 1.00

00:27:53.320 know, express the assertive side. I remember when I went to high school and, um, the, you know,

00:27:58.560 my guidance counselor would, um, you know, if, if, if, if a, if a girl, young girl or young woman

00:28:04.160 in my, um, high school was, um, really bright and, you know, and had, had it together. Um, you know,

00:28:11.960 she, the, the guidance counselor would say, well, you can be a nurse, you can be a teacher. Um, you 0.96

00:28:17.100 know, and, you know, um, that, that would be pretty much the options, professional options she was

00:28:23.080 offered as a bright woman. And, um, and so it's wonderful that young women today are being told,

00:28:31.680 you know, um, you go girl and, you know, do anything you want and get the wind beneath your

00:28:36.640 wings and all options are, uh, you know, should be open to you and there's, it should be nothing

00:28:41.220 that you shouldn't consider the possibility of doing. Um, and we need to, to, to, um, mix that

00:28:49.760 in with helping the young woman understand the trade-offs of becoming whatever she wishes to

00:28:55.480 become if she becomes an Olympic star. Um, that's wonderful if you hold open that possibility

00:29:00.380 for her, but it's sad if you don't help her understand that everything she's going to have

00:29:05.180 to give up in terms of friendships and time and free time and, um, so on in order to become

00:29:10.580 that Olympic star. And so sometimes we paint the dream without the, without the hard work

00:29:14.980 that it takes to get to that dream. Um, and so conversely, um, men in order to protect women

00:29:20.860 and in order to be willing to go to war and die, uh, for both women and, um, their country

00:29:27.180 and to protect other men and children, uh, they had to learn to disconnect from their

00:29:32.380 feelings. So for example, if you, um, if I'm at war with a guy and I really get very, very

00:29:38.480 close emotionally to him, um, the closer that I get to him emotionally, if when he, if he's

00:29:44.900 killed and his blood spatters all over my body and bits and pieces of his skin and guts are 0.97

00:29:50.800 falling all over me and I, the closer I am to him, the more, the more emotional damage

00:29:59.460 that it's going to do to me, the greater the chance of my never recovering from that.

00:30:05.140 So I had to learn that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, not when the going

00:30:09.280 gets tough, the tough get in touch with your feelings. Um, or, you know, when I, when I

00:30:13.280 learn, when I meet a man, instead of like say, Hey bro, you know, how are you? You know,

00:30:17.780 that type of thing or, Hey dude, um, you know, and you know, um, you, I really get to appreciate

00:30:23.380 him, know him, know what's going on inside of him. And so in every way, and you know,

00:30:29.140 when, when a football player in a, in a high school in the United States today is playing

00:30:34.820 football, um, you know, the cheerleader is going first and 10, do it again. Now exactly

00:30:39.320 what is she cheering for when she cheers for do it again? She's not cheering for him expressing

00:30:44.760 his feelings. She's cheering for him, risking spinal cord injuries, concussions, broken noses,

00:30:50.180 uh, dislocated shoulders. And she's saying, do it again for the sake of bringing a piece of leather

00:30:55.320 a few yards further on the football field. And if he does do it again and does it effectively,

00:31:00.520 he's considered a hero and her body is being, you know, that saying first and 10, do it again.

00:31:06.600 That's, you know, for in seventh grade, a beautiful girl's body. This is the first exposure

00:31:12.300 for many guys to a beautiful woman in the flesh. And she's basically saying, when you do it again,

00:31:18.120 when you risk your body, when you risk your, um, your, your mind, you can cut it in the terms

00:31:23.580 of a concussion again, um, my love, my sexuality, my adoration of you will increase. And so he's

00:31:30.980 learning. And, and also his, his guy friends, um, are saying the same thing to him and his parents

00:31:36.180 are coming out on Thanksgiving and cheering for him when he risks his body. And I just went to my

00:31:40.800 50th high school reunion, not too long ago. And, you know, the, the guy who was the quarterback

00:31:45.220 and the other guy who was the, and who scored the most touchdowns on the football team, they

00:31:50.780 were by far and away the most sought after people, um, in, you know, in the, uh, um, at the

00:31:57.200 50th high school. So you have the legacy of, you know, just performing well in high school.

00:32:03.760 Um, but all of this required these guys to disconnect from their feelings. And, and so

00:32:11.660 now, is it more feminine to be in touch with your feelings? The standard stereotype ways?

00:32:16.960 Yes. Is it healthy for men to be more in touch with their feelings? Overall? Yes. In relation

00:32:21.460 to what men are. On the other hand, you can take every virtue taken to its extreme becomes

00:32:25.760 a vice. Um, if you get so in touch with your feelings that every time something goes wrong,

00:32:30.180 you're crying and you're, you're, you're a drama king or queen, then you have, then, then

00:32:35.080 you prevent yourself from doing what you need to do in emergencies. And so we, you know, both

00:32:40.880 sexes need to understand and, um, get skillsets that were, that were deprived, uh, that were 1.00

00:32:49.640 deprived, uh, in the normal traditional socialization of, of, uh, gender roles.

00:32:54.520 Yeah. Do you ever think about what was it like in pre-Christian pagan days with the, the roles

00:33:00.680 were between the genders and what their relationships were like? Do you think it was healthier than 1.00

00:33:04.120 this modern liberalism kind of religious thing we have going today?

00:33:08.300 I think overall the religious part, no, but the, uh, we, we've always been, um, in the United

00:33:15.340 States and most, you know, most countries in the world throughout history have had very strong

00:33:19.160 superstitions and religions. That's the only way that we could cope with the stress, you know, 1.00

00:33:23.200 and, you know, the fear that there would be, you know, seven years of, of feast would be

00:33:27.980 followed by seven years of salmon. And so almost all religions were very crucial to the survival

00:33:33.760 of a culture because they helped to unify that culture. So, you know, we probably haven't

00:33:39.320 inside of us a little bit of a, um, a gene for the belief in, in, um, in God, because the

00:33:45.180 belief in God allowed us to unify and therefore battle an opposing, um, uh, kinship network

00:33:53.200 or opposing, um, country and be more successful in doing so. If you had that type of belief,

00:33:58.720 that doesn't mean there is a God. It just means that the belief in there being a God,

00:34:03.240 um, um, is, um, probably had some positive functionality for many years. The problem is

00:34:08.920 that it is, it is, um, it is also, you know, very dysfunctional in many ways to believe that

00:34:15.780 something external is magically controlling your future or that it, that if you just, um,

00:34:21.720 you know, that if there's, um, a trillion people out there that, uh, a prayer and saying,

00:34:27.740 gee, I would like some, um, some ice cream for dessert for dinner, um, that that will be paid

00:34:33.300 attention to, um, by you, um, by the, somebody listening to you upstairs.

00:34:38.440 Yeah, I was thinking about that European pre-Christian pagan days, and I was thinking,

00:34:44.460 hmm, I wonder if suicide rates were high then, and probably not because one, men were their 0.56

00:34:48.480 own masters, and two, they probably had healthier relationships and they were more in touch with

00:34:52.300 the primordial traditions and, and nature, not this religion and liberalism we have today.

00:34:57.940 Just a theory.

00:34:59.760 No, I would overall, let me give a perspective on that. Um, one of the things I do is teach

00:35:04.840 couples communication. And, um, during the class, I teach people how to, um, how to handle personal

00:35:12.180 criticism without becoming defensive. And I basically start out with the class and saying

00:35:17.120 that historically speaking and biologically, when we heard a criticism, uh, we responded,

00:35:22.820 um, it had the potential for being an enemy. So it was functional for us to get up our defenses

00:35:28.600 to defend against being killed by the enemy. And it was even more functional for us to kill

00:35:33.040 the enemy before the enemy killed us. If we did that, we survived. However, if, um, you

00:35:39.580 and your partner, um, in life, um, are having challenges with each other and you open up and

00:35:45.660 express some of your feelings of, of hurt or pain to your partner, and he or she says, you

00:35:51.680 know, some version of, um, and, and he, he or she becomes defensive, um, you learn to shut

00:35:57.620 your mouth and to not open it again, because unless you really, unless it's so important that

00:36:02.700 you're willing to risk the possibility of escalation. And so the, what was functional

00:36:08.180 for survival is dysfunctional for love. Um, and so the, um, it really, but if I ask, so

00:36:17.020 I, I, I work with the people, the couples in my group to, to learn that. And somewhere

00:36:21.540 during the workshop, I say, by the way, um, how many of you feel that your communication

00:36:26.540 even before you came into this workshop was better than your parents and your

00:36:30.640 grandparents and virtually everybody in the group says yes. And then I say, well, if I

00:36:36.380 were to, but we all agree that our grandparents had a divorce rate that was lower than the divorce

00:36:41.880 rate of people today. And so does that mean that, um, better communication leads to more

00:36:50.440 divorces? And of course the answer is no, that's not what it leads to. That's a correlation that

00:36:56.800 doesn't have a cause attached to it, but what the cause of the greater amount of divorces. 1.00

00:37:02.680 And if you ask a different question and say, who, who's happier us today or our grandparents,

00:37:11.400 that's a much tougher question to ask, even though their communication, I mean, that doesn't ask

00:37:16.820 but answer, even though our grandparents communication was probably significantly worse

00:37:23.140 than most couples communication is today. Um, the grandparents may have been happier because

00:37:29.440 they had lower expectations because life was simple. The choices were simpler. Um, and, you

00:37:35.680 know, now if, you know, if a kid doesn't have an iPhone, you feel, you know, he or she feels

00:37:40.680 like, you know, they're discriminated against and they're left out of the group and they're,

00:37:45.540 you know, that type of thing. And if the parents prevent them from having a Facebook page or

00:37:49.140 doing Twitter or whatever, um, you know, they, they feel deprived. And, uh, and so, um, you

00:37:54.920 know, whereas my father used to say, you know, what I got for Christmas was an orange each year

00:38:00.460 and that was it. And, and so, you know, the, the idea of us getting more than a couple of

00:38:07.380 presents for Christmas was sort of really hard for him to work with. And my dad was born on

00:38:13.280 Christmas and he just got a Christmas and birthday gift all in one. For him, I do feel sorry.

00:38:19.140 So if we discuss our PC culture today, do you think it's negatively affecting men and young

00:38:25.640 boys growing up in this kind of environment? Yes. Um, you know, I've given complex answers to

00:38:31.680 every question, but I love that when I can give a clear yes to, um, and it's because PC isn't by

00:38:39.960 definition bad, um, if it's at the very beginning stages, but almost every, every, almost by definition,

00:38:47.920 political correctness means that you can't speak about certain things, um, without getting into

00:38:54.400 trouble. And the moment you move speech into that context, you undermine the very concept of what the

00:39:00.560 first amendment and freedom of speech was about. And you certainly undermine everything a university

00:39:06.160 is supposed to be about. And so for there to be, you know, when I grew up and I'm 71 years of age and

00:39:12.040 I grew up during the Vietnam war and the free speech movement was, you know, the, with that,

00:39:16.360 the universities were the center of freedom of speech. We were the center of the group of people

00:39:20.780 that, that said that, um, that the, you know, the McCarthy was, you know, just an evil person for,

00:39:28.320 you know, wanting to, you know, make sure that anyone who spoke in positive, in positive ways about

00:39:33.520 Russia or communism was immediately going to be suspicious. And so here we are at a point. We,

00:39:40.580 we were at that point, a point in a point in history where the universities were at the core

00:39:45.000 of articulating the importance of, of, of multiple ways of thinking and looking at things and questioning

00:39:51.620 the way, you know, the, the, the, the center of the first group in history that said, maybe going to

00:39:58.100 war, uh, was not the right thing to do. We need to question the war and ask for the motives and

00:40:02.940 things like that. And then we've gone from the university being that to not being able to say

00:40:08.280 in the university, anything in a gender class, almost anything that is male positive without

00:40:13.800 being ostracized in that class and without being, and if you challenge, you know, so for example,

00:40:19.820 I'm playing tennis a few years ago with, um, with the president of Northwestern University and we

00:40:25.120 finished the tennis, um, we were, we belonged to a same thing tag together. We didn't know who the

00:40:29.100 other one was before we played tennis. We just got, we just met at the tennis court and we finished

00:40:33.620 the tennis game. And he says, well, you know, what do you do? And I tell him that, you know,

00:40:36.340 I'm into, and I describe what, um, men's issues are. And he goes, wow, that's really fascinating.

00:40:41.600 We don't have any of that at Northwestern University. And I said, well, would you like to make

00:40:46.020 Northwestern University the first major university in the world that has a genuine male studies

00:40:52.840 curriculum to not be, uh, to not replace the women's studies curriculum, but to be synergistic

00:40:58.880 with the women's studies curriculum. He said, I liked the way you put that, but he said,

00:41:02.820 well, and he smiled at me and somewhat condescending smile. And he said, you know, Warren, I would be,

00:41:07.960 um, I would be not a university president long enough to get that implemented. If I even articulated

00:41:17.040 that the moment I articulated that the feminist would in essence kill me, um, you know, academically. 1.00

00:41:24.640 And so then I said to him, well, is there any way, shape or form that there could be, um, men's

00:41:31.500 studies courses at Northwestern University? And without missing a beat, he said, sure,

00:41:38.300 sue the university. And I said, tell me more. He said, if you, if you sued us, then I would be a

00:41:44.900 hero for preventing the university from losing money in a lawsuit. Um, and therefore my forming a men's

00:41:54.120 studies course or curriculum would see, would be, would seem to be the necessary political power

00:42:01.680 response to prevent the force of that lawsuit from overwhelming us. Then I'd be a hero. It took him a

00:42:10.380 minute to think of that. Um, so, and yet it's been hard for me to organize and get, um, in order to do,

00:42:18.460 do something like that, you have to have two major factors. You have to have students at a university

00:42:23.440 that are actually, that do want to belong to, or be part of a men's studies course. And then second, you have

00:42:30.220 to have some, you know, good pro bono lawyers or a good, you know, a good, um, um, contribution to finance

00:42:37.400 lawyers to, to make that happen. But I would pretty much assure one that if when, if, if a group of

00:42:44.620 students got together and did that with a couple of good lawyers working with them, that they would

00:42:49.500 make change, that that would make national publicity and that would get universities all over the country

00:42:55.880 to be very fearful of, um, doing anything, but, um, but really re-examining that issue. And that that,

00:43:04.060 and that that would lead to, and once that happened in the United States, it would begin to happen all

00:43:08.400 over the industrialized world. Well, it's as dangerous as starting a white students union. 1.00

00:43:13.280 You know, some people have tried to do that and all hell broke loose. People accuse them of being

00:43:17.440 Nazis and KKK immediately. Yes, yes, indeed. Um, it is very, you know, it's, um, it's very sad how we've,

00:43:27.700 we've limited ourselves and we can, I have more empathy for it in the, um, black, white area than I 0.99

00:43:36.820 have in the male or female area. And this is, I think, one of the, the major problems that, that 0.99

00:43:42.460 feminism made. Um, feminism came onto the scene. This second wave of feminism came onto the scene 1.00

00:43:49.060 in the early seventies. And we had just passed through two major, um, two major eras, if you will,

00:43:56.140 the era of the civil rights movement in which there were oppressors and oppressed and the era of

00:44:02.840 Marxism being very strong in Marxism divided, divided the world into the oppressors and the

00:44:08.900 oppressed. So when feminism came on board, it was like the, the, it was no longer, um, the oppressors 0.99

00:44:17.960 and the, they divvied up men and women into the oppressors and oppressed. And that was the false

00:44:25.220 division. Um, so when, when you talk about black studies, there really was a, an oppressed group,

00:44:33.640 um, that, you know, in the United States that, that had many, that we did not allow to have equal

00:44:40.420 opportunity very clearly. And so when you want to do something for that group, what you should do for

00:44:47.080 that group to empower them is very arguable. But the fact that they were in an oppressed position

00:44:52.440 is in my opinion, less arguable, but with men and women, it wasn't a matter of oppressed, oppressor.

00:44:59.140 It was a matter of men and women, both had it having obligations and responsibilities and strict

00:45:05.060 roles. And, you know, women's role was raise children. Men's role was raise money. Women's role,

00:45:10.680 um, men's role was to risk their lives in war to protect the children that women bore. And so we had, 0.51

00:45:16.800 we had all of that happening in which both men's lives were clearly more disposable and every culture 0.83

00:45:22.460 that survived, every, every culture that survived, survived based on its ability to train sons to be

00:45:27.540 disposable, disposable in war, disposable in work. And because many of those men who were killed in war,

00:45:33.540 killed in work were also fathers, uh, disposable as fathers as well. And so the, um, so all of this was

00:45:40.320 very, um, so being disposable, in my opinion, is not about being, you know, being an oppressor. Um,

00:45:48.240 it's more, it's closer, more akin to being oppressed. Um, but again, it was not about men being

00:45:53.860 oppressed any more than women. Women had to risk their lives and childbirth. And so what the real

00:45:58.500 issue was is every kinship network or nation figuring out a way or, you know, groups like, um,

00:46:05.460 Jews or Arabs or whatever, figuring out a way that that group of Catholics or whatever, whatever group

00:46:12.060 it was could survive and produce more Catholics and, and, um, and have, and have that religion or

00:46:18.220 that group or that ethnic, ethnicity survive. Now, another controversial one for you. Is it healthy

00:46:24.240 for boys to grow up with two moms and no father? Because a boy already struggles, I think, greatly growing

00:46:29.720 up with a single mom and no father. Yes. We don't have great evidence on the two mom situation.

00:46:36.800 What we do know is that children that do, um, the best have about an equal amount of father and mother.

00:46:45.140 Uh, they have, they have four things happening for them. They're, they're ideally in an intact male, 0.99

00:46:51.180 female family. That seems to be the, the group in which the, the way in which children do the best. 1.00

00:46:56.500 Um, the, um, the, the second way they do the best is they have to be brought up in a non-intact family

00:47:03.220 that they have about an equal amount of time with father. They have, the four things need to happen,

00:47:07.660 uh, simultaneously. They have to have about an equal amount of time with the mother and the father.

00:47:14.640 Second, the mom and the dad need to live close enough to each other so that the children don't have to give

00:47:20.880 up friends or activities to be involved, to see the other parent. Otherwise, there develops a

00:47:26.820 resentment toward the other parent, usually the non-custodial parent. And the, um, and that

00:47:33.060 resentment leads to, you know, negative things or the, and the child doesn't have a chance to develop,

00:47:39.200 to be involved with a soccer team and really get to be good on the team or, you know, develops a

00:47:44.360 friendship and can't go to that friend's birthday party. And so that's, that type of, um, that's

00:47:51.180 number. So the number two point is the children, the, the parents live to need, need to live close

00:47:56.580 enough to each other, usually within about 20 minutes from each other so that the child can go

00:48:01.380 from one parent to the other without having to miss, um, friends and activities. Uh, number three

00:48:06.800 is that the child is not able to overhear any bad mouthing from mother to father or father to

00:48:12.560 mother. And bad mouthing is a broad term word that I use to also cover negative body language. So

00:48:19.080 rolling, you mentioned your, you mentioned mom to dad and dad rolls his eyes at mom. The child gets

00:48:25.380 this, you know, that dimension of mom, the debt, the child gets the, uh, the, the, the feeling of the

00:48:30.980 understanding that it's not safe to talk to about mom in a positive way to dad or vice versa.

00:48:35.680 And, um, and then the fourth thing that's crucial to children doing well in a, in a non-intact family

00:48:41.880 is the, um, child, is the parents having, being consistently involved in, in, in counseling, um, not

00:48:50.480 just emergency-based counseling, but consistently involved in proactive preventing of problem

00:48:57.460 counseling at each stage of that child's growth and development.

00:49:01.640 Switching gears a little, are you aware of the type of feminism in, in Sweden? 1.00

00:49:05.680 I'm only, I've been to Sweden and, um, and certainly heard that it's, um, even if you

00:49:12.200 will, worse there.

00:49:13.680 Oh yeah.

00:49:14.440 More of, more of a straight jacket there than it is here.

00:49:16.700 Well, there's lots of female politicians and they're not any better than men. In fact, 1.00

00:49:19.960 I'd say they're probably even worse. There's one female politician she's suggesting for men 1.00

00:49:25.440 to sit down when peeing.

00:49:27.400 Oh my God.

00:49:28.280 Yeah. And now some Swedish schools have even suggested using genderless pronouns to

00:49:32.320 avoid pushing gender roles. What do you think about that?

00:49:35.720 Well, this would be as, as stupid. I mean, let's, let's take the first one first about 1.00

00:49:41.060 the sitting down while peeing. Think of the, think of the situation right now. When a man

00:49:47.160 goes into a men's room, almost all, at least in the United States and most of the world that 0.96

00:49:51.880 I've been to, um, there is an every men's room, a urinal. Every time he urinates, he uses

00:49:58.700 urinal, not the, um, not the, you know, the regular sit down toilet. When he goes, when 0.86

00:50:04.460 he, when he gets married, if he gets married and has a home, he can be a multimillionaire

00:50:10.000 and have a gorgeous home and there will be not a single urinal in that home.

00:50:16.880 And so can you imagine a maskless movement coming along saying what we should have, you know,

00:50:23.720 women should learn to stand up and pee like men do. And we should have only urinals in homes 1.00

00:50:28.740 that, that, that people use for, um, peeing and, um, and, you know, but, and people can use the,

00:50:35.640 the, the, the toilets for other purposes. And so it's sort of like so stupid, you know, like men 1.00

00:50:41.300 and women do have differences. Our differences are both physical, they're biological, they're, 1.00

00:50:46.800 they're, um, they're neurosciences. Neuroscience can articulate hundreds and hundreds, probably

00:50:53.060 thousands of differences between male and female in the, in the uterus. Um, um, you know, when you

00:50:58.960 become, um, when there's huge amounts of testosterone that go through the, the, uh, the

00:51:05.620 uterus to, to that flood the boy, the person, the, the embryo that's going to become a male

00:51:11.600 and, uh, that, that does not exist with the embryo that's going to become a female. And,

00:51:17.240 you know, a thousand other things, you know, we're, we as guys, when we see a woman who is

00:51:22.480 an hourglass type of figure, uh, we are pulled emotionally and sexually toward her once we, 0.98

00:51:29.340 once we enter puberty. And that creates a powerlessness among us, um, to that woman who 0.93

00:51:35.580 is young and beautiful. And, um, and so the, so we, we, the question that needs to always

00:51:43.340 be asked is what's functional and what's dysfunctional? Um, you know, men and women should be able to

00:51:49.160 do anything that they wish to do as long as it doesn't hurt other people.

00:51:52.480 Um, we should always be asking the question, not what is male or female, what is feministically, 0.99

00:51:57.860 you know, what is politically correct or not, but rather, you know, what is functional, what is,

00:52:02.560 um, and then what is functional, but we should be different for different people.

00:52:06.160 You know, we, we need our firefighters and our soldiers and we need our police officers.

00:52:11.720 And there's a traditional men may decide to be that way. So we should always honor and support

00:52:16.280 that willingness to risk their lives, but to have a boy grow up in a military family and be told the

00:52:21.500 only way that you can become a man is to become a soldier is, is to restrict his freedom to be

00:52:28.060 who he wishes to be. So the good news of feminism is that for women, it really very much expanded 1.00

00:52:34.920 women's options and, um, expanded women's psychology. And, and we saw to, you know, if people were to live,

00:52:43.780 grew up in the fifties, like I did. And people say, well, you know, when you get older, Warren,

00:52:50.060 more people, more people going to law school will be women than men, more people going to medical

00:52:54.140 school will be women than men. You know, I would have had a hard time following that, not for, 0.98

00:53:00.280 because, because I just would have, couldn't have imagined that. And so what, part of what,

00:53:04.260 what science teaches us is neuroplasticity and the brain of a woman or a man changes as we change

00:53:11.320 roles. When a man begins to father, uh, he's, his testosterone level goes down, his oxygen level

00:53:18.060 goes up, his nurturing skills increase. We are extraordinary complex as beings. We have extra,

00:53:24.660 and the, the, the way we are most, um, most functional is by our extraordinary ability to adapt

00:53:31.420 to changing circumstances. The people that survive the best and the longest are the ones, um, best able

00:53:36.760 to adapt. And so feminism has done a really good job of, of taking that adaptation assumption and 1.00

00:53:43.820 working with it. And they've, that turned out to be quite accurate, but it's been, but in the process,

00:53:50.960 it has done two major, um, major things that have been problems. One is it has undermined the family,

00:53:58.780 devalued the family and D and demonized men. And there was no reason to demonize men, except for

00:54:06.420 the fact that feminism got born in a period of history where, when you, when you, um, 1.00

00:54:14.420 where you created oppressed and oppressors, you dichotomize. And ironically, that's a highly

00:54:19.540 competitive modality that, that feminist claims to not be interested in is competition. 1.00

00:54:25.660 Yeah. You mentioned testosterone and you, you know, now I've spoken to other guests in the past,

00:54:30.880 most men suffer from low testosterone because of all the endocrine disrupting chemicals out there

00:54:36.500 and all the bad ingredients and food and all the other toxic exposure we get. And that actually makes

00:54:43.040 men suffer, makes them irritable, creates all kinds of problems. Have you looked into this?

00:54:48.040 Yes. Um, so this is really important what you're bringing up here and very few people know about this.

00:54:52.520 Um, so in the United States, as we all know, there's a lot of rivers where there's, um,

00:54:57.580 plastics that are, um, dumped, um, near the rivers or, or that go from the factories into the rivers.

00:55:05.460 And you see this especially around places like Lake Apopko and, um, outside of Disneyland where there's

00:55:11.380 millions and millions of, of, um, bottles, plastic bottles that leach into Lake Apopko and,

00:55:18.100 in studies of different rivers, um, at different junctions in the United States, there's, there's

00:55:23.620 studies showing that, that, that the plastics leach phthalates and the, and the phthalates, um, mimic

00:55:31.980 estrogen. And so particularly in areas where there's a high amount of estrogen in the water,

00:55:38.760 um, the, you have an acceleration of what I call the gender puberty gap. And we all know that

00:55:46.040 girls tend to mature more quickly in puberty than, than boys do. But when there is, um,

00:55:53.020 contact with water that has this, that mimics estrogen, uh, almost by definition, the girls

00:55:59.560 reach puberty even more quickly than the boys, than, than they did before. And the boys reach

00:56:04.920 puberty more slowly than before. So the old gender puberty gap in which girls matured more 0.89

00:56:10.560 quickly than boys is now accentuate, accentuated in many areas. And that's a real problem.

00:56:16.520 It's especially a real problem when you think about it in relation to sexuality, probably

00:56:20.820 the most vulnerable dimension of growing up, um, in, in your adolescent years is what happens

00:56:28.120 around sexuality and rejection and our self-concept. Uh, well, the least mature, when, when boys are

00:56:35.500 even less mature than in comparison to girls than they have been in the past, then we, um,

00:56:42.660 and, and they're still the one expected to risk sexual rejection when they, when they know barely

00:56:48.800 anything about sex and virtually nothing about girls. And they're, and get there. So there, 0.70

00:56:55.620 we're still live in a world where we're told sex is dirty. Uh, you see, if you see a man on TV,

00:57:02.700 your 13 year old and 15 year old daughter and son watching a male masturbate on TV, the chances are 0.95

00:57:09.420 most parents are likely to go over and turn that TV off. And so the, the, the message that comes 0.62

00:57:14.480 across to kids is that sex is dirty, but we still say to boys, you initiate the dirt. So we're saying

00:57:20.580 sex is dirty. The least mature sex that knows the least about girls and sex should be the one to risk 1.00

00:57:28.020 the sexual rejection, um, and initiating something that's dirty. That, what does that produce? That

00:57:32.760 produces shame and that produces self-disgust and, um, and feelings of guilt and feelings that we need

00:57:40.500 to compensate and be more, uh, do things in order to prove ourselves worthy of girls. So we begin to

00:57:46.660 start earning more money, um, to be able to add, afford to ask a girl out and pay for dinner and pay for

00:57:51.980 dates and pay for drinks and pay for, um, you know, um, for ultimately for diamonds, like I was

00:57:56.740 mentioning before. And so all those things lead to a, um, so, so that, that leaching of the lates in

00:58:04.840 our water that exaggerates the old, um, gender puberty gap, particularly in the light of sexuality,

00:58:14.280 creates, um, creates a magnification of problems, um, that have, we've never really faced in humankind.

00:58:21.400 And, and that magnification is increased still further by technology. In the old days, a boy had

00:58:29.040 to deal with asking a girl out. He was expected to ask a girl out. He was expected to screw it up.

00:58:35.440 He was expected to overdo it or underdo it, or, and he paid different prices if he overdid it or

00:58:40.480 underdid it. Um, but today, if he, you know, if he realizes he can't handle that, he turns to,

00:58:46.060 you know, a selection of 250 million free video porn, um, sites that, that helped him to be able

00:58:52.020 to hide in the, uh, hide in the, in the video porn, um, release himself sexually to that and therefore

00:59:00.760 be able to isolate himself further from real life women. A couple more questions for you. Circumcision.

00:59:06.740 I mean, personally, I think it's completely unnatural. And if you're not Jewish, 1.00

00:59:10.160 why do it America? But psychologically speaking, do you think a boy is traumatized from circumcision?

00:59:16.220 Most probably. Yes. Um, how much the trauma, how long the trauma lasts and how deep it is.

00:59:22.420 The fact that we really have done very minimal research until recently on to get the answer

00:59:28.020 to that is part of, you know, our ask is part of the deeper, a deeper question, which is that

00:59:33.780 boys were trained for disposability, not for being caring about how, um,

00:59:39.840 here have having us care about the level of their sensitivity. And so clearly what we do now

00:59:45.460 is that when we take off the end of a male penis, that we, that we desensitize that penis in the old 0.99

00:59:51.780 days or in many warrior cultures, still a couple, even today, when the culture was truly a warrior 0.97

00:59:58.220 culture, a boy didn't get circumcised until he was about 13, 14, 12, 11. And then he got circumcised

01:00:06.540 in front of the entire tribe of males. And he, um, wasn't allowed to use anesthesia. No anesthetic

01:00:14.220 was used on him. And the cutting of his penis was done in front of the other males. And if he even 0.99

01:00:20.620 evinced an ouch or a pain or any type of, um, feeling of, of upsetness, he was not allowed to pass on to

01:00:29.600 being a full male. And so, and so the, the point of that is, is that he was, he was learning that

01:00:38.640 the circumcision was used as a rite of passage ritual that helped him, that taught him that

01:00:47.200 anybody that would be respected by his tribe or his culture was going to be somebody who would be

01:00:53.440 able to, when the going got tough, the tough got going and would never admit pain, who would die.

01:00:59.520 So others would live. That's the training that it took to be a male. So that's the history of where 0.58

01:01:04.420 it comes from and, and what it's related to and why we, you know, why we do it. Now, I personally

01:01:09.980 think that a male, a circumcised male penis looks nicer, more attractive than an uncircumcised male 1.00

01:01:16.140 penis. So, you know, but, but is, is, is, you know, we do a lot of things for looks, you know, 0.99

01:01:21.800 women get plastic surgery for looks. Is plastic surgery healthy for women? I don't think so. 1.00

01:01:26.720 But they do it anyway. And, and men are doing it increasingly now as well. And so the question

01:01:32.060 has to be, you know, if you do believe that a circumcised penis looks better than a non-circumcised 0.97

01:01:37.200 penis, then, then be part, try to be as supportive of a culture, which also does studies to find out 0.93

01:01:47.080 how long the trauma of the cutting of a, of a, an infant penis at an early age, how, how deep does 0.99

01:01:55.200 it go? How long does it last? What, what are the ramifications of it? And that at least will say 0.94

01:02:01.640 that we're beginning to care about what happens inside of men and boys. And so, you know, that's

01:02:08.700 the trade-off that we have to make. And the question, I think the underlying questions we need to ask

01:02:13.240 and to recognize that this is not about a religious thing. It's about a trade-off. It's

01:02:20.480 that the fundamental neglect has been to even care enough to study how, how deep the trauma

01:02:27.900 of the cutting goes. Last question for you. How do you see a healthy relationship dynamic between

01:02:34.360 a man and a woman? I think the single most important thing that the Achilles heel of all human beings 1.00

01:02:42.960 is male or female, is our inability to handle personal criticism without becoming defensive.

01:02:50.980 And so part of what I have started focusing on doing is to, and that's really hardwired into the

01:02:59.340 brain, but hardwiring doesn't mean it can't be changed. It's just like you have a hardwired computer.

01:03:05.660 You can develop a workaround to the software of the computer to accomplish something that wasn't

01:03:10.360 accomplished by the original programming. And so what I try to do with couples that I work with

01:03:15.520 is to, um, to, to say, basically, if it's biologically natural to not be able to hear

01:03:23.400 personal criticism and communicate with each other, then we have to create an unnatural way

01:03:29.160 to be able to emotionally associate what our partner needs to say to us that includes criticism

01:03:35.100 and emotionally associate that with love. So, you know, so, but you can't do that unless you meditate

01:03:42.880 yourself into an altered state so that you're ready and centered enough to be able to hear whatever

01:03:49.400 your partner needs to say. And then once you do that, you have to work with certain specific

01:03:55.960 dimensions of that meditation. So you, if you were my sister, let's say, and you always felt that I got

01:04:01.720 more attention than, than, than, uh, you did from dad and mom, uh, that you might, that I might,

01:04:07.660 instead of thinking of while you're talking and saying that that was true, I was starting to think

01:04:12.520 of all the responses that I had and all the ways that you were paid attention to more than by dad

01:04:16.760 and mom. And so, um, but instead I'm taught that, you know, I, I really, my main goal with you,

01:04:23.800 my partner, my partner, let's say, uh, my main goal with you is to be loved by you. And if I can provide

01:04:29.860 a safe environment for you to be able to share your story, your, your, the way you look at the

01:04:36.620 world, um, and that you will feel more loved by me, you will feel safer by me. And if I can do that

01:04:44.080 for you and you feel more loved by me, you'll feel more love for me. So that's the beginning of the

01:04:50.220 process of associating, um, someone else's criticism of a, with an opportunity to be loved.

01:04:56.660 That's, you know, that's the tip of the iceberg. If, if, you know, somebody wants more on that

01:05:00.120 issue or any of the other things that I've mentioned, it's, um, I have a website, warrenferrell.com

01:05:05.500 that, you know, somebody can go to and, you know, see any of the books on any of the issues that I've

01:05:09.380 been talking about, but that's, but, you know, if you, if you have to do anything, you have to focus

01:05:14.500 on anything that I've talked about, it's, you know, if you work on that single issue, whether you're a,

01:05:23.100 if you're a feminist, you'll be able to hear men. If you're Republican, you'll be able to hear 1.00

01:05:27.700 Democrats and vice versa, Israeli, Jewish, you know, behind all the problems of our time 1.00

01:05:32.820 is practically the, is more than any other single thing is the inability to communicate,

01:05:38.440 hear each other in a loving and compassionate way.

01:05:40.980 Absolutely. Well, thank you. I really appreciate your time today. And if you could one more time,

01:05:44.540 give out your website and any other information you want to give the audience.

01:05:47.300 Sure. warrenferrell.com. And the, the myth of male power that was discussed probably most in this,

01:05:55.640 um, discussion is now just available in a 2014 ebook edition for the first time.

01:06:02.240 And so I probably recommend that over the hardcover edition, um, because it's both up to date and has

01:06:07.420 a lot more access to videos and things like that in it that I was not able to put in my 1991 book.

01:06:14.880 Great, Warren. Thank you. I appreciate your time today.

01:06:17.300 It's been wonderful talking with you.

01:06:19.380 No doubt about it. The most delicate relationship in society is between the male and the female, 0.99

01:06:24.560 and the children rely on this relationship to be in balance and harmony. If the children are the

01:06:29.740 future, what kind of example are we setting for them? Both the male and the female are equally as

01:06:34.980 important. There's a saying that says the woman makes the man. And I also know based on my relationship 0.97

01:06:39.840 that the man also makes the woman. I personally feel empowered and more free because of the man I am with.

01:06:45.880 Women blaming men for the problems in the world is childish. First off, I wouldn't exist if it 1.00

01:06:51.500 weren't for a man. Secondly, my ancestors were also men who fought to protect the females in my line

01:06:57.240 and made possible my life today. Today, I wouldn't be enjoying the comforts of the Western world if it

01:07:02.560 weren't for men's ingenuity. And ladies, we inspire men to reach these great heights. Don't you know that

01:07:07.660 by now? I think feminists have greatly exaggerated with the help of Hollywood the mistreatment of 1.00

01:07:12.900 women in the past and in the present, as if all men have always been barbarians and a healthy female 0.86

01:07:18.520 male relationship never existed in the past. These are Marxist lies used to divide the sexes and disrupt

01:07:24.880 the family unit, which is a primordial tradition based on the natural order of nature. I really do feel

01:07:31.100 that before the religions of Abraham and before the religion of liberalism, the male-female dynamic

01:07:36.840 was more in tune with nature and folk traditions that were based on thousands of years of a sacred

01:07:42.180 natural order. Therefore, the sexes were healthier and happier. I will never be able to lift 200 pounds

01:07:48.000 and I'm okay with that. My brain might not be wired to set up recording gear and I'm okay with that too.

01:07:53.220 Men and women are unequal in many ways, but when we come together, it equals a whole that is equally

01:07:59.460 as important. Cheesy, I know. Stay tuned for much more coming up. Remember, you can sign up for a Red

01:08:04.980 Ice membership at RedIceMembers.com, which we greatly appreciate. Radio314.com and RedIceCreations.com

01:08:12.500 are the websites where you'll find more. We'll talk soon.

01:08:23.220 We'll see you next time.

01:08:53.220 We'll see you next time.

01:09:23.220 We'll see you next time.

01:09:53.220 We'll see you next time.

01:10:23.220 We'll see you next time.

01:10:53.220 We'll see you next time.

01:11:23.220 We'll see you next time.

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01:13:23.220 We'll see you next time.

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01:15:23.220 We'll see you next time.

Radio 3Fourteen - July 23, 2014

The Myth of Male Power

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