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Jewish World Review
Feb. 9, 2006
/ 11 Shevat, 5766
A ‘radical’ who wasn't completely wrong
By
Suzanne Fields
Reconsidering Betty Friedan
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Like it or not, we live in a world riven by polarities:
black/white, red/blue, left/right. Our emotional responses to
subjects that
demand reasonable debate but show us to be blinded by rigid points
of view
can even be measured by the latest technology of brain imaging. We
cheat
both the record and ourselves when we overlook the hard truths
embedded in
the ideas of people we dislike (or think we should dislike).
There was considerable gnashing of teeth among some
conservatives
the other day on the occasion of the death of Betty Friedan. When
certain of
her critics paused to consider her legacy, they focused only on what
they
didn't like about the revolution she midwifed.
There was, to be sure, lots not to like. Betty Friedan was
one
tough mother. She overstated her case about the boredom of the 1950s
American housewife, and she indulged in vicious and damaging
hyperbole,
describing the suburban housewife as living in a "comfortable
concentration
camp." But she transformed certain female realities that would
benefit
generations that came later, whether pleasing to liberal or angering
to
conservative.
Before she wrote "The Feminine Mystique" in 1963, many
women who
aspired to work in certain trades or pursue careers in the
professions were
consigned to the closets of their suburban homes, both literally and
figuratively. She blazed a way out into a world of expanded
opportunities
that young women today expect as their natural due. It's important
not to
confuse Betty Friedan, the mother of modern feminism, with all that
came
after her. When she saw the damage wrought by radical feminists, she
challenged the movement she founded, confronting the lesbian
conspirators
who would ignore the emotional wants and needs of women who yearned
to be
full-time mothers, or who wanted to mix family with work. She was
denounced
by some of the sisters as "bourgeois."
In her 1981 book, "The Second Stage," she examined some of
the
not-so-good changes her revolution had wrought. She told of the
"executive
assistant" she met in the office of a Los Angeles television
producer. The
woman, in her late 20s, beautiful, accomplished and "dressed for
success,"
liked her work and saw it as a rung on the ladder to greater
opportunity. "I
know I'm lucky to have this job," she told Betty, "but you people
who fought
for these things had your families. You already had your men and
your
children. What are we supposed to do?"
Like most revolutions, feminism pushed the culture a few
inches
too far, ignoring the iron law of unintended consequences. Women who
put
their careers above all often found themselves listening to the
remorseless
ticking of their biological clocks without a man to love or child to
nurture. Feminists had ignored Mother Nature, and Nature is the
toughest
mother of all.
The number of childless women in their early 40s doubled
over two
decades. One study found that 42 percent of successful women in
corporate
America were childless after 40. The numbers grew in other
professions as
well, as women became workaholics like the men they had railed
against. By
the 1970s, Betty Friedan's famous "feminine mystique" had hardened
into
conventions that deprived women of the warmth and caring that had
marked
their sex as la difference .
Betty Friedan made the mistake of imagining that all women
were
alike. She underestimated the passion of the conservative women led
by
Phyllis Schlafly, who almost single-handedly defeated the Equal
Rights
Amendment. In one debate, Ms. Friedan screamed at Mrs. Schlafly:
"I'd like
to burn you at the stake." Phyllis, who never loses her
cucumber-like cool,
replied: "I'm glad you said that, because it just shows the
intemperate
nature of proponents of ERA."
Betty Friedan and Phyllis Schlafly clarified the issues
for women,
issues that still teeter on the seesaw of public opinion. Betty had
the
media with her, but Phyllis had a grass-roots movement of her
creation
that's still alive and well. John Kerry won the majority of single
women in
2004, but George W. won the overwhelming majority of married women,
who
figured he would be more likely to keep the home fires ablaze.
Betty Friedan was contemptuous of the radical feminists
who set
women against men, women again women, feminists against family. She
warned
young women of the peril of distorting the priorities of women and
starting
a war nobody could win. She was right about that, too.
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Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Suzanne Fields, Creators Syndicate
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