I was in my late thirties when I became a birdwatcher. Which might be considered an odd statement in this introduction to my eulogy, such as it is, to Betty Friedan and the other "pioneers" of the women's movement.
Perhaps it was the peace and quiet of sitting on a shady porch while watching the wildlife live their happy lives on a spit of land that was such a beacon for both flying and mammalian animals that I nicknamed the lot "Critter Cove." Perhaps it was the thud of dawn breaking over my marble head as I watched the animals in my surround make their houses with naught but twigs and protect their families with no weapons. Perhaps it was because I was, then in solid middle-age, finally at a point in my life where every minute was not a constant rush to get here, go there, work overtime, pick up the teenager, bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.
But during those bird watching moments I began to realize how I'd spent a lifetime being absolutely wrong about all involved in being a woman in today's society.
For during my early twenties until those more peaceful mid-40's, this born-again conservative was rabidly liberal and I was an especially vehement feminist. In fact I, and a friend, dressed from head to toe in green and actually went to D.C. for Ronald Reagan's inauguration.
"Join us in protest," the literature read. "Dress in green and show this new president that women will not be reduced to second class citizenry."
Well we saw not one other soul dressed in green that day, male or female. Still we marched all over D.C., myself determined to wend my way to the site of the inauguration speech that Mr. Reagan would see my fine self dressed in green and prepared to stomp all over him should he get any notions about taking away my "rights."
I hailed the day the Roe vs. Wade decision came down from the Supreme Court, considering it a new era when women are finally released from the prisons of their bodies. I could not believe that the ERA did not pass across the states of this country. How could this country not believe in the inborn right of women to be equal, I used to lament.
Yes I was a pretty, intelligent, curvy and lusty young female of my day. I had a college degree earned through 13 grueling years of night school. I always held responsible high-paying positions and indeed, was myself the recipient of high-paying jobs that my company, mighty AT&T before its breakup, urged females to take as a bow to the political correctness of the era. I took a position of Quality Control Inspector for the company and hated every minute of it. Before me, that department had been all males. When I showed up on the scene they treated me like so much dirt and even sabotaged my efforts to learn the job duties.
Article comments
1 - Pat
Pat,
How poignant and beautiful. Thanks for sharing the wisdom.
2 - Scott Butki
Wow. That was an amazing piece.
You heart breaker, you!
3 - Pat Fish
I must thank for the compliments. Actually I am a little embarrassed as I remember those years.
That thing about the heartbreak, well the door DID swing both ways. My heart got broken a few times too.
It's a shameful thing, deliberately hurting somebody but hey, at that time I had estrogen flowing and it was the battle of the sexes I suppose. It never gave me any real joy but it is the stuff people do in the mad world of dating.
It's why I understand Maureen Dowd. She so reminds me of me as a younger woman. Bitter and unable to accept the way of the world.
Sheesh...just sheesh.
I was just such a liberated woman and in that era we didn't have Herpes, we didn't have HIV, we HAD abortion, we made love, not war.
My granddaughter ever behaves like I did I'll break her neck.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
I didn't exactly expect a change of pace from the pros and cons of extreme feminism to birds.
5 - Bliffle
Why do I get the feeling that you change your ideological orientation as easily as you might your dress? Searching for acceptance? Trying to be age-appropriate chic?
Did you ever think you might have to study and think and find principles you could cling to and give your life to? The hard work of intelid you avoid all that hard work and just accept the ideology of those around you, feeling the comfort of a cameleon?
Friedan was a spoiled rich girl who became a stalinist. Never worked a lick. Never built a company. Always had a maid. Always supported by some guy. She had all the failings one would expect from such a self-indulgent background.
One must think for oneself. there is no shortcut for the lazy and self-indulgent.
6 - Henrietta
Ah, poor Betty. So many words and so few allusions to her actual ideas. How many readers here have even read her? She's known mainly in caricature and has no longer any hope of defending herself.
And neither do God's birds, for that matter. There's little hint in Patfish's blog, for example, about many different kinds of parental arrangements there are in nature. Even if we confine ourselves to birds, we should be careful not to overgeneralize. Take nest-building, for example. In various species, it is the males who build and try to attract the females through their superior nests. Perhaps demonstrating their strong feminine sides?
And in many species, infidelity is the rule, among both males and females. And not every family gets the help from dear old dad. Consider this from PBS's Life of Birds: "Jealous female warblers competing for the attention of a male have been caught smashing their rivals' eggs by biologists in Sweden, in this fascinating experiment. The male great reed warbler may have several females nesting in its territory, but only the lucky 'primary' female whose eggs hatch first get his help in rearing her young."
Oh, and there's so much more. Please, dear reader, do not believe that nature is uniform or virtuous or "conservative" in any way. It is wonderful and beautiful, treacherous and terrible, all at the same time. It inevitably defies our prejudices, whatever they may be.
Yes, Betty did break a few eggs of her own to feather her cognitive nest. But she also gave many females wings with which to fly from some of the the depressing, claustrophobic nests of the 1950s. She helped provide resources with which to survive when those male warblers abandoned their females, and she allowed many a female bird to fly higher and sing more brightly than they ever would have in the past.
In short, Betty made the conventional human world a bit more like the natural one: a colorful, complex tapestry, one where women have more choices, including the ability to peck at the hand that frees them.
7 - Laura Ramirez
Pat,
We are keepers of the nest, we are keepers of the children and we are also keepers of our hearts and dreams. I discuss this in my book, "Keepers of the Children: Native American Wisdom and Parenting." I believe that Native Americans were among the first psychologists because they understood that Mother Nature teaches us the basics of human psychology and offers insights into our nature as human beings. It's too bad that we humans have to swing from one extreme to another to find our center and thus, our truth, but that's because we are raised to follow the dictates of society (and the spirit of the times), rather than the rhythms of our hearts.
Like the different kinds of nest-builders in the bird world, we create our lives individually.
A career may feel right for some women while tending to home and family may be fulfilling to others. Some women, like me, need a little bit of both. The trick is in discovering (and not too late) what kind of animal we are"in other words"who we are, what we have to offer others and what it is that fills our hearts the most.
Tending to the nest does not have to mean you must deny your nature or what you have to offer society at-large. In my book, I talk about how looking into our children's hearts helps us see more clearly into our own. It's not an either-or proposition, it's a dance of mutuality.
The fact is, if you don't take the time to discover who you are, you'll be unhappy, no matter what you do because lasting fulfillment doesn't come from what society deems as success, it comes from participating fully in life and in the growing ability to become aware of and follow your true nature.
Laura Ramirez
Author of "Keepers of the Children:
Native American Wisdom and Parenting"
Raising Children to Develop their Strengths
and Lead Uniquely Purposeful and Fulfilling Lives
www.walk-in-peace.com
8 - Sister Ray
Thanks for the post, Pat. It was nice to hear a perspective on "The Feminine Mystique" from someone who was there at the time.
I was born a few years after the book came out. I've read it. I like the encouragement for women to use their minds and to think abstractly. However, I dislike the victimhood and anti-male aspects of current feminism. I wish they'd quit being so paranoid about "the patriarchy."
9 - Purple Tigress
I am often suspicious of people when they make comparisons between species, particularly men who say that men should be like bees (stupid because they are thinking about the female worker bees) going from flower to flower to flower or like lions/stallions with many consorts (stupid because when the alpha male loses his virility he's out and the females move on to another). Why not be like the Mandarin duck, rumored to be loyal for life?
In most species of animals, single-family units headed by the female is the rule according to NOVA. Birds, however, have 90 percent male involvement.
Humans are not birds. Notice that it is the male of many bird species that display their finery to attract the female such as the peacock and the peahen. This is not the case in American culture although you can see some instances of this in some subcultures and cultures.
Likewise, there are animals where the male tends to the young instead of deserting them in serial monogamy. The seahorse is a prime example. The giant waterbug, the stickelback fish, the Panamanian poison arrow frog, deer mice, emperor penquins, spotted sandpipers and red foxes have male roles that are different from this.
We are not birds although we can be bird-like. Men and women are different, but we have yet to define clearly what those differences are and what are cultural dictates rather than natural behavior.
As a minority, it is hard not to be "paranoid" about patriarchy, particularly when one is told that one just another Asian woman ruined by American/Western culture.
One of the problems of the feminist movement in America was that it tended to exclude many people and to make pronouncements before some investigation.
10 - IgnatiusReilly
So if you had seen some other animals, might you have chosen yet a different path. Sounds awfully arbitrary. Good thing you didn't see a paying mantis eat her mate, or another species eat their young.
11 - Dave
Interesting read. You make some good points. It really will be nice when we can move away from the generalizations, though. In my own case, I'm glad to be married to a fair minded woman who doesn't believe her function in life is to "keep me in line" or judge whether I have a "decent" job or not. Just as I wouldn't presume to make those judgments about her. We just respect one another and try as best we can to support the other's efforts to lead a meaningful and creative life. We don't always get it perfect, of course. But we make adult compromises, care about each other's well being and do our best. Don't most people?
12 - Careolyn
It's very ridiculous and inaccurate to make compairsons of *humans* with animals especially simple animals like birds! Although as someone here did rightfully point out many male birds and fish are the care takers and nurturers not the females.
I suggest you read what decades of all the psychological academic research studies and tests have consistently found, that boys and girls and men and women are more *alike* than different in most areas and much greater individual people differences are found. Also there are tons of great studies and experiments that show that male and female babies are actually born biologically more alike than different with very few differences and yet they are perceived and treated systematically very differently by parents and other care givers from the moment of birth on!
Also Walter Williams is an award winning anthroplogist and author of The Spirit and The Flesh and he and many other anthroplogists have studied and documented several androgynous cultures where men and women are not put into seperate opposite roles and categories and are more alike than different . Also I once heard a stay at home father say on the radio that there are 2 million stay at home house husbands in this country. In American Psychologist this past September,there was a major review of over 40 studies from over 20 years by psychologist and gender research expert Dr.Janet Hyde pf the University of Wisconsin that also found that men and women are much more alike in the majority of areas with only a few differences.
People certainly have been very conditioned and taught mant common gender myths and stereotypes in this very sexist,gender divided gender stereotyped male dominated society we all live in, and it's less threatening to believe these myths and biases and you get more cultural acceptance when you buy into them.
13 - Carolyn
Also,
There is an excellent well documented book called,Myths Of Gender:Biological Theories About Women and Men by Brown University biologist Dr.Anne Fausto-Sterling.
14 - Steve
Well, in response to the last few comments, I'm not sure Pat's arguments were necessarily suggesting that men and women are TOTALLY different, and certainly not that either are inferior, only that they are not IDENTICAL.
I find it hard to imagine anyone who has been in a relationship or has heard other folks talk about their relationships, to disagree on that simple point.