Feminists Do Not Represent the Views of Most Americans
On Sept. 25, 2009, I will be speaking at the How to Take Back America Conference in St. Louis, Mo. The subject of my workshop, which I'll be conducting alongside Phyllis Schlafly, is "How to cope with feminist attacks on marriage and motherhood." It's a subject I've been dealing with for years since the release of my first book, and I can assure you it's a topic that's not going away. In many respects the fight has just begun.
The perception many Americans have of feminism is that it's dead – though nothing could be further from the truth. It's true we don't often hear or read about feminists, but that's not because they've gone away. On the contrary, labeling women "feminist" is no longer necessary because feminism is as natural as breathing.
As an example, in May Larry King aired a segment called "Women and Self-Worth." His featured guest was Cheryl Saban, whose book "What Is Your Self Worth? A Woman's Guide to Validation" had just been released. King gave Saban and three other feminists – Lisa Ling, Della Reese and Lisa Nichols – an hour's worth of airtime to discuss feminist issues, but the women were never referred to as feminists. Why would they be? CNN's producers are all feminists themselves (indeed, Carol Lin, the anchor of CNN's "Sunday Evening News," once told me my book – which supports and encourages at-home motherhood – "stirred up all the women at CNN"); and they truly, honestly believe their views are normal. Right. Good. They're not views some women have; they're views any normal person would have – so there's no reason to refer to the women as feminists. It's superfluous.
No, feminism is not dead. It's worse. It has become fully inculcated into modern society, to the degree that any woman who takes an alternative view is routinely marginalized and downright vilified. When I wrote a blog about the Larry King segment, mocking some of the ridiculous things the women said – "It's not until we fall in love with ourselves that the world will begin to honor and support us"; "I suggest women get financially independent because that gives you freedom and empowerment to love yourself first"; "Once you are complete you look for others in your life to complement your completeness" – I got this response from a reader:
Your words make me ill. really, really ill. gross. how could you dismiss women's desire to not be dependent on men? you are an embarrassment to women. i can't believe that someone would say such things. what on earth is wrong with you? so women SHOULD be dependent on men? and NOT love themselves? based on my life experience, and all my amassed world knowledge, that is a recipe for depression and abusive relationships. i am still in shock about your words. your words are extremely dangerous to women!
The reason so few women speak out about the damage of modern feminism is because not many people can withstand this kind of heat. Even I do a double take when I first read these comments, and I have very thick skin. The one woman in America who knows how brutal the fight is is Phyllis Schlafly; no one has withstood the kind of feminist vitriol she has. Betty Friedan once told Schlafly she'd like to "burn her at the stake." She has also had a pie thrown in her face when she ran for Congress in 1952.
I have a theory about Schlafly's experiences: I think she was ahead of her time. Schlafly knew, without having to see the results first, the toll feminism would take on society. No one else did. Unfortunately, Schlafly was born at the wrong time in that she tried to fight feminism (not to say she wasn't successful; she was) right when it was getting off the ground. During the 1950s, America was ripe for the idea of female empowerment; they weren't ready to hear Schlafly's contrarian view. But 40 years have passed now, and the damage of modern feminism is clear to those who are willing to face it.
UPDATE:Click here to read Suzanne's response to some of your comments.
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You say that the Feminist movement began in the 1960's, from that wrong statement you haven't been right on anything. your quote "While people associate feminism with the 1960s revolution, since that is when feminism began". The history of the modern western feminist movements is divided into three "waves". Each is described as dealing with different aspects of the same feminist issues. The first wave refers mainly to women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (mainly concerned with women's right to vote). The second wave refers to the ideas and actions associated with the women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s (which campaigned for legal and social equality for women). The third wave refers to a continuation of, and a reaction to, the perceived failures of second-wave feminism, beginning in the 1990s. So you see your a reactionary without the basic facts.
Chuck
Mrs. Venker is using the statement of fringe elements of the modern feminist movement to paint the entire movement as radicals.
There are extreme separatist elements that promote such actions... but it is not representative of mainstream feminist thought (just as saying that woman cannot be raped by her husband is not part of mainstream conservationism).
When my children were growing up I stayed home with them. I was active in the communities we lived in and volunteered in the school, church and community. Ater they were in high school I worked part time, and now that they are grown and on their own I work full time. I was dependent on my husband financially during my stay at home days, and he was dependent on me to provide for our children and keep his home nice and provide good meals. Now my husband and I share household responsibilities so we are still dependent on each other, though not in the same way. A good marriage is like a team. Neither partner does the same thing in the same way, but the goal remains the same - to win. A winning marriage is one in which both partners can depend on each other and respect each other. I do not regret staying home with my children and do not believe I am less of a woman because I did.
Though I don't agree with the article; however, I think the general belief of a unified feminist theory is problematic. I'm not accusing anyone on here of doing that so much as saying that people unfamiliar to the subject just hear femiminsm, period.
Though feminists share common goals there are many different interpretations of what feminism is or should be. To say feminism is this or feminism is that is simply not valid without a "to me" added.
Though first wave is long gone there are still second wave interpretations, which vary, not to mention the incredibly diverse third wave.Everything from true androny or man hating to sex positive, pro porn interpretations and many things in between have been catargorized as third wave feminism at some point. Some approaches are great, but others are extremely damaging and cause a great deal of tension between the sexes and confusion for the general public.
There are interpretations that suggest supremacy as opposed to equality. And to an extent, some use these feminist arguments as leverage to gain political power with little consideration of their overall impact on society . I feel like many of these arguments arise from the great diversity in attitudes and theory being crammed under the single label of feminism in the minds of a great many people.
I agree with what most of you have already said about this article. Feminism is about choice. If not for feminism women would have only 1 option. Get married and pump out kids . Anything else wasn't socially acceptable before. The advent of feminism and the women's rights movement allowed women to be writers and pilots and all those other things that most of us agree women have every right to be. If we're lucky and work hard then maybe eventually they'll even get paid the same as men in the same fields.
On the other hand, to the author's credit, feminism is about choice. That includes the choice to stay at home and pump out kids. Some women really want that and it's not a rebuke of feminism for them to want that. More power to you. You can be a feminist and still stay at home and pump out kids. Any feminist that says you can't is anti-feminist. They're saying you don't have that choice, which is bull!
So have at it. Stay at home or go to work. Be independent or be dependent. Pump out kids or adopt or have no kids at all. Thank the feminist movement for giving you those choices and don't use the feminist movement as an excuse to look down on women who have chosen different paths than you.
Man, she's been at it a long time.
I am a feminist. I am a mother , a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a cousin...I live alone AND love spending time with my family. I don't need a man to take care of me and I've always supported myself. I put myself and my son through college while attending college and graduate school, as well as coaching my son's basketball and soccer teams when he was little. My son is successful architect and I'm going to visit him in New York next week. I expect to get paid as much as a man for equal work. I can change my own tires and build my own fires when I go camping.
There's my radical, family-ruining, marriage -destroying agenda.
Yup, Phyllis is still alive and kicking. In fact, watch out. She published some "reading text books" a few years ago, which have actually made their way into some of our public school classrooms. Imagine my shock to fine them on the shelf in my daughter's first grade classroom two years ago. I took one home and analyzed it. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'll tell you that it was filled with rah-rah right-wing political propagandizing, and even in the vocabulary lists, sentences examples which used a man as the subject outnumbered sentences which used a woman as the subject by at least 3-1. And sentences which referred to the subject in relation to a professional occupation, such as a doctor, almost exclusively used a man as the subject, while sentences which referred to cooking , cleaning or other household tasks referred almost exclusively to a female subject.
Talk about finding a subversive and subliminal way to reinforce the anti-woman agenda to our innocent children . I was very angry and talked to the teacher about it. She had no idea, was shocked, and didn't use the books anymore.
Bravo for being proactive!
I'm interested in what the "damage of modern feminism " as you call it is. I have yet to see the effects of it. While no doubt some feminists are extreme, the feminist movement has done nothing to "damage" society . That's just stupid.
And Schlafly is an idiot. She cancels speeches because her husband thought she worked too much. She doesn't believe a husband can rape a wife (because it's completely coincidental that woman who report husbands raping them also violently abuse them - or did they sign up for that too on the marriage agreement?). She thinks womans lives improved not because of the feminist movement, but because of better clothes dryers and diapers. This woman isn't only backward in her thinking about woman in society, she's just plain stupid.
Anyway, I love how the damage of modern feminism is never explained as though it's obvious. This just in, it isn't obvious to the majority of Americans who are actually sane people.
Okay. So, just because the author believes that women shouldn't become the goddess-like creatures, enslaving men and using genetic manipulation to create a race of uber-females that shall destroy all men like many of the radical feminazis want to, she's a traitor?
Puh-leeze.
Feminism is great. The idea that women can do anything a man can do is great. May not always be true, but it's great. Gaining the vote for women-- fantastic. Allowing women to leave the house and get a job-- brilliant.
No, what this author is talking about are the people who want to be "equal-- but better." Meaning, if I have two candidates who come in for a job, one male, one female, I should HAVE to pick the female because, well, she's a female. This author is talking about the feminazi attack on men. This author is talking about the conceited notion that women are "better" than men. THAT'S the problem. Feminism has turned from "give us equal rights!" to "get rid of all men!"
Please re-read her article again.