Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say: Destroying Myths, Creating Love

by Warren Farrell

Shows couples ways to improve communication, and discusses giving and receiving criticism, and reexamines popular stereotypes

Genres: Nonfiction, Gender, Relationships, Marriage, Feminism, Psychology, Self Help

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

Warren Thomas Farrell is an American educator, activist and author of seven books on men's and women's issues.

He came to prominence in the 1970s, championing the cause of second wave feminism, and serving on the New York City Board of the National Organization for Women (NOW). However, he left NOW and is now recognized as an important figure in the modern men's movement.

His books cover ten fields: history, law, sociology and politics (The Myth of Male Power); couples’ communication (Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, and Father and Child Reunion); economic and career issues (Why Men Earn More); child psychology and child custody (Father and Child Reunion); and teenage to adult psychology and socialization (Why Men Are The Way They Are and The Liberated Man). All of his books are related to men's and women studies; consistent to his books since the early 90's has been a call for a gender transition movement.

Reviews

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first third of this book was actually pretty good. It was interesting and engaging, and some of the things Farrell was saying make a lot of sense. I think his method of communication would solve many issues, and I wish it was taught more widely. I also think he's right to highlight the importance of men supporting each other emotionally, and the benefits this would bring - both to individual men and to society as a whole.

However, after his list of 51 chores men do (most of which rarely need doing, are wholly voluntary, or are often done by women) the book goes down hill, slowly then pretty quickly. He seems to have quite a serious dislike for single mothers, and his comments about how they manipulate men into helping them with the 51 chores seems rather unfair- apparently the men who help are only doing it because they think they might get lucky. Are men really that shallow? Is he suggesting that men never do kind things for no ulterior motive?

But worse, he repeatedly appears to make light of date rape, even, at one point, calling it 'buyer's remorse'. He does not consider being pressured into having sex by a partner to be rape, and criticises a study where this is the accepted definition. His citation of a study suggesting 60% of rape claims are false is tenuous, I recommend reading that study's methodology - about 20% were admitted false, the other 40% is based on the study leader's opinions of how to tell a 'real' rape victim from a fake one, these women weren't proven to be lying, they were assumed to be. One of “proofs” was that one of the victims was quite large and would, according to the male researcher, have needed to willingly take her jeans off...

He also mentions that in films men are more likely to die because men hate seeing women die. He doesn't back this up with any statistical evidence (although, it would need to be percentage rather than number due to the gross difference between male and female speaking parts in TV and film), but men (apparently) are totally okay with the frequent and brutal rapes of female characters if current films and popular TV shows (such as GoT) are anything to go by. It seems strange to me that female deaths (which frequently occur to provide a male character with back story) can make men uncomfortable, when rape scenes are common, and collated and highly rated on porn sites (and I'm referring to the rape scenes made for TV, rape porn is another issue altogether).


I am in agreement with his that the anti-male advertising is unfair and inappropriate, but I also think Farrell needs to remember that most of the people in charge are male! If they find the notion of a male figure who cannot look after his kids/remember something/clean his home, why do they continue to portray men in such a way? It benefits men to pretend to be incapable at these things, because that way they are done for him. If men find this portrayal so offensive, why do they not complain? Why keep portraying men as incompetent in the home sphere, I promise him that women are not enticed by such inadequacy in basic life skills.

He goes on to suggest that pornography is comparable to stupid greetings cards, but better, because women view men as objects of contempt (which I think is unfounded, because many women will bend over backwards to defend men and excuse even the most heinous behaviours from them), but men view porn because of women's beauty... I don't think anyone can seriously argue that men watch brutal gang-bangs, violent S&M, or abuse because they have an appreciation for women's bodies! An appreciation for female bodies does not require simulated or actual rape on film, it does not require women being beaten around the head, or having items inserted into them, or being choked.

He is also very one-sided: male miners may well have been disposable under a capitalist system, but so were female mill workers who suffered back problems, limb amputation from the machines, and lung conditions from the dust. Back at this time the work of both sexes was often hard and vile. Men weren't sent down mines because they were less valuable, but because women weren't considered strong enough - although, many women DID go down the mines to work anyway, so his point about men taking the awful jobs to protect the women from doing becomes moot. Women have always done the crap work alongside the men, only the middle or upperclasses could really afford to treat women as dainty and wholly incapable, useful only for breeding and embroidery.

Overall, he continues to drive home his belief that men do things because they are programmed to love women and to want to protect them, and I believe most men truly DO love their women, but it also makes me ask some questions:

Is groping women on the train, or at work, protecting them?

Are rape jokes, sexual assault, and actual rape a way of protecting women?
Is FGM or the burka protecting women?

Is sex trafficking, or child marriage protecting women?

Is not allowing women the right to drive or vote or receive equal pay protecting them?

Men don't deny women equal rights in an attempt to protect - is anyone really foolish enough to suggest that denying women equal pay was protection? These things were not given to women out of some deep-seated wish to protect (if they were, why were they denied in the first place?) they were fought for, tooth and nail, and many women were brutally beaten, see the suffragettes - was this protection?

He also brings up the Titanic's 'women and children first' rule, but doesn't acknowledge that this was quite a rarity. I recommend looking at some maritime history and the treatment of women on board when boats began to sink (or hit rough waters and the women were thrown overboard to get rid of bad luck) was this men protecting women?

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's a bizarre book. I though it would be about successful communication within a marriage; yet it turned out to be mostly about gender issues. There is a reason to that, though: the author believes that most miscommunication at home stem from men being emotionally immature compared to women, an immaturity that he blames on what he sees as the triumph of 'competitive feminism', which encourages it. Now, that might sound ironic from a feminist himself (Warren Farrell is the only man to have been elected three times to the board of NOW in New York City). Yet, he has many fair arguments that deserve to be heard.

That men, for many reasons, have not been encouraged to be in touch with their emotions and communicate their feelings is a well-known fact. Manhood has long been associated with a distorted view of strength, according to which feelings are irrelevant and should be bottled up or ignored. Such view of masculinity, in regards to all its negative consequences (on men first of all, and on women as collateral damages) is slowly, and rightly, being acknowledged as 'toxic'. Yet, at the time of the publication of this book (1999) this recognition was far from obvious. And here's where he scores points.

Everybody (unless you are a misogynist or a sexist) will acknowledge the victories of empowerment feminism, whereas women fought to be able to reach their full potential within society. From education to careers and even special laws protecting them (eg. when it comes to domestic violence...) women gained well-deserved rights. The issue is, sadly, that parts of feminist movements took from then on a nasty turn to morph into what he calls 'competitive feminism', that is, the idea that 1-women can only be victims, 2-have it worse than men in every field, and, above all, 3-that men, since they are the oppressors, have no issue at all. In a word: he turns here his guns against feminism turned misandry.

Of course, since this book was first published (following the 1990s) a lot has changed! The so-called Third Wave feminism has been criticised and challenged; thank goodness including by feminists themselves! Men's issues are also being recognised, and from health issues (mental health...) to fathers' rights, a lot of the problems affecting men way more than women, and that were dismissed in the last decades, are now being at the forefront of many campaigns. Thus, given the new socio-cultural landscape, is this book still relevant? Well, somehow, yes. As he rightly states:

'Today women are given scholarships and affirmative actions to encourage them full-time into the world of business and politics; men are given neither to encourage them full-time into the world of home and family.'

Health, education, family life and parenting (there are eye-openings chapters on domestic abuses and divorce laws...) men are indeed not only still left behind in many respect, but they were back then mercilessly silenced should they dared bringing such unbalances up. What he called the 'Lace Curtain' (the dismissal of men's problems so as to frame genders issues in a false dichotomy oppressors-oppressed, where men are the oppressors to be silenced) can actually still be pretty much pervasive. Mens have issues too; so thumbs up to the author for having kickstarted a whole more than needed men's movement!

Having said that, his work here is not without flaws itself. Challenging those feminists dismissing men's problems as counter-productive is good, but one has to be careful not to go the complete opposite direction and brush asides all of their assertions. Sexual harassments and women victims of sexual violence (which he doesn't address as deeply and as much as other issues) is still and always haunting us. Women are still doing more house chores and childcare than men, contrary to what he tries (ridiculously) to disprove. He also ought to up his sense of humour instead of seeing misandry absolutely everywhere (from the card industry to portrayal in the medias, taking the p. at men sometimes is just that: laughing at men - a joke is not necessarily sexist just because it involves genders...). In a word, despite powerful arguments in many respect, he also needs a sense of balance himself.

Now, at this point you may wonder: how is all that relevant to marriage? Well, since society expected men to have no issue (despite every statistics to the contrary) and be censored into not bringing their feelings up anyway (silenced as they were by the victimhood culture of a distorted yet powerful feminism) was it any surprise that such lack of empathy and openness to criticism would spilled at home, into relationships? I don't really know what to think of such an argument. Are couples really undermined by communication problems, stemming from a whole culture preventing men to be as mature and competent as women when it comes to talk? It sounds pretty simplistic; though there's no denying that men have a lot to learn from how women deal with their own emotions! Again, then, I found his approach quite bizarre.

Nevertheless, it remains a good book. Provocative and well-referenced, it's a needed criticism of what had been the prevailing victim culture among certain feminists; a victim culture which, by pushing men aside in the name of 'progressivism', had done nothing but encourage misinformation, stereotypes, and alienation between the sexes. Misandry (conscious or not) had to be called out; not only because it betrays what previous waves of feminism were about, but, also, because the damages it caused to men, especially at a time when manhood had to be rethought and redefined, negatively affected women too. There is no male vs female; there is 'us'. An interesting read, even if outdated at times.

[Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book challenges common myths about men. It's mostly an extension of his previous book, The Myth of Male Power, but includes a section at the beginning about communication. The two different sections felt pretty disconnected. It started out like a relationship self-help book, but then most of the rest of the book was about the powerlessness that men feel, without really tying that with the communication section at the beginning. It was like two different books. But these two books were really good books, nonetheless.

The first part gave some really good advice for how couples can communicate more effectively, particularly in the area of giving and receiving criticism. It felt like a bit of information overload, and hard to encapsulate it in a conceptual framework. He tries to remedy this by providing "quickie reviews" and "starter kits" at the end.

The rest of the book dispels myths about men. The second section is about the myths about their relationships with women. Namely, the myths that men do less around the house, and that they're more violent in their relationships than women. The third section is more of a direct challenge of feminism than he's written to date. The last, and longest chapter, made this book my favorite Farrell book so far, because it directly addresses the struggles I've had with feminism, namely the censorship and outrage nontraditional men face when they try to say anything that isn't strictly feminist.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways an over-detailed evaluation of male-female conversation, but a genuine attempt to help couples truly communicate as they would most benefit, genderwise. There is a section at the end of each chapter on the high points. There is an entire communications course in the subheadings alone.
One wonderful find inside is the real male housework list (all the things men do around the house) that is much more comprehensive than males get credit for--worth the price of admission.

[Josiah Severe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives you a new perspective on feminism and the different categories pertaining it. I gave this book a 3 start due to the fact that it didnt really touch to much on solutions but mainly addressed the problems. When looking at the title, then reading the book, the title is very misleading. Although, the content in the book with the data and evidence supporting male issue was s very insightful and definitely informative. I enjoyed the male house chores section of the book and the legal system that is set up. I really enjoyed both perspectives, especially since the author is a feminist. So hearing some of his thoughts on different subjects was interesting. However, such a topic has ambiguity, which leaves me hopeless that the solutions would work at a global scale

I admired the authors perseverance through they years by the eyes of the media that censored him. That makes me wonder how many other things have been censored or men just didn’t say. It’s definitely true that women can’t hear what men don’t say. The book addresses how thats not women’s fault but primarily the male because the lack of emotional intelligence to articulate their feelings in a heated discussion.

Although, there wasn’t much solutions, the solutions that he had was feasible and could work in a relationship. Gender transition towards different roles and open communication enticed me. The important in acknowledging that there will be a trade off due to a change in gender transition will lead to lower exceptions and a higher success rate.

The book was not horrible but it wasn’t quite what I expected.

[Tiago Martins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good insights, but overall a bad guide for relationships, perhaps too much men centered. The best part is clearly the critique to mainstream narratives about sex differences. As a love counselor seems naive and basic.

[Shirin Abdel Rahman · Rating 1 out of 5]

اذا كان هناك نسوية فهناك أيضا ذكورية و فى هذا الكتاب يطرح الكاتب الوجة الاخر للنسوية.

[Hm · Rating 3 out of 5]

جميل جداً

[Kurt Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros: The first third of the book has a lot of tactical ways of more effective communication, particularly between intimate partners. So it delivered in that sense.

Cons: I was expecting the whole book to follow the pattern of the first third, giving more/better examples and going into depth about psychology, but it didn't. Instead, the latter 2/3 of the book become a more palatable version of Farrell's 'The Myth of Male Power' (a chocolate-covered red pill, if you will). While this isn't inherently a bad thing, it isn't what I opened the book for.

Verdict: If you've never read one of Farrell's books, I'd give it 4 stars and say it's representative of his work. If you have read any of his other works, while pleasant, this book is probably a 'pass.'

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

How is this dude not more famous?

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an interesting and practical book... I feel like everyone should read it. Imagine if everyone followed those tools! It would be bliss

[Cherie Kephart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read. Gives such depth into what is at the root cause of the way we act in love and relationships.