2.05.2006
Bye, Bye Betty
Betty Friedan died. I had long meant to writer her a letter.
When I read The Feminine Mystique a few years ago, I looked her up and noticed she's in the phone book. I wanted to write her and thank her for the opportunities I and other women of my generation have because of her and and other trailblazing women. I didn't go to college as way to kill time until marriage, to make myself a well-rounded wife or to meet an up-and-coming man to marry. That in itself is a huge transformation from my mother's generation -- her father thought she should attend college so she didn't "marry a cop." And when my mother announced, 25-plus years ago that she was pregnant with me, her employer laid her off. It was illegal then, but attitudes hadn't caught up with the law, and it simply was expected that she would quit.
Without a doubt, women of my generation -- the granddaughters of Freidan's -- still struggle with issues of womanhood and the workplace. I have seen my friends take divergent paths, some refusing to cede scholarly and professional ambitions, some eyeing futures as stay-at-home mothers, and others making it up as they go along. I think all three groups should be thankful to her because they have those divergent paths to choose from. I struggle with it, with being a woman and wanting a family in that "some day" way that is completely intangible and noncommittal to the nth degree. I'm in the "see what comes" camp, leaning much more toward ambition in the raw sense; but I don't think anyone -- woman or man -- can plan his or her own life to a T. What comes at you is half luck, blessing or curse, and you make the best of it.
In what I suppose must have unintentionally coincided with Friedan's death, teacher Deborah M. Hoffman wrote in Sunday's Washington Post that society's low expectations for boys' and mens' behavior does them and women a disservice. In her piece, "What Does 'Boys Will Be Boys' Really Mean" she writes:
So much for the all-to-widely held belief that the women's movement is passe.
(P.S. Two for two on schools, eight to go, and no idea what I'll do.)
When I read The Feminine Mystique a few years ago, I looked her up and noticed she's in the phone book. I wanted to write her and thank her for the opportunities I and other women of my generation have because of her and and other trailblazing women. I didn't go to college as way to kill time until marriage, to make myself a well-rounded wife or to meet an up-and-coming man to marry. That in itself is a huge transformation from my mother's generation -- her father thought she should attend college so she didn't "marry a cop." And when my mother announced, 25-plus years ago that she was pregnant with me, her employer laid her off. It was illegal then, but attitudes hadn't caught up with the law, and it simply was expected that she would quit.
Without a doubt, women of my generation -- the granddaughters of Freidan's -- still struggle with issues of womanhood and the workplace. I have seen my friends take divergent paths, some refusing to cede scholarly and professional ambitions, some eyeing futures as stay-at-home mothers, and others making it up as they go along. I think all three groups should be thankful to her because they have those divergent paths to choose from. I struggle with it, with being a woman and wanting a family in that "some day" way that is completely intangible and noncommittal to the nth degree. I'm in the "see what comes" camp, leaning much more toward ambition in the raw sense; but I don't think anyone -- woman or man -- can plan his or her own life to a T. What comes at you is half luck, blessing or curse, and you make the best of it.
In what I suppose must have unintentionally coincided with Friedan's death, teacher Deborah M. Hoffman wrote in Sunday's Washington Post that society's low expectations for boys' and mens' behavior does them and women a disservice. In her piece, "What Does 'Boys Will Be Boys' Really Mean" she writes:
You can hear and see evidence of this longstanding folk "wisdom" about boys almost everywhere, from the gender-typed assumptions people make about young boys to the resigned attitude or blind eye adults so often turn to disrespectful or insensitive male behavior.What results is a pardon of boorish behavior by men toward women, and an expecatation that women should keep them in line. It not only forgives, but encourages, teenage boys and young men to pursue members of the opposite sex like predators on their prey, reducing women to animals by analogy and asking very little of men as moral beings.
So much for the all-to-widely held belief that the women's movement is passe.
(P.S. Two for two on schools, eight to go, and no idea what I'll do.)
# posted by even the rain @ 23:35 
