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Topic: R.I.P. Betty Friedan
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audra trower williams
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2
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posted 04 February 2006 04:01 PM
quote: Betty Friedan, the visionary, combative feminist who launched a social revolution with her provocative 1963 book, "The Feminine Mystique," died Saturday, which was her 85th birthday.Friedan died of congestive heart failure at her home in Washington, D.C., family members told the Associated Press. Her bestselling book identified "the problem that has no name," the unhappiness of post-World War II American women unfulfilled by traditional notions of female domesticity. Melding sociology and humanistic psychology, the book became the cornerstone of one of the last century's most profound movements, unleashing the first full flowering of American feminism since the 1800s.
Full story. [ 04 February 2006: Message edited by: audra trower williams ]
From: And I'm a look you in the eye for every bar of the chorus | Registered: Apr 2001
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skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478
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posted 05 February 2006 10:15 AM
That's a good historical summary. From the conclusion: quote: The book's focus on the struggles of educated, middle-class white women was attacked by other critics as a major shortcoming. To many black women more concerned with survival than self-fulfillment, Friedan's call to women to find meaningful careers "seemed to come from another planet," according to historian Paula Giddings.The personal narrative that gave "Feminine Mystique" much of its power was misleading in another way: It omitted references to Friedan's earlier career as a left-wing journalist, creating the impression that the author had never been anything other than a suburban matron. Years later, biographer Daniel Horowitz would accuse Friedan of obscuring her past to sell books. But Friedan insisted she was only being politically savvy. "It was the McCarthy era . . . and I didn't go around parading my left-wing background because it wouldn't have helped in organizing the women's movement," she told the Times a few years ago(5/00). "On the other hand, I never kept it secret." Friedan's radical past explains "how she came as a housewife to politicize so deftly the 'problems that have no name,' " said historian Ruth Rosen. "People in the old left got experience in naming things. That's not unimportant. It explains the power of 'The Feminine Mystique."'
Even at the time, Friedan and her book seemed to some of us, those of us who were heading into the New Left, somewhat limited in class and cultural terms, but then so did Ms magazine. But she and Ms had much the higher profile, and their impact was much more widespread. Many, many important political and legal changes could not have been brought about without their broad influence on the American middle class. She did what was there for her to do, and she stayed tough and independent-minded. A great life, well worth celebrating.
From: gone | Registered: May 2001
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anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045
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posted 05 February 2006 01:05 PM
And had she written of the challenges facing black women, women of colour, minority women or even immigrant women she'd have been flayed alive for daring to interpret someone else's cultural reality.Sometimes you're hooped if you do and hooped if you don't. A writer has to start SOMEWHERE. Sooner or later, usually sooner, you wind up staring at what is going to be page one chapter one...and sometimes there are two or even three books worth of material prior to page one as it is chosen. And then, of course, there is the fact that a very male supremicist culture was looking for things to criticize!! "You did good, Betty. Good on ya!" We should all do as well.
From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005
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anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045
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posted 05 February 2006 02:27 PM
A dear friend gave me a "banner" which I hung on the kitchen wall, it said "Sisterhood is Powerful. It can fuckin'well KILLYA!".I think I did okay until "Lies Secrets and Silences" became de rigeur. I've always resented questions like "penny for your thoughts" and "what are you thinking about?". My thoughts are worth more than a penny (to me!) and if I wanted you to know what I was thinking I'd be talking...that book just about sent me into rant mode!! Then it was followed by that hellish time of "politically correct" humourless academic formula-speak and I don't do well with euphemism, to me it is baffle-gab and all too often oxymoronic (and the rest of the time downright moronic). Ah, them was the days!! Now I'm just an isolationistic curmudgeon. It's way lots easier. I'll burn smudge for Betty and then have a couple of cups of tea, my non-alcoholic equivalent of a wee drammy.
From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005
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anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045
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posted 07 February 2006 11:28 AM
I remember when I read "The Female Eunach". I was still married but seriously wondering WHY I was, and I laughed. And laughed. And then I LAUGHED. Peter Pan asked why I was laughing, I said oh, just something in this book...he must have thought I was reading Bennet Cerf...and a couple of weeks after I'd read the book, while I was still pondering and wondering, Peter Pan came into the room, with the book, and tossed it aside. He told me the book was trash, full of lies, and filthy in the bargain. And I howled with laughter. Then I watched on TV a programme taped when she debated William Buckley. I did not laugh. I just watched, and thought what a champion she was. I knew she was one of those women my mother warned me against...and her personal life is about as bizarre as she describes Betty as being... Just more reason to concentrate on the WORK, and not on the flawed person who produced it. I think the "star fucker" mentality must be very hard to have to endure. I don't think I fully understood the "class" rift in the women's movement until there was an ad for a networking banquet (or some dam thing) in Toronto, with a picture of tables of four, women seated, while waitresses served food and I thought right, our lot is still serving the toffs. Resentment took root. Then I read an academic thing from a woman prof at the University of Victoria, a study on women in the founding years of trade unionism on the Island and I just about boiled over with fury; that someone with tenure, making what to most of us would be huge bucks, was writing about women who had held firm even when their kids were so skinny they looked like wraiths. The paper was well written and extensively researched and there was nothing emotional in it, I felt that the union supporting women had been reduced to ciphers, marginalized all over again, and USED by someone who would never understand their courage or their commitment. And my "class" awareness began to grow. To the point I now feel there are two women's movements, perhaps a wave within a wave, and one is the theoretical talkers, the other is the women who LIVE the oppression they struggle against. And until we give more respect to and honour the women who wait the tables where the talkers are having their pleasant little lunches, we're going to continue to be split on questions of class. I was at a healing conference years ago and every evening at suppertime we all clapped and cheered for the women doing the cooking. We need to do more of that and less of guaranteeing the "honoured speakers" have the best rooms, accomodations, and seats at the tables.
From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005
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skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478
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posted 07 February 2006 02:41 PM
Yeah. Those are hard thoughts, anne. How do we change all that? Because really, the class situation hasn't changed much at all. That debate you saw between Greer and Buckley - that was at the Cambridge Union in the UK, yes? I remembered that too, for years, after I'd seen it. When I was teaching at a junior college here, I mentioned it one day to another teacher when we were trying to figure out how to teach our flocks formal debating techniques. She had the bright idea of checking the library, and lo and behold, someone had taped the show! That show! So after that, we were running it over and over again for all our classes, mixed groups of men and women, twentysomethings mainly, enrolled in business or marketing diploma programs. They would just be riveted. I always pretended, of course, that I was using it purely to teach speaking and debating style. One funny thing: At the end, there would always be students who turned on me and said, "But Miss dadl, they weren't doing what you taught us at ALL!" (I had been forced to teach very basic pro and con formulae - stay rational; stay consistent; the rebuttals should address what opponent said in careful order; etc.) And of course neither Greer nor Buckley talks that way at ALL! They damn well said what they had to say. And she won, eh?
From: gone | Registered: May 2001
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