"The Flipside of Feminism"

...you still did n´t reply to my observation, I mean can you answer for woman

as I said I am not taking any sides on this one..

I am just saying that as an US outsider (European) I would like to know if American women fill there some truth to this book..

American women largely dont support what they know

When it comes to women in America, progress is the operative word. According to the Free Online Dictionary, progress means “steady improvement, as of a society or civilization.” It’s a relative term—how to improve something is entirely subjective. Yet when we talk about women in America, progress is never defined, debated, or qualified. The topic is misleading right out of the gate.

For the past several decades, it has been widely accepted that women in America usually, if not always, get the short end of the stick. According to feminists, women, like blacks, have been oppressed for centuries. We’re told not enough progress has been made and that society still hasn’t leveled the playing field. This philosophy is so embedded in our culture that Americans don’t question it. We don’t even label it “feminist” to think this way; it’s just commonplace to believe women suffer discrimination. Turn on the television, flip through a magazine, or search America’s airwaves, and you’ll be deluged with stories about women who wonder how their needs can best be met, how they can balance their lives better, or how they can deal with the myriad of problems and dangers they face. Women’s grievances dominate the conversation.



But grievances are like crabgrass: the more heat they get, the more it spreads. And that is precisely what has happened with modern women. Feminist organizations even promote the growth of grievances by consciousness-raising sessions, where feminists exchange tales of how badly some man treated them and what government’s role should be as compensation. (See the NOW Resolutions on the Equal Rights Amendment in Appendix C.)

In the meantime, buried beneath the surface lies the truth: American women are the most fortunate human beings who have ever lived. No one has it better. No one.
This is a new twist to an old debate, one that elicits shock. It even sounds wrong on a piece of paper or rolling off the tongue. That’s because Americans have been conditioned to believe otherwise. Millions of Americans think progress requires women’s liberation—from men, from children, from society’s constructs, from just about anything that makes women feel morally obligated to someone or something other than themselves.

The saddest part of this misguided view of human nature is that it hasn’t made women any happier. In fact, it has done just the opposite. According to a 2007 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “As women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy.”1

The authors of this report, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, suggest that “the salience of the women’s movement fueled elation in the 1970s that has dissipated in the ensuing years.”2 That isn’t surprising. Most women in America are a right-of-center bunch and don’t want what women on the left want. The majority of women in this country are traditionalists and don’t want to change America.

Feminists do. They’ve spent decades trying to convince women that America needs to accommodate them so women can be unshackled, free, and presumably happy. It has been an alluring concept. Certainly women like the idea of being free from their responsibilities from time to time; they may like the thought of being liberated from husbands and children occasionally. Who wouldn’t? Marriage and motherhood require a lot of work and sacrifice. But women don’t want to be “free” if being free means being single, dependent on the government, or even being a big-shot powerhouse with no time for family. Most women in America want what any reasonable person wants: a family to love and—yes—even depend on.

The female left wants something else. “As we approach a new century—and a new millennium—it’s the men who have to break through to a new way of thinking about themselves and society,” wrote Betty Friedan in the 2001 edition of her 1963 landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. “Too bad women can’t do it for them, or go much further without them. Because it’s awesome to consider how women have changed the possibili- ties of our lives since we broke through the feminine mystique only two generations ago.”3

Those powerful words helped to shape a generation of American women. Implicit in Friedan’s worldview—the worldview so many Americans have been raised to accept—is the notion that women are oppressed, and that men are the ones who need to change. Friedan believed the odds are severely stacked against women. The only way to eliminate female oppression, she said, is to change men and society—to create a different America, one that’s more fair and just to women.

Those who are tempted to write off Betty Friedan as a has- been shouldn’t. Her words live on in the minds of influential female leftists whose goals are no different from Friedan’s. In November 2009, Maria Shriver, along with the left-wing think
tank Center for American Progress, produced an exhaustive, four-hundred-page document titled The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. Its fundamental argument is that government policies and laws “continue to rely on an outdated model of the American family.”4

Shriver and company—which includes Oprah Winfrey—seek to remedy this supposed problem by proving we are no longer living in a “man’s world” but are now living in a “woman’s world.” They consider the traditional family a thing of the past, which is fine with them because what feminists really want is a matriarchy. And now they’ve admitted it. The Shriver Report boasted, “As we move into this phase we’re calling a woman’s nation, women can turn their pivotal role as wage-earners, as consumers, as bosses, as opinion-shapers, as co-equal partners in whatever we do into a potent force for change. Emergent economic power gives women a new seat at the table—at the head of the table.”5

Every couple of years Time and Newsweek ask, “Is Feminism Dead?” It is not dead. While people associate feminism with the 1960s revolution, since that is when feminism began, feminism and feminists didn’t disappear just because they’re no longer marching in the streets. They simply chucked the loud protests and morphed into the fabric of society. The left offered feminists a home, a place where they could comfortably hang out—along with the Barack Obamas of the world—and plot their strategy to “fundamentally transform” America.

By Suzanne Venker
© 2011

According to Kay Hymowitz, whose new book, "Manning Up," was featured prominently in the Wall Street Journal in February, "legions of frustrated young women" are dealing with a new crisis in America: modern men refuse to grow up.

It appears the 21st-century male is living a kind of extended adolescence. In the past, it was assumed men would receive a high-school diploma or college degree, then get married and settle down to the responsibilities of work and family life. Today, young men "hang out in a novel sort of limbo," keeping adulthood at a distance as they enjoy a lifestyle that demands few, if any, obligations.

The question is why – and how – did this happen? And the answer is simple: feminism.

One of the many side effects of the American feminist movement is that men's traditional role as family man and provider has been eradicated. Today, men compete with women who are more educated than they and who often make more money. That women suggest they don't need husbands to be happy – or even to have children – rubs salt in an open wound. The result is that men are stuck in a prepubescent quandary.

Rather than focus exclusively on feminism, however, Ms. Hymowitz blames the predicament men are in on something called "The Knowledge Economy." The Knowledge Economy, she says, prolongs the maturation process in part because the kinds of jobs men used to get – the ones that forced them to grow up – have been usurped by women.

But why is that? Why are there now more women in college than men, and why are there more women in the workforce than ever before? Because ever since the 1960s, feminists have been telling women this is where they belong. Marriage and motherhood are passé, they said – a woman's true identity can only be found in the workforce. For today's pre-adults, "what you do is almost synonymous with who you are … starting a family is seldom part of the picture," writes Hymowitz.

Phyllis Schlafly, the original "anti-feminist," teams up with Suzanne Venker in a tour-de-force defense of traditional womanhood -- don't miss "The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know -- and Men Can't Say"

The reason family life has become an afterthought is because feminism has become thoroughly absorbed in American culture. People don't have to think about feminism or even acknowledge its presence – it just is. "With women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles – fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity – are obsolete, even a little embarrassing," writes Hymowitz.

The result is that the single guy can live in "pig heaven," and women give up on the idea of marriage and "just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man." Indeed, we may recall Jennifer Aniston's pronouncement last August: "Women are realizing more and more that you don't have to settle, they don't have to fiddle with a man to have that child."

(Column continues below)



Wake up, America. If we don't muster the courage to admit the damage feminism has caused – that it has changed the rules drastically and confused the heck out of women and men – we are headed for extinction. Men and women simply don't know what to do with each other anymore. Women's nature tells them sex requires love; marriage is important; children are a blessing; and men are necessary. But our feminist culture tells women to sleep around and postpone family life because that will cost them their identities.

As for the men, they are simply responding to what society expects of them. Contrary to what movies like "He's Just Not That Into You" suggest, most men want to settle down and have children of their own. Countless men would be happy to do so if they did not have sex so freely available and if their girlfriends weren't so willing to cohabit. This is an inconvenient truth, to be sure – but that doesn't make it any less true.

A recent Wall Street Journal asks, "Where Have the Good Men Gone?" The answer is simple: Feminists drove them out. The sooner we face this fact, the sooner we will get the good men back.



Read more: Why men won't grow up http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=272173#ixzz1bD4ELsqQ

Those powerful words helped to shape a generation of American women. Implicit in Friedan’s worldview—the worldview so many Americans have been raised to accept—is the notion that women are oppressed, and that men are the ones who need to change. Friedan believed the odds are severely stacked against women. The only way to eliminate female oppression, she said, is to change men and society—to create a different America, one that’s more fair and just to women.

Those who are tempted to write off Betty Friedan as a has- been shouldn’t. Her words live on in the minds of influential female leftists whose goals are no different from Friedan’s. In November 2009, Maria Shriver, along with the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, produced an exhaustive, four-hundred-page document titled The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. Its fundamental argument is that government policies and laws “continue to rely on an outdated model of the American family.”

Shriver and company—which includes Oprah Winfrey—seek to remedy this supposed problem by proving we are no longer living in a “man’s world” but are now living in a “woman’s world.” They consider the traditional family a thing of the past, which is fine with them because what feminists really want is a matriarchy. And now they’ve admitted it.

The Shriver Report boasted, “As we move into this phase we’re calling a woman’s nation, women can turn their pivotal role as wage-earners, as consumers, as bosses, as opinion-shapers, as co-equal partners in whatever we do into a potent force for change. Emergent economic power gives women a new seat at the table—at the head of the table.”

The left offered feminists a home, a place where they could comfortably hang out—along with the Barack Obamas of the world—and plot their strategy to “fundamentally transform” America