When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
Betty FriedanRead
Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
Interpretation
The quote highlights that men, shaped by outdated societal expectations, are also victims of the pressures of masculinity.
Betty Friedan's quote examines the idea that men are often portrayed as aggressors or enemies, yet they too are victims of a restrictive societal construct known as the 'masculine mystique.' This concept pressures men to conform to an outdated definition of masculinity that emphasizes strength and dominance, leaving them feeling inadequate and trapped when such expectations are unrealistic or irrelevant, especially in a modern context where traditional roles are evolving.
In practice
In a discussion about gender roles during a seminar.
When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.
Advice? I don't offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it's hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth
The State lives by its very existence on the two-fold and pervasive employment of aggressive violence against the very liberty and property of individuals that it is supposed to be defending.
As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more.
He only deserves to be remembered by posterity who treasures up and preserves the history of his ancestors.
Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.