What I learned from Warren Farrel:

He tried to show us the soft side of masculinity. What he presented was all the thoughts going through a young man’s head before his first date in 1966.

The male/female image Mr. Farrel showed me seemed completely outdated. The students present proved it with their questions and comments. A young woman wanted to become an ambassador. If she found a man to share her life along the line, fine, but that was not her main focus in life. The young men seemed also to be studying to enrich their own lives more than to focus on making a living and supporting a family. They would like to share their lives with a woman, see her as the mother of their children, but struggle for a woman’s love, approval and blind admiration would not dictate their lives.

Mr. Farrel seemed to try to show us that all the soap operas are right. All our attention and energy goes to attracting the attention of the right members of the opposite sex.

Dear Mr. Farrel, times have changed. The students you were addressing were all studying what they were interested in, planning their lives to get where they wanted. The focus is on developing themselves on all levels of life, spiritual, mental and physical. If they find mates who will go the journey with them, so much the better.

We are in a time now where the male/female relationship is shifting. In 10 years from now, people will talk of God as being equally as much feminine as masculine. The status of homemakers and mothers will rise to be the responsibility of raising the society we will retire in. Young men and women will know as an instinct that they both have male and female sides they will call on for different tasks in their lives. They also feel that they pull the responsiblity for the world as it is together, and that by being fully men and fully women using all their innate biological and personal strength they can do a terrific job.

To define men and women as you did doesn’t apply anymore. The barriers fell down 10 years ago. Listen to the woman who says her fiancee will earn less then her when they graduate, but that is no hindrance for them to get married, have children and be happy. And we do say good luck to the woman who wanted to become an ambassador and the man who wants to become a nurse. As I write this I see that this is too narrow a viewpoint, too.

Goodbye Mr. Farrel. Goodbye 1966. Thanks for an evening about as entertaining as the soaps.

Wencke Hoier-Hansen

DeKalb