Pioneering feminist author and one of the founders of NOW, Betty Friedan, died yesterday at the age of 85.
I was a feminist before I (knew I) was a lesbian. I cannot claim, however, that Friedan’s seminal work, The Feminine Mystique influenced me directly. By the time I was old enough to read it, it seemed somewhat dated. I knew I wasn’t going to settle down in suburbia and find total fulfillment in a husband and kids, and I didn’t need Friedan to tell me that. Still, the mere fact that I was able to make that choice is testament to the indirect influence of Friedan’s work, which helped motivate a generation of early feminists to fight for women’s rights and opportunities.
At the same time, Friedan was well known for her opposition to “radical lesbians” and her desire to exclude them from the feminist movement, concerned people would equate feminism with lesbian extremism. She seems to have tempered her views with time, however, saying in 1977, “I believe that we must help the women who are lesbians be protected in their own civil rights.”
Even in the late 90’s, though, she stated, “For a great many women, choosing motherhood makes motherhood itself a liberating choice,” but noted this should not cause conflict with “other feminists who are maybe more austere, or choose to seek their partners among other women.” Lesbian motherhood, then, was not on her radar screen.
This makes me think. I’m staying home to raise my son while my partner works. Have I given in to society’s conventional views about a woman’s place, despite the work of Friedan and other early feminists? Or am I taking the traditional role Friedan inveighed against and subverting it in a way even she struggled to come to terms with, by merging it with my identity as a lesbian?
I prefer to believe the latter. I know, though, that if in being a lesbian mom I am a far cry from anything Friedan might have imagined, especially in the early 1960’s, I am still the beneficiary of much of her work. When my son is in school full-time and I return to work, I will respond to a gender-neutral job announcement and expect pay equivalent to that of my male colleagues. That is in large part the result of Friedan’s leadership at NOW.
I will then go home to my partner and son, grateful that the feminist movement itself has become more inclusive, and now fights to secure rights for lesbians as well as straight women. Yet in the end, to recognize the limits of Friedan’s work is not to deny the vast good she also did.