What message did Betty Friedan try to communicate in her writing about feminism?

Dear Kimberly,

You and I are so much on the same wave length and such proficient friends that I can't think our e'er disagreeing, even though we've discussed innumerable topics by phone, letter, electronic mail, in person, and on this blog.  But this time I'm going to have issue with your Feb. 28 postal service.  I felt your critique was a bit likewise hard on Betty Friedan andThe Feminine Mystique.

When Friedan was writing

As you know, Kim, we've oftentimes talked on this weblog about the time period in which Friedan was writing (as in, for case, my Sept. 8, 2008 and Sept. nineteen, 2008 posts)—a time that is very real to me because I lived information technology. I don't call up anyone tin fully appreciate what Betty Friedan was trying to do in her book without taking into consideration the gender expectations of the 1950s and 1960s.

To criticize her for not addressing the broader interrelated concerns of other social inequities and economic injustices isn't really fair; it pulls her book out of the context in which it was written, including the audience to whom it was addressed.

Why the book doesn't speak to you today

At the same fourth dimension, I really practise understand why it no longer speaks to you as a Third Moving ridge feminist in the 21st century.

First, because information technology wasn't written for the world your generation is encountering simply rather for an important segment of my Second Moving ridge feminist world, which is where it had its greatest impact.

And 2d because you lot are constantly learning, growing, and stretching your mind—as a Christian, as a feminist, and as an all-around brilliant, gifted young adult female.  Y'all have simply outgrown the book, my friend, and you take learned then much more than since you lot read it just a few years agone (which was around the time we started this blog in 2008).  So much has changed in your life since then, including these past two years of studying at Yale Divinity School.   Understandably, you find that much of the book is dated, and certain particulars are inapplicable to our world today—or, more than specifically, simply don't arrive enough.

This is a perennial problem for authors in a rapidly changing world—even after a book has had a major touch and helped catalyze changes at a detail time.  As you know from reading the serialized story I've been writing about Nancy Hardesty's and my coauthoring our 1974 volume,All We're Meant to Exist: A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation, we did non stop at 1 edition. We revised our book twice to incorporate some of the subsequently biblical and theological scholarship, social science research, feminist theory, gender studies, and current concerns at the time each of the three editions was written. The third edition (1992) wasextensively revised, expanded, and updated.

Times change, circumstances change, and we every bit people change.  But, of form, books tin can't keep being revised for ever.  We demand new books to exist written.  And I hope you'll be writing some of them, Kimberly.

The audition

Information technology's also important to exist enlightened of Friedan'southward audition at the time she was writing.  Yes, information technology'southward truthful; she was for the most function addressing middle-class women— the actual or aspiring "Betty Drapers" of the 1960s Us suburbs, perhaps married to men like those depicted in theMad Men television series.  These were women who were told by the culture of the times that they were living a fairy-tale "happily e'er subsequently" life—even though and so many of them felt strangely empty inside.  Each woman who experienced the "trouble that has no name"—equally Friedan chosen it—blamed herself and wondered what was incorrect with her.  Why wasn't she happy?  Why did she feel such discontent?  What more than could she desire?  Didn't she accept a hubby who loved and provided for her and the children? Didn't she live in the business firm of her dreams?  Didn't she own the latest appliances?  What more could she possibly desire?  The very fact that she wanted something more (more ofwhat?she wondered) made her feel guilty, ungrateful, selfish.

A problem deeper than socioeconomic grade

Kim, I know you call up that Betty Friedan wasn't aware of her class privilege, but I don't recall that's entirely true.  When you spoke of her addressing women whose lives were filled with "matching slipcovers, cooking gourmet snails, and building swimming pools," information technology came across equally though y'all idea that's what the women themselves desired for their lives. They could then be so easily caricatured every bit spoiled, ungrateful, bored and restless women who didn't appreciate what they had, when so many other women had so little.

But what we must go along in mind in reading that outset folio of theFeminine Mystique is that the life described was not necessarily what the women in Friedan's auditionwanted.  Rather, it was the bulletin that those who were considered the experts were telling the women that theyshould want.  And many women following such advice found themselves feeling empty inside.

(I'1000 reminded of a line in an Ingmar Bergman picture of the early 1970s, where Marianne, some fourth dimension subsequently a divorce, writes in her periodical that she was surprised to realize she didn't know who she was, that she had ever done what people told her, always tried to be agreeable.  "I take never idea: What doI want?  Simply always: What doeshewant me to want? It's not unselfishness equally I used to remember, only sheer cowardice, and what's worse—utter ignorance of who I am." (From "Scenes from a Marriage," in Ingmar Bergman,The Spousal relationship Scenarios, Pantheon Books,1974, English Translation by Alan Blair, pp.122-23.)

At the time that Betty Friedan wrote, the pop culture of the times was stressing that each woman was supposed to glory in a certain image of femininity (as the experts defined that term). Fulfilling that image was considered a natural part of having been born female person.  She was expected to desire what others "wanted her to want," namely, to fulfill her destiny as a married woman and female parent—a destiny that was far more than than a office (one that was parallel to the function of married man and father every bit simply one part of life) but as the driving strength comprising thewhole of her life.  And she was given instructions about how to live out that destiny. In a consumption-driven order, advertisers especially delighted in telling her what they "wanted her to desire."

I remember of the lines from the movieMarty when available Marty, who lives with his mother, brings a young woman home to meet his widowed mother.  Suddenly, the mother is struck past the thought that Marty might ally and leave her solitary with zero to practice only wait to dice.  "Your children grow up and then, what is left for you lot to practice? What is a female parent's life but her children?" she says.  She feels information technology is essential for a woman to have a house to clean and a family to cook for. What is there when that is gone?  "These are the terrible years for a mother," she says.

Wanting something more than

Women who wanted something more were considered neurotic and destined for unhappiness.  The women'south magazines  were filled with advice about how to go about living out a certain epitome of womanhood—what Friedan termed the "feminine mystique"—day  by day.

Friedan had worked for these magazines and knew well the audition they were reaching. In the 1985 introduction to her collection of writings titled,Information technology Changed My Life,Friedan explains both her purpose and her intended readership.  "I started to writeThe Feminine Mystique because the very assumptions of the articles I was then writing for women'due south magazines no longer rang true to me—though I, as other women in America, was living my life according to these assumptions" (p.xx).

Religious institutions reinforced these ideas about womanhood past insisting this was "God's will."  Physical and mental wellness professionals in large role bolstered these ideas past telling women that the emptiness they felt while trying to accommodate to societal expectations could exist alleviated by accepting—and yielding to—the prevailing "feminine mystique" and non resisting information technology.

In other words, simply wanting to existhuman being was considered to be a rebellious act against this mystical quality supposedly endowed by nature that automatically made women'south yearnings for learning and achievement unlike from those of men.  Information technology was that limited construct, that image of what girls and women were expected to be and call up and exercise, that Friedan had in mind in speaking of a "feminine mystique."

Homo personhood and dignity

At its root, the problem existence addressed was far greater than whether or not a particular adult female had a selection about working exterior the home or being a full-time homemaker supported by a husband whose unmarried income was sufficient to provide such support.  I think Friedan'south far deeper signal had to do with the core of a adult female'due south being equally ahuman being.

Y'all and I accept talked near this again and once again, Kim.  Then accept others over fourth dimension.  In 1790, under the penname "Constantia," Judith Murray wrote an essay "On the Equality of the Sexes" forMassachusetts Magazinein which she challenged prevailing attitudes.

Should information technology still exist vociferated, "Your domestick employments are sufficient"—I would calmly enquire, is it reasonable, that a candidate for immortality, for the joys of heaven, an intelligent being, who is to spend an eternity in contemplating the works of Deity, should at nowadays be then degraded, every bit to exist allowed no other ideas, than those which are suggested by the mechanism of a pudding, or the sewing of the seams of a garment?  Compassion that all such censurers of female improvement do non go one step further, and deny their time to come existence; to exist consistent they surely ought.  (As quoted in Aileen S. Kraditor, ed.,Up from the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism. Quadrangle Books, paperback edition, 1970, p. 34.)

In the 19th century, Lucy Stone expressed like thoughts about what women were told was to be their extremely limited role in life. She, likewise, argued that conformity to that image contradicted a woman'southward humanness as it was intended past the Creator.

I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not hateful all our time should exist devoted to feeding and clothing the trunk. (From Stone's extemporaneous spoken language at the 1855 National Woman's Rights Convention in Cincinnati. Quoted in Kraditor, p. 73.)

Underlying all such arguments that countered prevailing gender norms was the key ideathat persons born female were born to be fully autonomous human beings no less than were men and should be so recognized and respected. This whole upshot has to do with human being personhood and dignity.

The onetime slave, Sojourner Truth, was making that same point (and, indirectly, many other points as well) in her powerful "Ain't I a Adult female" speech at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851.

Regardless of which version of that speech is the more historically accurate, its intent was articulate.  If what the chaplain, who had stood upward in the coming together, had said about women were true—that women were delicate, fragile beings that needed aid climbing into and out of carriages and must be given a loftier place on a pedestal just by virtue of beingness female person, then what about her?  How could she,Sojourner Truth, exist explained?  Wasn't she a adult female?  Surely that was proven past her having given birth to many children.  But no i helpedher in and out of carriages.

She held upwardly her muscular arm and declared that she had done all types of hard heavy physical labor expected of men and that no human could take done it meliorate or shown greater force and power.

And she had been required to practice such work while regarded equally the property of a slaveholder who had sold her children into slavery likewise.  She had borne the lashes of a whip.  She had experienced oppression doubly—even triply—on the footing of her gender, her race, and her social class (no class could be lower than a slave who was consideredproperty!). Nothing fragile or delicate about her!  Her experience put to rest the idea that by nature a woman was to be identified in a certain way and should be expected to act in conformity to that delicate "feminine" way.

The women at the briefing reportedly cheered her on.  The movement for women's rights had, afterward all, grown out of the abolition move.  Abolishing slavery, abolishing discrimination against women—the two were interrelated.  And Sojourner Truth'south personal experience of womanhood, coupled with her experience as an enslaved blackness person, demonstrated the issue of intersectionality long before the concept was recognized or the give-and-take used.  And at the core of information technology all was the matter of human dignity.

But, of course, no one likely saw it in quite that "intersectional"mode at the time.  And later, we even see some of those working for women's suffrage actually distancing themselves from African Americans and their rights rather than risk alienating whites who might assistance in winning the vote for women if the movement were kept "pure" and separate from black rights.

Kimberly, I know this is where much of your criticism of Friedan's volume comes in.

What Betty Friedan didn't exercise

It'due south true that Friedan in 1963 did not provide a critique of so many other social inequities she could accept discussed, nor did she specifically address issues of race and class.  And y'all were understandably disturbed that she seemed to advise that by using the extensive wordwomen,she seemed to think she was speaking to and forall women rather than just addressing the white, educated, privileged centre-class women whom the book seemed to hold upwardly as the norm.

Your criticism is well taken, Kim.  As Stephanie Coontz points out in her insightful analysis of Friedan's work from the vantage betoken of most half a century after its publication, such judgments were already being voiced by some readers even at the time of publication (Coontz, A Strange Stirring,2011, p. 105).  1 of the first was Gerda Lerner, who herself would later  shed new  low-cal on women's history through her ain noteworthy scholarship and writings.  Before long subsequently Friedan's book was published, Lerner wrote a personal letter to Friedan, praising the volume for what itdiddo, while at the same time calling into question what it didnondo.  She said her one reservation about how Friedan addressed the subject was its attention solely to college-educated, middle-class women while ignoring less privileged women, especially black women, who were disadvantaged not only by the feminine mystique only by the economic opportunity arrangement too.  Lerner pointed out that the same mistake was made in the suffrage movement and, in her stance, hindered the advancement of women which needs the piece of work of women from all demographics.

At the same fourth dimension, perhaps nosotros should not read also much into Friedan's narrower focus.  Information technology does non necessarily mean she was unconcerned about these larger social inequities.  She may merely have made an editorial decision to employ this particular book to reach the audition she had addressed during her days of writing for women's magazines, while likewise beingness aware that the book couldn't embrace all that it could have covered.  Coontz writes that "in early drafts ofThe Feminine Mystique, she drew parallels between the prejudices against those of women and those confronting African Americans and Jews" (p.104).

Friedan and Minorities

Friedan also worked with African American activists such as Dorothy Height, whom  we've discussed (including links) on this blog earlier. Height believed in forging coalitions and saw women's causes as encompassing both African American and white women, proverb they had much in common.  Thus, Betty Friedan, along with Dorothy Peak, Shirley Chisholm, and Gloria Steinem, helped plant the National Women'southward Political Conclave in 1971, a mentioned in most obituaries when Dorothy Superlative died last year.  (See here, here, and here.)

Friedan was especially a product of her fourth dimension in regard to homosexuality, every bit various statements in her book illustrate. I, equally someone who has written books and spoken a great deal about acceptance, inclusiveness, and respect for LGBTQ persons, of course found it troubling to read of her unwelcoming attitude toward lesbians as role of the women's movement—particularly in the early days of the National Organization for Women (Now).  However, Betty Friedan did change her mental attitude later.

In reading homophobic statements inThe Feminine Mystique,such every bit Friedan's reference to "the homosexuality that is spreading similar a murky fog over the American scene," it's important that we proceed in mind the manner homosexuality was regarded in the 1960s.

I don't know whether or non you lot had a chance to picket the PBSAmerican Experiencepresentation of "The Stonewall Uprising" recently, only it's very revealing in terms of today's irresolute attitudes toward LGBTQ people as compared to the times in which Friedan was writing.  The PBS program included bodily clips from documentary-type films of the 1960s, among them the 1967CBS Reports special programme titled "The Homosexuals," which painted an especially scary picture of homosexual persons, pointing out how the police force, mental wellness professionals, and religion at that time were united in viewing gay men and lesbians equally unspeakably evil or sick.

(Yous can view the PBS "Stonewall Uprising" plan online. Most of the clips from 1960s films that were intended to educate the public on the supposed dangers of homosexuality are featured in the first twenty minutes.)  Since almost gay and lesbian people were of necessity remaining closeted at the time, the American people for the virtually part were non knowingly acquainted with gay and lesbian persons—and then they either idea footling about the topic or else believed what the media and religious institutions were telling them.  Information technology's important to go on that in mind in reading some of Friedan's statements on the topic. It does non excuse them, simply information technology explains them.

What Friedan accomplished

Just rather than thinking about what Friedan didn't do, we need to capeesh what shedidpractise.  She tapped into something that was bothering a considerable number of women in the 1950s,1960s, and into the1970s, causing them to experience intense self doubt, lowered cocky-esteem, and a sense of emptiness and discontent, feelings that they could neither explain nor proper noun only that made them feel lone and left them wondering if something were wrong with them.

By describing and naming that empty feeling—even naming information technology equally the "problem that had no name" (though its characteristics were readily recognizable)—Betty Friedan was able to prove these women they were not lone.  She could help them realize that this nameless problem stemmed from a mythical and mystical view of women that denied women their full personhood and potential, a constellation of expectations that she termed the "feminine mystique."  And she introduced many women to some facts and aspects of women's history that many had never heard before.

It was an "aha" moment for countless women—women who saw they could requite themselves permission to have independent interests beyond homemaking and childcare, as important equally these responsibilities were.  And it empowered women to believe they could complete or increase their education, detect new outlets for their talents, realize their correct to exist complete human beings, and see themselves in a new light.

Some insights from Stephanie Coontz inA Foreign Stirring

Stephanie Coontz was able to see this tremendous touch on of the book as she recently surveyed 188 women and men, later conducting interviews with some of them as well.  They and endless others can call up howThe Feminine Mystique afflicted them when they read it more than 45 years ago.  Information technology was a book written for its fourth dimension—notahead of it, and it accomplished its major mission.  As Coontz wrote:

It in no way disparages Friedan'southward accomplishments to point out thatThe Feminine Mystique was non ahead of its fourth dimension.  Books don't become best sellers because they are alee of their time. They become best sellers when they tap into concerns that people are already mulling over, pull together ideas and data that have non yet spread beyond specialists and experts, and bring these all together in a fashion that is like shooting fish in a barrel to understand and explain to others.  (Stephanie Coontz,A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s,Basic Books, 2011, p. 145.)

Coontz shows how Friedan achieved all this.  (That paragraph is also a adept way to think almost successful not-fiction writing.)

I highly recommend Coontz's volume, Kimberly.  Perhaps you lot'll have some fourth dimension to read it this summer with your coursework out of the way.  She shares some remarkable stories most women, as well as some men, who read the book around the fourth dimension of its publication. And she sets the stage by opening her book with a detailed description of the enormous legal and societal obstacles women had to face at the time Friedan wrote, which explains whyThe Feminine Mystiquewas such a welcome relief and sign of hope for and then many.

Just Coontz also is totally in tune with your response as a Third Moving ridge feminist.  She said her  students reacted similarly after she had assigned the book for a college course. They saw it as outdated and unrelated to their concerns in today's world—except for i chapter, Friedan's chapter titled, "The Sexual Sell."   Coontz said her students actually resonated with the bulletin of that chapter. "Nigh all testified to the pressures they felt non merely to buy consumer goods but to present themselves as objects to be consumed" (A Strange Stirring, p. 177).  Did that chapter in Friedan'southward book stand out for y'all, too?

Your thoughts?

I'll look forward to hearing whatsoever further thoughts you might have on all this, Kim.  I'm thinking nigh you a lot at this exciting time as y'all expect forward to your graduation this month with a Master'due south caste from Yale Divinity School.  I'm tremendously proud of yous and happy for y'all!  You've accomplished so much!

I also want to apologize to our readers for my long delay in replying to your concluding post, which has thrown the72-27 web log off the monthly schedule we were trying to go on.  As you, Kimberly, and many of our readers already know, my coauthor ofAll We're Meant to Exist,Nancy Hardesty, died concluding month.  As the cancer metastasized and her condition worsened quite chop-chop the last couple of months, I had been putting much of my writing time into trying to finish writing the backstory of our coauthorship of the volume while she was still with us. Nancy and I started writing our book only six years after Betty Friedan wrote hers, so some of the readers of72-27 might wish to read that backstory, too (including some of Nancy's and my correspondence and photos from those times).  The backstory, "CoauthoringAll We're Meant to Exist," is told in serial form on my "Letha's Calling" weblog that is role of my personal website.

That's all for this fourth dimension.  Over again, heartiest congratulations on your graduation, Kim!

In loving friendship,
Letha

arrowoodhors1995.blogspot.com

Source: https://eewc.com/betty-friedan-didnt/

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