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A Different Look at
Betty Friedan's Legacy
Betty Friedan (1921-2023)
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183827,00.html
died recently at the age of 85. Eulogies have
stacked up quickly for the feminist icon: Friedan
founded modern feminism; she rescued women from the
'50s; she pioneered the brave 'new woman' who now
strides through society.
I disagree with those
eulogies about the content of Friedan's legacy. The
disagreement contains no malice; because Friedan is
a public and now-historical figure, an accurate
view of her social impact is simply
necessary.
Accuracy may be especially
important as the impact of her death is already
being used (or abused) by various political
organizations and agendas. For example,
www.now.org/press/02-06/02-04.html
the press release from the National Organization
for Women, which Friedan was instrumental in
founding in 1966, reads like a fundraiser. At the
other end of the spectrum, some www.standyourground.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8239
masculinist groups "rejoice in the fact that her
hateful voice is now silenced."
A starting point of
consensus on Friedan is possible, even among
extremes. She was a remarkable woman who deeply
influenced the culture of her time. But for better
or worse? -- that's where battle engages.
Some of the 'facts' and
assumptions about her life advanced in the eulogies
demand closer examination.
Assumption One: Friedan
was an apolitical housewife who had an 'aha'
moment.
The New York Times
sums up www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/national/05cnd-friedan.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1139116031-FFyTOfwLU6uxpLB4oRZ8yQ
its eulogy with the observation that Friedan will
"be forever known as the suburban housewife who
started a revolution with The Feminine Mystique"
(TFM), her best-selling book (1963). Although TFM
capitalized upon and thus acknowledged Friedan's
ivy-league education, it also presented her as a
basically apolitical homemaker who stumbled across
political truth through viewing her own domestic
circumstances. This is myth.
In his award-winning book
Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminist
Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and
Modern Feminism (1998), Professor Daniel Horowitz
of Smith College www.salon.com/col/horo/1999/01/nc_18horo2.html
documented Friedan's ideological roots. From
college days through to her mid-30s, Friedan was a
consistent and committed Marxist. She was a veteran
labor journalist and union activist/pamphleteer
with extensive publishing savvy. Rather than
suddenly drawing political conclusions from her
domestic experience, Friedan clearly brought prior
conclusions to her experience, which she
interpreted through them.
Assumption Two: Friedan
was representative of American women.
TFM argued that Friedan's
reported experience of being caged in the
oppressive, dehumanizing role of mother and
housewife was shared by millions of American women.
In TFM's preface, Friedan stated, "Gradually,
without seeing it clearly for quite a while, I came
to realize that something is very wrong with the
way American women are trying to lives their lives
today."
The en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan
very history of TFM refutes the claim that
Friedan's experiences were representative.
As part of her 15th
reunion at Smith College, Friedan conducted a
survey of graduates, which asked them about
satisfaction with their lives. The resulting
article, which focused on the dissatisfaction of
those who became homemakers, was widely rejected by
editors. Friedan eventually expanded the article
into TFM.
Thus, the book reflected
the subjective evaluation of an elite class of
women. Indeed, Friedan www.academia.org/campus_reports/1999/april_1999_6.html
employed a full-time maid to pursue her career as a
writer. As Rosemarie Tong remarked in Feminist
Thought (1998), "Friedan seemed oblivious to any
other perspectives than those of white,
middle-class, heterosexual, educated women who
found the traditional roles of wife and mother
unsatisfying."
More recent scholarship
questions whether Friedan even accurately
represented the domesticity of upper or
middle-class white women. (See 64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:t8ssFGSqLX0J:www.history-compass.com/images/store/HICO/chapters/153.pdf+%22Women%27s+Magazines+and+a+Discourse+of+Discontent%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5
Joanne Meyerowitz's "Rewriting Postwar Women's
History 1945-1960.")
Although TFM clearly
inspired women who wanted more independence, this
is not to say that Friedan's life was
representative. In the '60s, everyone seemed to
demand "more"; everyone blamed society. And men may
have been equally unhappy with their role as sole
provider.
Assumption Three: Friedan
was a moderate within feminism.
Friedan's reputation as a
moderate springs largely from her rejection of
anti-male rhetoric and of lesbianism as a feminist
issue. She believed www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-04-friedan-obit_x.htm
both would harm feminism's mainstream appeal.
Friedan's stand against "the bra-burning, anti-man,
politics-of-orgasm school" led other prominent
feminists like Susan Brownmiller to denounce her.
But neither her rejection of lesbianism nor the
criticism of colleagues makes Friedan
moderate.
TFM does not contain the
Marxist rhetoric that characterizes later gender
feminist writing but its message is no less
radical. The chapter entitled "Progressive
Dehumanization" draws a lengthy and explicit
parallel between housewives and prisoners in Nazi
concentration camps, both of whom are "walking
corpses." Friedan's assessment of the housewife may
well have been instrumental in the decades-long
devaluation of women who chose that option. She
wrote, "Housewives are mindless and
thing-hungry…Housework is peculiarly suited to
the capabilities of feeble-minded girls; it can
hardly use the abilities of a woman of average or
normal human intelligence." As Carol Iannone
www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/fem/MODERA.html
remarked, for Friedan, "submitting to the
traditional feminine role was nothing less than an
embrace of nonbeing."
Assumption Four: Friedan
was crucial to sparking a revolution in women's
status.
Without access to parallel
realities as a basis of comparison, who knows how
feminism might have evolved without TFM? I believe
'women's liberation' was an idea whose time had
come. I think it sprang from a combination: the
economic freedom women acquired during World War
II; a postwar prosperity that encouraged personal
growth; and, the unwillingness of a new generation
to accept old values. A surge of feminism would
have occurred with or without any particular
individual.
But, as an individual,
Friedan did influence the direction of that surge.
For doing so, many offer eulogies. All I can say
with honesty is "rest in peace."
©2007, Wendy
McElroy
* * *
Wendy
McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com
and a research fellow for The Independent Institute
in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and editor of
many books and articles, including her latest book,
Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the
21st Century. She lives with her husband in
Canada. E-Mail.
Also, see her daily blog at www.zetetics.com/mac
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