"I started to get very well recognized in the early seventies as the only man in the United States who had been elected three times to the board of NOW in New York City"
About this Quote
The flex here is oddly double-edged: Farrell isn’t just claiming credibility, he’s claiming rarity. “The only man” works like a spotlight and a warning label at the same time. It signals insider status in a movement widely coded as women’s terrain, while quietly reminding you that male legitimacy there is exceptional, contingent, and therefore narratable.
Context matters: early-1970s NOW is a high-visibility engine of second-wave feminism, building institutional power in big-city chapters and fighting for policy wins. Farrell’s phrasing borrows the movement’s own language of representation (elected, board) and turns it into a personal credential. That’s not incidental. It frames him as democratically validated by feminist women, which preempts the most predictable critique he’d later face: that men’s-advocacy arguments are opportunistic or reactionary. The sentence is a kind of inoculation.
The subtext is also about media economics. Being “well recognized” isn’t just social standing; it’s cultural capital you can spend. The movement becomes a résumé line, the chapter becomes a stage, and “New York City” adds the implicit stamp of influence: not just any NOW board, but the one presumed to matter.
There’s a tension humming underneath. By emphasizing “only man,” Farrell is both celebrating inclusion and underscoring segregation. The triumph he describes also betrays the limits of the era’s gender politics: even in a liberation movement, male participation had to be exceptional enough to be newsworthy, and useful enough to be repeatedly ratified.
Context matters: early-1970s NOW is a high-visibility engine of second-wave feminism, building institutional power in big-city chapters and fighting for policy wins. Farrell’s phrasing borrows the movement’s own language of representation (elected, board) and turns it into a personal credential. That’s not incidental. It frames him as democratically validated by feminist women, which preempts the most predictable critique he’d later face: that men’s-advocacy arguments are opportunistic or reactionary. The sentence is a kind of inoculation.
The subtext is also about media economics. Being “well recognized” isn’t just social standing; it’s cultural capital you can spend. The movement becomes a résumé line, the chapter becomes a stage, and “New York City” adds the implicit stamp of influence: not just any NOW board, but the one presumed to matter.
There’s a tension humming underneath. By emphasizing “only man,” Farrell is both celebrating inclusion and underscoring segregation. The triumph he describes also betrays the limits of the era’s gender politics: even in a liberation movement, male participation had to be exceptional enough to be newsworthy, and useful enough to be repeatedly ratified.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|
More Quotes by Warren
Add to List
