MACCHIETTO: Your book (Myth of Male Power) has been out since August 1993. How has it been received?

FARRELL: I put my address in "The Myth of Male Power" so I could get the most important response -- that of the readers. So far I've received about 360 letters. To my amazement, over 98% have been positive. The most frequent response from men is "It articulates feelings I've always felt but were never able to put into words." Women most often say, "It made me feel so much more loving towards my dad" (or "my husband" or "...my son"). On the other hand, establishment feminists respond about 90% negatively, although I don't know any who have read it beyond an excerpt or two. The other 10% of feminists, like Camille Paglia and Karen DeCrow (former president of the National Organization for Women), have written very positive responses.

MACCHIETTO: Examples?

FARRELL: Paglia's review in the Washington Post called it a "bombshell" that is "filled with stunning insights and haunting aphorisms" that "attacks the unexamined assumptions of feminist discourse with shocking candor and forces us to see our everyday world from a fresh perspective." She calls the book an "original, abrasive, heretical text that is desperately needed." Nancy Friday called it "impressive and important... a long overdue rejoinder to women's cry of 'victim' and 'backlash.'" My favorite quote came from Cathy Guisewite (syndicated cartoonist of "Cathy"), who said she "was so riveted by the startling, exhilarating, unnerving, incredible insights in this book that an entire quart of ice cream melted, untouched, by my side while I read it. Warren Farrell has just single-handedly resurrected my hope for relationships. The "Myth of Male Power" will be in my purse on every date."

MACCHIETTO: And what do the people who are critical of your book say?

FARRELL: They react to the title, saying, in essence, "It's so obvious that male power is not a myth...men still run the government and corporations." But they don't read the book to see how I am demanding a paradigm shift in the way we conceptualize power.

MACCHIETTO: Well, how do you know they haven't read the book?

FARRELL: First, I ask them if they've read the book and they say "yes." Then I ask them questions like, "Of the 11 Glass Cellar jobs I described in the book, tell me about two you disagree with." When they stumble over that one, I ask them which statistics about false accusation of rape do they disagree with. Then they confess that they didn't read the book.

MACCHIETTO: Amazing. They criticize you until you quiz them and expose that they didn't even read your book.

FARRELL: Yes, and the critics who have glanced through it do not criticized the statistics--they attack me personally. This, by the way, is the exact experience Katie Roiphe, the woman who just wrote the attack on the feminist definition of date rape, is also receiving -- personal attacks from feminists.

MACCHIETTO: Well, what do feminists call you?

FARRELL: They say that I'm a "turncoat" or a "heretic" and perhaps the most bizarre, "an opportunist for money."

MACCHIETTO: And how is that bizarre, Warren?

FARRELL: Well, federal and state agencies and college campuses have plenty of funding for consulting and speaking on everything from affirmative action to sexual harassment to date rape, but all of these speakers are controlled by committees of feminists, many of whom have graduated from the 15,000 women's studies courses and programs. If I had devoted the same 70 hours per week to feminism that I did to "The Myth of Male Power," I estimate that I'd be making about $200,000 per year, rather than going $60,000 to $70,000 in debt.

MACCHIETTO: What do you think is in your book that has gotten these people so emotionally upset?

FARRELL: "The Myth of Male Power" upsets the feminist case for victim power, and asks us to question both sexes' deepest instinct: the instinct to protect women.

MACCHIETTO: So what do you mean by "power?"

FARRELL: In "The Myth of Male Power" I am redefining power as the ability to control one's life. I am saying, for example, that if a man feels obligated to take a job he likes less so he can be paid more money that someone else spends while he dies seven years earlier, well, that's not power.

Men often follow a program called "leadership" and call it "power" without realizing they are following a program, and are therefore, followers.

MACCHIETTO: So, you're trying to get men to have real power to have control over their lives. How do you go about doing this?

FARRELL: By getting men to understand what their feelings are, and to express those feeling, and as a result, getting the society to understand what we are doing that is leading men to commit 80% of the suicides, be victims of 3/4 of the homicides, become 85% of the street homeless, most of the alcoholics and gamblers, and over 90% of the prisoners.

We have no problems understanding that blacks are more likely to be the victims of these problems because of the powerlessness of blacks, but when men as a group are victims of each of these problems we cannot conceive that it might be a result of the powerlessness of men.

MACCHIETTO: So this gets back to what you were saying about males and females having an instinct to protect women. Men can't protect women when perceived to be a victim, so male victims are ignored and denied.

FARRELL: Precisely. It's similar to what I call the most serious discrimination against men: the psychological preparation to be disposable. The most apparent symbol is draft registration of only 18-year-old boys, only our sons, not our daughters, must register. In post offices throughout the United States, selective service posters picture the body of a man with these words written across his body: "Register: A Man's Gotta Do What a Man's Gotta Do." Imagine if the post office had a poster saying "A Jew's Gotta Do What a Jew's Gotta Do." Or if, because we register men to be killed off in war, we registered all women to produce male children to replace the men who are killed off in war, and therefore selective services posters had pictures of pregnant women with these words written across a woman's body: "Register: A Woman's Gotta Do What a Woman's Gotta Do."

MACCHIETTO: Obviously a few women would say, "The government has no right to control a woman's body: A woman's body means a woman's choice."

FARRELL: Exactly. Our slogan for a woman is: A woman's body, a woman's choice." Our slogan for a man is: "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

The question is this: How is it that if any other group were singled out to register for the draft based merely on its characteristics at birth--be that group blacks, Jews, women, or gays--we would immediately recognize it as genocide, but when men are singled out based on their sex at birth, men call it power?

MACCHIETTO: Now that women are joining the military, is that making things a bit more equal?

FARRELL: No. Women have equal rights to join the military but not equal obligations to register. And once in the military, women increasingly have equal rights to fight in combat positions, but do not have equal obligations to be in combat positions if needed.

The single biggest barrier to getting men to look within is that what any other group would call powerlessness, men have been taught to call power. We don't call "male-killing" sexism; we call it "glory." We don't call the one-million men who were killed or maimed in one battle in World War I (the Battle of the Somme) a holocaust, we call it "serving the country." We don't call those who selected only men to die "murderers." We call them "voters."

MACCHIETTO: What are some other examples of male disposability?

FARRELL: In 1920, women in the United States lived one year longer than men. Today women live seven years longer. We can think of this difference as the way we acknowledge that blacks dying six years sooner than whites reflects the powerlessness of blacks in American society. Yet, men dying 7 years sooner than women is rarely seen as a reflection of the powerlessness of men in American society.

If power means having control over one's own life, then perhaps there is no better ranking of the impact of sex roles and racism on power over our lives than life expectancy. Here is the ranking:

Females (White) 79 years
Females (Black) 74 years
Males (White) 72 years
Males (Black) 65 years

The shorter male life span can be thought of as "the 10% male disposability tax."

MACCHIETTO: So men's shorter life expectancy is one example of their powerlessness when power is defined as control over one's life?

FARRELL: Yes. And another is men's greater tendency to commit suicide. Men commit suicide about 4 times as often as women. Until boys and girls are nine, their suicide rates are identical. From 10 to 14, the boys' rate is twice as high as the girls'. From 15 to 19, the rate jumps to four times as high and from 20 to 24, six times as high. In absolute numbers, as boys are exposed to the male role, their suicide rate increases 25,000%.

MACCHIETTO: And what about in the older age groups?

FARRELL: The suicide rate for men over 85 is 1,350% higher than for women of the same age group. That is over 13 men for each women committing suicide in that age group.

And when it comes to violence, men are almost twice as likely as women to be victims of violent crimes (even when rape is included). And men are three times more likely to be victims of murder. (All the documentation for everything I am saying, by the way, is in the 50 pages of footnotes in "The Myth of Male Power.")

MACCHIETTO: So in a sense, you are saying men are the invisible victims of violence?

FARRELL: Yes. For example, when Rodney King was beaten by police, we called it violence against blacks, not violence against men. Had Regina King been beaten, would no one have mentioned violence against women?

I, remember Steve Petrix, a journalist who lived near me in San Diego. Every day he returned home to have lunch with his wife. One day, as he got near his door, he heard his wife screaming. She was being attacked with a knife. Steve fought the assailant off his wife. His wife ran to call the police. The intruder killed Steve.

Steve was playing an invisible role: the role of unpaid bodyguard. We think of men as being violent to women; we rarely think of men's unpaid role of being expected, as Fred Hayword puts it, "to protect any woman we are with at any time should she be threatened."

MACCHIETTO: What do you say to the public about traditional forms of power, for example, when skeptics question you about men's higher earning potential.

FARRELL: Let's get right to the nitty-gritty here. When it comes to money, what counts between the sexes is what women vs. men have left when their different expenses and liabilities are subtracted from their different incomes and assets--which is called net worth. For example, if one sex earns twice as much but is also the sex expected to pay more child support, alimony, mortgage payments, etc., then it is the net worth, not the gross income, that gives us a sense as to which sex is faring better. Among women and men who are heads of households, women's average net worth is $14,000; men's is $10,000. These are the U.S. Census Bureau figures (again, the exact documentation is in "The Myth of Male Power"). Put on a percentage basis, these women have a net worth 141% that of the men.

MACCHIETTO: You are not saying women have higher gross incomes, then, but rather that more men are more likely to, for example, support wives than a wife is to support her husband and therefore that his income is more likely to be split up, leaving him with a lower net worth.

FARRELL: Yes. This is especially true after divorce. Divorce often means the woman receives the home the man pays for and also receives the children the man pays for... so his gross income is given away, alimonied away and child supported away faster than her gross income. It's important to note, though, that women usually have a greater time obligation (that is, to spend time with those children) after divorce, but it is exactly women's time obligation that men pay for by going out and earning more. When men earn more to pay for the children and a home they're not living in they of course increase their gross income but not necessarily their net worth.

Further, if the man and woman start dating, he is more likely to pay and she's more likely to be paid for, so he earns more to pay for dinner, theater, gas, etc., but also spends more. Women often say, "Well, men earn more." But when two women go to a restaurant, they don't assume that the women who earns more will pay the bill. The expectation on men to spend more on women creates the "Spending Obligation Gap."

MACCHIETTO: In your book, you discuss the comparisons of women to blacks as being fallacious. Would you elaborate?

FARRELL: In the early years of the women's movement, an article in "Psychology Today" called "Women as Nigger" quickly led to feminist activists (myself included) making parallels between the oppression of women and blacks. Men were characterized as the oppressors of women and blacks. Men were characterized as the oppressors, the "master," and the "slaveholders."

The parallel allowed the hard-earned rights of the Civil Rights movement to be applied to women. The parallels themselves had more than a germ of truth. But what none of us realized was how each sex was the other's slave in different ways and therefore neither sex was the other's "nigger" ("nigger" implies a one-sided oppressiveness).

MACCHIETTO: In what ways did men have an equivalent experience to blacks or to slaves?

FARRELL: Blacks were forced, via slavery, to risk their lives in cotton fields so that whites might benefit economically while blacks died prematurely. Men were forced, via the draft, to risk their lives on battlefields so that everyone else might benefit economically while men died prematurely. Both slaves and men died to make the world safe for freedom--someone else's.

Slaves had their own children involuntarily taken away form them; men have their own children involuntarily taken away from them. To this day we still tell women they have the right to children and tell men they have to fight for children.

Blacks were forced, via slavery, into society's most- hazardous jobs; men are forced, via socialization, into society's most-hazardous jobs. Both slaves and men used to make up almost 100% of the "death professions." Men still do.

When slaves gave up their seats for whites, we called it subservience; when men give up their seats for women, we call it politeness. Similarly, we called it a symbol of subservience when slaves stood up as their master entered a room; but a symbol of politeness when men stand up as a woman enters.

Blacks are more likely than whites to be homeless; men are more likely than women to be homeless. Blacks are more likely than whites to be in prison; men are about 20 times as likely as women to be in prison. Blacks die 6 years earlier than whites; men die 7 years earlier than women. Blacks are less likely than whites to attend college or graduate from college. Men are less likely than women to attend college (46% vs. 54%) or graduate from college.

Apartheid forced blacks to mine diamonds for whites; socialization expected men to work in different mines to pay for diamonds for women. Nowhere in history has there been a ruling class working to afford diamonds they could give to a group that could get away with calling themselves the oppressed (even as they accepted the diamonds).

Blacks are more likely than whites to volunteer for war in the hopes of earning money and gaining skills; men are more likely than women to volunteer for war for the same reasons. Blacks are more likely than whites to subject themselves to the child abuse of boxing and football in the hopes of earning money, respect, and love; men are more likely than women to subject themselves to the child abuse of boxing and football, with the same hopes.

It would be hard to find a single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50% of the vote got away with calling itself the victim. Or an example of an oppressed group which chooses to vote for their "oppressors" more than it chooses to have its own members take responsibility for running. Women are the only minority group that is a majority, the only group that calls itself "oppressed" that is able to control who is elected to every office in virtually every community in the country. Power is not in who holds the office, power is in who chooses who holds the office. Blacks, Irish, and Jews never had more than 50% of America's vote.

Women are the only "oppressed" group to share the same parents as the "oppressor;" to be born into the middle-class and upper-class as frequently as the "oppressor;" to own more of the culture's luxury items than the "oppressor;" the only "oppressed" group whose "unpaid labor" enables them to buy most of the fifty billion dollars' worth of cosmetics sold each year; the only "oppressed" group that spends more on high-fashion, brand name clothing than their "oppressors;" the only "oppressed" group that watches more TV during every time category than their "oppressors."

MACCHIETTO: Feminists have often compared marriage to slavery--with the female as slave. Do you agree?

FARRELL: It seems like an insult to women's intelligence to suggest that marriage is female slavery when we know it is 25 million American females who read an average of twenty romance novels per month, often with the fantasy of marriage. Are feminists suggesting that 25 million American women have "enslavement" fantasies because they fantasize marriage? Is this the reason Danielle Steele is the best-selling author in the world?

Never has there been a slave class that has spent a lot of time dreaming about being a slave and purchasing books and magazines that told them "How to Get a Slavemaster to Commit." Either marriage is something different than slavery for women (for example, a ticket to options) or feminists are suggesting that women are not very intelligent.

MACCHIETTO: How have our social policies been affected by this fatal comparison of women's plight to the plight of blacks?

FARRELL: By understanding that what we did to blacks was immoral, we were willing to assuage our guilt via affirmative action programs and welfare. By thinking of men as the dominant oppressors who do what they do for power and greed, we feel little guilt when they die early in the process. By believing that women were an oppressed slave-like class, we extended privileges and advantages to women that had originally been designed to compensate for our immorality to blacks. For women--and only women--to take advantage of this slavery compensation was its own brand of immorality. For men to cooperate was its own brand of ignorance.

MACCHIETTO: What about the feminist claim, then, that women were treated as property?

FARRELL: Women were treated as property. What the feminists missed was the understanding that men were treated as less than property. That is, men were expected to die before their property was even hurt. They were expected to protect their property before themselves. If a woman committed a crime under English law, the man went to jail. Feminists never told us about that. Even if a woman spent too much money in running her home, the man went to debtors' prison.

MACCHIETTO: Why, then, was property often passed down through men and not women?

FARRELL: Property was passed down through men because it was the man's responsibility to provide the property. Men's incentive to attain property was partially that no woman who was beautiful and had class would marry a man without property. He was not worthy of this woman--not equal to her--until he provided property.

Providing property was a sign of obligation, not privilege. This, however, did not mean that men had more obligation than women. Women had the obligation--or responsibility--to provide the children. Neither sex had rights--both sexes had obligations and expectations and, if they fulfilled those expectations and obligations well, they received status and privileges.

MACCHIETTO: In other words, men got status for being subservient. Your book has many far reaching challenges to the status quo of the belief in male privilege. What do you think readers of your book will benefit the most from?

FARRELL: First, an understanding that the wound that unifies all men is the wound of our disposability--our socialization that we will be more lovable if we risk our lives to be a wallet, a soldier, or in a death profession, and as a dad who is a wallet rather than to respect ourselves enough to know that we can become lovable merely by loving.

Further, our society has created the technology for our species to survive without killing, but also created the technology to end our species if we do kill. So our strategy for the survival of men and women has reversed itself in an evolutionary instant. But we have responded by changing only what women do to survive. Women are still marrying the killer-protector type men and men are still becoming that way to be considered the most "eligible."

We have used birth control to create female biology not only as female destiny but as male destiny: she can choose to abort or to sue for support.

MACCHIETTO: And what do you think we need to address the most in order to have a successful men's movement?

FARRELL: Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a successful men's movement is how men's victimizer status camouflages men's victim status. The process of cutting ourselves off from our feelings leaves us with the inability to express how we feel--and women cannot hear what men do not say.