Betty Friedan, 85
(BBC) One of America's most famous feminist thinkers and writers, Betty Friedan, has died at the age of 85. She was best known for her book The Feminine Mystique, which helped start the modern women's movement in the United States.
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 2/06/2006 11:58:00 AM
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AP’s Betty Friedan Obituary Whitewashes Her Known Communist Roots
Posted by Tom Blumer on February 6, 2006 - 10:30.
In her obituary following the death of Betty Friedan this past Saturday, AP National Writer Hillel Italie summarized Friedan's first and most influential book, "The Feminine Mystique," in these terms:
Few books have so profoundly changed so many lives as did Friedan's 1963 best seller. Her assertion that a woman needed more than a husband and children was a radical break from the Eisenhower era, when the very idea of a wife doing any work outside of house work was fodder for gag writers, like an episode out of "I Love Lucy."
Independence for women was no joke, Friedan wrote. The feminine mystique was a phony deal sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name" and seeking a solution in tranquilizers and psychoanalysis.
"A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, `Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children," Friedan said.
After her slap at the Republican Eisenhower era (it's not as if the Democratic Truman era that preceded it was any different for women after the soldiers returned from World War II), Italie's obituary carries expected praise from liberal icons Hillary Clinton, National Organization of Women President Kim Gandy and Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal.
The obituary's account of Friedan's early years and the time leading up to the publication of "The Feminine Mystique" reads like the "bright girl held back by societal norms becomes disillusioned" story one might expect based on her book.
The trouble is, the still widely-accepted accounts of Betty Friedan's early years have been shown to be totally, if you excuse the term, divorced from reality. The only hint that Italie gives of Friedan's true past is the description of her as a "labor reporter" during roughly the mid-1940s.
There's much more to Betty Friedan's early years than Ms. Italie lets on.
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