Feigned Feminism Friday Part Two
Welcome the the series Feigned Feminism Friday! If you missed the first article, you can catch up here.
Today I am delving into answering this question-Did feminism originally begin as a men bashing movement?
1976
I sat in the Welfare Rights building waiting for my mom. I smoothed my maroon and plaid skirt while and dangled my legs over the chair while she volunteered. She helped single Moms get assistance in feeding their children and paying household bills. I had walked around the block from the Catholic school I attended, an extreme contrast, where most of the families were affluent and had two parents. My sister and I stuck out like sore thumbs, we were middle class and our mother had been divorced (and remarried). Mom still had the taste of lack bitter in her mouth (being single with four children) and she wanted to help other women in the same situation.
The breakdown of marriage in my lifetime.
“In 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan of California made what he later admitted was one of the biggest mistakes of his political life. Seeking to eliminate the strife and deception often associated with the legal regime of fault-based divorce, Reagan signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce bill. The new law eliminated the need for couples to fabricate spousal wrong doing in pursuit of divorce;… no fault divorce gutted marriage of its legal power to bind husband and wife, allowing one spouse to dissolve a marriage for any reason or no reason at all.” -www.nationalaffairs.com
From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate more than doubled. Less than twenty percent of couples married in 1950 ended up in divorce while fifty percent of couples married in 1970 ended up in divorce(www.nationalaffairs.com).The nearly universal introduction of no fault divorce opened the floodgates and the sexual revolution added the fuel.
What does divorce have to do with feminism? This get out of marriage free card, no fault divorce gave men permission to abandon their families. Many women entered marriage with an understanding that they would stay at home and raise the children and run the household and hubby would work outside the home and support his family. When men began divorcing their wives, women were left in the lurch and a wave a feminism swept through our nation. Women, abandoned and rejected by their mates were treading water, trying to keep their heads above the waves of poverty and entering academia and the workforce to support their children. These women were angry, hurt and determined.
I grew up in the generation where all girls ‘need math and science’ and going to college was expected for us, because you never know what is going to happen, not because you are intelligent and deserve and education (the latter of which I was told at home). My mother was unique in her generation, she had a Master’s degree. Women began joining men at the universities, not to find a husband, but because they didn’t have the foundation, the covenant of marriage to stand on any more. Men seemed to have the power, the upper hand and women had to push back for the same pay for the same job accomplished. It became a bloody battlefield.
Women do have the right to be educated (that’s another post) and to pursue careers if they choose. This is the true ‘pro choice’, but by the same token, women should have to freedom to choose to be keepers at home and run a household (also another post). In fact a hefty and dangerous myth is gaining traction as fact, that you are subjicated, oppressed and you don’t have any real value. You are a servant with no power, no choice and you are uneducated and ill-informed.
What does this have to do with men bashing? Everything. Feminism is about equality for the sexes, right? Political equality, socio ecomomic equality? Problem is, the rules got changed and men forfeited their responsibility and women are left scrambling. Trying to find their footing and do two jobs at once.
Secular or feigned feminism started out with the right idea. It’s just gone to far. The truth is every movement starts for a good reason. The reason feminism began is because there was/is a gross inequality when it comes to treatment of women. Not only did the rules change on women, the whole game changed.
True feminism isn’t about bashing men, it’s about expecting equality. It is about women expecting men to fulfill the covenant made at the altar. It’s about equal wages for a job.
Feigned feminism has gone too far. What started out as women being rejected and satan derailing the purpose of women have driven many to the destination of destruction of men and family.
“You may be wondering which came first, the chicken- feminism-or the egg- male selfishness and immaturity. I believe the answer is feminism. For the first day that The Feminine Mystique hit the bookstands, feminism did not focus on equal pay for equal work, but on how marriage, husbands, men in general, and children in specific were enemies and the oppressors of true womanhood.”- Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Women, you have power, you have the power of influence. Don’t use it to bash men over the head. Bashing men over the head is not the goal of true feminism.