“The Future That Never Happened” by Ariel Levy
Levy starts off her essay with a narrative about Susan Brownmiller. Brownmiller was a Cornell dropout turned actress turned feminine activist. She fought for the radical goal of fundamentally changing all of society not just parts of it. Levy explains how many women in the feminist movement, including Brownmiller, had a background in activism. Many had participated in the peace or the civil rights movements. However, many of these groups marginalized women. The feminist movement developed as women started to meet on their own. Brownmiller describes the Roe vs. Wade ruling as a pivotal moment of victory for feminists.
Levy then explains how in one decade landmark decisions involving birth control, wages, and working rights changed the way women experience society. These were the results of either the women’s liberation movement or the sexual revolution. These two entities shared some of their goals but diverged in distinct ways as well.
Hugh Hefner championed the goals of the sexual revolution. His funding of Roe vs. Wade and denial of conventional roles coincided with the feminist movement. However, his ideas of female sexuality veered sharply from the goals of feminism. Heifner saw women as a means to satiate male sexual desires and little more.
Brownmiller clashed with Hefner’s ideology by fighting against pornography. This pornography debate expanded and caused the feminist movement to fracture. As Levy puts it, “Everyone was fighting for freedom, but when it came to sex, freedom meant different things to different people” (p. 63).
Levy closes her article with a portrayal of the feminist movement in its glory days, when it was actually trendy to be a feminist.
“The Reemergence of the Woman Question” by Alice Echols
Echols explains how organizations like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and work in the peace and civil rights movements effected the feminist movements. The SDS was part of the “new left” that had strong anti-Communist views. However, this organization was run in a sexist fashion. It did inadvertently benefit women by giving them the political skills and exposure that helped to birth the feminist movement. The new left also contributed by encouraging its followers to connect elements of their personal lives to political issues. Chiefly the new left contributed by providing a springboard for the feminist movement to rebel against. Though the feminist movement came out of the civil rights movement, black women felt estranged from the movement. Echols argues the reason for this was a lack of shared history with their white counterparts. The civil rights movement also began to gear towards black power. This was a more violent approach that demanded white expulsion from its groups.
The Peace movement was also essential to feminism. It too provided women with only a marginal role since they could not be drafted.
Through these marginalizing forces, women began to demand more. Learning from the spirit of the black power movement, the women desired to be the driving force behind the movement and not allow men to lead as the civil right movement had sometimes allowed white individuals to lead.
Excerpt from The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Women in the 1950s gave back ground won by the previous generation. They no longer aspired for careers. Instead, women strove to be wives, mothers, and excellent housekeepers. College became a place to find husbands, not an alternative to needing one. Many women felt unfulfilled by this lifestyle but did not talk about it. The few that did, saw themselves as being deeply flawed and spoke to a psychiatrist not one another. When women did finally begin to get public attention for their dissatisfaction, the public had varied responses. Some suggested that voting and education was too much for women to handle. Others prescribed outings or tranquilizers to distract women from their lack of purpose. This lack of purpose is the root problem that led to female dissatisfaction.
At first, the question of identity can be extremely intimidating. Women were used to being told who they are. Friedan suggests that education be used to combat these issues. She thinks that the government should sanction a bill similar to the GI bill that would enable women to pursue further education and a fulfilling career.
Excerpt from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Beauvoir begins by acknowledging that much has been written about women in recent years. Since the subject keeps repeating, it seems clear that there are some questions yet to be satisfied. Many of these writings lament the loss of the essence of woman. Beauvoir asks what constitutes this essence. She argues that women are still half the population as they have always been. That this essence that people speak of is an ill-defined idea. This idea of femininity encompasses more than simply biology. Beauvoir finds it necessary to ask, what is a woman? She points out that men do not engage in questioning their own gender in the same way. Maleness is the “positive and the neutral” (p. 254) while the feminine is the negative only. Women are defined by this femininity because it cannot be part of the neutral. A male has the privilege of having his views taken at face value and not in the context of his gender. A female is defined by her lack of male qualities. Beauvoir links this relationship of having and lacking to other polarities and constructions of the other within society. However it is distinctly different as well. Women do not form a cohesive separate group from their oppressors. Women could never be completely separate from males because the species would cease to exist.
Beauvoir argues against a discussion of inferiority and superiority when it comes to the sexes. She also rejects the measure of happiness when determining what is best. Instead, Beauvoir suggests that freedom be the goal.
Response to April
ReplyDeleteThe reference to the Roe vs. Wade case in “The Future that Never Happened” was quite interesting to me. I am a political science major and I have studied this court case at length. Roe vs. Wade was a Supreme Court decision made in 1973 that dealt with abortion. While most of my knowledge on the decision lies in its controversial nature, it was clearly, as Levy states, a revolutionary decision for women during the feminist movement. Another point that Levy makes and April alludes to is Levy’s portrayal of the feminist movement when it was trendy to be a feminist. This was very interesting to me because of the way that our first week’s readings spoke of feminism. Those authors painted a picture of feminism that made it seem outside the status quo and against societal norms. To think that there was a time when feminism was popular is very interesting. Levy also talks a little bit about how the women’s movement stemmed from other movements such as the civil rights movement.
Echols elaborates on Levy’s point about the feminist movement’s origins and continues by talking about how The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) inadvertently helped women because while it was run in a sexist fashion, women were able to gain political skills. Another interesting point that April brings up was the disconnect between black and white women during the feminist movement. While both groups were women fighting for the same cause, black women felt as though they were not welcome throughout the movement. This is very interesting because one would think that the more women that wanted to rally around this great cause the better. However, this phenomenon is not entirely surprising considering the somewhat racist world we still live in today.
Beauvoir talks a lot about the biology of women and the fact that what men say can be taken at face value while women’s opinions are attached to a gender. Even more interesting was what Frieden had to say about women in the 1950’s. She talks a lot about how women regressed in the 1950’s. She talks about how they lost the motivation to have careers and were completely content becoming housewives. They went to school to find a husband and a lot of the progress made by women in the early to middle part of the 20th century was lost. Similarly, as we learned last week, women in today’s society seem to be regressing again. While some claim that they own their sexuality and because of that it isn’t really sexism. Others would argue that a serious regression is occurring again. Enlightened sexism is no excuse for the way that society acts when it comes to women. There was no excuse in the 1950’s as to why women were regressing, nevertheless, is it possible that we have come full circle?
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ReplyDeleteResponse to April
ReplyDeleteIn The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir distinguishes the way males from females are viewed by society. While there were multiple occasions of my interest being sparked throughout the text, two notions of male superiority stood out the most. The first notion is this idea of male supremacy shown in religion. Beauvoir writes, “Everywhere, at all times, the males displayed their satisfaction in feeling that they are the lords of creation. ‘ Blessed be God… that He did not make me a woman,’ say the Jews in their morning prayers, while their wives pray on a note of resignation: ‘Blessed be the lord, who created me according to His will”(Freedman, 258). From this, I wonder about other religions in which women have subservient roles. And where else is self-worth based on man. This quotation reminds me of when my modernity class discussed Virgina Woolf’s “Three Guineas.” In particular, the idea of joining the procession of men reminds me of this quotation because men are the basis in which women judge themselves. For example, if women can receive the same pay as men or job opportunities. Does that make sense? Another illustration of women subordination is the idea behind women being the other. The word other just sounds wrong. I would never live to be considered the “other” because usually has a negative connotation.
In The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan men and children, whom women have placed on a pedestal, have left women with feelings of dissatisfaction. What I find interesting are the psychologists’ responses to these feelings. Friedan writes, “When a young woman went to a psychiatrist for help, as many women did, she would say, ‘I’m so ashamed,’ or ‘I must be a hopelessly neurotic.’ ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with women today,’ a suburban psychiatrist said uneasily. ‘ I only know something is wrong… (Freedman, 273)’” Psychiatrists’ often related these feeling to being tired or not sexually fulfilled by their partners. Something else that I find interesting is that women living in this time period often viewed the “woman problem” as non-existent in America. In response to Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex, “an American critic commented that she obviously ‘didn’t know what life was all about…(Freedman, 273)’”
In “The reemergence of the Woman Question” Alice Echols conveys that the “Movement” was sexist in a multitude of ways. Women’s issues presented to the SDS were often placed on the back burner so to speak. It seems that “the ‘fantastic amount of personal and political growth experienced by women’ blinded them initially to the Movement’s sexism” (Echols, 27). Something in the text that I found interesting was the role of race in feminism. Seemingly, black women tended to “dismiss women’s liberation as ‘white women’s business’ was related to the fact that middle class, white women were struggling for those things- independence and self-sufficiency- which racial and class oppression had thrust upon black women (Echols, 32)’” Race was another category needed to be tackled in the feminist movement.
I instantly pictured the image of a bunny when Levy referenced Hugh Hefner. What struck me were Hefner’s sexist remarks as to why he chose the bunny. And what was more striking was the fact that he still claimed to be a liberator when he was quoted saying things like “when I want to speak, to think, I stay with men”(Levy, 57). He is more over a sexual liberator of men than women. Something else that I found interesting in the narrative was that the New York Times help wanted ads were arranged by gender. I don't know why i found this so odd. Maybe on some level I do not want to believe that sexism is real.