Some Thoughts On Fallout From Militant Feminism

Although I do consider myself a feminist, feminism means something different to me than it did to the generation of women before me.

My mother literally burned her bra in the back yard (it was a Cross-Your-Heart, and only one of a vast, pointy collection of hers) as a sign of solidarity to The Cause. While I thought then, and still think now, that this was a groovy act, I also think the impetus behind it was a bit askew. Back then, in the early 60s, it was a sign of audacious rebellion (I guess because the inventor of the bra was a man, German Otto Titzling [yes, really!]). She even stopped drawing on her eyebrows for a month!

Before she burnt her bra and left off her ever-surprised, Joan Crawford brows, my mom performed in an absolutely fabulous, whacked-out way. Our house was so clean you could perform major surgery in any nook or cranny you could find. She wore her beehive hairdo complete with the right amount of AquaNet (A LOT), her starched Donna Reed dresses even while scrubbing with her hand-sewn aprons tied behind her, and her red (later Laugh-In pink) lipstick at all times. They had coffee parties every day at rotating houses on our block and all the women would show up coiffed with precision, directly after they had popped their "diet pills," which we now know to be dexadrine amphetamine (heh heh, it would get LOUD in there). Recharged and ready to go, they'd head back home to finish raising the 3-6 kids, make dinner and mix up the martinis for when daddy got home.

Honestly, other than the 3-6 kids part, it really doesn't sound too bad to me. I mean, I like a clean house if I got nothing else to do and I used to be a fashionista label-ho with a love of all things chemical (liquid, pill or powder). And martinis every night with a man I love who's bringing home the bacon don't sound like it would hurt much either. However, not everyone felt like that, and in reality, there wasn't a lot in the way of freedom to choose much else in them days, unless you wanted to be a school teacher. And for me, the freedom to choose, whatever the choice be, is what being truly alive is all about.


In my mom's time, in order to be Pro Women, you had to be Anti Men. Women needed a collective target to focus their inequality on, kind of like the U.S. needed Russia and the Communists during the Cold War. But I think man-hating (yet another Cold War?) was a continuation of a dangerous precedent for all Pro/Anti movements - and is something that caused women to have to pay dearly in our relationships. Why do we have to be Anti-something to be Pro-anything else?

These somewhat militant beginnings, even though we had to start somewhere, anywhere, to get the momentum rolling, have cost us the loss of a considerable amount of unconscious peace with our differences as men and women, which differences are so necessary for a well-rounded humanity. How about if we could have just owned our own "complicity," which alone would have begun that energizing empowerment that comes with owning your own crap, and "recruited" men to our unique way of seeing the injustices that inequality in pay and choices really creates? Sales in our favor couldn't have been THAT hard, especially if we approached it in a way that they could hear us, rather than pointing the finger.

I think love and family have had to pay an even greater price. But it's time to eat, so see future post, More Fallout From The Bitch Versus The Bastard Era. And, Why I Think Divorce Runs Rampant In America.

Today I'm grateful to be a conscious woman in my time. Next generation may be a little easier.