Betty Friedan and Coretta Scott King, Requiesat in Pace
It's been a sad week for us progressives, not even counting Alito's confirmation. We've lost leading lights of the movement, and are not looking to see their like in the forseable future.
Coretta Scott King
It's said that the definition of a martyr is one who lives with a saint. And MLK was an American saint. Caucasians should thank God every night that we had MLK, on the most cynical level because he prevented a race war. Americans of African descent post WWII could have very easily risen up against their oppressors violently and caused a great deal of damage, both physically and to the psychic fabric of the nation. As it is, Martin Luther King Jr. showed us a better way of social change and style of life. Now, he had his personal failings, which Ms. King had to live with, in public no less. She was a martyr in this sense, as her husband was in the literal sense. But CSK continued her late husband's work, however foolish it may have seemed at the time, using her status as the widow of an American martyr and saint.
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan, on the other hand, fought that no woman would ever have to trade on her husband's name again. I'm not saying that this is the better fight, but in some ways, the two women seem to be from different eras, one that gave birth to the other. If the civil rights movement hadn't trained women in social activism (and, inadvertently, the inconsistencies between the theory and practice of "liberal" men), the women's liberation movement would have been radically different, if it happened at all.
I don't know how many other people read The Feminine Mystique after say, 1976, but I did. I had to choose a "book that made a difference" for a graduate school class. If you've never read it, be forewarned: it is not light reading. About a quarter of the book is footnotes; it is painstakingly researched. It is also very much of its time, the post-war period. That said, it is clear, and it is galvanizing. The case Friedan makes is damning: of societal expectations in the twentieth century, of the educational system, of the media, and of corporate America. Many feminists of the second wave, famous and not, credit reading The Feminine Mystique as the original raising of their consciousness. I think the sexual revolution also had a role to play, but that's for another post. Anyway, I wrote an analysis of the book and its effects for my class which I really should convert to HTML at some point. I was affected by this book. I knew that things were bad before second wave feminism got rolling, but I didn't know they were that bad. The Feminine Mystique brought it all home, in excrutiating detail.
One of the things that I touched on was how the book affected the women I knew. The most fascinating person was my mother. She never read The Feminine Mystique, reacted to my utterance of the word "feminism" in relation to her life as if I had announced that she had roaches under her stove, and yet she has lived a very feminist life. She went to a prestigious medical school in the '60s, completed the rigorous training for her specialty, continued to work while her children were still small, became a nationally known expert and advocate on issues relating to children, and became an endowed chair at her teaching hospital. I sometimes remark that instead of Kinder, Kirche, Kuche (Children, Church, Kitchen) my mother has lived by Kids, Career, Crusades. Not always in that order, but that's another post. Anyway, with that background, it's no surprise that my sister and I were raised to be independent, educated, career-minded critical thinkers. My mother sometimes seems surprised that we're so apathetic towards to the domestic arts ("You don't cook? Really?"), but the other thing we learned is that there is only so much time in the day and you have to prioritize. Yup, before I could read, The Feminine Mystique touched my life.
Conclusion
Wow. That's a lot more than I intended to write. So much on Betty, and one measly paragraph on poor old Coretta. Well, I know more about Friedan, how she held that men were not enemy, got a little freaked out about the "Lavender Menace," and a lot freaked out by her perceived excesses of the feminist movement. What do I know about King? That she raised four fairly sane kids in the spotlight and that she and her husband saved America's collective ass. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.
Coretta Scott King
It's said that the definition of a martyr is one who lives with a saint. And MLK was an American saint. Caucasians should thank God every night that we had MLK, on the most cynical level because he prevented a race war. Americans of African descent post WWII could have very easily risen up against their oppressors violently and caused a great deal of damage, both physically and to the psychic fabric of the nation. As it is, Martin Luther King Jr. showed us a better way of social change and style of life. Now, he had his personal failings, which Ms. King had to live with, in public no less. She was a martyr in this sense, as her husband was in the literal sense. But CSK continued her late husband's work, however foolish it may have seemed at the time, using her status as the widow of an American martyr and saint.
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan, on the other hand, fought that no woman would ever have to trade on her husband's name again. I'm not saying that this is the better fight, but in some ways, the two women seem to be from different eras, one that gave birth to the other. If the civil rights movement hadn't trained women in social activism (and, inadvertently, the inconsistencies between the theory and practice of "liberal" men), the women's liberation movement would have been radically different, if it happened at all.
I don't know how many other people read The Feminine Mystique after say, 1976, but I did. I had to choose a "book that made a difference" for a graduate school class. If you've never read it, be forewarned: it is not light reading. About a quarter of the book is footnotes; it is painstakingly researched. It is also very much of its time, the post-war period. That said, it is clear, and it is galvanizing. The case Friedan makes is damning: of societal expectations in the twentieth century, of the educational system, of the media, and of corporate America. Many feminists of the second wave, famous and not, credit reading The Feminine Mystique as the original raising of their consciousness. I think the sexual revolution also had a role to play, but that's for another post. Anyway, I wrote an analysis of the book and its effects for my class which I really should convert to HTML at some point. I was affected by this book. I knew that things were bad before second wave feminism got rolling, but I didn't know they were that bad. The Feminine Mystique brought it all home, in excrutiating detail.
One of the things that I touched on was how the book affected the women I knew. The most fascinating person was my mother. She never read The Feminine Mystique, reacted to my utterance of the word "feminism" in relation to her life as if I had announced that she had roaches under her stove, and yet she has lived a very feminist life. She went to a prestigious medical school in the '60s, completed the rigorous training for her specialty, continued to work while her children were still small, became a nationally known expert and advocate on issues relating to children, and became an endowed chair at her teaching hospital. I sometimes remark that instead of Kinder, Kirche, Kuche (Children, Church, Kitchen) my mother has lived by Kids, Career, Crusades. Not always in that order, but that's another post. Anyway, with that background, it's no surprise that my sister and I were raised to be independent, educated, career-minded critical thinkers. My mother sometimes seems surprised that we're so apathetic towards to the domestic arts ("You don't cook? Really?"), but the other thing we learned is that there is only so much time in the day and you have to prioritize. Yup, before I could read, The Feminine Mystique touched my life.
Conclusion
Wow. That's a lot more than I intended to write. So much on Betty, and one measly paragraph on poor old Coretta. Well, I know more about Friedan, how she held that men were not enemy, got a little freaked out about the "Lavender Menace," and a lot freaked out by her perceived excesses of the feminist movement. What do I know about King? That she raised four fairly sane kids in the spotlight and that she and her husband saved America's collective ass. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.
posted by S. M. Frances at 5:34 PM
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