politricks and other distractions

A Pause in the Feminist Heartbeat

There's a lot going on in the world this week, but I gotta take a moment and recognize how different the world is today because of Betty Friedan and all the feminists like her.

Backstory: I come from a long line of feminists. My mother was in the first class of women Marine's. My grandmother got a public health degree at Columbia in the early 20th century, ran the Red Cross there during WWII, and brought visiting nursing to the Mid-West. Her mother was a teacher on the Iowa prairie. Family legend has it one of her students was Laura Ingalls Wilder. In my family, women never questioned that we would work.

When my oldest sister was looking at colleges in 1968, she got an interview for the Foreign Service School at Georgetown, our father's alma mater. My sister was captain of the debate team - and I think president of her class. She got As and knew her stuff. It was a time when women could think about being diplomats instead of teachers or nurses.

At the interview, the counselor told her that they wouldn't accept her because they didn't want to waste a spot that a man could use who'd really go on and have a career. They knew my sister would only work until she got married.

So, my sister scheduled another appointment with another counselor there. Amazingly, that person told her the exact same story. She found a different school to go to and has had a great career in other realms.

Within 10 years of that date, nobody would believe that story. Especially no young woman. By the time I was headed to college, Mary Tyler Moore had her own show as a career woman and I was ready to throw my beret in the air just like her.

Now we're at the other end of the feminist movement. Girls today wouldn't know what you were talking about when we said they're treating themselves as objects by dressing like sluts. Bill Maher even had a joke about it, "You know who I really feel sorry for today? Whores. I mean, how do their customers even know who they are any more. They have to hold up signs that say, 'no, really, I AM a whore!'" Today beauty seems to be the #1 requirement for women. Thank god that wasn't necessary to those who started fighting for our rights. Until Gloria Steinem showed up, none of us was worthy of being a Playboy bunny.

I think it was in the 1980s that polls started to show a weakening of pro-choice beliefs in college women. After so many decades of fighting for our reproductive rights, women started to get complacent. Now, you can't get an abortion in 85% of counties in America. And still nobody's ever thought to get men involved in that issue - which I find odd because they are exactly half of the equation when it comes to the insemination of an egg.

In fact, I'd venture to say that one of the weaknesses of the movement founded by Friedan and others is that they haven't leveraged men as partners where they could. It was an us vs. them mentality for a long time - and I'm not sure it's served us. We're still only making 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, aren't we?

With all its failings, I'm still proud to be a feminist - even if that word is going out of fashion. Maybe we need a new word to denote where we are on the equality curve. We're Friedan-tastic. We're Steinem-ized. Stein-women. Friedancers.

Work with me, people. Keep hope alive. And note one blip on the heart monitor of the women's movement as a true revolutionary moves on.

posted by dcnative @ 7:45 AM