The Myth of Male Power

In this book, I define power as having control over one’s own life. The male obligation to earn more money than a woman before she would love him was not control over his life; in Stage I, neither sex had control over her or his life. And, as we saw in the opening chapter, both sexes had what was the traditional definition of power (influence over

The bad news is that when an adult man complains, women hear whining—and no woman’s hero is a man who whines. For millions of years women got protection by choosing Alpha males, not whining males. A woman’s instinct to seek a killer-protector husband was part of her instinct to protect her children.

The more beautiful the woman was when she was younger, the more she had been treated like a celebrity—what I call a genetic celebrity—and therefore the more she felt like a has-been. It’s harder to lose something you’ve had than never to have it to begin with. As she became increasingly invisible, she felt increasingly disposable and increasingly a

Have we been misled by feminists? Yes. Is it feminists’ fault? No. Why not? Men have not spoken up. Simply stated, women cannot hear what men do not say. (Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say became the title of my next book—in 1999.) Now men must take responsibility to say what they want—to turn a “War in Which Only One Side Shows Up” into a “Dialo

Men don’t have a unifying force of women-as-jerks or oppressors. Men’s purpose in being trained to kill was, ironically, at least in part to protect the sex that now considers them the “oppressor.” To die for a woman’s love is one thing. To die for women who think of him as a jerk, enemy, or “oppressor” feels more like saving the enemy. The challen

if you are both reader and leader, that just as the women’s movement redefined women and expanded our daughters’ future, you will employ The Myth of Male Power to redefine men and expands our sons’ future—thus preparing our sons to become the men our daughters will be proud to love.

FROM ROLE MATE TO SOUL MATE For thousands of years, most marriages were in Stage I—survival-focused. After World War II, marriages increasingly flirted with Stage II—a self-fulfillment focus. In Stage I, most couples were role mates: the woman raised the children and the man raised the money. In Stage II, couples increasingly desired to be soul mat

When he did express his concerns, they were dismissed as his “male midlife crisis.” Essentially, though, women’s liberation and the male midlife crisis were the same search—for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, love. But while women’s liberation was thought of as promoting identity, the male midlife crisis was thought of as an id

When the issue of sexual harassment surfaced, then, we were told “men don’t ‘get it’ ” when, in fact, neither sex “gets” it. Men don’t get women’s fears of harassment that stem from the passive role; women don’t get men’s fears of sexual rejection that stem from the initiating role. Each sex is so preoccupied with its own vulnerability that neither