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Betty Friedan just died.

piny

This has been an awful week for losing brilliant women.

(And thanks, Marian, for letting us know in comments. I can’t imagine this being OT.)

Margalit Fox of the New York Times says it as well as I could:

Betty Friedan, the feminist crusader and author whose searing first book, “The Feminine Mystique,” ignited the contemporary women’s movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world, died yesterday, her 85th birthday, at her home in Washington.

That’s a good start, isn’t it?

She spent her life identifying and attacking the ways in which women are taught to live only for others. She tore the mask off of June Cleaver. She made it so that women like my mom could have real live careers and be proud of them.

I was supposed to be in bed several hours ago, but I wanted to mark her passing if only in brief. I’m sure zuzu and Jill will have their own posts. She had a long and complex activist life, and there’s a lot to talk about.

12 thoughts on Betty Friedan just died.

  1. Pingback: Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » The Passing of Betty Friedan

  2. She was a giant- the mother of the American 2nd wave.

    I just wish I had thanked her in a letter or an editorial or something when she was alive. I guess I took her mortality for granted; oddly, I’m somewhat shocked by her passing. Does anyone else feel this way?

    There’s so much more work to be done for women and girls in this country. I’ll try to pay tribute by doing more, speaking out more. I haven’t been nearly as brave as Betty was. She took a lot of knocks from anti-feminists and from some feminists, too.

    RIP, Betty Friedan. And Thank You!

  4. And now we await the Pat Robertsons of the world to demonize her as a cankterous lesbian who tried to corrupt a generation of innocent young girls into having occult lesbian orgies and killing their families.

  5. “Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.” — Betty Friedan

    Right on, Betty.

  7. She spent her life identifying and attacking the ways in which women are taught to live only for others.

    And now they are taught to live only for themselves, and abort anything that gets in the way. Is that any better?

  8. Not a lesbian; a bit homophobic in her early days, in fact.

    Just a Communist who lived in a mansion, had domestic staff, and didn’t in fact lead the life she purported to lead. She wrote articles about the oppressive nature of capitalist housewifery for Stalinist rags for fifteen years before being “inspired” to write her book, under profoundly dishonest pretenses.

  9. And now they are taught to live only for themselves, and abort anything that gets in the way. Is that any better?

    Not exactly. We’re taught that we should have children when we want them; we should have a career if we want to; we should stay home if we want to. And to answer your question, yeah, that’s a heck of a lot better than compulsory childbirth and a life of servitude.

  10. Not exactly. We’re taught that we should have children when we want them; we should have a career if we want to; we should stay home if we want to. And to answer your question, yeah, that’s a heck of a lot better than compulsory childbirth and a life of servitude.

    I’m glad feminism *is* moving in that direction. You still do run into types who believe that it’s not a valid choice and that it’s “Stepford,” but honestly, my examples of those have mainly been random bloggers and their commentors during the Linda Hirshman and Louise Story NYT fiascos.

    I did read some pretty outrageous stuff on the internet in response to those–someone compared raising a baby to mowing the lawn as far as importance, saying that it’s just as routine for your kid to take his first steps as it is for the grass to grow, so who cares if it’s you or the daycare that sees it. Someone else insisted that 7-week-old infants “do fine” in day care and that full-time work should never be something to opt out of, even for maternity leave. But that’s not the “official” third-wave feminist line, and comments like that pissed off even the most liberal at-home moms.

    I think that during the 1970’s, there *was* a particular circle of feminists who felt that staying home was a no-no. My mom talks about feeling spat-upon by a lot of her friends for being home with my sister and me (born in 1972 and 1979 respectively). She was selling out to society and my dad, etc. etc.

    But today as I share my desire to be home with my kids for a few years, the only spitting I’ve really run into was from people named “Anonymous” in Haloscan. Stay-at-home motherhood doesn’t seem to know a political party. It’s something people do when they feel it’s best for their families, and I think even the at-home dad movement is growing too.

    I did feel a certain disparaging tone in Friedan’s book, and if it came from a friend of mine today, I would feel judged. But perhaps it was the anger of someone who felt she had no other choice? For instance, if I were a doctor right now because my parents insisted and not because I wanted to, I might feel fairly bitter and want to write about it. Not every woman is cut out to be a mother and housewife, which is where I think the 50’s culture went a bit wrong.

  11. But perhaps it was the anger of someone who felt she had no other choice?

    As I understand it, she had a job not long before she wrote the book. She was a journalist for a union publication, but the it was put out of business as part of a McCarthy-era purge of left-leaning unions. I’m pretty sure she was freelancing for women’s magazines in the late 50s. So part of what she was reacting to was probably loss of status: she wasn’t suited to being at home, and she felt more bitter about it because she’d experienced something else.

    I think most feminists have complicated and conflicted feelings about Betty Friedan. But it’s hard to talk about them, both because we’re conscious that there are hateful folks like Robert running around, gleefully spitting on her corpse before it’s cold, and because right now it feels like speaking ill of the dead.

  12. Mmm, I have a fair degree of respect for Friedan. She moderated her views in later life, and she was an able and energetic activist in her cause.

    But she was also of the school that thought it fine to be a dishonest polemicist, to hide truths that would be inconvenient to her message. That’s destructive to an open polity of civil discourse. If you want to characterize unemotional, objective statements regarding her known behavior as “spitting on her corpse”, fine. I wouldn’t criticize her at her wake, but as a public intellectual her dishonesty is a fair subject of critique.

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