I never set out to write a book to change women’s lives, to change history. It’s like, ‘Who, me?’ Yes, me. I did it. And I’m not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.
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.
I realized that what I was saying was threatening, somehow, to the editors of women’s magazines. That it threatened the very world they were trying to paint, what I then called the “feminine mystique.”
The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
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?
Some people think I’m saying, ‘Women of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your men. It’s not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners.
Men weren’t really the enemy – they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
