Thank you, Gardening Mommy for your detailed response. I was there throughout the modern Women’s Lib movement. I watched as women were radicalized. I flipped through Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinem at the helm. It was an attempt to create a Playboy for women.
You are very right about getting those high-powered, high paying jobs. Some women did want to stay home and raise the kids they brought into this world. I have compassion for those women who were brutalized, physically and verbally, by their husbands. I know one of these women and I saw the anguish on her face as she described what she went through.
There was a concerted effort through the late 1960s and through the 1970s to reengineer America. For Catholics, it was a transition from a Church centered, family oriented, cooperative community to what we have today. The Hippies and Miss Steinem wanted to rearrange everything, even if it meant “burning down the country.” But lives and societies are not furniture. NOW was not Biblically based. It was loud, shrill and confrontational, as were a lot of Hippies and Anarchists.
I think it revictimized victims of abusive husbands and offered them hope for not a better relationship with men but a future filled with power and empowerment. But, once again, relationships between human beings involving true love, true caring and true partnership are not meant to be power plays negotiated at a conference table. Betty Friedan described the family as “a comfortable concentration camp.” Modern Feminism became a cult and its leaders convinced women to be and remain victims of what they called a patriarchal society bent on their subjugation. So they figuratively and literally separated women from men. They created Feminist Culture, Feminist Art, Women’s Studies and other events that built a wall between men and women.
And where are women today? No-Fault Divorce has meant that I know a lot of divorced women, with 2 or 3 divorces being not uncommon. The media has helped spread the message of “have sex first and ask questions later, if ever.” An example of this is the TV program Grey’s Anatomy where Dr. Grey picks up an anonymous guy at a bar, has sex with him, and tells him it’s unimportant to know who he is or who she is. And too many young men and young women, including Catholics, are shacking up, having sex, using contraception, and well, just don’t care. Is it right? is it wrong? Well, everybody’s doing it, right? Even divorced moms.
I am happy to hear about Feminists for Life but the other radical variety of feminist is still around, still trying to convince women that men are a useless appendage, abortion is the great equalizer (a man doesn’t have a uterus and besides, it’s
her body which she let some man use and now she’s pregnant).
No, I’m not advocating women be kept as slaves, however, there was a method of courtship, dating, talking with each other’s parents, and priests, that were all part of my life that were there to help me. I am advocating getting rid of the idea that all women are victims, all men are guilty of plotting against all women, and a return to a way that promotes healthy, and holy relationships between men and women. Getting to know the other person, getting to know their parents, showing, by word and deed, that you are an honorable, responsible and stable person, and then, if you want to get married, going through a process that weeds out the bad guys from the good.
It can be done. It is being done (example:
avemariasingles.com), but it’s not being advertised much. Young people today, without the guiding hand of their parents, are more likely to do what the crowd is doing.
God bless,
Ed
Things like the PTA, for example, are not meaningful. With the way she talks, I wonder if she can’t imagine anyone being happy with manual labor unless they are developmentally challenged. I think she is completely missing the religious dimension of meaning/life in her analysis.
I expressly went out and obtained a copy of the exact book and read two of her chapters. I think it is possible for me to discuss the book. I directly addressed some of your thoughts about feminism (men were thought to be all guilty). I don’t think it is possible for me to know the actual impact that it had on society. Perhaps the book did make it more likely for a woman to be paid a suitable amount of money. Then again, maybe it had no effect on that. Maybe her book was only a sign of the times and the forces of change were already at work by the time it was published. I can, however, comment that some of her ideas were sound, like what I mentioned about discernment of vocation, a word that she actually used (which surprised me).
for some reason I completely missed pug comments, Im losing it heheheheehe Anyways. I think it does direct to you original question. How can you ask a question based on a book that you did not read? You sound like an AP journalist. 
well maybe not that bad…