Friendship and Feminism

This post is dedicated to my dear friend, Estelle Richardson, who turns 18 today. I know my blog isn't supposed to be personal, but this post is. Happy Birthday, Estelle! Thank you for all the conversations, inside jokes, frustrations, secrets, tea, and laughter we have shared.

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'" - C. S. Lewis

Estelle is my feminist comrade, so in honor of her birthday, I am posting some selections from the speech I gave on the feminist revolution and the damage it inflicted on women. It's long, and blog spot wants to double space it, so I'm making the type smaller. (If it seems a little scattered, it is because it was my notes for the speech, and there were a few things that I explained in the speech which I didn't need to write out word for word.)

During the sixties, what is called the second wave of the feminist movement began to sweep the nation. Women’s rights had been fought for by suffragists during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but this was a new more radical form of feminism, focusing more on social and economic equality, and reproduction rights.

Just as a quick clarification of terms, when I say feminism, I am not referring to the women’s suffrage movement, or the belief in political equality. I am referring to the second and third wave feminism, what is sometimes termed “extreme feminism”: the belief that woman and men are exactly the same, and all differences are socially conditioned, the belief that every single woman must be completely independent and work outside of the home to find fulfillment, (essentially when I refer to feminism I am describing the opinions presented by Gloria Steinem, Margaret Sanger, and [Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique)

Although feminism, just like abolitionism and the civil rights movement, was built at first on noble principles, radical feminism failed and is failing in key ways to actually improve the condition of women and America as a whole.

1. Feminism fails to protect women

It used to be optional for women to work, one income was enough—

so many women began to work, more workers (supply and demand) now necessary for two incomes.

Feminists struck down

Family wage- for men supporting a wife and children

No fault divorce-eliminated rules, which endangered women. now unsafe for a woman to devote herself to making the home and raising children

ERA- complete equality of rights under the law for both sexes.

women already have the same constitutional rights

Definitively clarified no legal distinction between men and women. Draft, combat, labor laws, custody. Maternity leave?

Female condoms were introduced in 1993, and hailed by feminists groups as sexually liberating for women, saying, now you won’t have to worry if he won’t wear a condom. But is it really liberating for women to be expected to have a relationship with a man who has so little respect for her that he refuses to wear a condom to protect her? This idea of women being able to and needing to protect themselves instead of finding someone who respects them is more demeaning and degrading to women than being “liberating.”

2. Feminism damages families

Abortion, practical standpoint, sexual freedom is emotionally damaging. It is bad to be married and have a single romantic partner. “If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.” Betty Freidan “Fem Myst”

"We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- Robin Morgan

Feminists generally advocate having multiple relationships, never committing unless it is convenient. Some even go to the extremes of advocating lesbianism.

Never having the security of marriage or even commitment within a short term romantic relationship could not be healthy emotionally for American women

Harry Harlow’s famous cloth mother/wire mother experiments proved that more than physical needs being met is necessary for children’s development—the comfort of a mother.

Thirty-seven percent of married mothers work full time, and another 36 percent work part time. Fifty three percent of mothers with children under the age of one are working mothers.

Researchers have identified clear links between care provided for children in the early years, and brain development. If the brain is not fully developed until after puberty, then it is important for mothers (and fathers too) to be fostering healthy relationships with their children.

A study conducted by Alan Sroufe and Byron Egeland at the University of Minnesota found that children who had predictable, reliable relationships developed fewer behavior problems at school. These children also showed higher confidence levels and better social relationships

It is not wrong for mothers to work, but feminist ideology, by lessening the importance of motherhood and stating that women need to find other sources of fulfillment is harmful to the family and the mother.

3. Feminism creates a new confining role for women.

My mom is an ESL teacher who works part time at Cabrillo College. Last year she decided to take two years off of work and stay at home until I graduated from high school. She has become a lot less stressed… happier… getting things done… house runs smoother… homework help instead of grading papers, more family dinners because she isn’t working on evenings. She says she prefers being at home and cooking.

Jane Sellman “The phrase, ‘working mother’ is a redundancy.”

This doesn’t apply to every woman, or even every mother. Feminism, by demeaning housewives, (only fulfillment) puts an added strain on many women.

"[Housewives] are dependent creatures who are still children...parasites." ~ Gloria Steinem, "What It Would Be Like If Women Win," Time, August 31, 1970.

“[Housewives] are mindless and thing-hungry...not people. [Housework] is peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls. [It] arrests their development at an infantile level, short of personal identity with an inevitably weak core of self.... [Housewives] are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps. [The] conditions which destroyed the human identity of so many prisoners were not the torture and brutality, but conditions similar to those which destroy the identity of the American housewife." ~ Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963.

By striking out against housewives, feminists have created an enduring image in our culture of the independent business woman who can do anything, who can raise children while she and her husband work full time. Feminists have imposed an ideal of “superwoman” on countless innocent women and teenagers.

While radical feminists have tried to demolish the image of the submissive housewife suffering in a brutal male society, they have erected their own ideal of what women should look and act like, and in doing so, have become the very thing which they sought to overthrow.