New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | February 8, 2006

Cathy Young assesses the late feminist icon and Feminine Mystique author Betty Friedan.

Comments

|2.8.06 @ 12:57PM|#

...some of Friedan's conservative critics have tried to paint her as a radical intent on subverting the American family and society...

True enough. Most of the sociocons (including the brain stems who inhabit political squawk radio) have focused on Friedan's connections with the "Stalinist" movement of the post-war years. Yet her Communist connections (and no doubt she had them) don't mean you have to toss the proverbial baby with the bathwater; her pronouncements on feminism (well, many of them) do indeed hold up well. C'moon, guys: let's give credit where it's due...

|2.8.06 @ 12:59PM|#

she challenged the 1950s ideal of female fulfillment

I would question any era's dictum that there is a single path to fulfillment for any size group beyond the individual.

|2.8.06 @ 2:09PM|#

I'd comment on this but the truth is that womens just make a fool out of me...

|2.8.06 @ 2:37PM|#

Oh c'mon, we all know that women are babymakers that were put on Earth for the pleasure of men.

|2.8.06 @ 2:38PM|#

C'moon, guys: let's give credit where it's due...

OK. Although dorky and dishonest, Friedan was less dorky and dishonest than are most feministas.

|2.8.06 @ 3:34PM|#

Oh what delicious irony to click on the article about Betty Friedan and have the RPG waiting for me.

|2.8.06 @ 5:59PM|#

Jim, I love the phrase "brain stems that inhabit squawk radio." Please give me permission to borrow it, with proper credit, of course.

As for feminism, it suffers from the same problem that Christianity does: no copyright on the name. Lots of really silly people call themselves feminists and have said many, many foolish things. Still, the basic premise that women are human remains sound. Betty Friedan deserves credit for writing an engaging book that put the fact that women were, oddly enough, human, on the best-seller lists. The flaws in her work are what one would expect of something written at that period on that subject. (Eg. on homosexuality, she simply aped the opinion of most psychologists of the time. See "Momism.")

I note also that her opinions resonated with more than college-educated suburbanites. Anyone interested in what working class women were going through at the time might refer to the three best works of that noted philosopher Loretta Lynn, who wrote "The Pill," "One's On the Way," and, my favorite, "Your Squaw's on the Warpath" during the later part of the Sixties. I doubt anyone who bought Ms. Lynn's work cared much about Ms. Friedan, but the sentiments are very much the same. Betty may have lit the fuse, but lots of other women had been piling up dynamite all those years.

Jesse Walker|2.8.06 @ 8:57PM|#

Anyone interested in what working class women were going through at the time might refer to the three best works of that noted philosopher Loretta Lynn, who wrote "The Pill," "One's On the Way," and, my favorite, "Your Squaw's on the Warpath" during the later part of the Sixties.

I agree with your point, but have a couple small corrections. Lynn did record "One's On the Way," but it was written by the great Shel Silverstein. And I'm pretty sure that song and "The Pill" weren't released until the '70s.

|2.8.06 @ 9:07PM|#

Jesse -- Thanks. Shel Silverstein is indeed great, and I'm glad to hear he wrote "One's On the Way," as well as the classic "A Boy Named Sue." Country music certainly lost a lot when he turned to poetry. Of course, one could say he wrote poetry all along.

|2.9.06 @ 4:14AM|#

Sylvia's mothers says...

|2.9.06 @ 12:11PM|#

For me, the most memorable part of "The Feminine Mystique" was the chapter in which she noted how fluffy a lot of women's magazines had become. Fifty years later, though, a lot of women seem to choose the fluff - Lifetime TV, Oprah, etc. I remember when Glamour magazine, which in the 1980s was so yuppie-career-oriented, sighed and started running horoscopes because readers wanted them. Maybe "Kirche, Kueche, Kinder" is more accurate than we like to admit.