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The quote highlights that men, shaped by outdated societal expectations, are also victims of the pressures of masculinity.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 This concept pressures men to conform to an outdated definition of masculinity that emphasizes strength and dominance, leaving them feeling inadequate and trapped when such expectations are unrealistic or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.
Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.
Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.
The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven." "The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.
We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that.
'Facts, facts, facts,' cries the scientist if he wants to emphasize the necessity of a firm foundation for science. What is a fact? A fact is a thought that is true. But the scientist will surely not recognize something which depends on men's varying states of mind to be the firm foundation of science.
I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black,...an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.
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