I define power as 'control over one's life.' A balanced life is far superior to the male definition of power: earning money someone else spends while he dies sooner.
Warren FarrellRead
So long as you create laws that define women as victims, as creatures that demand protection, that need bodyguards, you are going to perpetuate the very worst of our sexist past.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how laws that depict women solely as victims can reinforce negative stereotypes and hinder progress towards equality.
Warren Farrell argues that if laws continue to characterize women only as victims in need of protection, society will remain trapped in outdated sexist views. Instead of empowering women as equals, such legal frameworks risk perpetuating a narrative that diminishes their agency and strength.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about feminist legal reforms.
I define power as 'control over one's life.' A balanced life is far superior to the male definition of power: earning money someone else spends while he dies sooner.
Men rarely worry about using or being used because all relationships work that way. A man perceives himself as owning and being owned by a woman. 'Use' is a dirty word only when there's an imbalance in the relationship.
We always look at the 'Fortune 500,' and we say, men in power, but we don't look at the glass cellar as opposed to the glass ceiling and say, men also are the homeless, men are also the ones that are the garbage collectors. Men are also the ones dying in construction sites that aren't properly supervised for safety hazards.
Is there discrimination against women? Yes. There's no denying that the old boys' network is alive and well. But there's also discrimination against men.
The key to wealth is not what we earn. It is in what is spent on us.
Throughout my life I have always been amazed that people couldn't listen to other people, that they couldn't hear their best intent, that there seemed to be an enormous need to demonize.
What ought a man be? Well, my short answer is 'himself'.
Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.
The hydrogen bomb is not the answer to the Western peoples' dream of full and final insurance of their security ... While it has increased their striking power it has sharpened their anxiety and deepened their sense of insecurity.
It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
Instead of working hard to keep their share of a shrinking pie, or working even harder to make sure the industry stays as is, I think the most essential thing legacy book industry players can do is set up independent ventures with great people and little interference and work really hard to put themselves out of business by starting at the bottom, not by reinforcing the top.
The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lord God used to make us a human being. If we cultivate a lively sense of our origin and nurture a sense of continuity with it, who knows, we may also acquire humility.
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