NOW and Marxism

["Smith, Gerard" <gsmith@xxxxxxxxx>]

    Here's an snip from a website about Betty Friedman from Fathers for Life
http://forever.freeshell.org/. Thought it appropriate about the debate
concerning Gender and Class. The fundmental premise of the group (that
children need both parents)is valid; however, these folks pretty much blame
Betty and NOW for destroying the "American Family", causing hetrophobia, and
a whole bunch of other ills.

I let them speak for themselves:

"Nobody should have any illusions that the feminists consider any of the
ideas presented in the Communist Manifesto to be outdated and archaic.  The
feminists use it as their bible."

 "WE REJECT the current assumptions that a man must carry the sole burden of
supporting himself, his wife, and family, and that a woman is automatically
entitled to lifelong support by a man upon her marriage, or that marriage,
home and family are primarily woman's world and responsibility-hers, to
dominate-his to support. We believe that a true partnership between the
sexes demands a different concept of marriage, an equitable sharing of the
responsibilities of home and children and of the economic burdens of their
support. We believe that proper recognition should be given to the economic
and social value of homemaking and child-care. To these ends, we will seek
to open a reexamination of laws and mores governing marriage and divorce,
for we believe that the current state of "half-equity" between the sexes
discriminates against both men and women, and is the cause of much
unnecessary hostility between the sexes."  Betty Friedman

That doesn't sound so bad at first glance.  But regardless of what it sounds
like, it is but one way by which to attempt to entice women, the majority of
whom are found in poll after poll to prefer to be stay-at-home, married
moms, to enter the work force.  Why would anyone promote an idea that most
women don't like?  The answer to that question may be found in the fact that
the goal to bring women into the work force is an ancient goal of communism
and that, as Smith College professor Daniel Horowitz states in his new book
"Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique" Betty Friedan was
well into her thirties a devout and active functionary of the Communist
Party of the U.S.A..
As per a book review by professor David Horowitz (no relation), published in
Salon Magazine Jan. 1999

http://www.salon.com/col/horo/1999/01/nc_18horo2.html ...

the author of that book establishes beyond doubt that the woman who has
always presented herself as a typical suburban housewife until she began
work on her groundbreaking book was in fact nothing of the kind.  In fact,
under her maiden name, Betty Goldstein, she was a political activist and
professional propagandist for the Communist left for over a decade before
the publication of "The Feminist Mystique" launched the modern women's
movement...:
Professor Horowitz documents that Friedan was from her college days, and
until her mid-30s, a Stalinist Marxist, the political intimate of the
leaders of America's Cold War fifth column and for a time even the lover of
a young Communist physicist working on atomic bomb projects in Berkeley's
radiation lab with J. Robert Oppenheimer.  Her famous description of
America's suburban family household as "a comfortable concentration camp" in
"The Feminine Mystique" therefore had more to do with her Marxist hatred for
America than with any of her actual experience as a housewife or mother."
(Her husband, Carl, also a leftist, once complained that his wife "was in
the world during the whole marriage," had a full-time maid and "seldom was a
wife and a mother").
         It is fascinating that Friedan not only felt the need to lie about
her real views and life experience then, but still feels the need to lie
about them now.  Although Horowitz, the author of the new biography, is a
sympathetic leftist, Friedan refused to cooperate with him once she realized
he was going to tell the truth about her life as Betty Goldstein."

Walter H. Schneider
Box 62, Bruderheim, Alberta, Canada  T0B 0S0
    Tel: (780) 796-2306
e-mail: sheep_@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Website: http://www.fathersforlife.org or http://forever.freeshell.org




~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.