more adbusters - betty friedan, feminism and the right

in the same issue of adbusters magazine that i mentioned earlier, there's a piece on betty friedan called "a life and death in feminism" by maria hampton (unfortunately it's not available online). here's some good stuff from that article:

... after stunning initial successes, feminist infighting increased as activists were filled with self-doubt, the classic female trait, and a malaise that the movement appeared to be going nowhere. What they failed to realize was that the momentum appeared to have slowed only because they had come so far, and forced the rest of society to catch up - muting the stark relief of injustice that first spurred them on.

As Julie McCrossin warned in Girls Own, "Movements for social change cope with internal differences while the movement is gaining ground and is on the offensive. Internal divisions and debate act as catalysts for change and advance, [but] when the reaction sets in and we are defending our gains, we must be aware of the tendency for movements to turn in on themselves and to self-destruct."

...Still, as feminism became more distracted and slowed its pace, with the easier obstacles overcome, it became an easier target for an increasing conservative backlash. The religious "family values" movement had declined from its hayday in the baby-boomers' post-war childhoods, but had regrouped and through its corporate control of the media was able to scrawl crude caricatures of those it blamed for its fall from grace - the lazy hippies, wimpy sandal-wearing environmentalists, shit-disturbing black rights campaigners and, the most one dimensional stereotype of all, the bra-burning, sex-hating feminazis - a label almost diametrically opposed to everything Friedan believed in.

Coupled with internal infighting, this creeping historical rewrite is particularly destructive for those generations of women who did not experience third-wave - let alone second wave - feminism firsthand and have no notion of the gains their mothers and grandmothers made. For them feminism's legacy was the jarring hyperbole between warring feminist factions, and the lingering - somewhat embarrasing - media stereotype of hairy-legged fanaticism.

As Katha Pollitt noted in The Nation, "If you ever doubt how successful feminism was, try teaching The Feminist Mystique to young women. You might as well be teaching Jane Austen. the way you'd have to explain about curates and entailed estates, you have to tell them how women dressed up to go to the supermarket, how magazines obsessed about the fragile male ego and how dropping out of college to get married was indulgently viewed because you weren't going to use your education anyway. The vast American obliviousness that shrouds, in a kind of Gothic mist, everything that happened before last Tuesday has swallowed up the system of laws, practices and understandings Friedan described."

the text is particularly strong as an overview of the women's liberation movement in different historical contexts, including the current one, linked to other movements. see:

...This crisis of confidence and community coincides with a critical juncture when many are already on the defensive about one of feminism's key successes: abortion. With the rise of neoconservatism this issue's tone changed from pro-abortion to pro-choice, and the resulting nomenclature has infected the other social movements too, reframing environmentalism, black rights and civil justice issues in terms of the individual.

Public rights have been replaced by personal choices. Don't have a right to clean air, pure water and a future for you children? Then choose composting, recycling and growing your own veggies organically. Worked out that having it all - a career and family - isn't all it's cracked up to be? Then take your right to choose, give up that career and stay at home with the kids, the cost of childcare was killing you anyway. Black? Then you'll probably "choose" a second-rate education, exponentially higher exposure to violent crime and a diet that will make you sick. And while you're at it why not settle in the poorest, nastiest ward of New Orleans? Go ahead, it's your choice. This reframing of the debate, to cripple the very power of a movement by shaking it down from masses in search of a universal right to individuals with private decisions to take, was a masterstroke by the Right, because if you pit the little guy against an institution the institution will always win.

We stopped working together for reform and are now being forced to conform, dying deaths of a thousand choices. But it's not too late. In the words of Roberta Lynch, "Movements do not simply get born, flourish and die. They go forward and are beaten back. They retreat, regroup and advance again."

...We have been distracted by personal rather than political empowerment and dragged low by the constant blandishments of a culture that tells us the only path to empowerment is through shopping, plastic surgery and pandering to the so-called ironic fantasies of chortling men. Feminists, black rights campaigners, environmentalists and activists of all creeds, it's time to get angry all over again.

so good! [emphasis mine] but if i mention betty friedan and feminism i have to mention bell hook's critique of her and her feminine mystique, a critique that's representative for how second wave feminism is generally seen to have ignored and ultimately failed a lot of different women/feminists. so from feminist theory: from margin to center (if you haven't read this book yet, you must):

... [Betty Friedan] did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife. ...

and

... [The Feminine Mistique] can also be seen as a case study of narcissism, insensitivity, sentimentality, and self-indulgence, which reaches its peak when Friedan, in a chapter title "Progressive Dehumanization," makes the comparison between the psychological effects of isolation on white housewives and the impact of confinement on the self-concept of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. ...

unfortunately. it's strange to me that the adbusters article doesn't touch at all on this aspect of friedan's approach - and as far as acknowledging specific feminist criticism of friedan it only talks about this "less-than-kind" obituary of friedan's by germaine greer.

ps: in romania, women still dress up to go to the supermarket.