Published twenty years ago, I understand that Farrell’s unflattering generalizations about women may be a reflection of the way things were and not how they are. But I still find it difficult to believe that women were so drastically different in 1986 than I know them to be today.
The answer to the question posed in the title, according to Dr. Farrell, is: men are the way they are because women are selfish, lazy gold-diggers who manipulate men sexually to achieve financial security.
By studying cartoons and advertisements in popular magazines, Farrel concludes that a woman’s primary fantasy is commitment because she wants financial security and success provided to her by a man instead of achieving it for herself. Huh? I am and have always been more successful in my own right than either of my husbands. Speaking for myself, financial security is not and has never been my primary fantasy. I don’t need or want a man to provide financial security. Few of my female friends express an interest in getting married so they can stop working.
A man’s primary fantasy is to have a variety of beautiful women to have sex with. He achieves success to acquire his primary fantasy. Women are taught to hint at sexual fulfillment, give a taste, generate excitement and anticipation, then pull back in order to achieve their primary fantasy: commitment.
Commitment, being the intended result and goal for women, by its very nature requires men to give up their primary fantasy: having sex with lots of beautiful women. No wonder men duck and dodge! It also explains my observation that men have a harder time being faithful than women do.
Farrell suggests that women should be equally responsible for initiating contact, calling, making plans, and picking up the dinner tab. He rightly points out that most men will refuse to allow her to pay for dinner, so he suggests that the woman should say “If you don’t let me pay, I’ll remain celibate.” So. Not only should a woman buy him dinner, but she should expect to have sex with him and she should use the promise of having sex with him to manipulate him into letting her buy him dinner.
By suggesting that women should assume more responsibility in dating and relationships (it being unfair that men alone assume the risk of rejection and the expectation that he’ll be the financial provider, women should be approaching men, calling, asking them out, paying for dinners and vacations, even providing financial support after marriage) Farrell misses some very important Mars/Venus dynamics at play. Men are fulfilled when they feel useful. They enjoy being needed. Women are fulfilled when they are cared for. When a woman approaches a man, asks him out, and pays for dinner, neither of them achieves maximum fulfillment from the dynamic. I want a man to buy me dinner, not because I can’t afford it or I’m too cheap to spend my money on him, but because I feel valued when he does things for me. He feels valued when I appreciate what he does for me. He is useful and needed, I am cared for. If I buy him dinner, he doesn’t feel valued as I would, he feels that he’s missed an opportunity to show me how valuable and useful he is. It ruins the dynamic of an early relationship.
As I read, I kept wondering what experiences led this man to have such contempt for women.
And then he went too far, suggesting that domestic violence and abuse in relationships occur equally with women as perpetrators and men as victims. Statistics showing otherwise can be dismissed because they reflect only reported incidents of violence. Male victims do not report it. Oh my, hang on just a minute. Having studied this issue quite thoroughly and with an intense personal perspective on it, I am amazed that the man presents such a load of crap with a straight face. I won’t belabor the point too much, but let’s examine the idea a little bit.
Certainly some women have violent emotional outbursts where they may slap or shove a man. I have never heard of a situation in which a woman choked a man, beat him, raped him, knocked him unconscious or broke his bones. I doubt that it happens very often because most men have the physical strength to prevent her from causing serious injury. When a woman is violent toward a man, she is not attempting to control or intimidate him. She knows that she doesn’t have the physical size or strength to do this. When a woman strikes a man, she is saying “You bastard, you have hurt me and made me so angry that I want to hurt you.” For control and intimidation, she will use other weapons: she will be a passive-aggressive bitch.
For men, however, physical violence is a means to control and intimidate her, and it works. When a man hits a woman, he is not saying “You hurt me and so I want to hurt you.” He’s saying “I want to hurt you so that you will---(listen, stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing, be afraid of me, make me happy, whatever).” Control, in other words. Clearly, men’s violence against women is not the same thing as women’s violence against men. Not only is it done for different purposes, but the two genders have unequal physical abilities to injure the other or to protect themselves from the other. Men’s violence is clearly more threatening. If, as Farrell indicates, male victims are just as common as female victims but less known because men hide it rather than report it, what does it say about the injuries inflicted by female violence against men? Pretty easy to hide, I would imagine. A slapped face, a shove, a clawmark on the arm. Compare that to the injuries you have seen on women inflicted by men. A lot more severe and difficult to hide, huh? How can this man suggest that women’s violence against men is just as common as the reverse or that women’s violence is anything like the same as men’s violence?
Finally, the point at which my head actually exploded was this:
For men the gap between desire and fulfillment creates a pressure cooker. And the man’s role of taking initiaves and receiving rejection puts an aggressive anger (as opposed to her passive anger) in his pressure cooker. If there is no outlet, the ultimate explosion can be violence, one form of which can be rape.
Do I read this correctly to say that rape is a natural and expected result of men’s frustrated desires (caused by women’s conscious prick-teasing manipulations)? He does not go so far as to say that rape is an acceptable expression of a man's frustration when a his pressure cooker gets heated up, but nor does he suggest in any way that it’s not acceptable! The implication is that women are responsible for ensuring their safety by being mindful of a man’s inability to handle rejection.
While I came away from this read with a bit more understanding of why men are the way they are, more questions arose in my mind about why the author is the way he is.
