CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM WAS ROOTED IN A REBELLION AGAINST THE SIXTIES
(Conservative themes in modern feminism from Prohibition to the Present)
CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM WAS ROOTED IN A REBELLION AGAINST THE SIXTIES
(Conservative themes in modern feminism from Prohibition to the Present)
By
David Gottfried
Arguably, feminism, to a large extent, was not a rejection of 50’s domesticity or quaint straight-jacketing concepts of sex-role conformity. Feminism’s immediate antecedent, and the subject which gave it most of its ferocity and swagger, was the swinging Sixties.
The Sixties, and the latter half of the Fifties, were a time of heterosexual liberation. In other words, during that period of time, couples in movies no longer slept in separate beds, cheerleaders wore less and less, women were under greater pressure to have sex and some white liberal women, according to one white lesbian I know, felt compelled to show their solidarity with the Civil Rights Movement by submitting to black men sexually. Feminists, at the beginning of the contemporary feminist movement, rebelled against the pressure to have sex, and the pressure to be playful sexual kittens, created in the era of the swinging sixties. Feminists protested the Miss America Contest. Feminists turned the tide of fashion against the Mini Skirt and toward skirts that almost grazed the floor and pants suits. In the early 70’s, lesbians, such as Jill Johnson, had published, in every week’s edition of the Village Voice, her latest screed and rant against heterosexuality and manhood. The greatest ideological foe of feminists did not appear to be right wing preachers. The greatest ideological foe of feminism appeared to be that arch radical, Norman Mailer. In any event, traditional pre 60’s femininity, and its relationship to masculinity and men, would, perhaps, have been unopposed, and the post 1968 feminist movement would not have been born, had that old form of feminine behavior (which did not pressure women to have sex), and the special preferences given to women, not been undermined by the Sixties.
Before the sixties, women, arguably, had boys by the Seat of their Pants in Dating:
A boy was expected to pay for girls, all expenses, all the time.
Women were not expected to have sex with boys, and sex was strongly chastised.
Boys got virtually nothing from dates but a bill. A woman got a boon to her ego demonstrated, every day, by her burgeoning bitchiness. As a young girl said to Lawrence Olivier, in a movie entitled “Rebecca,” she wishes she were a 37 year old woman with a string of pearls. Women were not as afraid of getting old.
Women were not expected to be as beautiful: The Beatles, and so many members of the British Invasion, were so good looking that women felt as if they needed a major upgrade in looks. Before the Beatles, many, many women, by today’s standards, looked terribly frumpy. See the entirety of the Ed Sullivan show on the first night the Beatles appeared on the show. On that old program, we see many of the vestiges of pre-Sixties America. In that February 1964 episode of the Ed Sullivan show, there is an act in which a woman, decidedly middle-aged and obese, sings, in part, about the benefits she can give a man who loves her by telling us, If I recall correctly, that there is more of her to grab onto. She is not meant to be funny or ironic. By today’s standards, the woman looked quite disgusting, old and fat, wearing sagging, roomy clothes and projecting a gutsy Ethel Merman like voice at the audience. The men might have despised it; I am sure the women loved it; and the sexless entertainment of the pre-Sixties world were a grande dame’s treat, and a fair assortment of any number of old movies and situation comedies shows that a huge proportion of women played the role of sarcastic suburban grande dame, confronting matters no less grave as those faced by Khrushchev and Kennedy, as suggested by Queen’s song “Killer Queen.”
In any event, in the Sixties women were taken off of the pedestal and entered a sexual mosh pit of sorts. They were no longer ladies. They were Playboy playmates. Of course, I realize that Playboy was initiated in the 50’s, but many of the ideas Playboy, and those of its more aggressive and further-reaching successors, had, by 1960, not infused American life to any significant decree – I am referring to an America beyond a two mile radius of the hearts of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Since the modern feminist movement was born, at the very soonest, in 1969, possibly in 1966, I think it is fair to assert that before we assume that feminists were decrying the 1950’s, and only the 1950s, we ask whether feminism might have had certain qualms with the sixties and may have been a reaction against the sexual revolution. (I realize that Betty Friedan’s, “The Feminine Mystique,” had been written in 1963. But feminism did not get off the ground for several more years)
The feminist movement is generally placed on the Left end of the spectrum. But was the modern feminist movement nothing but a long detour on the Road to Sarah Palin?
Women arguably have a tendency to swing toward the political right that most people forget in this era in which the Democrats are said to be the Mommy Party and Republicans are the Daddy party.
From 1920 through 1960, women were more likely to vote for the GOP candidate than the Democratic candidate for President.
In the beginning of the 20th Century, women were much more active than men in advocating prohibition. Likewise, in the early part of the twentieth century, domestic work became a science of sorts and some of the self-proclaimed mavens of domestic life were decidedly bigoted, contending, for example, that the consumption of too much garlic betrayed poor breeding as Italians and undeserving foreigners had a propensity to use the spice.
Also contemporary feminism soaked-up all the attention of the Democratic Party and brought about the demolition of workers’ rights and the increasing chasms in wealth seen today.
In addition feminism encouraged more women to work, more women did work and the explosive growth in the labor force became a damper on wages.
Salaries went down; corporations rejoiced. Years ago, most families could subsist on one income. Those years are long since dead.
And as the feminists of old, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, have been eclipsed by the Harridans of today, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman, can we conclude that feminism was really part of process that pushed America to the right and that feminism was instigated by female hostility toward the sexual licentiousness of the Left, of The Sixties represented by Mailer, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman et al.
Copyright, David Gottfried, 2012