My mother bought and read the paperback edition of The Feminine Mystique as soon as it was released. She had read an excerpt in one of the women’s magazines and knew it was a very important book. As part of her effort to discourage me from pursuing sex reassignment surgery, she insisted I read it.
I was part of the radical generation, everything would be different for us. Indeed Betty Friedan looked down upon those women who opted out and became part of the Beatnik Generation, the precursor of the alternative culture of young radicals and hippies.
While Betty Friedan’s analysis was limited to a white middle class demographic The Feminine Mystique was more responsible for the Second Wave Feminist revolution than either Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex or any single work by numerous authors such as Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millet or Robin Morgan.
While many of the more radical feminist groups are but a historical memory NOW keeps on fighting the good fight and I keep on paying my annual dues.
From Veteran Feminists of America: http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Happy-Birthday-Betty-Friedan-from-Veteran-Feminists-of-America.html?soid=1101707198155&aid=qPVQmpqf1WI
Forty-seven years after the publication of her world-shaking blockbuster “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan has hit the front pages again. The recent and somewhat controversial book by Stephanie Coontz, “A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s” has stirred up discussion after heated discussion about Betty’s role as catalyst in the Movement.
But controversy aside, there was another, very personal side to Betty Friedan. As NPR producer Kitty Eisele reminisced on National Public Radio Feb 4, 2006, the day Betty died:
Continue reading at: http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Happy-Birthday-Betty-Friedan-from-Veteran-Feminists-of-America.html?soid=1101707198155&aid=qPVQmpqf1WI
Women Born Transsexual 