Thank God for the Feminists

Betty Friedan died on Saturday. She was the lady who started the modern feminist movement with her book The Feminine Mystique. A lot of men hate feminists because they think they put a bunch of screwy ideas into womens' heads that make them unsatisfied with the traditional roles of wife and mother. Well I'm here to tell you that's a load of bullexcreta. Feminists didn't make women unsatisfied with their lot. Men did that. In Betty's day a woman got fired if she fell pregnant. She was probably in a menial job anyway because women did not get access to senior positions and they were shut out of entire industries. Women in the early 1960s, when Betty wrote her book, were consigned to the roles of breeding stock and domestic servants. We have since discovered that women have brains and can use them. They can invent things and make scientific discoveries and run large organisations and make films... All of these things they were discouraged from doing. Told they weren't good enough. I wonder how males who hate feminists would feel about them if they grew up as females back in those days.
Thank God for the Feminists because they gave us a chance at having fully-integrated relationships. Women who are supressed by men always get back at them. They nag or dominate their husbands. They make their children miserable. They find fault. All the jokes about women in marriage ("Take my wife. Please take my wife.") are jokes on the men who manufacture their own misery.
Don't get me wrong. A woman who wants to devote her life to raising children and keeping house should have that right. (Louisa stayed out of the workforce while our kids were growing up so they would have a parent there when they came home from school. We were lucky to have that opportunity. But she suffered for it when she re-entered the workforce, and I suffered for it, too.)
It's not what women do that matters. It's that they have the right to choose what they can do. The right to fulfill their potential as human beings. It's ironic that the American Declaration of Independence opens with the lines: "“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Each woman should have these rights, too.
Brother, she wasn't born to be your wife, your lover, or the mother of your children. She was born to be herself, the best person she can be. And if that includes being your wife, your lover and the mother of your children, then you should thank God for her choice and respect it and show her what it means to you, everyday.
As men, when we marry, we earn the right to try to win her heart again every day. We know how to do it. We already did it once before. We've just got to keep on doing it. Everyday. And guess what? It helps her become the best wife, lover and mother she can be.
So thanks, Betty. It was a hard lesson, but a good one to learn.


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