Last week, I wrote that the OSU chapter of NeW began reading The Feminine Mystique. I wanted to withhold my personal opinions of the first few chapters until I had the chance to discuss them with the other NeW ladies at our weekly meeting.
Our individual reactions to the first few chapters were surprisingly the same: Most of the points that Betty Friedan made were not out of line. Remember though, we have only read the first 3 chapters, and more importantly, this book was written in the 1950s, so we are looking back on a time we can never fully understand.
I will not go over all of them because I think everyone should read the book, but one point that Friedan wrote particularly appealed to our chapter:
I think that Friedan makes a fascinating point that illustrates what I have been building on in my past few posts: Women should not be confined or forced into one role. Both sides (radical feminists especially) should not focus so much on what a woman does with her life, but focus on making sure she always has a right to choose a role or a choice to balance a set of roles. In my opinion, women can make these decisions on their own without society, men, or other women telling what they ought to do.
