Monday, April 1, 2013
HIT-AND-RUN WITH A SUITCASE
After I told my daughter about the following experience, she said, "Mom, that's a perfect story for The New York Times column, "Metropolitan Diary." So I sent it in, and it was published this morning. You can find this and other stories about New York in this column, which appears every Monday.
Walking along the crowded lunch-hour sidewalk on Madison Avenue in January, I felt something unexpected on the top of my right foot. I looked down at a "wheelie" rolling off my shoe, being pulled along briskly by a well-dressed woman, eyes straight ahead, oblivious of where her suitcase had just been. Like hit-and-run drivers who don't notice the bump of the person they ran over, she hadn't noticed the interference in her bag's progress.
She rushed along. I walked at a slower pace, limping a little, but a block later we were next to each other at the traffic light. I turned and said pleasantly, "You might want to keep closer track of your suitcase. It ran over my foot."
I expected, as she saw my gray hair and the evidence that I had about 30 years on her, "Oh, I'm so sorry, were you hurt?" Silly me.
What I got was this stern reproof: "You need to watch where you're walking!" Barely taking a breath, she asked, "Were you behind me or in front of me?" "Behind." (I had been next to her until she elbowed her way in front.) "Well," she said, clinching her case, "You need to be more careful. I don't have eyes in the back of my head!"
"You're very good at not taking responsibility," I said, and was amused when, taking this as a compliment, she said, "Thank you." And the light changed.
When the young man next to us raised an eyebrow in her direction, then rolled his eyes and grinned at me, I enjoyed sharing this moment with a stranger and was reminded why I love New York.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Memories
EEOC
When we met, Betty asked me to reveal problems and conflicts at the Commission. As a staff member, however, I did not feel I could publicly speak out about the Commission's dereliction, and I did not tell her what was happening with regard to women's issues. But when she came a second time, I was feeling particularly frustrated at the Commission's failure to implement the law for women, and I invited her into my office. I told her, with tears in my eyes, that the country needed an organization to fight for women like the NAACP fought for African Americans.
Sonia Pressman Fuentes
______________________________________________________
TALIA WEISBERG'S ESSAY WRITTEN AS AN APPLICATION TO HARVARD ABOUT HOW SHE WAS INFLUENCED BY BETTY FRIEDAN THROUGH THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
When we met, Betty asked me to reveal problems and conflicts at the Commission. As a staff member, however, I did not feel I could publicly speak out about the Commission's dereliction, and I did not tell her what was happening with regard to women's issues. But when she came a second time, I was feeling particularly frustrated at the Commission's failure to implement the law for women, and I invited her into my office. I told her, with tears in my eyes, that the country needed an organization to fight for women like the NAACP fought for African Americans.
Sonia Pressman Fuentes
______________________________________________________
TALIA WEISBERG'S ESSAY WRITTEN AS AN APPLICATION TO HARVARD ABOUT HOW SHE WAS INFLUENCED BY BETTY FRIEDAN THROUGH THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
PS. Talia was accepted.
BETTY FRIEDAN
by Talia Weisberg
Her name can be found in most American history books, and her accomplishments are part of every US history curriculum. This recognition is not undeserved, as she revived interest in feminism with her book The Feminine Mystique and facilitated change in women’s roles by establishing the National Organization for Women (NOW). Although most high school students treat Betty Friedan as another name to memorize for a history test, she is so much more than a removed figure in a textbook for me. She is the reason that I am a feminist.
My middle school history teacher developed my interest in First Wave Feminism, encouraging me to write papers for class and National History Day (NHD) about the suffrage movement. The summer before I entered ninth grade, I progressed into learning about the Second Wave on my own. Doing research led me to read feminist classics, all of which really resonated with me. I identified much more with 1960s and 1970s feminism largely because the issues that were relevant then, from LGBT+ rights to equal pay to reproductive justice, are still pertinent today.
However, it was not until I read The Feminine Mystique that I had my “feminist click moment.” While reading, I was shocked by the blatant sexism that society condoned and prevalence of discriminatory attitudes towards women. Friedan’s exposé was so powerful that it rallied me to action and made me want to battle for women’s rights. It was official: I became a feminist.
Ever since reading The Feminine Mystique, I have gotten involved in numerous feminist activities. I have written four award-winning papers about women’s history for NHD, one of which won at the national level. One of these papers was actually about the history of NOW and the advances it has made for women’s rights since its inception in 1966. I love to write about feminist topics, so I have published over 100 articles about feminism in media outlets like the Ms. Magazine Blog,Jewish Week, FBomb, Jewesses with Attitude, and Girl w/ Pen!. I also blog regularly at Star of Davida (starofdavida.blogspot.com). I also co-created Maidelle.com, a writing website that allows teenage girls to speak about their lives without any inhibitions.
Betty Friedan influenced my current actions as well as my future aspirations, as I hope to pursue gender studies in college and become a labor lawyer specializing in women’s issues. These goals were made final when I attended the NOW conference as part of the NOW Young Feminist Task Force, an exclusive group that unites young feminists and gives them a greater voice. Hearing motivating speeches and meeting dedicated feminists showed me that this is what I want to do with my life. Although I never met Friedan, who died in 2006, I know that she would be proud to have inspired me to carry on the torch of feminism
________________________________________________________
When I met Betty Friedan, we discussed marriage, divorce, and child rearing, although I had planned to discuss her book The Feminine Mystique. We had some similar experiences as I, too, had been married for 20 years and was separated from my husband. Whereas she had three children, I had only one daughter, and she said to me, "don't say 'only' one--you have one wonderful daughter." I felt encouraged, and, paraphrasing Wordsworth, in a feminine mode, I said, "the child is Mother of the woman, and I shall wish my days to be bound each to each in natural piety." She closed her eyes for a moment, as if she were savoring that thought, and then she said, "that's right," and nodded. Some people then came to talk to her, and she continued smiling. During the rest of the reception, we often caught each other's glances, and whenever our eyes met, she had a glimmer in it, which was so warm and it was like she was saying "yes, yes" and following my train of thought. She had a smile of understanding. I felt very close to her after this meeting.
Best regards,
Jenny Batlay, PhD
________________________________________________________
I met Betty Friedan in 1970 the night before the March for Women's Equality down 5th Avenue. Since that day our paths crossed many times. I found her to be a brave woman who had a sense that her book "The Feminine Mystique" was having a profound world-wide impact on the lives of women. At that time we did not know the extent of her input but knew something was happening and that women were going forward, not to return to the way it was.
Betty was constantly under attack, both from the right and the, left and from governments nationally or internationally. She was one of the few women who fundamentally changed women's lives in modern times. I remember the time in Mexico City when I attended the International Women's Year Conference along with Betty and Jacqui Ceballos. The environment was very unfriendly to feminists especially, American feminists. Betty was threatened by various government and political groups to the point that she was warned that her life was in danger by both the Mexican and American government representatives. We set up a separate speak-out called "East meets West" after one the daily conferences to show that American feminists were for women and not controlled by the government. It was attended by women from different parts of the world. At the end women started sharing their concerns and hardships a nd not the dogma given to them by their governments. Later we heard that it was written about in various countries, even in China. Betty's book "It Changed my Life' gives the details in her chapter "Scary doings in Mexico City" of the unbelievable events that took place.
Another moment of her life when she had to keep up the fight was when she ran for a delegate slot to the Democratic Convention in New York in 1974. I was her campaign manager and booked speaking engagements with senior citizen centers and various non-political places on the West Side of Manhattan, since we didn't have the political power to be invited to speak at the usual places. She placed second, over elected political officials. The Board of Elections said she didn't win. In the end we were proven right and off to the convention she went.
I supported Betty when I was a board member on the NOW National Board. There was a split in the movement on the direction it should take and Betty was again fighting for what she believed was the right way the movement should go. It hurt her deeply when certain people disagreed with her.
My last memory of Betty was in Washington, DC for the "March for Women's Lives". Betty was eighty-three years old: it was two years before her death and she was not feeling well. She sat quietly at the bus window looking out. People lining the streets saw it was her and called out her name and cheered. The bus stopped along the way so Betty could speak to the people and wave. It brought a sparkle to her eyes and she became the Betty we knew from the past. When we arrived at the mall I rode in a cart crossing crossing the Washington Mall, with Betty up front and myself and Sandy Zwerling in the back. Women filled the mall. As they separated to allow the cart to pass they started yelling "that's Betty Friedan, that's Betty Friedan". Cheers filled the air. Betty sat up smiling and waved.
She was our leader.
Carole De Saram, VFA Board Member, President NY NOW 1974, Board Member National Board NOW 1974.
_____________________________________________________
I met Betty just after she published "Feminine Mystique," when she was about to write a piece about working mothers (still a new idea) for the then NY Herald Tribune. I had three kids under five years old, and also a job as Special Features editor for Harper's Bazaar--for which I also wrote a monthly column about social issues, called Needles and Pins. She then lived at the Dakota on the Upper West Side and I lived nearby at the Century. A mutual friend introduced us, and Betty invited me to come by for an interview about the joys and travails of working-motherhood.
We had an immediate meeting of minds and recognized each other as kindred spirits. Her hearty, raucous laugh enchanted me. Later, after we both divorced, we moved into the same building. At One Lincoln Plaza, off Central Park, we were closer neighbors than ever. Betty was more of a gadabout than I, but she always checked in when she came home at night. We shared many a midnight supper together, and gossiped like kids over cold chicken and glasses of wine about everything and everyone.
Betty signed the books she wrote: "Evolve! Enjoy!" To the end of her legendary life, she took her own advice. She evolved. She enjoyed.
I loved her. I still do.
Natalie Gittelson Lachman
_____________________________________________________
Mary Eastwood, Esq. remembers:
I first met Betty Friedan in the late fall of 1965. Pauli Murray had given a speech to a national women's organization in New York (National Council of Women?) in which she stated "I hope that women do not have to march on Washington like the 1963 march for jobs and freedom in order to get title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enforced." or words to that effect. She was quoted in the New York Times which Betty read.
At the time Betty was planning to write another book basically on what the Lyndon Johnson Administration was doing on women. Pres. Johnson had previously announced he would appoint 50 women to high federal positions. Betty called Pauli and asked who she could talk to in Washington, DC and Pauli told her Catherine East and me. Pauli knew us from working with the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962 and 63, and Pauli and I had just finished writing a law review article (Jane Crow and the Law) awaiting publication in the George Washington Law Review.
Betty first met Catherine and me separately, then together every couple of weeks after that. It was at these dinner meetings we encouraged Betty to initiate an organization outside the government to pressure the government to enforce the nondiscrimination in employment law for women. At first Betty resisted saying she was not an organization type person.
It was the next summer (1966) at the meeting of the State Commissions on the Status of Women, that NOW was started. Catherine provided most of the names of women to be invited to Betty's hotel room
_____________________________________________________
The only personal contact I had with Betty was in 1999 when she was honored by the VFA -- I had a photo taken of the two of us, which I proudly display with other feminist icons. At that event, I asked her if I could get her something from the bar -- She said - "Yes, get me a Scotch" -- and as I turned to do so -- she said "...and make it a double!"
GRACE WELCH, VFA board member and President Emerita, National Organization for Women - Mid-Suffolk chapter, Yoga Teacher
______________________________________________
I wrote a paper about The Feminine Mystique
when I was in my first year of college. I still have it
somewhere
Linda Joplin
BETTY FRIEDAN
by Talia Weisberg
Her name can be found in most American history books, and her accomplishments are part of every US history curriculum. This recognition is not undeserved, as she revived interest in feminism with her book The Feminine Mystique and facilitated change in women’s roles by establishing the National Organization for Women (NOW). Although most high school students treat Betty Friedan as another name to memorize for a history test, she is so much more than a removed figure in a textbook for me. She is the reason that I am a feminist.
My middle school history teacher developed my interest in First Wave Feminism, encouraging me to write papers for class and National History Day (NHD) about the suffrage movement. The summer before I entered ninth grade, I progressed into learning about the Second Wave on my own. Doing research led me to read feminist classics, all of which really resonated with me. I identified much more with 1960s and 1970s feminism largely because the issues that were relevant then, from LGBT+ rights to equal pay to reproductive justice, are still pertinent today.
However, it was not until I read The Feminine Mystique that I had my “feminist click moment.” While reading, I was shocked by the blatant sexism that society condoned and prevalence of discriminatory attitudes towards women. Friedan’s exposé was so powerful that it rallied me to action and made me want to battle for women’s rights. It was official: I became a feminist.
Ever since reading The Feminine Mystique, I have gotten involved in numerous feminist activities. I have written four award-winning papers about women’s history for NHD, one of which won at the national level. One of these papers was actually about the history of NOW and the advances it has made for women’s rights since its inception in 1966. I love to write about feminist topics, so I have published over 100 articles about feminism in media outlets like the Ms. Magazine Blog,Jewish Week, FBomb, Jewesses with Attitude, and Girl w/ Pen!. I also blog regularly at Star of Davida (starofdavida.blogspot.com). I also co-created Maidelle.com, a writing website that allows teenage girls to speak about their lives without any inhibitions.
Betty Friedan influenced my current actions as well as my future aspirations, as I hope to pursue gender studies in college and become a labor lawyer specializing in women’s issues. These goals were made final when I attended the NOW conference as part of the NOW Young Feminist Task Force, an exclusive group that unites young feminists and gives them a greater voice. Hearing motivating speeches and meeting dedicated feminists showed me that this is what I want to do with my life. Although I never met Friedan, who died in 2006, I know that she would be proud to have inspired me to carry on the torch of feminism
________________________________________________________
When I met Betty Friedan, we discussed marriage, divorce, and child rearing, although I had planned to discuss her book The Feminine Mystique. We had some similar experiences as I, too, had been married for 20 years and was separated from my husband. Whereas she had three children, I had only one daughter, and she said to me, "don't say 'only' one--you have one wonderful daughter." I felt encouraged, and, paraphrasing Wordsworth, in a feminine mode, I said, "the child is Mother of the woman, and I shall wish my days to be bound each to each in natural piety." She closed her eyes for a moment, as if she were savoring that thought, and then she said, "that's right," and nodded. Some people then came to talk to her, and she continued smiling. During the rest of the reception, we often caught each other's glances, and whenever our eyes met, she had a glimmer in it, which was so warm and it was like she was saying "yes, yes" and following my train of thought. She had a smile of understanding. I felt very close to her after this meeting.
Best regards,
Jenny Batlay, PhD
________________________________________________________
I met Betty Friedan in 1970 the night before the March for Women's Equality down 5th Avenue. Since that day our paths crossed many times. I found her to be a brave woman who had a sense that her book "The Feminine Mystique" was having a profound world-wide impact on the lives of women. At that time we did not know the extent of her input but knew something was happening and that women were going forward, not to return to the way it was.
Betty was constantly under attack, both from the right and the, left and from governments nationally or internationally. She was one of the few women who fundamentally changed women's lives in modern times. I remember the time in Mexico City when I attended the International Women's Year Conference along with Betty and Jacqui Ceballos. The environment was very unfriendly to feminists especially, American feminists. Betty was threatened by various government and political groups to the point that she was warned that her life was in danger by both the Mexican and American government representatives. We set up a separate speak-out called "East meets West" after one the daily conferences to show that American feminists were for women and not controlled by the government. It was attended by women from different parts of the world. At the end women started sharing their concerns and hardships a nd not the dogma given to them by their governments. Later we heard that it was written about in various countries, even in China. Betty's book "It Changed my Life' gives the details in her chapter "Scary doings in Mexico City" of the unbelievable events that took place.
Another moment of her life when she had to keep up the fight was when she ran for a delegate slot to the Democratic Convention in New York in 1974. I was her campaign manager and booked speaking engagements with senior citizen centers and various non-political places on the West Side of Manhattan, since we didn't have the political power to be invited to speak at the usual places. She placed second, over elected political officials. The Board of Elections said she didn't win. In the end we were proven right and off to the convention she went.
I supported Betty when I was a board member on the NOW National Board. There was a split in the movement on the direction it should take and Betty was again fighting for what she believed was the right way the movement should go. It hurt her deeply when certain people disagreed with her.
My last memory of Betty was in Washington, DC for the "March for Women's Lives". Betty was eighty-three years old: it was two years before her death and she was not feeling well. She sat quietly at the bus window looking out. People lining the streets saw it was her and called out her name and cheered. The bus stopped along the way so Betty could speak to the people and wave. It brought a sparkle to her eyes and she became the Betty we knew from the past. When we arrived at the mall I rode in a cart crossing crossing the Washington Mall, with Betty up front and myself and Sandy Zwerling in the back. Women filled the mall. As they separated to allow the cart to pass they started yelling "that's Betty Friedan, that's Betty Friedan". Cheers filled the air. Betty sat up smiling and waved.
She was our leader.
Carole De Saram, VFA Board Member, President NY NOW 1974, Board Member National Board NOW 1974.
_____________________________________________________
I met Betty just after she published "Feminine Mystique," when she was about to write a piece about working mothers (still a new idea) for the then NY Herald Tribune. I had three kids under five years old, and also a job as Special Features editor for Harper's Bazaar--for which I also wrote a monthly column about social issues, called Needles and Pins. She then lived at the Dakota on the Upper West Side and I lived nearby at the Century. A mutual friend introduced us, and Betty invited me to come by for an interview about the joys and travails of working-motherhood.
We had an immediate meeting of minds and recognized each other as kindred spirits. Her hearty, raucous laugh enchanted me. Later, after we both divorced, we moved into the same building. At One Lincoln Plaza, off Central Park, we were closer neighbors than ever. Betty was more of a gadabout than I, but she always checked in when she came home at night. We shared many a midnight supper together, and gossiped like kids over cold chicken and glasses of wine about everything and everyone.
Betty signed the books she wrote: "Evolve! Enjoy!" To the end of her legendary life, she took her own advice. She evolved. She enjoyed.
I loved her. I still do.
Natalie Gittelson Lachman
_____________________________________________________
Mary Eastwood, Esq. remembers:
I first met Betty Friedan in the late fall of 1965. Pauli Murray had given a speech to a national women's organization in New York (National Council of Women?) in which she stated "I hope that women do not have to march on Washington like the 1963 march for jobs and freedom in order to get title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enforced." or words to that effect. She was quoted in the New York Times which Betty read.
At the time Betty was planning to write another book basically on what the Lyndon Johnson Administration was doing on women. Pres. Johnson had previously announced he would appoint 50 women to high federal positions. Betty called Pauli and asked who she could talk to in Washington, DC and Pauli told her Catherine East and me. Pauli knew us from working with the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962 and 63, and Pauli and I had just finished writing a law review article (Jane Crow and the Law) awaiting publication in the George Washington Law Review.
Betty first met Catherine and me separately, then together every couple of weeks after that. It was at these dinner meetings we encouraged Betty to initiate an organization outside the government to pressure the government to enforce the nondiscrimination in employment law for women. At first Betty resisted saying she was not an organization type person.
It was the next summer (1966) at the meeting of the State Commissions on the Status of Women, that NOW was started. Catherine provided most of the names of women to be invited to Betty's hotel room
_____________________________________________________
The only personal contact I had with Betty was in 1999 when she was honored by the VFA -- I had a photo taken of the two of us, which I proudly display with other feminist icons. At that event, I asked her if I could get her something from the bar -- She said - "Yes, get me a Scotch" -- and as I turned to do so -- she said "...and make it a double!"
GRACE WELCH, VFA board member and President Emerita, National Organization for Women - Mid-Suffolk chapter, Yoga Teacher
______________________________________________
I wrote a paper about The Feminine Mystique
when I was in my first year of college. I still have it
somewhere
Linda Joplin
Woman Power Need is Cited
David Dismore sent this article from a 1972 New Orleans Times Picayune around today --- reminding us how great an advocate for women's rights was Betty Friedan ! ----and also reminding us how many women supported male supremacy. Read the article and rejoice that this brilliant, courageous, sometimes crazy but wonderful woman not only awakened us to the injustices of sexism, but took the helm and led us in our fight for freedom, justice and equality!..
WOMAN POWER NEED IS CITED
Feminist Friedan Speaks to Group Here
By MILLIE BALL
Looking and talking rather like a militant mother, feminist Betty Friedan alternately shouted with waving hands, and spoke softly with punching motions of the need for political power for women. She smilingly admitted : "Some of my best friends are men."
Speaking Tuesday to the New Orleans chapter of the National Organization for Women (which she founded in 1966) at the
Andrew Jackson Restaurant, the author of the "Feminine Mystique" shook her shag-cut gray hair and dangling earrings, folded her
arms and began slowly. She was soon up to fever pitch.
"It is impossible to overestimate the power of what's happening to American women," she said vehemently. "But," she added, "I can't stand the term 'women's lib.' It's a bra-burning image, and we're not burning bras.
"You don't have to give up femininity to be a woman," she insisted. "To feel good about yourself as a woman is the meaning of femininity, and the more liberated we are, the more feminine we will be and the more we will love men. Men are here to stay," she said with waving hands, "and they're joining us and supporting us, telling their wives to go back to school, to get a job."
POLITICAL GAME
According to Mrs. Friedan, the "name of the game is political. We're in the third stage now. First was consciousness-raising, and that's taking place everywhere. Girls are joining Little League, couples are sharing in housework. Second was commitment, and that's been hap-
pening for five years. Now, third, we need to restructure our institutions, so we can have a voice of decision in society.
"Every woman in America is a housewife,"she expounded. "We're expected to do for love what no one would do for money. The govern-
ment spends 10 billion dollars for a space shuttle to the moon, six billion dollars for some undersea mess, and then vetoes a paltry few million dollars for childcare centers.
Just getting started on the child-care center issue, Friedan gained speed. "It takes two to bring a child into the world, and two should share in the rearing. A mother shouldn't be forced to go into a sexual
monastery with nothing over three feet tall."
SENATORS MENTIONED
Mrs. Friedan said that she hopes that Louisiana women will "make their way through the bayous and magnolias" to make sure that
Senators Ellender and Long vote for the Equal Rights Amendment March 20. "Senators should know that we will notice how they vote, and that we will replace them if they vote against it," she said to resounding applause.
"Women have 53 per cent of the vote," she stressed. "And we're going to get together, cross party lines, to get something done. We have one great advantage : we weren't brought up to be men. We see the human side of things. If the government can land men on the moon, why can't they use technology to help human beings clean up the cities." Quietly she added, "More important than who wins the presidency is the emergence of women as an unprecedented political force."
Mrs. Friedan said that the movement will even accept as allies "ornery White Anglo-Saxon geriatric bosses who have finally seen
the new needs of women."
She gave the victory sign, got a standing ovation, and sat down, before dashing off to another city and another speech.
===========================
NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
MAR 8, 1972 PART 3 PG 22 C 8
===========================
'LIB' AND CHILD CARE
Editor, The Times-Picayune :
The most revolting article I have read in years was the one including Mrs., Miss or Ms. Betty Friedan's statement that "The government spends $10 billion for a space shuttle to the moon, $8 billion for some undersea mess and then vetoes a paltry few million dollars for child care centers.
...... It takes two to bring a child into the world and two should share in the rearing. A mother shouldn't be forced to go into a sexual monastery with nothing over three feet tall."
I'm a woman and I'm for the space shuttle to the moon and the undersea mess - not government child care centers. If a woman has a baby she should be willing to take care of that baby, not turn it over to someone who does not love it. What kind of "care" will it get ?
MAUD O'BRYAN
New Orleans
===============================
NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
MAR 12, 1972 PART 2 PAGE 2 COL 4
===============================
WOMAN POWER NEED IS CITED
Feminist Friedan Speaks to Group Here
By MILLIE BALL
Looking and talking rather like a militant mother, feminist Betty Friedan alternately shouted with waving hands, and spoke softly with punching motions of the need for political power for women. She smilingly admitted : "Some of my best friends are men."
Speaking Tuesday to the New Orleans chapter of the National Organization for Women (which she founded in 1966) at the
Andrew Jackson Restaurant, the author of the "Feminine Mystique" shook her shag-cut gray hair and dangling earrings, folded her
arms and began slowly. She was soon up to fever pitch.
"It is impossible to overestimate the power of what's happening to American women," she said vehemently. "But," she added, "I can't stand the term 'women's lib.' It's a bra-burning image, and we're not burning bras.
"You don't have to give up femininity to be a woman," she insisted. "To feel good about yourself as a woman is the meaning of femininity, and the more liberated we are, the more feminine we will be and the more we will love men. Men are here to stay," she said with waving hands, "and they're joining us and supporting us, telling their wives to go back to school, to get a job."
POLITICAL GAME
According to Mrs. Friedan, the "name of the game is political. We're in the third stage now. First was consciousness-raising, and that's taking place everywhere. Girls are joining Little League, couples are sharing in housework. Second was commitment, and that's been hap-
pening for five years. Now, third, we need to restructure our institutions, so we can have a voice of decision in society.
"Every woman in America is a housewife,"she expounded. "We're expected to do for love what no one would do for money. The govern-
ment spends 10 billion dollars for a space shuttle to the moon, six billion dollars for some undersea mess, and then vetoes a paltry few million dollars for childcare centers.
Just getting started on the child-care center issue, Friedan gained speed. "It takes two to bring a child into the world, and two should share in the rearing. A mother shouldn't be forced to go into a sexual
monastery with nothing over three feet tall."
SENATORS MENTIONED
Mrs. Friedan said that she hopes that Louisiana women will "make their way through the bayous and magnolias" to make sure that
Senators Ellender and Long vote for the Equal Rights Amendment March 20. "Senators should know that we will notice how they vote, and that we will replace them if they vote against it," she said to resounding applause.
"Women have 53 per cent of the vote," she stressed. "And we're going to get together, cross party lines, to get something done. We have one great advantage : we weren't brought up to be men. We see the human side of things. If the government can land men on the moon, why can't they use technology to help human beings clean up the cities." Quietly she added, "More important than who wins the presidency is the emergence of women as an unprecedented political force."
Mrs. Friedan said that the movement will even accept as allies "ornery White Anglo-Saxon geriatric bosses who have finally seen
the new needs of women."
She gave the victory sign, got a standing ovation, and sat down, before dashing off to another city and another speech.
===========================
NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
MAR 8, 1972 PART 3 PG 22 C 8
===========================
'LIB' AND CHILD CARE
Editor, The Times-Picayune :
The most revolting article I have read in years was the one including Mrs., Miss or Ms. Betty Friedan's statement that "The government spends $10 billion for a space shuttle to the moon, $8 billion for some undersea mess and then vetoes a paltry few million dollars for child care centers.
...... It takes two to bring a child into the world and two should share in the rearing. A mother shouldn't be forced to go into a sexual monastery with nothing over three feet tall."
I'm a woman and I'm for the space shuttle to the moon and the undersea mess - not government child care centers. If a woman has a baby she should be willing to take care of that baby, not turn it over to someone who does not love it. What kind of "care" will it get ?
MAUD O'BRYAN
New Orleans
===============================
NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
MAR 12, 1972 PART 2 PAGE 2 COL 4
===============================
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Memories
When I met Betty Friedan, we discussed marriage, divorce, and child rearing, although I had planned to discuss her book The Feminine Mystique. We had some similar experiences as I, too, had been married for 20 years and was separated from my husband. Whereas she had three children, I had only one daughter, and she said to me, "don't say 'only' one--you have one wonderful daughter." I felt encouraged, and, paraphrasing Wordsworth, in a feminine mode, I said, "the child is Mother of the woman, and I shall wish my days to be bound each to each in natural piety." She closed her eyes for a moment, as if she were savoring that thought, and then she said, "that's right," and nodded. Some people then came to talk to her, and she continued smiling. During the rest of the reception, we often caught each other's glances, and whenever our eyes met, she had a glimmer in it, which was so warm and it was like she was saying "yes, yes" and following my train of thought. She had a smile of understanding. I felt very close to her after this meeting.
Best regards,
Jenny Batlay, PhD
________________________________________________________
I met Betty Friedan in 1970 the night before the March for Women's Equality down 5th Avenue. Since that day our paths crossed many times. I found her to be a brave woman who had a sense that her book "The Feminine Mystique" was having a profound world-wide impact on the lives of women. At that time we did not know the extent of her input but knew something was happening and that women were going forward, not to return to the way it was.
Betty was constantly under attack, both from the right and the, left and from governments nationally or internationally. She was one of the few women who fundamentally changed women's lives in modern times. I remember the time in Mexico City when I attended the International Women's Year Conference along with Betty and Jacqui Ceballos. The environment was very unfriendly to feminists especially, American feminists. Betty was threatened by various government and political groups to the point that she was warned that her life was in danger by both the Mexican and American government representatives. We set up a separate speak-out called "East meets West" after one the daily conferences to show that American feminists were for women and not controlled by the government. It was attended by women from different parts of the world. At the end women started sharing their concerns and hardships a nd not the dogma given to them by their governments. Later we heard that it was written about in various countries, even in China. Betty's book "It Changed my Life' gives the details in her chapter "Scary doings in Mexico City" of the unbelievable events that took place.
Another moment of her life when she had to keep up the fight was when she ran for a delegate slot to the Democratic Convention in New York in 1974. I was her campaign manager and booked speaking engagements with senior citizen centers and various non-political places on the West Side of Manhattan, since we didn't have the political power to be invited to speak at the usual places. She placed second, over elected political officials. The Board of Elections said she didn't win. In the end we were proven right and off to the convention she went.
I supported Betty when I was a board member on the NOW National Board. There was a split in the movement on the direction it should take and Betty was again fighting for what she believed was the right way the movement should go. It hurt her deeply when certain people disagreed with her.
My last memory of Betty was in Washington, DC for the "March for Women's Lives". Betty was eighty-three years old: it was two years before her death and she was not feeling well. She sat quietly at the bus window looking out. People lining the streets saw it was her and called out her name and cheered. The bus stopped along the way so Betty could speak to the people and wave. It brought a sparkle to her eyes and she became the Betty we knew from the past. When we arrived at the mall I rode in a cart crossing crossing the Washington Mall, with Betty up front and myself and Sandy Zwerling in the back. Women filled the mall. As they separated to allow the cart to pass they started yelling "that's Betty Friedan, that's Betty Friedan". Cheers filled the air. Betty sat up smiling and waved.
She was our leader.
Carole De Saram, VFA Board Member, President NY NOW 1974, Board Member National Board NOW 1974.
_____________________________________________________
I met Betty just after she published "Feminine Mystique," when she was about to write a piece about working mothers (still a new idea) for the then NY Herald Tribune. I had three kids under five years old, and also a job as Special Features editor for Harper's Bazaar--for which I also wrote a monthly column about social issues, called Needles and Pins. She then lived at the Dakota on the Upper West Side and I lived nearby at the Century. A mutual friend introduced us, and Betty invited me to come by for an interview about the joys and travails of working-motherhood.
We had an immediate meeting of minds and recognized each other as kindred spirits. Her hearty, raucous laugh enchanted me. Later, after we both divorced, we moved into the same building. At One Lincoln Plaza, off Central Park, we were closer neighbors than ever. Betty was more of a gadabout than I, but she always checked in when she came home at night. We shared many a midnight supper together, and gossiped like kids over cold chicken and glasses of wine about everything and everyone.
Betty signed the books she wrote: "Evolve! Enjoy!" To the end of her legendary life, she took her own advice. She evolved. She enjoyed.
I loved her. I still do.
Natalie Gittelson Lachman
_____________________________________________________
Mary Eastwood, Esq. remembers:
I first met Betty Friedan in the late fall of 1965. Pauli Murray had given a speech to a national women's organization in New York (National Council of Women?) in which she stated "I hope that women do not have to march on Washington like the 1963 march for jobs and freedom in order to get title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enforced." or words to that effect. She was quoted in the New York Times which Betty read.
At the time Betty was planning to write another book basically on what the Lyndon Johnson Administration was doing on women. Pres. Johnson had previously announced he would appoint 50 women to high federal positions. Betty called Pauli and asked who she could talk to in Washington, DC and Pauli told her Catherine East and me. Pauli knew us from working with the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962 and 63, and Pauli and I had just finished writing a law review article (Jane Crow and the Law) awaiting publication in the George Washington Law Review.
Betty first met Catherine and me separately, then together every couple of weeks after that. It was at these dinner meetings we encouraged Betty to initiate an organization outside the government to pressure the government to enforce the nondiscrimination in employment law for women. At first Betty resisted saying she was not an organization type person.
It was the next summer (1966) at the meeting of the State Commissions on the Status of Women, that NOW was started. Catherine provided most of the names of women to be invited to Betty's hotel room
_____________________________________________________
The only personal contact I had with Betty was in 1999 when she was honored by the VFA -- I had a photo taken of the two of us, which I proudly display with other feminist icons. At that event, I asked her if I could get her something from the bar -- She said - "Yes, get me a Scotch" -- and as I turned to do so -- she said "...and make it a double!"
GRACE WELCH, VFA board member and President Emerita, National Organization for Women - Mid-Suffolk chapter, Yoga Teacher
______________________________________________
I wrote a paper about The Feminine Mystique
when I was in my first year of college. I still have it
somewhere
Linda Joplin
Best regards,
Jenny Batlay, PhD
________________________________________________________
I met Betty Friedan in 1970 the night before the March for Women's Equality down 5th Avenue. Since that day our paths crossed many times. I found her to be a brave woman who had a sense that her book "The Feminine Mystique" was having a profound world-wide impact on the lives of women. At that time we did not know the extent of her input but knew something was happening and that women were going forward, not to return to the way it was.
Betty was constantly under attack, both from the right and the, left and from governments nationally or internationally. She was one of the few women who fundamentally changed women's lives in modern times. I remember the time in Mexico City when I attended the International Women's Year Conference along with Betty and Jacqui Ceballos. The environment was very unfriendly to feminists especially, American feminists. Betty was threatened by various government and political groups to the point that she was warned that her life was in danger by both the Mexican and American government representatives. We set up a separate speak-out called "East meets West" after one the daily conferences to show that American feminists were for women and not controlled by the government. It was attended by women from different parts of the world. At the end women started sharing their concerns and hardships a nd not the dogma given to them by their governments. Later we heard that it was written about in various countries, even in China. Betty's book "It Changed my Life' gives the details in her chapter "Scary doings in Mexico City" of the unbelievable events that took place.
Another moment of her life when she had to keep up the fight was when she ran for a delegate slot to the Democratic Convention in New York in 1974. I was her campaign manager and booked speaking engagements with senior citizen centers and various non-political places on the West Side of Manhattan, since we didn't have the political power to be invited to speak at the usual places. She placed second, over elected political officials. The Board of Elections said she didn't win. In the end we were proven right and off to the convention she went.
I supported Betty when I was a board member on the NOW National Board. There was a split in the movement on the direction it should take and Betty was again fighting for what she believed was the right way the movement should go. It hurt her deeply when certain people disagreed with her.
My last memory of Betty was in Washington, DC for the "March for Women's Lives". Betty was eighty-three years old: it was two years before her death and she was not feeling well. She sat quietly at the bus window looking out. People lining the streets saw it was her and called out her name and cheered. The bus stopped along the way so Betty could speak to the people and wave. It brought a sparkle to her eyes and she became the Betty we knew from the past. When we arrived at the mall I rode in a cart crossing crossing the Washington Mall, with Betty up front and myself and Sandy Zwerling in the back. Women filled the mall. As they separated to allow the cart to pass they started yelling "that's Betty Friedan, that's Betty Friedan". Cheers filled the air. Betty sat up smiling and waved.
She was our leader.
Carole De Saram, VFA Board Member, President NY NOW 1974, Board Member National Board NOW 1974.
_____________________________________________________
I met Betty just after she published "Feminine Mystique," when she was about to write a piece about working mothers (still a new idea) for the then NY Herald Tribune. I had three kids under five years old, and also a job as Special Features editor for Harper's Bazaar--for which I also wrote a monthly column about social issues, called Needles and Pins. She then lived at the Dakota on the Upper West Side and I lived nearby at the Century. A mutual friend introduced us, and Betty invited me to come by for an interview about the joys and travails of working-motherhood.
We had an immediate meeting of minds and recognized each other as kindred spirits. Her hearty, raucous laugh enchanted me. Later, after we both divorced, we moved into the same building. At One Lincoln Plaza, off Central Park, we were closer neighbors than ever. Betty was more of a gadabout than I, but she always checked in when she came home at night. We shared many a midnight supper together, and gossiped like kids over cold chicken and glasses of wine about everything and everyone.
Betty signed the books she wrote: "Evolve! Enjoy!" To the end of her legendary life, she took her own advice. She evolved. She enjoyed.
I loved her. I still do.
Natalie Gittelson Lachman
_____________________________________________________
Mary Eastwood, Esq. remembers:
I first met Betty Friedan in the late fall of 1965. Pauli Murray had given a speech to a national women's organization in New York (National Council of Women?) in which she stated "I hope that women do not have to march on Washington like the 1963 march for jobs and freedom in order to get title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enforced." or words to that effect. She was quoted in the New York Times which Betty read.
At the time Betty was planning to write another book basically on what the Lyndon Johnson Administration was doing on women. Pres. Johnson had previously announced he would appoint 50 women to high federal positions. Betty called Pauli and asked who she could talk to in Washington, DC and Pauli told her Catherine East and me. Pauli knew us from working with the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962 and 63, and Pauli and I had just finished writing a law review article (Jane Crow and the Law) awaiting publication in the George Washington Law Review.
Betty first met Catherine and me separately, then together every couple of weeks after that. It was at these dinner meetings we encouraged Betty to initiate an organization outside the government to pressure the government to enforce the nondiscrimination in employment law for women. At first Betty resisted saying she was not an organization type person.
It was the next summer (1966) at the meeting of the State Commissions on the Status of Women, that NOW was started. Catherine provided most of the names of women to be invited to Betty's hotel room
_____________________________________________________
The only personal contact I had with Betty was in 1999 when she was honored by the VFA -- I had a photo taken of the two of us, which I proudly display with other feminist icons. At that event, I asked her if I could get her something from the bar -- She said - "Yes, get me a Scotch" -- and as I turned to do so -- she said "...and make it a double!"
GRACE WELCH, VFA board member and President Emerita, National Organization for Women - Mid-Suffolk chapter, Yoga Teacher
______________________________________________
I wrote a paper about The Feminine Mystique
when I was in my first year of college. I still have it
somewhere
Linda Joplin
Looking Back at a Domestic Cri de Coeur
By JANET MASLIN Published: February 18, 2013
On my first day of work at The New York Times, a young reporter spied me in the newsroom and rushed up to say hello. “Hey!” she said. “It’s another one of us!” We were both in our 20s at a time when young women at The Times were a novelty, and that big smile from Anna Quindlen was an amazingly generous icebreaker. That was that: friends for life.
Three and a half decades later I was embarrassed to tell Anna that I had never read “The Feminine Mystique,” which was published 50 years ago this Tuesday. It has now been reissued, with an introduction by the Times Op-Ed columnist Gail Collins and an afterword by Anna. Anna and I talk about books all the time; how had this one never come up in conversation?
She wasn’t surprised. She hears “The Feminine Mystique” name-dropped by people who, she can tell, haven’t read it at all.
“It is a cliché of our own time,” Betty Friedan wrote in her 1963 manifesto — which, yes, I have just finished reading — “that women spent half a century fighting for ‘rights,’ and the next half wondering whether they wanted them at all. ‘Rights’ have a dull sound to people who have grown up after they have been won.”
Among the many truisms in the book, that one leaps out at me most. Unlike friends who went to women’s colleges, I went to a coed campus and studied math; “The Feminine Mystique” was not required reading. By the time I became a journalist, Friedan’s sleepwalking housewives were so long gone that I could enter the professional world with a short memory and an undisguised advantage. The top editor who hired me in 1977 told me, perfectly nicely, that I was “the right age and the right sex.” He told Anna that if she hadn’t been female, she never would have gotten in the door.
Friedan wrote about the period between World War II and 1960, when women married young, abandoned their ambitions, had large families that fueled the baby boom, moved to the suburbs and valued femininity above all else. This was the era during which Adlai Stevenson, soon to make his second bid for president, told Smith College’s Class of 1955: “I think there is much you can do about our crisis in the humble role of housewife. I could wish you no better vocation than that.”
Read today, “The Feminine Mystique” is a fascinating mixture of antiquated attitudes (like that one) and others that have remained unchanged. Foisting sexual precocity on the very young goes way back, we find out; JonBenet Ramsey’s parents didn’t invent it. Remember that YouTube video of 7-year-old girls mimicking Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” dance moves? In Friedan’s day a newspaper ad for a child’s dress featured the tag line “She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set.”
This gasp factor keeps “The Feminine Mystique” evergreen. Friedan, a suburban housewife herself (though with a more complicated history than she let on), played reporter to collect evidence of how and why young married women felt so stifled. She claimed to be writing about “the problem that has no name,” but she executed a brilliant marketing coup in naming it. She was writing about depression, frustration, emptiness, guilt and dishonesty; she was analyzing the way psychiatrists, women’s magazines, marketers, educators and social scientists routinely lied to women about their need for feminine glamour. But mystique itself is a glamorous word, and it put a seductive spin on a set of dismal problems.
Her chapter on advertising, “The Sexual Sell,” is the most obvious stunner. Thanks to “Mad Men,” we have some inkling of what marketers thought of women, but Friedan brought her own anger to describing it. After writing about how they tried to make housework sound important, scientific and even therapeutic — instant cake mix was pitched as an outlet for creativity, not as a way of being lazy — she sat down with a motivational-research expert (male), who explained that ads had to be careful not to scare women with the prospect of making them so efficient that they would have free time.
What would be so bad about that? she asked. “Why doesn’t the pie-mix ad tell the woman she could use the time saved to be an astronomer?” Even an algebraic topologist who also shuffled computer punch cards — hey, I tried — would find that a silly question. The expert then tossed off a few suggestions, like “the astronomer gets her man.”
Parts of the book now seem repetitive and obvious, but perhaps because these ideas were so new they warranted repetition. Though her topics include Freud (shredded here), Margaret Mead (ditto) and the arrested development of young wives, Friedan repeatedly returns to women as lost souls. Equating the helpless housewife and the concentration camp inmate is as shrill now as it must have been in 1963.
One big gap in “The Feminine Mystique” concerns popular culture. Aside from looking closely at women’s magazines (what easy targets), Friedan ignores the messages sent by television, books, movies and celebrities, though lonely housewives must have been well aware of these influences. Did she not wonder why shows like “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” presented housework as something to be done in full makeup and party clothes? Why did she overlook the new world of rebellious teenagers? Why mention the novel “Peyton Place” without parsing its values? I suppose it’s safe to say that Friedan had quite a lot else on her mind.
In 1963 she prophetically suggested that the era of “The Feminine Mystique” might be a larval stage, after which women would break out of their cocoons and get moving again. As time passed and she added retrospective material — an epilogue in 1973, a new introduction in 1997 — she gave the book much-needed context and described its consequences. Yet she made enemies along the way, and not just the suburbanites who ran her out of Rockland County. She had her differences with later waves of feminists too.
I have a photograph of myself with Betty Friedan. We were together on a radio show. I was there because I was a critic for The Times and I arrived at The Times because of opportunities her book created. I wish I had known how much I owed her.
She wasn’t surprised. She hears “The Feminine Mystique” name-dropped by people who, she can tell, haven’t read it at all.
“It is a cliché of our own time,” Betty Friedan wrote in her 1963 manifesto — which, yes, I have just finished reading — “that women spent half a century fighting for ‘rights,’ and the next half wondering whether they wanted them at all. ‘Rights’ have a dull sound to people who have grown up after they have been won.”
Among the many truisms in the book, that one leaps out at me most. Unlike friends who went to women’s colleges, I went to a coed campus and studied math; “The Feminine Mystique” was not required reading. By the time I became a journalist, Friedan’s sleepwalking housewives were so long gone that I could enter the professional world with a short memory and an undisguised advantage. The top editor who hired me in 1977 told me, perfectly nicely, that I was “the right age and the right sex.” He told Anna that if she hadn’t been female, she never would have gotten in the door.
Friedan wrote about the period between World War II and 1960, when women married young, abandoned their ambitions, had large families that fueled the baby boom, moved to the suburbs and valued femininity above all else. This was the era during which Adlai Stevenson, soon to make his second bid for president, told Smith College’s Class of 1955: “I think there is much you can do about our crisis in the humble role of housewife. I could wish you no better vocation than that.”
Read today, “The Feminine Mystique” is a fascinating mixture of antiquated attitudes (like that one) and others that have remained unchanged. Foisting sexual precocity on the very young goes way back, we find out; JonBenet Ramsey’s parents didn’t invent it. Remember that YouTube video of 7-year-old girls mimicking Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” dance moves? In Friedan’s day a newspaper ad for a child’s dress featured the tag line “She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set.”
This gasp factor keeps “The Feminine Mystique” evergreen. Friedan, a suburban housewife herself (though with a more complicated history than she let on), played reporter to collect evidence of how and why young married women felt so stifled. She claimed to be writing about “the problem that has no name,” but she executed a brilliant marketing coup in naming it. She was writing about depression, frustration, emptiness, guilt and dishonesty; she was analyzing the way psychiatrists, women’s magazines, marketers, educators and social scientists routinely lied to women about their need for feminine glamour. But mystique itself is a glamorous word, and it put a seductive spin on a set of dismal problems.
Her chapter on advertising, “The Sexual Sell,” is the most obvious stunner. Thanks to “Mad Men,” we have some inkling of what marketers thought of women, but Friedan brought her own anger to describing it. After writing about how they tried to make housework sound important, scientific and even therapeutic — instant cake mix was pitched as an outlet for creativity, not as a way of being lazy — she sat down with a motivational-research expert (male), who explained that ads had to be careful not to scare women with the prospect of making them so efficient that they would have free time.
What would be so bad about that? she asked. “Why doesn’t the pie-mix ad tell the woman she could use the time saved to be an astronomer?” Even an algebraic topologist who also shuffled computer punch cards — hey, I tried — would find that a silly question. The expert then tossed off a few suggestions, like “the astronomer gets her man.”
Parts of the book now seem repetitive and obvious, but perhaps because these ideas were so new they warranted repetition. Though her topics include Freud (shredded here), Margaret Mead (ditto) and the arrested development of young wives, Friedan repeatedly returns to women as lost souls. Equating the helpless housewife and the concentration camp inmate is as shrill now as it must have been in 1963.
One big gap in “The Feminine Mystique” concerns popular culture. Aside from looking closely at women’s magazines (what easy targets), Friedan ignores the messages sent by television, books, movies and celebrities, though lonely housewives must have been well aware of these influences. Did she not wonder why shows like “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” presented housework as something to be done in full makeup and party clothes? Why did she overlook the new world of rebellious teenagers? Why mention the novel “Peyton Place” without parsing its values? I suppose it’s safe to say that Friedan had quite a lot else on her mind.
In 1963 she prophetically suggested that the era of “The Feminine Mystique” might be a larval stage, after which women would break out of their cocoons and get moving again. As time passed and she added retrospective material — an epilogue in 1973, a new introduction in 1997 — she gave the book much-needed context and described its consequences. Yet she made enemies along the way, and not just the suburbanites who ran her out of Rockland County. She had her differences with later waves of feminists too.
I have a photograph of myself with Betty Friedan. We were together on a radio show. I was there because I was a critic for The Times and I arrived at The Times because of opportunities her book created. I wish I had known how much I owed her.
‘The Feminine Mystique’ at 50, Part 2: Three Feminists on What It Means Today
Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a founding editor of the feminist Ms. Magazine; Alisa Solomon is a drama critic and a journalism professor at Columbia University; Jessica Bennett is the executive editor of Tumblr and a former Newsweek senior writer. In part two of the conversation, they examine how the feminist movement has changed in five decades.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. magazine, is the author of many books, including Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America and the upcoming How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick. She is a past president of Americans for Peace Now, co-founder of the (now-defunct) International Center for Peace in the Middle East, and co-founder of several Palestinian/Jewish dialogue groups, one of which has been ongoing for three years. She is also a former president of The Authors Guild.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. magazine, is the author of many books, including Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America and the upcoming How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick. She is a past president of Americans for Peace Now, co-founder of the (now-defunct) International Center for Peace in the Middle East, and co-founder of several Palestinian/Jewish dialogue groups, one of which has been ongoing for three years. She is also a former president of The Authors Guild.
Feb 12, 2013 4:45 AM EST
Three feminists from different generations revisit Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking book on its 50th anniversary. How have things changed for women in 50 years? Plus, part one of the conversation. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published 50 years ago this month, all but bringing the nascent second-wave feminist movement to the national spotlight. We asked three feminists, each representing a different generation, to discuss the intellectual legacy of the book.
Betty Friedan, co-founder of National Organization for Women (NOW), speaks during the Women's Strike for Equality event in New York's Central Park on August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage. (AP (file))
Alisa: Today, the feminist discourse seems to me to have narrowed. All those magazine pieces that still come out bemoaning how women can’t have it all seem to leave out the structural impediments to equality. Has 21st-century feminism so totally bought into the larger cultural insistence on individualism that we make no demands on the workplace or the state? Friedan helped teach us that the personal is political. Has the political now become completely personal?
Jess: I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that feminism as a "movement" has waned. There are certainly young women who care about women's issues today, there are bloggers and writers and organizers. But there is no Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan. There's no marching in the streets (at least not without our tops off). Is it harder to make demands on an institutional level if it doesn't feel like there's a movement behind us?
Today, the message is that you can be anything. Supreme Court justice. Secretary of State. Astronaut. President. And yet I've often wondered if that message is almost too rosy. Young women today are excelling in every way imaginable: better grades, better graduation rates, and so on. But does that only set them up for a shock? Gail Collins said in an interview with The Atlantic this week that young women who face discrimination today often “don't know what to do.” The discrimination itself is subtle, and so when it does come up it's almost hard to recognize it. By the time I was in my 20s and starting my career, it was as if the idea of gender as an inhibitor was so passé that I'd never even considered it.
Alisa: There’s no Big Sexist Jerk guarding the gates, thus, enormous challenges for any kind of movement building. Friedan encouraged women toward self-actualization—not abandonment of their families by any stretch, but widening of their worlds and aspirations. That ground shifted—and maybe resettled without the more difficult, sociopolitical reconfiguring that real equality would require. If it’s no longer a “feminine mystique” that must be bared and examined, is it the old mystique of power, operating in ways that have come to appear anonymous and natural, that poses the problem? And how in heaven’s name do you organize to change that?
Jess: Rather than fighting the system, or making demands on it, we're trying to work within it, individually, to get ahead. I'm reading Sheryl Sandberg's new book right now, Lean In, which argues (among other things) that women must learn to work within the system in their efforts to rise to power, even if they want to fight on a structural level—simply because it's what we can more easily control. I tend to agree, but this also strikes me as a particularly third-wave phenomenon, of fighting within the system, for ourselves, rather than banding together to fight the system as a whole. Whether it's effective or not, it's a very "me, then us" tactic. It actually pits women against each other.
Letty: The trouble is once they get power, they seem to change things for themselves—the female elites—but they don't change policies for everyone and make sure systemic change holds for the future. Furthermore, change doesn't trickle down because they don't make common cause with women who are the company's receptionists, file clerks, and office cleaners.
Alisa: That’s the same lack of common cause among women that Friedan herself was criticized for: she pretty much ignored class and race. Working-class women have always had jobs outside the home, of course, and a second shift in the home. Gender discrimination and prevailing assumptions about women’s domestic responsibilities certainly impinged those lives, but Friedan didn’t seem interested in—or know how to discuss—ways the “mystique” worked on them. I wonder, too, whether The Feminine Mystique played into the emerging vilification of poor African-American women at the time. I’m thinking of the notorious Moynihan Report that came out just a year or so after Friedan’s book and basically blamed black people for the consequences of poverty. The argument went that single-mother households—“matriarchies” as Moynihan termed them—emasculated men in the community, led to children’s poor academic achievement, and even to high crime rates. To this day, the conservative answer to poverty has nothing to do with economics or jobs or housing or education. It’s marriage!
Letty: Today's average young woman seems capable of reacting with appropriate outrage to injustices committed against her. What's missing is the macro-analysis, the impulse toward solidarity, the gut-level identification with one's "sisters"—including women of color, and poor and working-class women—and the willingness to organize or act collectively even if resistance makes you appear a tad unfeminine.
But generally speaking, unless their personal ox is being gored, few young women seem willing to make waves. (Block that mixed metaphor!) Maybe they don't want to be marked as troublemakers, or maybe they're afraid of reprisals, or maybe what we're seeing is the return of the "good girl," to borrow a phrase from Lynn Povich's book title, which brings us back to Jess’s Newsweek story a couple years ago assessing the gender discrimination case from 1970 and its legacy.
Jess: I think to myself, couldn't this so easily be solved just by teaching women's history in schools?! I pretty much gave myself an education in our own history once I realized how little I knew—but it was only through discovering the story of the Newsweek women, and everything that was happening around them at the time, that even convinced me that I needed to know it. The problem wasn't just that I didn't learn things that I wish I'd known, it was that I genuinely didn't think I needed to know them.
Letty: Such an important point! What troubles me about the fact that The Feminine Mystique is not read in colleges anymore is that this is part of a clear social pattern (I almost said conspiracy) to alienate one generation from the other so that each generation is condemned to rediscover the same patriarchal injustices in new forms and fight the revolution all over again. I didn't know anything about what the suffragists did 40 years before I was born until I encountered a few paragraphs about them in my sixth-grade history textbook. The accompanying photos made them look like crazy ladies and discontented old maids. (Plus ça change!) The language of the text suggested that "women were given the vote" rather than that women won the vote after a bravely sustained 60-year struggle— by chaining themselves to the White House gates, moldering in prison, maintaining hunger strikes (and being painfully force fed), and otherwise putting their lives and bodies on the line.
The women of each subsequent generation are encouraged/pressured to dissociate themselves from the radical heroism of the prior generation. Rather than today's young women feeling like the heirs to a glorious legacy, they disavow those who came before. Who wants to be one of "Them" when you can be new, cool, critical, and ironic?
Jess: Great organizing can certainly happen in the messy, DIY-Occupy style, without the hierarchy of campaigns. And great organizing and protest can happen online, via massive petitions, via blogging, via Twitter campaigns and hashtags, and so forth. I'm thinking, say, of the campaign by three New Jersey young women to have a female moderator of the presidential debates, which earned 170,000 signatures on Change.org.
The problem, it seems, is that these examples are few and far between. Most of these campaigns deal in the specific over the institutional—i.e., a female moderator, which is fantastic but doesn't address the larger institutional problems of why there was no female moderator in the first place, or why there are so few women at the heads of news organizations, or businesses, and so on. It's certainly easier (and perhaps more effective) to focus on specific, targeted causes. But what about the larger problems? What about the problems that would really require a massive sense of anger, among women all across the country, to change?
Alisa: Lest I leave off on a pessimistic note, I hasten to add: There is so much great local organizing being done in communities, workplaces, schools, religious institutions ... Maybe it’s just a different model of movement making than we saw, and needed, 50 years ago, and one just has to plug in where she feels drawn and do the work.
Jessica Bennett, formerly of Newsweek, is executive editor of Tumblr. Find her online.
Alisa Solomon is a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the Arts and Culture concentration in the M.A. program. She is the author of Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender and, with Tony Kushner, co-editor of Wrestling With Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Abortion: A Woman's Civil Right
Keynote speech, First National Conference for Repeal of Abortion Laws, Chicago, Ill., Feb 14, 1969
There is no freedom, no equality, no fullhuman dignity and personhood possible for
women until we assert and demand control
over our own bodies, over our own reproduc-
tive process.
Then and only then will women move out
of their enforced passivity, their enforced
denigration, their definition as sex objects,
as things, to human personhood, to self-
determination, to human dignity.
The use of sex to sell everything from
cars to detergents to mouthwash, even the
glorification of breasts and behinds is finally
being understood by women for what it is:
This ultimately denigrating enshrinement of
women as sex objects and even the hypo-
critical tributes to motherhood.
Don't talk to me about abortion reform.
Reform is something dreamed up by men.
Maybe good-hearted men, but they can only
think from their point of view as men. Women
are the passive objects that must somehow
be regulated; let them have abortions for
thalidomide, rape, incest. What right have
they to say ? This is a woman's right and
not a technical question needing the sanc-
tion of the state, or to be debated in terms
of technicalities -- they are irrelevant.
I remember how they laughed when NOW
decided that there had been enough talk
about women, we wanted action; we decided
to define a new Bill of Rights for women, and
one of the rights had to be the right of
women to control their own reproductive
process.
Then, lo and behold, I began to hear
ministers and ADA and ACLU and others
begin to voice the same position, in terms
of the woman's basic right. The essence of
the denigration of women somehow, in this
country, in the world, is the treatment of
women as a passive sex object.
Women, almost to the degree that they're
almost too visible as sex objects in this
country today, are invisible people. As the
Negro was the invisible man, so women are
the invisible people in America today. Women
as people, women to be taken seriously as
people, women to have a share in the decis-
ions of the mainstream of government, of
politics, of the church -- not just to cook the
church supper, but to preach the sermon; not
just to look up the zip codes and address the
envelopes, but to make political decisions; not
just to do the housework of industry, but to
make some of the executive decisions. Women,
above all, to say what their own lives are going
to be, what their own personalities are going to
be, and no longer listen to or even permit male
experts to define what "feminine" is or isn't
or should be.
Am I saying that therefore women must be
liberated from sex? No. I am saying that sex
will only be liberated to be a human dialogue;
sex will only cease to be dirty, if you will; sex
will only cease to be a sniggering dirty joke
and an obsession in this society, when women
are liberated to be active self-determining
people, liberated to a creativity beyond
motherhood, to a full human creativity.
Am I saying that women must be liberated
from motherhood ? No, I am not. I am saying
that motherhood will only be liberated to be
a joyous and responsible human act, where
women are free to make, with full conscious
choice and full human responsibility, the
decisions to be mothers. Then and only then,
will they be able to embrace motherhood
without conflict. When they are able to de-
fine themselves as people, not just as
somebody's mother, not just as servants of
children, not just breeding receptacles, but
as people for whom motherhood is a freely
chosen part of life, freely celebrated while
it lasts, but for whom creativity has many
more dimensions, as it has for men.
The hostility between the sexes has never
been worse. The image of woman in avant
garde plays, novels, in the movies and in the
mass image that you can detect behind the
family situation comedies on television is
that mothers are man-devouring cannibal-
istic monsters, or else Lolitas, thing-like
sex objects. Objects not even of hetero-
sexual impulse, objects of a sadistic sado-
masochistic impulse. That impulse is much
more a factor in the abortion question than
anybody ever admits: the punishment of
women.
Men will only be truly liberated, to love
women and be fully themselves, when women
are liberated to be full people. To have a full
say in the decisions of their life and their
society and a full part in that society.
Until that happens, men are going to bear
the burden and the guilt of the destiny they
have forced upon women, the suppressed
resentment of that passive stage -- the
sterility of love, when love is not between
two fully active, fully participant, fully joy-
ous people, but has in it the element of ex-
ploitation. And men will also not be fully
free to be all they can be as long as they
must live up to an image of masculinity that
denies all the tenderness, the sensitivity, in
a man that might be considered feminine.
All the burdens and responsibilities that men
are supposed to shoulder alone makes them
resent women's pedestal, much as that
pedestal -- that enforced passivity -- may be
a burden for women.
Men are not allowed to admit that they
sometimes are afraid. They are not allowed
to express their own sensitivities, their own
needs, sometimes, to be passive and not
always active. Their own ability to cry. So,
they are only half-human, as women are
only half-human until we can go this next
step forward, of which this right of woman
to control her reproductive process, the
right of woman to have a say in the decisions
of her own life, is a part.
The real sexual revolution is the emer-
gence of women from passivity, from thing-
ness, from the point of view where they can
be the easiest victim and the channel, if you
will, for all the seductions.
It cannot happen without radical changes
in the family as we know it today; in our con-
cepts of marriage, in our very concepts of
love, in our architecture, our plans of cities,
in our theology, in our politics, in our art. Not
that women are special. Not that women are
superior. But, it's bound to be a different
politics, when women's voices are equally
heard.
If we are allowed finally to become full
people, not only will children be born and
brought up with more love and responsibil-
ity than today, but we will break out of the
confines of that sterile little suburban
family to relate to each other in terms of
all of the possible dimensions of our per-
sonalities -- male and female, as comrades,
as colleagues, as friends, as lovers, in a
life span that is now 75 years and is going
to be 100 years. And without hate and
without so much jealousy and buried resent-
ment and hypocrisies, there will be a whole
new sense of what love is that will make
Valentine's Day look very pallid.
human dignity and personhood possible for
women until we assert and demand control
over our own bodies, over our own reproduc-
tive process.
Then and only then will women move out
of their enforced passivity, their enforced
denigration, their definition as sex objects,
as things, to human personhood, to self-
determination, to human dignity.
The use of sex to sell everything from
cars to detergents to mouthwash, even the
glorification of breasts and behinds is finally
being understood by women for what it is:
This ultimately denigrating enshrinement of
women as sex objects and even the hypo-
critical tributes to motherhood.
Don't talk to me about abortion reform.
Reform is something dreamed up by men.
Maybe good-hearted men, but they can only
think from their point of view as men. Women
are the passive objects that must somehow
be regulated; let them have abortions for
thalidomide, rape, incest. What right have
they to say ? This is a woman's right and
not a technical question needing the sanc-
tion of the state, or to be debated in terms
of technicalities -- they are irrelevant.
I remember how they laughed when NOW
decided that there had been enough talk
about women, we wanted action; we decided
to define a new Bill of Rights for women, and
one of the rights had to be the right of
women to control their own reproductive
process.
Then, lo and behold, I began to hear
ministers and ADA and ACLU and others
begin to voice the same position, in terms
of the woman's basic right. The essence of
the denigration of women somehow, in this
country, in the world, is the treatment of
women as a passive sex object.
Women, almost to the degree that they're
almost too visible as sex objects in this
country today, are invisible people. As the
Negro was the invisible man, so women are
the invisible people in America today. Women
as people, women to be taken seriously as
people, women to have a share in the decis-
ions of the mainstream of government, of
politics, of the church -- not just to cook the
church supper, but to preach the sermon; not
just to look up the zip codes and address the
envelopes, but to make political decisions; not
just to do the housework of industry, but to
make some of the executive decisions. Women,
above all, to say what their own lives are going
to be, what their own personalities are going to
be, and no longer listen to or even permit male
experts to define what "feminine" is or isn't
or should be.
Am I saying that therefore women must be
liberated from sex? No. I am saying that sex
will only be liberated to be a human dialogue;
sex will only cease to be dirty, if you will; sex
will only cease to be a sniggering dirty joke
and an obsession in this society, when women
are liberated to be active self-determining
people, liberated to a creativity beyond
motherhood, to a full human creativity.
Am I saying that women must be liberated
from motherhood ? No, I am not. I am saying
that motherhood will only be liberated to be
a joyous and responsible human act, where
women are free to make, with full conscious
choice and full human responsibility, the
decisions to be mothers. Then and only then,
will they be able to embrace motherhood
without conflict. When they are able to de-
fine themselves as people, not just as
somebody's mother, not just as servants of
children, not just breeding receptacles, but
as people for whom motherhood is a freely
chosen part of life, freely celebrated while
it lasts, but for whom creativity has many
more dimensions, as it has for men.
The hostility between the sexes has never
been worse. The image of woman in avant
garde plays, novels, in the movies and in the
mass image that you can detect behind the
family situation comedies on television is
that mothers are man-devouring cannibal-
istic monsters, or else Lolitas, thing-like
sex objects. Objects not even of hetero-
sexual impulse, objects of a sadistic sado-
masochistic impulse. That impulse is much
more a factor in the abortion question than
anybody ever admits: the punishment of
women.
Men will only be truly liberated, to love
women and be fully themselves, when women
are liberated to be full people. To have a full
say in the decisions of their life and their
society and a full part in that society.
Until that happens, men are going to bear
the burden and the guilt of the destiny they
have forced upon women, the suppressed
resentment of that passive stage -- the
sterility of love, when love is not between
two fully active, fully participant, fully joy-
ous people, but has in it the element of ex-
ploitation. And men will also not be fully
free to be all they can be as long as they
must live up to an image of masculinity that
denies all the tenderness, the sensitivity, in
a man that might be considered feminine.
All the burdens and responsibilities that men
are supposed to shoulder alone makes them
resent women's pedestal, much as that
pedestal -- that enforced passivity -- may be
a burden for women.
Men are not allowed to admit that they
sometimes are afraid. They are not allowed
to express their own sensitivities, their own
needs, sometimes, to be passive and not
always active. Their own ability to cry. So,
they are only half-human, as women are
only half-human until we can go this next
step forward, of which this right of woman
to control her reproductive process, the
right of woman to have a say in the decisions
of her own life, is a part.
The real sexual revolution is the emer-
gence of women from passivity, from thing-
ness, from the point of view where they can
be the easiest victim and the channel, if you
will, for all the seductions.
It cannot happen without radical changes
in the family as we know it today; in our con-
cepts of marriage, in our very concepts of
love, in our architecture, our plans of cities,
in our theology, in our politics, in our art. Not
that women are special. Not that women are
superior. But, it's bound to be a different
politics, when women's voices are equally
heard.
If we are allowed finally to become full
people, not only will children be born and
brought up with more love and responsibil-
ity than today, but we will break out of the
confines of that sterile little suburban
family to relate to each other in terms of
all of the possible dimensions of our per-
sonalities -- male and female, as comrades,
as colleagues, as friends, as lovers, in a
life span that is now 75 years and is going
to be 100 years. And without hate and
without so much jealousy and buried resent-
ment and hypocrisies, there will be a whole
new sense of what love is that will make
Valentine's Day look very pallid.
There is no freedom, no equality, no fullhuman dignity and personhood possible for
women until we assert and demand control
over our own bodies, over our own reproduc-
tive process.
Then and only then will women move out
of their enforced passivity, their enforced
denigration, their definition as sex objects,
as things, to human personhood, to self-
determination, to human dignity.
The use of sex to sell everything from
cars to detergents to mouthwash, even the
glorification of breasts and behinds is finally
being understood by women for what it is:
This ultimately denigrating enshrinement of
women as sex objects and even the hypo-
critical tributes to motherhood.
Don't talk to me about abortion reform.
Reform is something dreamed up by men.
Maybe good-hearted men, but they can only
think from their point of view as men. Women
are the passive objects that must somehow
be regulated; let them have abortions for
thalidomide, rape, incest. What right have
they to say ? This is a woman's right and
not a technical question needing the sanc-
tion of the state, or to be debated in terms
of technicalities -- they are irrelevant.
I remember how they laughed when NOW
decided that there had been enough talk
about women, we wanted action; we decided
to define a new Bill of Rights for women, and
one of the rights had to be the right of
women to control their own reproductive
process.
Then, lo and behold, I began to hear
ministers and ADA and ACLU and others
begin to voice the same position, in terms
of the woman's basic right. The essence of
the denigration of women somehow, in this
country, in the world, is the treatment of
women as a passive sex object.
Women, almost to the degree that they're
almost too visible as sex objects in this
country today, are invisible people. As the
Negro was the invisible man, so women are
the invisible people in America today. Women
as people, women to be taken seriously as
people, women to have a share in the decis-
ions of the mainstream of government, of
politics, of the church -- not just to cook the
church supper, but to preach the sermon; not
just to look up the zip codes and address the
envelopes, but to make political decisions; not
just to do the housework of industry, but to
make some of the executive decisions. Women,
above all, to say what their own lives are going
to be, what their own personalities are going to
be, and no longer listen to or even permit male
experts to define what "feminine" is or isn't
or should be.
Am I saying that therefore women must be
liberated from sex? No. I am saying that sex
will only be liberated to be a human dialogue;
sex will only cease to be dirty, if you will; sex
will only cease to be a sniggering dirty joke
and an obsession in this society, when women
are liberated to be active self-determining
people, liberated to a creativity beyond
motherhood, to a full human creativity.
Am I saying that women must be liberated
from motherhood ? No, I am not. I am saying
that motherhood will only be liberated to be
a joyous and responsible human act, where
women are free to make, with full conscious
choice and full human responsibility, the
decisions to be mothers. Then and only then,
will they be able to embrace motherhood
without conflict. When they are able to de-
fine themselves as people, not just as
somebody's mother, not just as servants of
children, not just breeding receptacles, but
as people for whom motherhood is a freely
chosen part of life, freely celebrated while
it lasts, but for whom creativity has many
more dimensions, as it has for men.
The hostility between the sexes has never
been worse. The image of woman in avant
garde plays, novels, in the movies and in the
mass image that you can detect behind the
family situation comedies on television is
that mothers are man-devouring cannibal-
istic monsters, or else Lolitas, thing-like
sex objects. Objects not even of hetero-
sexual impulse, objects of a sadistic sado-
masochistic impulse. That impulse is much
more a factor in the abortion question than
anybody ever admits: the punishment of
women.
Men will only be truly liberated, to love
women and be fully themselves, when women
are liberated to be full people. To have a full
say in the decisions of their life and their
society and a full part in that society.
Until that happens, men are going to bear
the burden and the guilt of the destiny they
have forced upon women, the suppressed
resentment of that passive stage -- the
sterility of love, when love is not between
two fully active, fully participant, fully joy-
ous people, but has in it the element of ex-
ploitation. And men will also not be fully
free to be all they can be as long as they
must live up to an image of masculinity that
denies all the tenderness, the sensitivity, in
a man that might be considered feminine.
All the burdens and responsibilities that men
are supposed to shoulder alone makes them
resent women's pedestal, much as that
pedestal -- that enforced passivity -- may be
a burden for women.
Men are not allowed to admit that they
sometimes are afraid. They are not allowed
to express their own sensitivities, their own
needs, sometimes, to be passive and not
always active. Their own ability to cry. So,
they are only half-human, as women are
only half-human until we can go this next
step forward, of which this right of woman
to control her reproductive process, the
right of woman to have a say in the decisions
of her own life, is a part.
The real sexual revolution is the emer-
gence of women from passivity, from thing-
ness, from the point of view where they can
be the easiest victim and the channel, if you
will, for all the seductions.
It cannot happen without radical changes
in the family as we know it today; in our con-
cepts of marriage, in our very concepts of
love, in our architecture, our plans of cities,
in our theology, in our politics, in our art. Not
that women are special. Not that women are
superior. But, it's bound to be a different
politics, when women's voices are equally
heard.
If we are allowed finally to become full
people, not only will children be born and
brought up with more love and responsibil-
ity than today, but we will break out of the
confines of that sterile little suburban
family to relate to each other in terms of
all of the possible dimensions of our per-
sonalities -- male and female, as comrades,
as colleagues, as friends, as lovers, in a
life span that is now 75 years and is going
to be 100 years. And without hate and
without so much jealousy and buried resent-
ment and hypocrisies, there will be a whole
new sense of what love is that will make
Valentine's Day look very pallid.
human dignity and personhood possible for
women until we assert and demand control
over our own bodies, over our own reproduc-
tive process.
Then and only then will women move out
of their enforced passivity, their enforced
denigration, their definition as sex objects,
as things, to human personhood, to self-
determination, to human dignity.
The use of sex to sell everything from
cars to detergents to mouthwash, even the
glorification of breasts and behinds is finally
being understood by women for what it is:
This ultimately denigrating enshrinement of
women as sex objects and even the hypo-
critical tributes to motherhood.
Don't talk to me about abortion reform.
Reform is something dreamed up by men.
Maybe good-hearted men, but they can only
think from their point of view as men. Women
are the passive objects that must somehow
be regulated; let them have abortions for
thalidomide, rape, incest. What right have
they to say ? This is a woman's right and
not a technical question needing the sanc-
tion of the state, or to be debated in terms
of technicalities -- they are irrelevant.
I remember how they laughed when NOW
decided that there had been enough talk
about women, we wanted action; we decided
to define a new Bill of Rights for women, and
one of the rights had to be the right of
women to control their own reproductive
process.
Then, lo and behold, I began to hear
ministers and ADA and ACLU and others
begin to voice the same position, in terms
of the woman's basic right. The essence of
the denigration of women somehow, in this
country, in the world, is the treatment of
women as a passive sex object.
Women, almost to the degree that they're
almost too visible as sex objects in this
country today, are invisible people. As the
Negro was the invisible man, so women are
the invisible people in America today. Women
as people, women to be taken seriously as
people, women to have a share in the decis-
ions of the mainstream of government, of
politics, of the church -- not just to cook the
church supper, but to preach the sermon; not
just to look up the zip codes and address the
envelopes, but to make political decisions; not
just to do the housework of industry, but to
make some of the executive decisions. Women,
above all, to say what their own lives are going
to be, what their own personalities are going to
be, and no longer listen to or even permit male
experts to define what "feminine" is or isn't
or should be.
Am I saying that therefore women must be
liberated from sex? No. I am saying that sex
will only be liberated to be a human dialogue;
sex will only cease to be dirty, if you will; sex
will only cease to be a sniggering dirty joke
and an obsession in this society, when women
are liberated to be active self-determining
people, liberated to a creativity beyond
motherhood, to a full human creativity.
Am I saying that women must be liberated
from motherhood ? No, I am not. I am saying
that motherhood will only be liberated to be
a joyous and responsible human act, where
women are free to make, with full conscious
choice and full human responsibility, the
decisions to be mothers. Then and only then,
will they be able to embrace motherhood
without conflict. When they are able to de-
fine themselves as people, not just as
somebody's mother, not just as servants of
children, not just breeding receptacles, but
as people for whom motherhood is a freely
chosen part of life, freely celebrated while
it lasts, but for whom creativity has many
more dimensions, as it has for men.
The hostility between the sexes has never
been worse. The image of woman in avant
garde plays, novels, in the movies and in the
mass image that you can detect behind the
family situation comedies on television is
that mothers are man-devouring cannibal-
istic monsters, or else Lolitas, thing-like
sex objects. Objects not even of hetero-
sexual impulse, objects of a sadistic sado-
masochistic impulse. That impulse is much
more a factor in the abortion question than
anybody ever admits: the punishment of
women.
Men will only be truly liberated, to love
women and be fully themselves, when women
are liberated to be full people. To have a full
say in the decisions of their life and their
society and a full part in that society.
Until that happens, men are going to bear
the burden and the guilt of the destiny they
have forced upon women, the suppressed
resentment of that passive stage -- the
sterility of love, when love is not between
two fully active, fully participant, fully joy-
ous people, but has in it the element of ex-
ploitation. And men will also not be fully
free to be all they can be as long as they
must live up to an image of masculinity that
denies all the tenderness, the sensitivity, in
a man that might be considered feminine.
All the burdens and responsibilities that men
are supposed to shoulder alone makes them
resent women's pedestal, much as that
pedestal -- that enforced passivity -- may be
a burden for women.
Men are not allowed to admit that they
sometimes are afraid. They are not allowed
to express their own sensitivities, their own
needs, sometimes, to be passive and not
always active. Their own ability to cry. So,
they are only half-human, as women are
only half-human until we can go this next
step forward, of which this right of woman
to control her reproductive process, the
right of woman to have a say in the decisions
of her own life, is a part.
The real sexual revolution is the emer-
gence of women from passivity, from thing-
ness, from the point of view where they can
be the easiest victim and the channel, if you
will, for all the seductions.
It cannot happen without radical changes
in the family as we know it today; in our con-
cepts of marriage, in our very concepts of
love, in our architecture, our plans of cities,
in our theology, in our politics, in our art. Not
that women are special. Not that women are
superior. But, it's bound to be a different
politics, when women's voices are equally
heard.
If we are allowed finally to become full
people, not only will children be born and
brought up with more love and responsibil-
ity than today, but we will break out of the
confines of that sterile little suburban
family to relate to each other in terms of
all of the possible dimensions of our per-
sonalities -- male and female, as comrades,
as colleagues, as friends, as lovers, in a
life span that is now 75 years and is going
to be 100 years. And without hate and
without so much jealousy and buried resent-
ment and hypocrisies, there will be a whole
new sense of what love is that will make
Valentine's Day look very pallid.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)