Mommy Life

March 5, 2008 9:39 AM

Feminism - a quiz and a little personal history

How well do you know the history of feminism? To find out, take this quiz.

I scored 9/10. But of course, I was one of the founding mothers of the second wave. Charter member of NOW, abortion rights activist - and so on and on.

Actually, maybe you'd like to hear a little firsthand account about feminism in those days! This is from my book Reaching the Left from the Right: Talking about Social Issues with People Who Don't Think Like You and shows I intertwined my own leftist history with the political movements that were going on. It's long, so if you want to continue reading, just click at the bottom - and if you want to read more about the book, click on the title above to pull up the Amazon page.

Here I am recounting how one night a friend named Sandy - we were both married women who had returned to school at George Mason University in 1970 - picked me up to take me to a "meeting":

I was lost as it seemed I had stumbled into an ongoing discussion that had started weeks or months before. Kind of like a big gripe session with some self-analysis thrown in. Sandy made one inappropriate remark after another – in between swigs of wine – so maddening everyone that the woman I’d figured out was the leader asked, then demanded she leave.

That was my introduction to consciousness-raising. Not typical, perhaps, but an insight into what was fueling feminism. Being pretty independent, I never really got involved in the consciousness-raising movement, but for women who found it harder to dredge up grievances without the help of a group they were quite useful.

Many women who had suffered sexual abuse as children had kept it secret, ashamed of a crime committed against them. In consciousness-raising sessions, they learned they were not alone. They drew strength from seeing themselves as members of an oppressed group rather than abused individuals. The recounting of smaller indignities – getting pawed on an elevator, having men making weird noises as you walked down the street (all so much more frequent back then) – also added up to more when considered as a symptom of women’s lower status in society. Thus the constant reminder: The personal is the political.

All of this soul-searching produced a brand of feminism that was quite different than the first. While First Wave feminists were focused on addressing social ills such as exploitative labor and abortion – the Founding Mothers of Feminism were actually anti-abortion, more on that in the next chapter – and obtaining the vote for women, Second Wavers were fueled heavily by anger and hostility toward men.

This anger was the theme running through the premier issue of Ms. magazine in the spring of 1972. As a charter subscriber, I was lucky to get my copy in the mail, for the first run of 300,000 sold out in eight days. Among articles on de-sexing the English language and abortion (no surprise), one article stood out and is remembered to this day.

In “Click! The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,” writer Jane O’Reilly designated the word “click” as shorthand communication for that moment of illumination when a woman suddenly sees something everyday as an act of oppression. She wrote:

Those clicks are coming faster and faster. American women are angry.
Not redneck-angry from screaming because we are so frustrated and unfulfilled
angry, but clicking-things-into-place angry, because we have suddenly and
shockingly perceived the basic disorder in what has been believed to be the
natural order of things. . . .

In Houston, Texas, a friend of mine stood and watched her husband step
over a pile of toys on the stairs, put there to be carried up. 'Why can’t you get this
stuff put away?' he mumbled. Click! 'You have two hands,' she said, turning away.

Last summer I got a letter from a man who wrote: ‘I do not agree with your
last article, and I am canceling my wife’s subscription.’ The next day I got a letter
from his wife saying, 'I am not canceling my subscription.’ Click!

O’Reilly went on to describe the mounting anger which erupted in midnight fantasies of bashing in her sleeping husband’s head with a frying pan. Certainly a far cry from the noble ideals of First Wave Feminists.

Her article was pretty much the defining statement of what feminism was all about in those days – so much so that it was included in the March 2002 Ms.30-year anniversary issue, which for the first time proudly bore Gloria Steinem on the cover, Oprah-style. Steinem had always been the poster girl for feminism, and it’s interesting to note that the woman who always had lots to say against men and marriage, did finally tie the knot herself in September 2000 – at the ripe old age of 66.

Here's something I published in honor of her marriage in the Marin Independent Journal:

YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, GLORIA

There’s something ironically reassuring about Gloria Steinem’s recent marriage. Something that goes a long way toward setting the record straight, perhaps signaling the Hegelian counter swing which will restore the balance that – oddly enough – Ms. Steinem herself began bucking almost 30 years ago.

In 1972, Ms. Steinem, who decided early on to forego marriage and children, gave birth to Ms., a more challenging new-kid-on-the-block for girls who’d grown up hanging out with Mademoiselle and Glamour.

For radical Second Wave feminists, busy writing manifestos, forming health collectives, and publishing journals with names like Off Our Backs, Ms. probably didn’t go far enough. But out there somewhere languished countless Suzie Q. Housewives, the women Ms. was anxious to rescue – the Sleeping Beauties who needed to be woken to the reality of their oppression and riled up enough to do something about it.

The charter issue boasted an article on the housewife’s moment of truth, introducing the term “click” to describe those moments of revelation when women wake up to their oppressed condition. I still remember the author’s confession to waking up with her husband sleeping beside her – and wanting to bash his head in with a frying pan.

Certainly, marriage for feminists was a tricky proposition – in Steinem’s words “[Marriage] was designed for a person and a half. You become a semi-non-person when you get married.”

The elite sisters didn’t need it. As Steinem pointed out, “Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.”

That certainly put all us semi-non-persons in our places.

And who could forget the most famous Steinem pronouncement of all, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

So what happened last week? Did Steinem become the man she wanted to marry and then marry him anyway? Or did the fish finally figure a bike might be nice after all?

The 66-year-old feminist activist’s press release didn’t speak of love or romance, but politics with the usual decidedly elitist slant:

“Though I’ve worked many years to make marriage more equal, I never expected to take advantage of it myself. I’m happy, surprised, and one day will write about it, but for now, I hope this proves what feminists have always said – that feminism is about the right to choose.”

Maybe that’s the best she can do. After all, this is the woman who wrote in her 1993 Revolution from Within, “Romance itself serves a larger political purpose by offering at least a temporary reward for gender roles and threatening rebels with loneliness and rejection.”

But maybe, just maybe Steinem fell madly in love. Maybe she finally recognized that though the personal is the political, that’s not always a negative. Maybe she’ll discover that thousands of years of tradition mean there’s more to marriage than meets the eye.

And if tradition’s not enough, check with science. According to a Rutgers University study, “Married couples have substantial benefits over the unmarried in terms of labor force productivity, physical and mental health, general happiness and longevity.” Other studies show they have less depression and better sex lives too.

I like to think of Steinem snuggled up beside her hubby, comforted as they grow old together, surprised by joy as she discovers firsthand the true nature of marriage. I hope she’s delighted to find that no matter how much she thought she knew there was still some territory left to explore.

Perhaps she’ll discover the meaning in this wedding blessing by Father Pat Callahan:

As you join in marriage, may life always be a shared adventure, marked by a
sense of personal freedom, as well as mutual responsibility.

May you find in each other companionship as well as love; understanding as
well as compassion; challenge as well as agreement.

May the home you establish be an island where the pressures of the world can
be sorted out and brought into focus; where tensions can be released and understood;
where personal needs do not tower over concern for others and where the warmth of
humor and love puts crisis into perspective.

And above all, may you find an ever richer joy in loving and learning together.

So here’s to Ms. Steinem. Though she’s yet to indicate she’s willing to change her name, she seems to have met a man who changed her mind. Perhaps someday soon she’ll change her mind about her underestimated sisters, too.

After 30some years of “Ms.understanding” marriage, she may finally be on to something new.

Originally published in The Marin Independent Journal, September 18, 2000.

Second Wave feminists, were angry, all right – and in many ways they had reason to be. That the culture was male dominated – making it difficult for girls to have role models and women to find outlets for their creativity – is a given. That there were double standards – justifying unequal pay for equal work as well as denying women with leadership ability the chance to use it to use it – that also is undeniable. Unless you’re over forty, it’s hard to imagine how much more difficult it was for women to become doctors or lawyers, to be published or recorded.

Without role models in the community and without encouragement in school, girls grew up without the options they have today. Although now I would argue that the pendulum has swung too far to the other extreme – producing a generation of girls brainwashed into giving up or postponing motherhood for careers, our situation is at least better than it was in the 60’s and 70’s. Freedom, after all, is the defining characteristic of our American culture. It is essential for girls to grow up expecting to have equal opportunities and the freedom to choose their future.

That said, I’m still not sure that the anti-motherhood-as-a-career atmosphere in public school has produced young women with true freedom.

And I go on to discuss the experience of my daughters growing up with the pressure to ignore their feminine focus on a domestic future - which many of you have experienced personally too.

Love,

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Comments

Barbara,
I find this post so interesting. I'm 38 years old and grew up in the '70's and '80's where I was bombarded with the message that I could "have it all" - career and family. In fact, that was what was expected. All of the family sitcoms at that time had working mothers - it seemed to be everywhere. My mom was a stay at home mom. I heard from the world that she was "lazy' or not trying to "reach her potential." All of my friends and I went to college to be career women (which as an aside, I am so grateful that I went to college and that I DO have the opportunities that the first-wave feminists fought so hard for.). But now my friends and I laugh that we have swung the pendulum back the other way. We've all realized that staying at home doesn't mean you are not reaching your potential. I feel that what I'm doing is so important and I'm so glad that my husband and I are able to swing it financially. I know it's hard for some out there because we really have turned into a 2 income society. Anyway, I'm sorry this went on so long. Thank you for your post.
Angela

Posted by: Angela | March 5, 2008 2:01 PM

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