Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.
BETTY FRIEDANWhen one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women’s passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
More Betty Friedan Quotes
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To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
I wouldn’t be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
[Feminist:] One who believes in the liberation of that which has been suppressed as female in a man.
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When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
Why the increasing emphasis by professional age experts and the media on – and public acceptance of – the nursing home as the locus of age when, in fact, more than ninety percent of those over sixty-five continue to live in the community?
BETTY FRIEDAN -
By now, abortion should be obsolete. And I – and probably a lot of other feminists – wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value – it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she “adjust” to prejudice and discrimination.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
This idea that the employment of women, the movement of women outside the home into the work world, and their demand for equality is somehow responsible for increasing juvenile delinquency or the increase in divorce rate, is just so much bullshit.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
Aging will create the music of the coming century.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
You can have it all, just not all at the same time.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
Aging is not “lost youth” but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
I can’t point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother’s ability and energy.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.
BETTY FRIEDAN