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The Myth of Male Power (Simon and Schuster, 1st Ed., 1993; 2nd Ed., Berkely, 2000) is an internationally best-selling book by Dr. Warren Farrell. Despite Dr. Farrell's background as the only male elected three times to the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women's New York City chapter, and a teacher of women's studies, The Myth of Male Power is considered to be a classic in the discipline of men's studies.

Defining Male Power and Powerlessness
In The Myth of Male Power, Warren Farrell offered his first in-depth outline of the theses he would eventually apply in his subsequent books--books on communication (Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say), parenting (Father and Child Reunion), and the workplace (Why Men Earn More). As The Myth of Male Power's title implies, Dr. Farrell challenges the belief that men have the power by challenging the definition of power. Farrell defines power as "control over one's life." He writes that, "In the past, neither sex had power; both sexes had roles: women's role was [to] raise children; men's role was [to] raise money." One of the examples that Warren Farrell uses to illustrate male powerlessness is male-only draft registration. He writes that if any other single group (the examples he lists are Jews, African-Americans, and women) were selected based on their birth characteristics to be the only group required by law to register for potential death, we would call it anti-Semitism, racism or genocidal sexism. Men, he says, have been socialized to call it "glory" and "power," and as a result do not view this as a negative.

Dr. Farrell contends that this viewpoint creates psychological problems for both sexes: that "men's weakness is their facade of strength; women's strength is their facade of weakness." He adds that societies have generally socialized boys and men to define power as, in essence, "feeling obligated to earn money someone else spends while we die sooner." Feeling obligated, he contends, is not power.

"Why Men are the Disposable Sex"
The subtitle of The Myth of Male Power is "Why Men are the Disposable Sex." This is a key tenet of Farrell’s philosophy. Historically, he says, both sexes were disposable in the service of survival: women risked death in childbirth; men risked death in war. However, Farrell notes, there is a key difference: women's disposability emanated more from biology; men's required socialization. Dr. Farrell asks, "how does a society get its sons to compete to die?" Farrell's thesis about socialization for male disposability is that virtually every society that survived did so by training a cadre of its sons to be disposable—for example, in war and in work (coal miners; [|firefighters]). Successful socialization required rewarding boys with social "bribes of approval." These bribes included being labeled "hero," giving them promotions and "Purple Hearts" for risking their lives, and the love of women. This love leads to children, who are then socialized by parents who reinforce the cycle.

The Myth of Male Power proposes that, because death is not particularly healthy, this cycle creates a "paradox of masculinity": what it has taken to create a society that is healthy creates boys and men who are unhealthy.

Perhaps Farrell's most controversial contribution to gender politics is The Myth of Male Power's confrontation of the belief that patriarchal societies make rules to benefit men at the expense of women. Farrell cites hundreds of examples to the contrary, such as male-only draft registration not benefiting men at the expense of women; or men constituting 93% of workplace deaths; or being expected to risk sexual rejection, pay on dates, and buy women diamonds. Once married, rules made by men are more likely to lead to men losing children and their home after divorce--what he cites as another example of male disposability. Farrell contends that nothing is more telling about who has benefited from "men's rules" than life expectancy and suicide rates--and men lose in both of these categories.

"Where Do We Go From Here?"
Warren Farrell posits that men and women need to make an evolutionary shift from a focus on survival to a focus on a proper balance between survival and fulfillment. (Warren Farrell’s theory on the evolution of gender roles from Stage I 'role-mate' to Stage II 'soul-mate' can be seen in the chart below.)

Warren Farrell's Theory on the Evolution of Gender Roles
The women's movement, he claims, has led to the re-socialization of girls to become women who balance survival with fulfillment, but that no one has similarly re-socialized boys to become men who pursue that balance once they take on the responsibility of children. Thus, Farrell believes, boys and men are decades behind girls and women psychologically and socially, and increasingly behind women academically and economically. In Farrell's recent presentations on this topic, he estimates that men are in 2011 where women were in 1961. Dr. Farrell's political solution is "neither a women's movement blaming men nor a men's movement blaming women, but a gender transition movement." He defines a gender transition movement as one that fosters a transition from the rigid roles of our past to more flexible roles for the future.

Critical Response to The Myth of Male Power
The Myth of Male Power is both Warren Farrell's most-praised and most-controversial book. It is praised by feminists such as Camille Paglia, who, reviewing it for The Washington Post, called it "A bombshell...forcing us to see our everyday world from a fresh perspective." Similar praise comes from both conservative and liberal intellectuals such as Nathaniel Branden and Ken Wilber, and from mainstream publications such as Time, Forbes, the Los Angeles times, The Vancouver Sun, the Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly.

The most ardent critics are academic feminists such as Margot Mifflin and book reviewers such as Robert Winder. Among their criticisms is that, first, male power is not a myth since men still hold the highest government and corporate positions of power; second, that men still earn more money for the same work; and third, that money is power.

The "Pay Paradox"
Dr. Farrell responds that The Myth of Male Power concurs with academic feminists that men hold the highest positions of institutional power, but that institutional power is not real power, which he has defined as "control over one's life." Men, Farrell posits, learn to earn money to gain the approval of their parents and the respect of other men; heterosexual men also learn to earn money to earn their way to female love ("Women don't marry men reading Why Men Are the Way They Are in the unemployment line.")

Warren Farrell introduced in The Myth of Male Power a thesis that he pursued in-depth in Why Men Earn More in 2005: that earning money involves forfeiting power. He goes on to describe his theory that earning money is less about power, and more about trade-offs. Dr. Farrell proposes that "the road to high pay is a toll road--you earn more when you pay 25 specific tolls such as working more hours, or taking less-fulfilling or more-hazardous jobs..."