Betty Friedan is dead

Rest in piece and God bless you Ms. Friedan...the whole human race owes you big-time.

anyway, rest in peace.

word

i've never heard her be so singularly positive about anyone before. i have been meaning to read 'the feminine mystique' now for awhile--will get around to it ASAP.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring this up, but I've always wondered why so many women gave up all the independence they seemed to have during WWII and went back (for a decade or so) to just being wives/mothers. I suppose you had to live then, but I have never been able to wrap my mind around it.

Maybe I shouldn't admit this, but I've never actually read any of her books. I have read The Second Sex though, maybe that counts instead.

On a more basic note, she had the guts to call bullshit on Freud, which was something near heresy at the time unless I misread the state of psychiatry in 1963.

she worked, she raised kids, she fed me and nutured me, and had no qaulms at helping my sister play rugby and me take pottery classes. her deconstruction of gender norms, her genrosity of spirit, and her hard edge at sheer fucking surrival comes entirely from reading Friedan and her sisters, who told her, yr strong as anyone else, just fucking work.

its harder and more complicated then that, but it always is. but is that enough for you momus?

Friedan, deeply opposed to "equating feminism with lesbianism," conceded later that she had been "very square" and uncomfortable about homosexuality.

"I wrote a whole book objecting to the definition of women only in sexual relation to men. I would not exchange that for a definition of women only in sexual relation to women," she said.

Nonetheless she was a seconder for a resolution on protecting lesbian rights at the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977.

I find that a wee bitty overstated. Surely generosity of spirit is something inherent?

I'm in Japan just now and I'm often struck by how good the gender relations are here. Men and women seem really tender and affectionate with each other. Nevertheless, the gender roles are what Westerners might think of as "old-fashioned". It seems to me that women are powerful here as women and not as men.

Now, there really aren't feminist writers here in Japan the way there are in the West. Nobody would cite radical oppositional writers here if you asked them what had shaped they way genders relate. But there is a long tradition of writers who are women, but not oppositional, going back to "The Pillowbook" and beyond.

I was in a video store today and saw a brief clip from a new film onscreen. It was Jody Foster in a plane. There was some kind of emergency, and she was responding by doing amazingly technical things, opening fuseboxes, making the oxygen masks fall down, demonstrating great technical prowess. And it struck me that while this was in some ways a "feminist" scene, showing women as bright and empowered, it was also a sort of misogyny. Because it showed a woman doing things that, in real life, women tend to be worse at than men. Technical things. It was a lie, a lie about women. It said "Women are as good at technical stuff as men. This is where their power lies. In out-manning men."

And I thought, as I left the store, that if that were true, feminist writers of Betty Friedan's generation should have devoted their lives to predicting what was going to confer power in the future, and preparing women for working with computers, for instance. So that when this new invention, this empowering new culture, came along, women would be at the forefront of it all. Of course it's a ridiculous idea, a parallel world. A world in which women are pitted against men at man stuff, and mostly fail. A world in which the whole definition of power (and hence "empowerment") is a male one, and in which any recourse to female values is called "Essentialism".

And the crazy thing is that women can win massively when power is defined differently, defined as something like "social power" rather than technical power or aggression. But for that we need Western culture to change. We need it to become less individualistic, because the idea of the strongly oppositional, fighting individual is at odds with the idea of social power. And we need it to recognize that failing to identify differences between the genders is not a way of avoiding essentialism, just a way of letting male definitions of power pass as universal ones.

Funny how women are naturally good at working with computers but naturally bad with fuseboxes and other 'amazingly technical things'.

Also: WTF?

Now, your move is to scoff at my essentialism in daring to suggest that femininity is all tied up with crinoline, and to scoff at the very idea that something as trivial as crinoline could make anyone "win massively". Right?

And my move then is to say "Why is defining power as (women/men) knowing what to do with crinoline essentialism, when defining power as (women/men) knowing what to do with fuseboxes isn't?" And I also want to say "Isn't there terrible misogyny built into this scoffing at crinolines?"

Because someone said

women can win massively when power is defined differently, defined as something like "social power" rather than technical power or aggression.

And we were all 'oh okay that sounds nice we'll give it a try'

As I understand it, your expectations of what a woman might reasonably cope with have narrower scope than your expectations of what a man might. Nothing to do with crinoline. This is what Freidan's legacy will be, and already has been: people aren't limited by their sex.

I haven't been to Gothic Lolita but I'd like to ask what the social context is of a party specifically designed to allow the women to 'win massively' but only at something so particularly feminine.

xpost

It's pretty sad when killing people is defined as "independence" and making people (what mothers do) is defined as dependence... and dependence is defined as "bad".

Not at all, I just think the things women do are unfairly derided, because in Western cultures aesthetic, social, nurturant and collectivist values are also unfairly derided.

And that phrase is why Friedan has had such a big impact: do you expect nobody to raise an eyebrow at that?

It isn't very equality-minded to say that women have very important things to contribute to society, and the important things are lovely and fluffy as well as important which makes them doubly special, and isn't it a shame that boys like playing with guns.

'equality-minded' is a horrible phrase, sorry.

This is a load of BS.

Women can be just as good at physics or math or electrical engineering as men, they are just as capable of understanding it and excelling at it. There is a shitload of barriers in the way to their sucess in those fields, and not one of them is their raw ability to understand and use the material.

a) When we appear to abolish gender "essentialism", in fact we merely impose the values of the dominant gender on both genders. The dominant gender gets to pose as "neutral".

b) The ideology of equality of opportunity is used as a way to divert attention from existing and lasting differences. Acting on how the world "should be" or "has the opportunity to be" is not acting fairly. To act fairly, we have to take actually existing differences into account, not imaginary lack of differences.

Building airplanes during the war isn't killing people?

To act (or judge) fairly, we'd need to talk about is, not can be.

There is no reason for math or computer science to be a masculine pursuit. I could care less if a programmer (male or female) is wearing lipstick and heels or hiking boots and jeans.

I think we disagree on what those differences are. I don't believe that there are more women than men who are unable to find their ways round fuseboxes because of their biological make-up. I think it's because in a patriarchal society men act with horror at the idea of women being competent in much more than baby-making and we still do live in a patriarchal society to quite an extent. It might seem like the pendulum's swung too far from your perspective, but I don't think it's gone half-way yet in many ways. Never took you for a Daily Mail reader.

x-post lyra I think he means "it looks funny to me when women do these things which are so obviously not their lot in life"

maybe you're just a dimbulb

They were building passenger jets during the war? I think not. Planes to carry medics or first aid supplies, maybe... because people were being killed. Again, I have to ask why this war work is "independence" ("good") and making children is "dependence" ("bad")?

(a) Roles are constraining, which is why it behooves us to allow people to occupy roles whose constraints they've chosen, and whose constraints match their talents and inclinations.

(b) In order for the above to happen, it needs to be necessary for women to be able to provide basic necessities for themselves. This means that if they have talents that can be monetized, or the inclination to monetize themselves, they need to be able to.

xpost

You do admit that deciduous trees have leaves, then? Not feathers? God this is hard work!

There is no point discussing these matters with somebody who is not listening. In this sense, Momus does us all a service by modeling the typical patriarchal stance on this thread.

Thanks M!

Is that a yes? If so, thank you.

So we seem to be running round in circles at this point. People need to have the option to do X, but not be constrained to do X only. Sure, we can agree. But we can also agree that your points are marketist. You think there's more freedom in money's exchangability, and you think the freedoms of being in the market outweigh the obligations and constraints, even for a female employee who, we know, still earns less there than her male equivalent (and God knows, he doesn't earn enough of the value he creates compared with shareholders, senior management and entrepreneurs either). Yet it is to this system that you look for liberation and social transformation. Good bloody luck.

"You think there's more freedom in money's exchangability" = you go back to pretending you didn't understand it. I do not think this. I explained, however, at the very beginning of the thread, that there's a very simple trick to the economic part. The trick is that food costs money. And since women, like men, need to eat to live, the ability to earn money becomes a bit of a crucial trick in making the decisions we're now apparently agreeing that they should be able to make. This doesn't mean there's more freedom in the market. It just means that a woman doesn't really have the option so, say, not marry if the alternative doesn't come with any food. In order to have the option to not-marry, in just about every society on Earth, a person must also have the opportunity to provide for herself.

I sorta thought Momus would understand this, given the never-run Pizza Hut commercials. Which I'm not mocking, for real!

Sure they do! they can be ARTISTS!

Not so, there is a third way, it's called socialism! (Not Tony Blair's "third way", obviously.) The state provides for people, gives them food and accommodation when they need it, for instance if they're a single mother with no job. It's called "benefits" or "the welfare state" and it pays for food, education, healthcare and childcare. I'm surprised that you jumped to agrarian soviets before that much milder and more widespread mixed economy solution.

Sounds like defeatist talk to me! Let's try reversing your statement:

"You do understand that just to cave in to market forces is not to change anything, right? and that it doesn't free one from having to live according to the conditions the market imposes?"

Wow, it's still true, but the market wins both ways! Must be something to do with the way you've framed it.

I'm far left, Momus: I'm an American who grew up believing that neither major political party really spoke for working people. Because I had a lot of exposure to American 3rd-party politics when I was young, I'm jaded & cynical about the prospects for a third party: they all have stepchild syndrome, and the infighting is headsmashingly awful. So I vote Democratic in major elections, though I have to hold my nose when I do so: they don't share any of my values. They don't give a shit about women's rights, or about the fucking dire history of race relations in this country; they lack the courage of their stated convictions. But at least they talk a decent line, occasionally.

The central issue for me politically is feminism; I think patriarchy has made a dire fucking mess of civilization, which itself (civilization, I mean) isn't actually such a bad idea. I don't think "deconstructing" masculinity (and I take issue with the use of "deconstruct" as a verb in that phrase, but whatever) can really be a meaningful endeavor until women aren't frankly oppressed and denied opportunities that're open to men & have been since roughly 3500 B.C. in the western cultures (and in the eastern ones, too, as far as we know, though the documentation's different). I believe in reparations. That's what I got politically for you.

I don't think "deconstructing" masculinity (and I take issue with the use of "deconstruct" as a verb in that phrase, but whatever) can really be a meaningful endeavor until women aren't frankly oppressed and denied opportunities that're open to men

That might be a long wait! But it sounds to me like you want women to become men before deconstructing maleness. If you can't beat them, join them, then beat them. Except that by that point you're beating yourself. You're defining life with a lot of attention to power imbalances rather than complementarities and co-operation, and with a lot of emphasis on "equal and the same" rather than "equal but different".

As for the reparations idea... well, given what you've said about your politics, surely you believe that state welfare aid to people in hardship is the best (and most likely and achievable) form of "reparation"?

Has it occurred to anyone else here that women - the point of focus of this very conversation - have appeared very rarely on this thread, said one or 2 things, and then (pressumably) given up and left?

But thats ok, you menfolk keep talking about our lives for us, you're all swell.

(And before anyone suggests "well come in here and discuss it then", I would perhaps hazard a guess that, as women, we're smart enough to know when a task is apointless waste of time *evil grin*).

Maybe I missed it upthread (I skimmed a bit towards the end) but what rights specifically are being denied to women today? You're talking about rights, right? Like the kind the 14th Amendment is supposed to give everyone? I'm curious.

Yes. I just like arguing.

Dan (...AR MY MIGHTY PHALLUS) Perry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1703933,00.html

Momus seems as intelligent as his music lends him to be.

He's certainly doesn't let the grass grow under his feet:

Me, I don't know what Betty Friedan wrote or believed. In fact, I'd never heard of her....

-- Momus - February 5th, 2006 4:04 AM.

After "The Feminine Mystique" sold millions of copies, she was in the position to set up her own organisation, the National Organization for Women, with herself as president. NOW did sterling work for abortion and equality legislation, and for that I very much salute Frieden. However, I don't agree with the thesis of the book she's most famous for.

-- Momus - February 6th, 2006 5:16 AM.

As for the second part of Nabisco's comment, no, I'm not discounting the whole of Friedan's achievement. I've already said I don't believe cultural arguments can be "refuted", and I've saluted what she achieved with equal rights and abortion legislation.

-- Momus - February 8th, 2006 2:28 AM.

from not having heard of her to citing that he's already "saluted" her in 3 days....

lol... momus.

Well, let me give you another example. I just came back from a club here in Osaka called Doll Dress, which hosts a regular Gothic Lolita party.

And it struck me that while this was in some ways a "feminist" scene, showing women as bright and empowered, it was also a sort of misogyny. Because it showed a woman doing things that, in real life, women tend to be worse at than men.

gross

momus

Man, am I glad I never read any Momus threads before.

yeah, read gabbneb instead

what's strange is I randomly remembered this thread just the other day...like 'oh yeah ILX used to be this whole other thing/fuckin' Momus.' I miss mark s tho.