Betty Friedan, one of the intellectual morons examined in my book by the same name, died this weekend. She was 85. Friedan launched the modern feminist movement with the 1963 publication of The Feminine Mystique, which (in)famously called the home a "comfortable concentration camp." In 1999, I wrote about the exposure of Friedan's self-misrepresentations in her book. It would not be the first time a feminist would spare the facts for a good story. A few years after the publication of her landmark book, she helped establish the National Organization for Women. Like Robespierre and so many other revolutionaries, Friedan was ultimately devoured by the revolution she helped start. Friedan criticized feminism's increasing identification with lesbianism, noted that she rejected abortion as a value, embraced motherhood, and even confessed a fondness for the missionary position. None of this sat well with feminists even more radical than Friedan, a postwar radical who had worked for several Communist fronts prior to her success as an author. Grandmotherly, Freidan presented a likeable, more mainstream image of feminism than presented by, say, Andrea Dworkin. Nice-old-lady image aside, it was only within the feminist continuum that Friedan could be considered mainstream. That Friedan increasingly became a voice of reason within the feminist movement says more about the movement than it does about Friedan. America is worse off because of Betty Friedan, but who am I, or anybody, to wish her anything but eternal rest? Betty Friedan, rest in peace.

Hey, Dan, Where you been hidin that Dworkin. She is hot...Georgia asphalt hot. Up at the burg after a keg race I took a girl that looked like that up to my dorm room for a little P and D. Good times...good times.

Dan,

Great post. I started to blog on this subject this morning and then noticed you beat me to it. That allowed me to abbreviate my remarks - esp. since I referenced the very article you did here that you wrote for Campus Report when we were both still there!

Anyway, here is my meager addition to your entry here.

Take care,
--Eric

As I recall, at one time that Dworkin slob claimed she was a prostitute. That is quite disgusting. I can only assume the male's that engaged in relations with her had to bring 3 things to the party. A 10 pound bag of flour, six boxes of jack in the box curly fries and a defibrillator.......crazy bastards.

Would prefer not to consider or know about how some 85 year old woman confesses that she has a fondness for he missionary position.

And...why don't we hear anything about Feminism from those chicks on E! who hang around with Hef at the mansion? They seem pretty feminine to me.

Yeaahh Baby, yeaahh!!

Or do Feminists have to be un-feminine to quality and look like Fat Ba$tard?

I strongly suggest people read some Andrea Dworkin books. She's harder to dismiss outright that way. I've read some, and I found her sometimes to be a remarkably intelligent and articulate for women's rights, not to mention a critic of the Left. Unlike Freidan, Dworkin didn't write from the privileged shelter of a suburban home, or from an academic appointment. If nothing else look up "conservative" columnist Maggie Gallagher's encomium of Dworkin that appeared right after she died.

Yeah. That's what I'll be doing soon: curling up with one of her books and try to become more enlightened on 'women's rights'.

But first, I'll be chewing, spitting, scratching my ba!!s and azz and finishing up my f$%king sensitivity training!!!!

Thank you for your honesty, asdf. I welcome it and will fling some back in turn.

No doubt about it: much about Dworkin is intellectually moronic, and even treasonous. In her memoir "Heartbreak", she states without remorse or irony that feminist conscious-raising groups were modeled, at least in part, on "criticism" sessions from Red China's Cultural Revolution. She recalls raising money for "hospitals" in North Vietnam. And in "Scapegoat" she draws what seem to me uneven parallels between Israeli pornography employing Nazi props and Israeli military power deployed the in disputed (a/k/a Palestinian) territories.

Yet in certain moments of honesty she frankly admits that conservatives tend to win public debates with radicals, be it William Buckley vs. James Baldwin or herself against others (unnamed). She also declared that child pornography and pedophilia should be punishable by death, a sentiment which you don't have to be a radical feminist to share (at least if it were your children that were involved).

If I'm not on your Christmas card list, I can live with that. I don't pretend to be a credentialed conservative, just a disillusioned ex-leftist, but I appreciate hashing out opinions here.

Yet in certain moments of honesty...

Even a broken clock is right two times a day.

LOL. Point taken.