Feminine Mystique Reconsidered

It was 1963.

It was quite a year.
It was the year that a telephone direct connection was established
between Washington D.C. and Moscow
...the so called red phone or hot line

In that year
Pope John the 23rd died and Paul VI was elevated

And there are thousands of U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam,
but they were not supposed to be engaged in combat.
They were there supporting the South Vietnamese government.

The Supreme Court banned the recitation of the Lord's Prayer
as a establishment of a particular religion

The Beetles a rock and roll group took the United Kingdom by storm,
they would tour the United States a year later.

The first artificial heart transplant was performed
at Houston Medical Center

It was the year of March on Washington civil rights rally
over 400000 people came to the capital
it resulted in the passage of the voter rights act the next year.

and of course in November 1963
John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas
and Lyndon Johnson became President

quite a year......

and oh yes, the Feminine Mystique was published
authored by Betty Friedan,
the book ushered a profound and lasting change
in American life.

I was an undergraduate in 1963.
and I read the Feminine Mystique.

Looking back, I find that quite remarkable,
I not someone who reads the latest fad book,
especially in 1963..... I was a philosophy major
and I was reading classics.

Books that had an influence, books that mattered,
Spinoza and Kant,
the Upanishads, and the Gita,

This week I looked up the best seller lists of 1963
internet searches are so revealing
and the Feminine Mystique is the only one I read.

There must have been some buzz,
some controversy, I don't recall.

I was a twenty year old. A well intentioned young liberal male.

The book had an impact on me,

I had thought the barriers to women had been removed.

I thought of myself as a supporter of women's full equality,
and she certainly shined a spot light on a problem
that I hadn't seen.

What she called the mystique,
the mystique portrayed an image
the image was conveyed in women's magazines
movies and in popular assumptions
according to the mystique
the woman was supposed to be
naturally happy as wife and mother,
happy because that was her biological destiny,
happy because that was the cultural ideal,
but real women weren't happy, reported Friedan
because they role of housewife and parent in charge,
didn't let women utilize their talents,
and creativity.

Now this was 1963
and I confess it was sort of abstract for me,

First of all, my mother was an old style feminist,
she had a profession, and practiced it,
she was pediatric nurse,
and a leading Unitarian Universalist lay person
and for her the women's rights movement was history.

Most of the young women I dated were old style feminists as well,
they planned to get a profession,
teacher, artist, social worker.
and they hoped to get married when they were older,
they were not the women in Friedan's book,
well not exactly,

And Friedan was describing an anxiety,
she was not advocating a protest movement.
I didn't see any kind of women's movement in 1963.

I don't recall feminism as a factor
in the newly merged Unitarian Universalist movement
there was a woman professor in my philosophy department,
and I recall that a French literature professor
had been a woman

But most college teachers were men,

that was in contrast with my high school and elementary schooling,
were most of my teachers were women.
College teachers were men, thats the way it was,
and it took me a Friedan's book to wonder why?

I wanted to be a Unitarian Universalist minister
while I was in college

Now as some of you know
I got detoured by teaching and other interests,
and it took me many years to follow up on that youthful calling.

But in 1963
I had never met a woman Unitarian Universalist minister

nor was I aware of many physicians, scientists, lawyers,
and beside for Claire Booth Luce
I knew no political leaders among women

Yet within a few years
women were organizing everywhere
seeking to raise women's consciousness,
to overcome the monopoly of power that was enjoined by men,
the social patterns that determined relations between the sexes,
and to expand the opportunities for women in every sphere.

It was a quiet revolution.
And it was related to what Betty Friedan said in that book.

A quiet revolution,
and the results have been profound
the idea that women should use their talents,
seek what were called careers

has been so accepted by liberals and broad sectors of the population,
it is hard to believe that it was ever any different.

Women now are the majority among undergraduates in colleges
and constitute 40 percent of all medical school graduates.
that number was closer to 5 percent in 1963.

Similar numbers apply to law schools,
with some law schools having majority of women enrolled.

The graduate schools of arts and sciences
also have seen tremendous changes in the last 40 years.
women Ph.D.'s who go on to college teaching positions
have increased significantly...
a third of the science Ph.D.'s
and a majority of the humanities and clinical psychologists...

Students studying to be clergy
presents a fascinating glimpse into American religion.

In the 1960s clergy were men. Period.

There were women here and there,
but since most clergy were men,
one might get the impression that all clergy were men.

Today,
in some liberal seminaries most of the students are women,

and yet in most of the conservative seminaries
none of the students are women.

You can tell were the seminary is theologically,
by looking at the student body.

Just over half of all Unitarian Universalist ministers are women,
while seven out ten of all new ministers are women,

more women leave the ministry every year,
so it will probably remain about 50 / 50 for some time to come.

New Reform Rabbis...about a third,
New Episcopal Priests about the same,
and so on for the mainstream Protestants.

And while the number of Roman Catholic women who are taking
advance degrees in religious studies has increased,
and Roman Catholic women are taking up responsible positions
as parish administrators,
religious educators, spiritual directors and faculty
women continue to be excluded for the Priesthood,
and from the ministry of most conservative
Protestant denominations.

So this week I have been reading the Feminine Mystique,
and trying to understand the book and its impact,
I was surprised by how uncontroversial I found her argument,
how limited in its scope.

We have learned a lot since 1963,
men and women have journeyed together
toward new ways of relating,
and toward quite different expectations of marriage
and work,
there is much resistance,
but there is progress to be noticed as well

so I was surprised that in this reading I found
the ideas in the Feminine Mystique to be quite tame.

This is the little book that started a revolution,
I thought to myself,
how could that be.

No blistering critique of male dominated society,

No accusations of patriarchy
as way of domination based on rape and violence,
No deep probing of the culture of competitiveness that underlies
boys relationship with each other,
contrasting it with the more group relational culture
found among girls

I am accustomed to being challenged
to the depth of my male embodied being by feminist writings

by contrast
the Feminist Mystique is a gentle cry for understanding

Women need to be creative and feel useful,
and being a stay at home mom
was the surveys told us, a source of anxiety.

The dissatisfaction, the anxiety was no secret
the mass media reported on the problem before Friedan,
but with a different twist.

Here is a sample;

"The road from Freud to Frigidaire, from Sophocles to Spock, has turned out to be a bumpy one," reported the New York Times on June 28,1960. "Many young women--certainly not all--whose education plunged them into a world of ideas feel stifled in their homes. They find their routine lives out of joint with their training. Like shut-ins, they feel left out. In the last year, the problem of the educated housewife has provided the meat of dozens of speeches made by troubled presidents of women's colleges who maintain, in the face of complaints, that sixteen years of academic training is realistic preparation for wifehood and motherhood."

But their solution seemed to be less college.
All that book learning was causing the anxiety among housewives,
less book learning, less anxiety.

Friedan of course was advocating a different solution:
She advocated that it would be better if women and men
shared in the household responsibilities,
in the child raising responsibilities
and both should participate in the economy.

That confining women to the role of the household
and creating an cultural image that this was idea,
and one was somehow neurotic if one didn't conform
was itself creating mental illness.

After discussing the use of anti depressants among women, and their frequent visits to therapists for "what is the meaning of life" advice
Friedan makes this point.

. . . new neuroses are being seen among women
--and problems as yet unnamed as neuroses
--which Freud and his followers did not predict,
with physical symptoms, anxieties, and defense mechanisms
equal to those caused by sexual repression.

And it is not only the suburban women,
but the children she is staying home to nurture:
I continue reading from Friedan:
And strange new problems
are being reported in the growing generations of children
whose mothers were always there, driving them around,
helping them with their homework

--an inability to endure pain
or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort,
a devastating boredom with life.
Educators are increasingly uneasy about the dependence,
the lack of self-reliance,
of the boys and girls who are entering college today.
"We fight a continual battle to make our students assume adulthood,
" said a Columbia dean.

As I said I was puzzled, Friedan's ideas seemed so common place.
Her social advocacy seemed so tame,
and then I realized what is the significance of her book,

Friedan was taking on both the most cherished orthodoxy of all time,
and she putting forth a new understanding of human psychology

Last year I preached on Margaret Fuller,
the 19th Century Feminist who had a profound influence
on the Transcendentalists,
and on Unitarian thinking

Her notion was that every person
male or female is innately creative,
and that we discouraged from using that creativity,
we are shamed into playing male and female roles
and men and women avoid authentic honest relations
soul to soul,
rather we play out our roles,
and live unhappy lives.

Friedan seemed common place to me,
because I knew Fuller and Emerson.
She was updating these classic ideas of human fulfillment.

But there was another way of looking at men and women
men as master of the house, engaged in the world,
protector and warrior,

and women as born to have babies,
defined primarily by their reproductive role,
this idea asserted that women had a natural inclination
to nurture and create a home,
and that any deviation from this norm was unnatural.

The religious conservatives taught that way of looking at human beings.

In 1963, Madison Avenue reflected this way of think
in their advertisements,
and the popular magazines extolled the ideal of a woman's sphere,
as distinct from a man's sphere.

But there was another source of intellectual justification
for the idea that men and women are radically different,
and men are meant for the world,
and women for the home.

And that source was Freud,

In 1963 when educated people thought of Psychology
they thought Freud,
most psychoanalysts were Freudians,
and most educated people had been taught his theories.

When I was re-reading the Feminine Mystique,
I was struck by Friedan's painstaking critique of Freud,
most of what she said has now been accepted,

Most of Freud's patients were women,
straight laced women in Vienna in the late 19th century
and his observation that their hysteria's and depressions
were caused by sexual repression
was perhaps insightful,
and maybe a bit of male biased projection.

In the 1950s and early 60s,
most of Therapists were men,
most of the patients seeing seeking psychiatric help
were women.

And Freud's theories were being applied to those women,
even if their sex lives were anything but repressed.

One might recall the film, the Graduate
not the picture of the suburb as innocence incarnate.

Friedan did our country a great favor
by taking on Freudianism
as well as those who took up the battle cry
of overcoming sexual repression
by taking up a promiscuous life style.

How soon we forget,
or we may never have been informed.

The Feminine Mystique
was published during the beginning
of the so called free love movement.

Now on the surface one might see perspective advocated by Friedan
and the advocates of open marriage and promiscuity.
have something in common.

They both appear to be rebellions against the marriage ideal
that was extolled in the 1950s,
but on close reading we find Friedan is warning against free love,
and instead is seeking a new way
of men and women being in relationship.

It was the feminists not advocates of tradition
that gave us terms like "meaningful relationship"
"mutuality" and "authentic communication"

now these were not themes found in the pages of Hustler and Playboy.
nor were they great concerns in the open marriage movement..

Commitment based on mutuality has become the guiding principle
of marriage and relationship,
ideas advocated in a book back in 1963.

No, Friedan wasn't as radical a feminist
as some who came later.

In fact a few years later she would become engaged in a controversy
with feminists who argued that marriage itself was oppressive
and needed to be abandoned to assure the liberation of women.

No, argued Friedan, most people was equality and mutuality in marriage.
most people, including most men, she insisted
Advocating an anti marriage stance would just make feminism look silly.

And long after most of the activists in liberal movements
and feminist causes had accepted homosexuality
and the idea of committed same sex relationship
Betty Freidan was still hesitant, and resistant.
She came to support gay and lesbian rights in time,
but not without some internal struggle.

For years she argued that the pro choice movement
should put the emphasis on sex education,
rather than abortion rights.
While more radical advocates branded her a conservative.

But in time many activists in the women's movement came
to appreciate what they called "her old fashioned feminism."

The modern Women's Movement,
beginning in the mid 1960s has had profound influence
on our society,
and on every institution in our society.
It has overturned the easy acceptance of Freud,
changed how advertising speaks to women,
changed how sports are conducted,
and how religious communities work,

We can look at the rise of the Religious Right, and wonder,
would this movement have gotten very far at all,
without the anxiety
that many traditionalists have felt
regarding the changes in mens and women's roles
in recent years.

If it wasn't for the millions of women who leave authoritarian churches
because of those churches continued advocacy
of a second class womanhood.

Her book was no manifesto for the woman's movement,
it simply let women know that they were not crazy
if they felt confined by a social role
she simply suggested that human beings were creative
and sought to participate in the larger society
And millions of women,
and millions of men responded.
And a new manifestation was at hand.

Let us sing. #109 As we come marching, marching