Feminist Conscience

Within this blog, I talk a lot about Betty Friedan, a feminist author and member of NOW, The National Organization for Women, because her ideas in her book, “The Feminine Mystique”, pertains to the articles we read and to Second Wave Feminism.

When reading the title of Echols article, “The Re-Emergence of the “Woman Question”, I was reminded of a concept I read in Betty Friedan’s book, “The Feminine Mystique”. I recalled Friedan saying that with the Civils Rights movement and other activist movements, a feminine conscience was spurred, thus leading to the Second Wave. I think it is important to acknowledge that this conscientiousness was not new, but perhaps something that had been hushed and put aside. With the emergence of the Civil Rights movement, however, women were more conscientious of the inequalities they faced and felt more comfortable to speak out. This act of speaking out and participation was in large part motivated by previous movements. Just as the Civil Rights movement and the First Wave movement spurred off of the abolitionist movement, so too did the Second Wave movement progress from Civil Rights activist organizations, such as: the “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee” and “Students for a Democratic Society” as mentioned in Echols article. While these activist movements helped ignite the beginning of the Second Wave movement, Echols describes the relationship between the movements as “complicated and paradoxical” because these movements were mostly “dominated by men, who were, at best, uninterested in challenging sexual inequality. Yet, although sexism was still prevalent in these Civil Rights groups, women were instilled with the desire to want more and the confidence to break free from their pre-assigned domestic spheres, leading back to the idea of the feminist conscience. Another quote from Friedan’s book, “Feminine Mystique”, that I think is relevant to the feelings of women during this time is the question that “Each suburban wife struggles with as she made the beds and shopped for groceries…Is this all?.” This questioning of identity is what I think as perhaps the most important pieces during the Second Wave movement. Although I said most women, what I really mean is middle to upper class white women, who unlike black, other minorities, and poor women, have the privilege of being able to question these feelings. In a sense, being able to have this desire to break free from the domestic sphere is a luxury that most women are not afforded. It is important to recognize that the Second Wave Feminist Movement, although all-encompassing, mostly pertained to a specific group of women, that being white, upper/middle class women.

Ti-Grace Atkinson, a member of NOW and a Radical Feminist Author, proclaims in her article, “Radical Feminism”, that in short, men are the enemy. Reading this statement in the first paragraph was unsettling because as a feminist, I believe that we are no better than the oppressors if we become one ourselves and subjugate others to the same oppression and discrimination. Thus, I would agree with Friedan’s statement that, “Men are not the enemy, but fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves”. Although I disagree with Atkinson’s statement that men are the enemies, I thought it was interesting how in her article she mentions the biological characteristics of men because I think in that sense it ties this reading quite easily with our others readings in the sense that these stereotypes and categorizations are methods which have the ability to dehumanize and devalue people as a whole.

- Jane B