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.
BETTY FRIEDANMen 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.
BETTY FRIEDANMen are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.
BETTY FRIEDANWe need a new political movement of women and men toward a new society.
BETTY FRIEDANWhatever I wrote was heretical. It offended the editors of the women’s magazines.
BETTY FRIEDANI just decided that I didn’t want to be in the academic world, because it was [really] too easy for me at the top. But also it wasn’t active enough for me.
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.
BETTY FRIEDANI wouldn’t be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
BETTY FRIEDANWe can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’
BETTY FRIEDANAdvice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
BETTY FRIEDANYou have to say no to the old ways before you can begin to find the new yes you need.
BETTY FRIEDANlife lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. That is the reason for the religious revival and the new resonance of ‘family.
BETTY FRIEDANSome 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.
BETTY FRIEDANWho knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?
BETTY FRIEDANI 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.”
BETTY FRIEDANWho knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women’s intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?
BETTY FRIEDANBy 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