Feminist Foundation
When the second wave of the women’s movement evolved in the late 1960s, Farrell’s support of it led the National Organization for Women’s New York City chapter to ask him to form a men’s group. The response to that group led to his ultimately forming some 300 additional men and women's groups and becoming the only man to be elected three times to the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women in N.Y.C. (1971–74). In 1974, Farrell left N.O.W. in N.Y.C. and his teaching at Rutgers when his wife became a White House Fellow and he moved with her to D.C.
During his feminist period, Farrell wrote op-eds for the New York Times and appeared frequently on the Today show and Phil Donahue show, and was featured in People, Parade and the international media. This, and his women and men’s groups, one of which had been joined by John Lennon, inspired The Liberated Man. The Liberated Man was written from a feminist perspective, introducing alternative family and work arrangements that could better accommodate working women and encourage care-giving men. The Liberated Man was the beginning of Farrell's development of parallels for men to the female experience: for example, to women's experience as "sex objects," Farrell labeled men's parallel experience as "success objects."
As a speaker, Farrell was known for creating audience participation role-reversal experiences to get both sexes "to walk a mile in the other's moccasins." The most publicized were his "men's beauty contest" and "role-reversal date." In the men's beauty contest, all the men are invited to experience "the beauty contest of everyday life that no woman can escape." In the "role-reversal date" every woman was encouraged to "risk a few of the 150 risks of rejection men typically experience between eye contact and intercourse."
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