A never-ending story in this life

This story is not about Betty Freidan, the so-called great leader of the second wave of feminist movement, it does include a number of thoughts from her books and articles from others about her. This is a story about a journey that started in a community college some 30 plus years ago, a chance meeting that caused me to consider why so many women gathered at a university to hear a diverse group of speakers talk about what women thought they needed to change in society so they could have  fulfilling lives. I believe that this transition for women started in the book of Genesis and is still going on today for better or worse. My desire was to see what type of changes they were suggesting and what change would bring.   

Why write another book about feminism? There are enough books expounding the virtues and failings to fill a library. While I love to write, I’m not a professional writer. This book has been in the works for more than 30 years; it occupied more time and money than I would like to calculate. It involved my family over this extended time. Now that the material has been sorted by my wife and her friend Darlene, I needed to do something with it. I am greatly indebted to organizations like Focus on the Family and for the book Lies Women Believe by Nancy Demoss Wolgemuth. The latter I found in a Bible store many years ago while I was travelling in Ontario; it was the last copy on a sales table along the center aisle. I am grateful to the author and for this book because it echoes what I have seen over the years.

My personal journey

I was born into a dysfunctional family; my father was at times an abusive alcoholic.  He also had come from a broken home where alcohol had played a large role and had an effect on his family; both of his sisters also had trouble with alcohol.

Some time during the Second World War, my father became a soldier in the Canadian Army and was sent overseas to England. It was here while he was serving in England he met, dated and married my mother.

My mother was young when she met my father, a handsome Canadian soldier who was good with the ladies and who won her over. My dad’s step-brother, who was also in the army died, from an accident while playing with a handgun; he had tried to convince my mother not to let my dad take her back to Canada. She had no knowledge of the problems she was marrying into. Her father, who was also divorced, tried to warn her in his own way. Once my parents were married and in Canada, the problems emerged. My father was an abusive alcoholic, who at periods of time could control himself for long periods; but his drinking and abuse always returned. My mother was the balance between order and disorder. In the mix were my three sisters and a brother. It was my father who negatively impacted the whole family. He created problems not only for his wife and children but for society: drunk driving and more. I’ll refrain from details for the sake of brevity and will consider only my journey to this point.

Education on the run

Most of my early life has been forgotten or erased; I can remember going to school and not liking it from a very early age.

My first run in with a strong female character was in grade school. She was a school patrol girl named Cindy, who was big for her age and very officious in her patrolling duties. I teased her a lot by calling her Cindy Bear. She would get a lot of the school-ground kids to help her chase me down so she could drag me around the playground by my feet. I was fast; she was strong, not equal.

My marks in grade school were anything but good, and my mom once signed a report card Mrs. Homework, hoping extra work would bring my grades up. Having failed grade 8, I was to join my friends a year later in high school. As I grew older and more radical, the less I liked school and quit after failing grade 9.

My desire to get an education happened slowly. It was an ongoing experience first started by my mother, who was always learning and trying to improve herself. My mother had said that I didn’t need to leave home to find myself; I needed to stay and get an education. My uncle who had come from England tried to help my mom and basically said the same thing to me in his letters. I had left school at 16 after failing grade 9.  My mother signed the appropriate documents to allow me to join the Navy as I was underage. It wasn’t long before the Navy realized I wasn’t mature enough and couldn’t handle the stress and released me from my commitment with a medical discharge. I returned home to medical treatment and counseling which when they ended, allowed me to go work at various odd jobs: dishwashing, unloading box cars and other similar jobs through manpower. I was a stock keeper at a department store when I decided to travel. I’d been passed over for promotion!

I needed to get out on my own and see what I was capable of. First, an adventure down a river in a rubber raft was a disaster. Then after an attempt to go to South America to find broken-down boats and sail back north failed. My friend’s car broke down just after we entered the United States.  A bus ticket from my brother removed me from the custody of a sheriff and allowed me to return home for a short time. You cannot abandon a car on a rural road in the states; thus, the arrest. After signing the car over to a scrap yard, we were free to go but not to hitchhike.

After I returned home it was now necessary to get out on my own without the support of my mother. I jumped on a freight train out of Winnipeg accompanied by a young man out of Québec, whom I had met on the highway on the outskirts of Winnipeg. Unable to get out of the city by hitchhiking, we headed for the freight yard. He spoke very little English, and I spoke even less French; we traveled to Saskatchewan and then hitchhiked on to Alberta where we had to go our separate ways because no one would pick up two males hitchhiking. He headed back east to Edmonton, and I continued on to Vancouver with a family who had fled from the Romanian revolution. They dropped me off in downtown Vancouver.

 As I travelled, I was reminded of what my mother had said about getting an education. The lack of a high school diploma kept me from many better-paying jobs. My uncle would tease me about my letters to him. The spelling and grammar were extremely poor, and he said he posted them at the old folks home to give the members a laugh. It was his way of encouraging me to work harder on my education. In Vancouver I took an English course in which we studied Beowulf. I don’t believe I finished the course, but I did keep the book. In Winnipeg I applied at a high school to take home economics; they said, “No, you have to take auto shop.” Being an auto mechanic was not on a list of things I wanted to do; I applied for home economics to learn cooking.

I had many reasons to finish high school. I’d spent many years going from job to job but never being out of work for any great length of time. Many of the jobs I was applying for asked for a high school diploma, which I didn’t have. I finally got my high school diploma in my 50s. Wherever I went, I tried to improve my education by entering upgrading courses in Vancouver, Manitoba and Ontario. I had left a job in Ontario and returned to Manitoba to enter another upgrading course that would allow me entry into the journalist course at the community college. It was while I was on the journalism course I came to understand there were social changes taking place that would affect my life. What were these changes, and how did they start me on a path that would take 30-plus years to write about?

The need for change: will it be social justice or anarchy?

Feminism came to school.

My first encounter with the women’s movement, of which I knew little, came about while I was a student in the communication program at a community college in Winnipeg. I was asked by a member of the school paper if I would think about attending a lecture by the Reverend Ellen Barrett and possibly writing an article about it.  The young man, who suggested I attend, knew the speaker would challenge my new-found faith and biblical beliefs. The Reverend Ellen Barrrett would also challenge me on a personal level as a man. I was an active Christian sharing my new-found faith but was not even close to living it as a godly man.

 Like most people in the 60s, I had heard and seen some of the news about the feminist movement and their desire to be equal. It seemed to be a reasonable desire. A few days before being asked to consider contributing an article in the school paper, I had witnessed an incident at the college: two young teenage girls leaning on the rail at the top of the back stairs were whistling and commenting out loud about a young man and his appearance as he stood on the landing below.  I was midway up on the last flight and looked up. No! I was not being whistled at, and they took the time when I looked at them to tell me so. Why did these two teen girls act out towards the young man in a way that they supposedly disliked, and what of the personal rejection directed towards me at their discretion?  It would’ve been a joke had it not come shortly before my being asked to attend the lecture. Girls whistling at boys didn’t affect my beliefs while the comments about the young man’s derrière did cause me to wonder what the girls were thinking about. With this incident in mind, I was curious to go and hear what he thought would challenge my beliefs.

Institutional learning or leaning!

The program booklet for the midwinter three-day festival at the University of Manitoba read, “Festival ‘78 Feminism,” which was billed as the “Festival of Life and Learning,” with close to a hundred speakers and panelists whose focus was on advancing feminism in society. The program cover had a picture of Margret Benedictsson and her family. Who was she? On the first page next to the cover photo was the explanation that she was an Icelandic suffragette who spread her ideas throughout the Icelandic communities in Manitoba. She was an editor and writer for Freya, an Icelandic language publication from 1898 to 1910. I had never before read or heard of her, and I grew up in Manitoba.[1][i] What was more interesting to me at the time was the write-up about the theme of the event on page 1. It read, “As for our theme – this program speaks for itself. Here is feminism in its struggle against institutionalized sexism and the psychological and social distortions of a sexist society. Here is feminism as a movement of great originality and creativity – rewriting history, remolding old institutions and creating new ones, revitalizing old fields of thought, producing new art forms. Festival feminism is re-creation in its true sense. This is your opportunity to renew and re-create yourself.” (Union 1)

The person whom I was supposed be interested in was the Reverend Ellen Barrett. The write-up on her was on page 3: a gay, female Priest. She would be speaking on Eve “In which we speak of Eve the Temptress, Sodom and Gomorrah and other Nasty Tales. The lecture took place in the Isbister Building at the University of Manitoba. Her way to broach the subject of Eve and Sodom and Gomorrah was to ridicule the conservative church teaching on the subject and by making light of those who believed in a literal Bible authored by God. She certainly challenged not only my Christian beliefs but what I believed about many things.

No article I could produce for a school paper would address what I was reading and hearing. I was now awakened to the extreme outline put forth by the feminist program. I was extremely angry at what I was hearing. The Rev. Ellen Barrett had been a hit based on the laughter and applause the Catholic seminary students and the other spectators gave her as she put her spin on Eve and the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This woman in her priestly outfit with a white collar was accompanied by nuns in habit before and after her lecture; she was a threat to me. How did she represent religion and the women’s movement, and what was this movement? How could Bible students applaud this woman? I was forced by the acceptance she received from the students, spectators and the religious order that was looking after her to look closer at the feminist movement and find out where and how it began and where it was going. I was so shocked by everyone’s acceptance of her presentation; and, when it ended as she was walking out of the hall, I approached her and said, “I heard what you did with Sodom and Gomorrah; what do you do with hell?” The nuns quickly escorted her away from me. This encounter started me on a journey to find out how this woman came to be accepted in a religious institution and not challenged and what “feminism is re-creation in its true sense” meant.

Out into the world

Realizing my grades would not allow me to get a degree in the journalism program or a job in writing. I quit the community college and headed back East to a small town in Ontario. I got a job and soon married a young girl from the church I was attending. I was 29 years old when I went to the Festival 78 Feminism; three years later I would be married and have a child. It was at this time I started amassing my collection of newspaper and magazine articles as well as books in an attempt to understand the feminist movement. Nightly news, magazines and newspaper articles were constantly acknowledging the feminist ideology. Numerous books by and for women were written to explain every sphere in which women wanted to challenge the chauvinistic, patriarchal society as they saw it. There was no end to the search for who they were, where they were going, how they would get there, or what they wanted to be.

Our first child was born on December 25,1980. By the time he was crawling on the floor of our apartment, it was covered by newspapers, some clipped and others waiting to be checked. Our son’s line of travel was redirected by a good friend who was between jobs and was willing to care for him. My daughter was born 2 ½ years later. My children grew up with stacks of newspapers and magazines piled in their rooms. When we, many years later, moved into a house, the papers and magazines came with us and filled the basement and other rooms. Books were constantly being added to the collection.  My wife graciously tolerated the mess I created daily and often had to move the mess for company, which often brought my complaint that I couldn’t find anything!

Education and unhappy people with questionable beliefs

The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963. I personally didn’t come into contact with this book until many years later. I found Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, in Detroit at John King’s Used Books. It had a large section on women and feminism. Many writers say Betty launched the second wave of the feminist movement in the 60s in the United States.  When I decided to read it, I had already spent many years collecting articles and books on women, by women and for women. The book had been out for many years before Festival 78, and I became aware of it much later. The book Feminine Mystique and its author was supposedly the reason for this current wave of the feminist movement, and it challenged my thinking about how our society viewed history and women’s place in it.

I have often told people about the Rev. Ellen Barrett and how she made light of the Bible when they asked why I am thinking about writing on the feminist movement. Most people could care less about the subject. Friedan was not the first woman to rally women together with her writing. Many women in various countries of the world had written about the many causes that affected women throughout history: the right to vote, prohibition of alcohol and many other causes. Margret Benedictsson pictured on the front cover of Festival 78 already mentioned wrote articles and along with her husband established a magazine in 1890. Over the centuries many books have been written to tell the plight of women and their lifestyles in and throughout history. One book mentioned in the Feminist mystique was  The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949. What new cause was to be written about by Betty Friedan in 1963?

Betty Friedan, a female writer who could not get a story about depressed, unhappy housewives published in some women’s magazines, used the material for a book. Her book was perceived and promoted by most media outlets as enlivening the readers, which then brought a renewal of the women’s movement back to the forefront in North America as a gender struggle.

What did Margret Benedictsson, Simone de Beauvoir, the Reverend Ellen Barrett and Betty Friedan have in common? All of them were well-educated and were unhappy in the roles that they believed were assigned to them as women by what they perceived as a flawed system. All of them were writers and feminists. Two were journalists and unhappy housewives; the other two were professionals who believed they were being sexually repressed. All were in some way connected to religion. Margret Benedictsson’s birth and troubled life can be found in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

The Rev. Ellen Barrett was gay; yet, she wanted to be a priest and after considerable time was able to attain her goal. With her litany of educational degrees, she made light of the Bible and not only made light of it but dismissed some of the most fundamental understandings associated with it. Margret Bendictsson was associated with a church and used religion to push her suffragette beliefs. Simone de Beauvoir felt religion suppressed women. While all these women had views on religion and how it affected women, Betty Friedan was not attacking religious beliefs in an obvious way; she was undermining gender roles found in the Bible. She also abandoned her religion, Judaism. Ellen Barrett was more open in her attack on the Bible and Church. Each woman like so many others believed they could change their problems by changing the systems around them. As we go through many stages, we’ll look at what was changed and what were the ramifications.

The Episcopalian Church in ordaining Ellen Barrett a homosexual, contrary to Scripture, allowed her to expound her views within the church. Betty Friedan with the help and encouragement of secular press challenged the role of mothers and housewives in postwar America. What would be the results of these two women’s actions years later on marriage, the church, religion and women? While the Rev. Barrett tried to lend legitimacy to a group of people who have been persecuted and marginalized because of their lifestyle, Betty Friedan’s book tries to legitimize her need for social change for the middle-class housewife of which she was a part.

The Book without an ending!

In the first edition of The Feminine Mystique 1963, Virgilia Peterson writes on the front cover how Betty Friedan has found the wound she and all women suffer. Eight years later in a fourth printing, July 1971 edition, the cover reads, “The famous bestseller that ignited women’s liberation. Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique, One and a half million copies in print.” The back cover reads,“Is the American woman on a pedestal or in a trap? For years American women have been assured they had all they needed to be perfectly happy and fulfilled – hard-working husbands, lovely houses, and wonderful babies, babies, babies. Then why all the tranquilizers? The liquor? The adulteries? The problem children? The suicides in the suburbs? And the terrible, gnawing inner malaise? Today American women are awakening to the fact that they have been sold into virtual slavery by a lie invented and marketed by men. One book has named that lie and told women what to do about it. The Feminist Mystique. Angry and thoroughly documented it is going to provoke the daylights out of almost everyone– LIFE- (dell #2498 1971)”

How does one answer all these and many more questions as well as the hype that this book and the women’s movement have brought into our daily lives?

Betty’s book “The Feminine Mystique” was produced out of a class reunion survey in 1957 in which her peers indicated they were not happy. She also studied what was written in various women’s magazines over the years, magazines she also wrote for. She received material from a school mate plus the material she couldn’t get published; all these resources created a book in which Betty could air frustration about an ailment that had no cure.

Betty Friedan, a Jewish woman in an unhappy marriage, dedicated the book to her husband and children. She had graduated in 1942 from a private female college with a bachelor’s in psychology. After a one-year stint as a fellowship student in graduate work in psychology at the University of California, she went to New York to be a writer, a continuation of what she had done in high school and college. She eventually married and had children. As a freelance journalist and an educated wife and mother, she decided to write a book about what she experienced and believed was happening to American women.

What did the book and its author say was needed to heal the wound all women suffer? In her pursuit to define the mystique or wound, the wound could only be seen in the action and reaction of women who showed and voiced their discontentment about the lives they were living. Betty focused on social change. Social change! Why must society change? Who will make these changes?  What will that social change look like over the span of time? Who will report on it?

The perception of history by feminists was pushed through the lens of what they said was a patriarchal society that needed to be changed. The social change that was brought to America and the world will be looked at from various types of media: TV news, newspapers, magazines and books {some old and some new} as well as the Internet. What has changed, and what are the outcomes of the actions taken to bring healing to all women? What is this ailment all women suffer and need healing from? what does Betty Friedan suggest will heal them?

One of the first areas of her research was the role of educated women in marriage as housewives and mothers. Friedman and her mother were not happily married housewives living the dream presented on the front page of magazines. No, they had been sold into domestic slavery, by tradition, education or lack of it and by men with the aid of other women. Magazines and books had led American housewives into a life of unfulfilled dreams and desires. They suffered from the mystique! What needed to change to allow these housewives and thousands of unmarried women and girls to live happy, productive lives? Friedan was an unhappy housewife and she like Margret Bendictttson had her marriage end in divorce.  The divorce was not the end to her crusade for women; it was just a parting of the path to one that would reveal itself as she went on.

How did Betty see herself when she was a young schoolgirl, and why did she make the choices she made? I’ll discuss some of these issues when I continue discussing The Feminine Mystique later on. My question now is: How do you see yourself, and what will be the choices you make?