Report: Feminism
Two Kinds of Feminism
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Concerned Women for America
HIJACKING A NOBLE CAUSE:
HOW MODERN FEMINISM HAS ABANDONED ITS FOUNDERS
By
Stephanie Porowski
More than 150 years ago,
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a rally at Seneca Falls, New
York, taking the first steps in achieving fair treatment for women. Many
scholars and political commentators view the early feminist movement as one of
America’s great success stories. However, in many respects modern feminism has
deviated from the lofty ideals and moral underpinnings of its predecessor, with
goals and beliefs that contradict those of the early feminists. Unlike the
early feminist goals, modern feminism’s agenda is based on a foundation of
separation and anger rather than equality and fairness. Today’s feminists
wrongly claim kinship to feminism’s founders, thereby cloaking their radicalism
in the early movement’s popularity and moral authority. Yet early and modern
feminism are two completely different movements.
The early feminist
movement began in an age of reform when widespread religious revival challenged
19th-century Americans
to make America a “truly great and virtuous nation,” as Stanton said1. The command to
love, not in “word or tongue, but in deed and truth,”2 has inspired
generations of Christians to loving reforms. Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, author and
editor of A
Christian Women’s Declaration, writes, “Many of the earliest and most effective
advocates of women’s rights and dignity were women of faith whose convictions
were rooted in Biblical truth.”3 As Stanton testified, “The same religious enthusiasm that nerved
Joan of Arc to her work nerves us to ours. In every generation God calls some
men and women for the utterance of truth, a heroic action.”4
Women such as
Frances Willard, a leader in the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, and
Susan B. Anthony approached life with a “sense of justice and moral zeal”
founded on Judeo-Christian principles.5 Like Willard and Anthony, typical early feminists
actively participated in the temperance and abolitionist movements. Their
desire for legal equality developed out of a deep commitment to justice and a
need to better the world. They firmly believed that “[t]here are deep and
tender chords of sympathy and love in the hearts of the downtrodden and
oppressed that women can touch more skillfully than man.”6
This belief led more
than 300 women to Seneca Falls on July 14, 1848, for the famous rally that
ignited the early feminist movement. These women had clear goals. They wanted
women’s suffrage and equal laws regarding property, marriage, divorce, child
custody and education.7
They
asked only for equality, with no special treatment. As 19th-century women’s
activist Lucy Stone stated, “We ask to be regarded, respected and treated as
human beings, of full age and natural abilities, as equal fellow sinners, not
as infants or beautiful angels, to whom the laws of civil and social justice do
not apply.”8
At Seneca Falls,
the women adopted a Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration
of Independence, in which they declared, “All men and women are created equal.”
They based their argument for fair laws and equal treatment on this premise of
equality. In their Declaration the early feminists also provided a list of
grievances,9 summing up the
unfair, often brutal treatment women received. They wrote:
He has
never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elected franchise.
… He has compelled her to submit to the laws in the formation of which she has
no voice. … He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her the right to own property, even to the wages she earns. …
He has so framed the laws of divorce … to be wholly regardless of the happiness
of women. … He has monopolized all the profitable employments. … He has denied
her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education.10
Early feminists had
powerful evidence of injustices at the hand of society, and they offered
clearly stated, practicable solutions. They asked for the right to vote for the
laws which would govern them, as American citizens; for the control of their
own property; for equal employment and educational opportunities and, finally,
for the right to obtain divorce on the grounds of brutality and drunkenness.11
The 1869 case of
Hester Vaughn symbolizes the plight of women at the beginning of the feminist
movement. At 20, Hester was deserted by her husband and left with no choice but
to find work in a wealthy Philadelphia home where the man of the house seduced
her, firing her when she became pregnant. Forced by poverty to give birth
alone, Hester was charged with murder when her baby died. Hester had no
representation at her trial and was not allowed to testify because she was a
woman. An all-male jury found her guilty of murder.
After hearing of
Hester’s treatment, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a
campaign to help her. As a result of their efforts, Hester was pardoned, and,
inspired by this success, American women went on to win the fight for full
equality under the law. 12
Because
they grounded their aims in constitutional principles of justice and equality,
women would achieve advances in property rights, employment, education and
divorce and child custody laws by the late 1800s. In 1920, through a coalition
of suffragists, women’s social welfare organizations, temperance groups and reform-minded
politicians, early feminists achieved women’s suffrage with the passing of the
19th amendment. They
firmly believed that the right to vote would prove to be the “most effective
means to challenge an unjust system.”13
However, in the
late 1960s and ’70s, feminism abandoned its moral and, often, Christian
heritage and became a movement based on anger and resentment. Women had
achieved full equality, but remained dissatisfied. The early feminists had
worked tirelessly so that women could help others, but modern feminists twisted
their movement around selfish, empty pursuits. As Crouse writes in the A
Christian Women’s Declaration:
The
radical feminist agenda has revolutionary, not reformist, goals. The agenda
demeans the role of women past and present and seeks to restructure society.
Rather than liberating women by providing them equal opportunity to develop to
the fullest their God-given talents, abilities and potential, this agenda, in
fact, leads to women being demeaned, their lives destroyed and their spirits
enslaved.14
These modern
feminists hold to a basic “pseudo-Marxist” tenet, with women as the victimized
proletariat. As British journalist Neil Lyndon writes, modern feminists believe
that “women belong by birth to a social and economic class which is oppressed
by the patriarchal system as it is operated by a social and economic class
composed by birth, of men.”15 Gender has become a “social construct,” equality now means
“identical” and women are seen as “empty vessels” shaped by “patriarchy.” They
are portrayed as “victims,” with exaggerations of women’s suffering becoming a
research field for women’s studies programs.16 Equality is no longer the only objective of the
feminist movement. Instead, modern feminists seek to overturn what they regard
as the male-established social order.
This modern
“victim” feminism began as part of a broader revolt, led by leftleaning
academics, against the established social order. Academic leaders influenced
people to see the traditional social system as defective, and this attitude of
social unrest translated to the feminist movement.17 Based on this
attitude, three books, in particular, led to the replacement of early feminism:
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Kate Millet’s Sexual
Politics and
Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch.
Betty Friedan,
though less radical than the man-hating, anti-feminine feminists, such as
Millet and Greer, established a platform on which her contemporaries would
voice their opinions. In The Feminine Mystique, published in
1963, she declared American housewives to be dissatisfied with their unequal
lot in life and called for reform.18 She founded the National Organization for Women
(NOW), a radical feminist group, in 1966.19
An open lesbian,
Millet agreed with Friedan’s assertion of the unhappiness of the housewife, but
she took Friedan’s idea to the extreme in her 1970 Sexual
Politics,
declaring marriage and family to be the way that patriarchy reproduces itself.
Believing every avenue of power lay in corrupt male hands, she called for an
end to this “abusive” system. Millet’s ideas embody the misandrism, or
man-hating, of modern feminists and would soon lead to the “glorification of
sexual lifestyles without limits and consequences and views of marriage and
family that contradicted Biblically based faith and time-tested moral
behavior.”20
Although Friedan’s
book laid the groundwork for modern feminism, and Millet’s work radicalized the
movement, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, also published in
1970, had the greatest influence, drawing the largest audience among women and,
surprisingly, men. Men were drawn to the work by Greer’s assertion that a
“woman has the right to express her own sexuality,” proclaiming women’s sexual
freedom. However, Greer herself described the book as an analysis of sex
oppression at the hands of men, writing of heterosexual love as a “mutual
fantasy.” She went as far as to advise women to “consciously refrain from
establishing exclusive dependencies and other kinds of neurotic symbioses,”
showing her hatred of men and marriage.21
Other feminists
would follow in the footsteps of these women, whose ideas would soon comprise
mainstream feminism. Like Friedan, Millet and Greer, feminists today see
themselves as victims of “mass persecution” at the hands of men. They believe
that the modern woman lives in a constant state of siege. Thus modern feminists
can be characterized as “articulate, prone to self-dramatization, and
constantly offended.”22
And,
despite this attitude of resentment and self-pity, they have succeeded in
changing the course of feminism.
1.
Early feminists looked at the world through reason; modern feminists see
everything through a gender prism.
Modern feminists
have created a generation that searches for sexual discrimination in all
aspects of life. Hyperconcern has become the norm,23 and feminists find
evidence of sexism everywhere. For example, Patricia Ireland, former president
of NOW, writes of her days as a flight attendant:
I thought
of myself as a professional. But what I really did was go down the aisle and
take people’s garbage and thank them for it. That’s what women have been doing.
We’ve been taking their garbage and thanking them for it. We’ve got to stop.24
Injustices do occur
against women, as well as men, but modern feminists, such as NOW’s Ireland,
exaggerate their inferior position in society. As author Dale O’Leary notes:
No one
can deny that women have suffered, but outrage at the abuse of women doesn’t
solve the problem. … The feminists offer radical revolutionary solutions when
far simpler changes would suffice. … It is true that a guillotine will solve
the problem of migraine headaches, but most people would not consider it a
viable solution.25
Unlike feminism’s
founders, who devoted their time to achievable goals and legitimate equality,
modern feminists complain and try to completely overhaul the traditional social
order. As Crouse notes:
[These]
“well-organized movements” undermine women’s dignity and equality by assuming
that behavior is beyond personal control and repudiating the idea of personal
responsibility by oversimplified “group think” that views life as a struggle
between oppressed victim groups and their oppressors, [and also by] fostering a
“therapeutic view” that sees the sole purpose of human life as pleasure and
self-actualization.26
2.
Early feminists did not view men as the enemy; modern feminists believe that
men are their constant oppressors.
A second key
difference between early feminism and modern feminism lies in the attitude
toward men. Both men and women organized Seneca Falls, and men actively
participated in the early feminist movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote,
“[T]he speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring
efforts of both men and women.”27 In fact, misandrism did not become a crucial element of feminism
until the 1960s. Early feminists did not self-segregate because they desired
the opposite: these women wanted to live in the world of men with full equality
under the law.28
Even Mary
Wollstonecraft, one of the founding British feminists and a radical in her
time, clearly expressed the cry of the early feminists in her book, Vindication
of the Rights of Women:
Would
men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship
instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more
affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, and more reasonable mothers … better
citizens.29
Early feminists,
like Wollstonecraft, saw men as potential allies in the fight to end hatred and
oppression. She and her allies would renounce their modern counterparts’
attitudes toward men, especially as depicted in a student’s statement about a
classmate:
Raphael
said he was a male feminist: That is an oxymoron. My deep belief is that men
cannot be feminists. They have no place in woman-centered spheres. Raphael is a womb
envier and a feminist wannabe—a poseur in our midst. [Emphasis added.]30
Modern feminists
have become convinced that men take every possible opportunity to exploit women
by injuring them physically and mentally. They see men as guilty until proven
innocent. Because of their upbringing in a “patriarchal society,” feminists are
convinced that all men have a capacity for crimes against women. Feminist
author Susan Brown Miller is not alone when she writes, “[A]ll men are
rapists.”31 Another feminist
author, Marilyn French, says, “The entire system of female oppression rests on
ordinary men, who maintain it with a fervor and dedication to duty that any
secret police might envy. What other system can depend on almost half the
population to enforce a policy daily … with utter reliability?” She continues:
It is
not necessary to beat up a woman to beat her down. A man can simply refuse to
hire women in well-paid jobs … [and] pay them less. Or treat women
disrespectfully. … He can fail to support a child he has engendered, demand the
woman he lives with wait on him like a servant. He can beat or kill the woman
he claims to love; he can rape women. …[H]e can rape or sexually molest his
daughters, nieces, stepchildren, or the children of a woman he claims to love. The vast
majority of men will do one or more of the above. [Emphasis in the
original.]32
Today, mainstream
feminists express views like those of Miller and French. Taught to appreciate
their “inferior” place in society and the joys and comforts of group
solidarity, modern feminists no longer strive to gain acceptance into the world
of men. Instead, they work to create a new woman-centered world, even if it
comes at the cost of traditional values.33 Regrettably, “Their influence has been greatly
magnified by their work through the United Nations, their domination of
non-government organizations and their powerful position in mainline denominations,”
says Crouse.
3.
Early feminists saw marriage and motherhood as privileges; modern feminists see
the family as a prison.
As their attitudes
toward men changed, feminist attitudes toward the relationship between men and
women in marriage also changed. Prominent early feminists, such as Mary
Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Angelina Grimke, Ernestine Rose, Margaret Fuller
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had loved and married men, though not always
successfully. Although early feminists believed that, often, as Susan B.
Anthony said, the “culture forced women to sell themselves cheap in marriage,
sex, and motherhood,”34
they
also knew that family life can strengthen women as individuals and allow them a
means of influencing society. Early feminists firmly believed that women’s
suffrage would benefit the family, whose interests, they believed, would be
better protected by wives and mothers.35 Susan B. Anthony reflected, “Sweeter even than to
have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been for me to help
bring about a better state of things for mothers generally.”36
Modern feminists
could not have more opposite views. They believe men use marriage and families
to suppress women. Patricia Ireland writes of her own “liberation” from the
institution of marriage:
As my
understanding of women’s second class legal status … grew, my point of view
about the contract of marriage itself changed dramatically. I couldn’t believe
the state could impose terms on our relationship that made me unequal to James
within our relationship and against our beliefs. I stopped wearing my wedding
ring. … Now that I knew that the loss of a woman’s name at marriage signified
the loss of her very existence as a person under the law, I took back my family
name.37
Not only do modern
feminists believe that marriage holds women captive, they believe that a
devoted mother and wife cannot possibly be an intelligent, successful woman.
Betty Friedan states this belief: “I never knew a woman, when I was growing up,
who used her mind, played her own part in the world and also loved and had
children.”38
According to
feminists today, one can achieve “liberation” only through a renunciation of
the role of wife and mother. In fact, The Feminists, an organization
established in the late 1960s, asserts that “marriage and the family must be
eliminated.” For only then, according to modern feminists, can women escape
this “slavery-like practice” and “bizarre heritage of oppression” that marriage
represents.39
4.
Early feminists saw abortion as exploitation of women; modern feminists see it
as a solution to the problem of exploitation.
Because of the low
value they place on marriage and children, modern feminists strongly advocate
abortion, saying, “Birth control and abortion contradict the notion of woman as
chattel or woman as childbearer—and nothing else. If we can control our
reproduction, we can control our lives. … [I]t is this freedom that is at the
heart of the abortion debate. [Emphasis in the original.]”40 Modern feminists
see abortion as an aspect of “liberation,” the freedom to choose the role of
mother. They see abortion as an escape from the “oppressive” roles of housewife
and mother and, thus, an escape from exploitation at the hand of men.
Not surprisingly,
most early feminists held an opposing view. They saw abortion as a symptom of
the problem of exploitation, rather than a way to escape from oppression. In
fact, Alice Paul, a prominent early feminist, considered abortion to be the
“ultimate exploitation of women.”41 In 1869, Mattie Brinkerhoff, another early feminist,
said, “[W]hen a man steals to satisfy we may safely conclude that there is
something wrong with society—so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn
child it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been
greatly wronged.”42
Likewise,
in an 1875 speech, Susan B. Anthony discusses abortion and postnatal
infanticide, along with rape and prostitution, as male crimes against women.43 These women
recognized that, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, “When we consider that women
are considered as property it is degrading to women that we should consider our
children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”44
Stanton and other
early feminists had a keen awareness that fair treatment applies to all humans,
even the unborn. Early feminists realized abortion means that, in a world
hostile to women, the special contributions that women make to society through
pregnancy and motherhood have become nothing more than a burden. The early
feminists could see nothing as degrading to women as abortion.
5.
Early feminists fought for access to the academic world; modern feminists work
to destroy that world.
While the early
feminists fought against abortion, they battled fiercely for equal education.
However, today modern feminists work unknowingly to undo the achievements of
their predecessors. They believe that women must move away from “male reason”
to “richer,” more “spiritual” subjects exclusive to women. Thus they fail to
recognize that the founding feminists based their plea for education on the
equality of their minds with those of men.45 Author Karen Lehrman writes of feminist university
classes today:
In many
classes discussions alternate between the personal and the political, with mere
pit stops at the academic … with the student’s feelings valued as much as
anything the professors or texts have to offer. … A hundred years ago women
were fighting for the right to learn math, science, Latin—to be educated like
men: today, many women are content to get their feelings heard, their personal
problems aired, their instincts and intuition respected.46
Feminists want a
complete transformation of the academy, starting with changing words such as
seminars to ovulars, history to herstory, theology to thealogy and elevating more
“emotion-based classes,” such as art and writing, above more reason-oriented
studies, like math and science.47 These women aim to alter reality, which they see as a “social
construct subject to change rather than an object for analysis.” They want to
change the very concept of knowledge itself, arguing that “knowledge is
socially constructed and is influenced more by the sex of the knower than by
the object of knowledge.” 48
This relative
concept of knowledge has led to the current women’s studies programs, now
mandatory on many campuses, where professors teach an ideology based on the
“oppressor/oppressed-class paradigm” rather than truth. Radical feminist ideas
rapidly spread beyond these classrooms in universities where feminist scholars
have key influence, especially in English, French and history departments, and
in law and divinity schools. 49 These feminist academics use their influence to overthrow the
classic curriculum. They attempt to rewrite history so that it includes more of
women’s contributions, often placing emphasis on minor female figures while
ignoring major male leaders and historical events.50 Some simply want to
exchange the literary canon of the West for “less oppressive writings,” but the
most radical extend this revisionism into the sciences and mathematics. Modern
feminists, such as Sandra Harding, Alison Jaggar and Evelyn Fox Keller,
maintain that, because men have determined the facts and conducted the
experiments, the present knowledge of math and science is distorted.51
Women’s studies
programs are a stronghold for this ideology. A model course developed by
professors at Rutgers University was established to “challenge and change the
social institutions and practices that create and perpetuate systems of
oppression.” 52
In this course
students would receive 40 percent of their grade by:
• Performing an
outrageous and liberating act outside of class and sharing feelings with
classmates.
• Keeping a journal
with narratives of personal experience, expressions of emotion, dream accounts,
poetry, doodles, etc.
• Forming small,
in-class-consciousness-raising groups.53
This program
embodies the ideas behind the modern women’s studies program. Ironically, these
programs support traditionally accepted women’s capacities for intuition,
emotion and sentiment while devaluing their capacity to reason. In fact,
according to Crouse, some academic feminists view logic as a matter of “making
it fit for what you believe.”
Early feminism and
modern feminism have profoundly affected today’s society. Because early
feminism helped to achieve full equality for women under the law, women have
gone on to make important contributions in areas to which society denied them
access 150 years ago. Today there are numerous “new traditional” women—women
who remain dedicated, like so many of the early feminists, to Judeo-Christian
principles. In the words of pro-family activist Connaught Marshner:
Who is
the New Traditional Woman? She is the mother of the citizens of the 21st
century. It is she who will more than anyone else transmit civilization and
humanity to future generations, and by her response to the challenges of life,
determine whether America will be a strong, virtuous nation. … She is new,
because she is of the current era, with all its pressures and fast pace and
rapid change. She is traditional because, in the face of unremitting cultural
change, she is oriented around the eternal truths of faith and family. Her
values are timeless.54
Crouse, too,
reflects on women, past and present, dedicated to eternal truth:
Because
we are created in God’s image and the Grace of God is extended equally to
women, we can join the company of those women who first wept in the shadow of
the cross and later rejoiced at the empty tomb. Because the Bible is the most
effective force in history, we can join the historic succession of women whose
Christian faith is forged from biblical truth and whose lives are shaped into
Christ’s image on the anvil of obedience.
As
women we are beneficiaries, not victims, of our Christian faith, despite its
imperfect outerworking in history.55
Great Christian
women, like many of the early feminists, have achieved much without sacrificing
traditional values. Their influence can only help this nation to continue to
grow and thrive.
However, early
feminism has had an unfortunate effect in modern feminism, a movement that
seeks to destroy rather than preserve traditional moral values. Modern feminism
has forsaken the objectives of the founding feminists in its quest for power
and “liberation” rather than equal rights.56 The Christian Women’s Declaration describes the
devastating consequences of this abandonment:
We are
especially concerned about the effects on women of contemporary cultural
trends. We decry the erroneous thinking about human nature, sin and utopian
expectations of society that have produced a pervasive sense of emptiness. The
notion of women’s autonomy—including absolute control over our own bodies—
leaves us with an unrealistic sense of human power and an exaggerated sense of
independence from the consequences of our attitudes and actions. The denial of
the transcendent God who orders the universe and directs our lives leaves us
with societal chaos and the absence of any objective sense of meaning. Most
especially, it is the authority of the one true God, in whose image male and
female are made, that insures the dignity and equality of men and women.57
And, today, the
effects of this abandonment of traditional values are glaringly evident as
education suffers and society has devalued the family, the traditional woman’s
role and human life, itself.
In academics,
radical feminists work tirelessly to ensure that women’s studies programs will
continue in their destructive mission. Christina Stolba tellingly concludes her
extensive research on this issue, by saying, “As its textbooks demonstrate, the
field of women’s studies has turned ‘rooms of their own’ into intellectual
prisons presided over by matriarchs of mediocrity who mistake ideology for
learning and scholarship.”58
Because
“vindication and liberation of women are more important that objective
analysis” in these programs, women’s studies lose legitimacy.59 Many students and
teachers recognize that women’s studies classes have become just another “easy
credit” and cannot be taken seriously.
Moreover, feminist
rewriting of history and literature harms the entire educational world. For
example, standards of knowledge have fallen sharply in history classes. History
books now place emphasis on the achievements of minor female figures while
ignoring major male leaders and historical events. A 1989 study indicated that
while 83 percent of the students surveyed recognized Harriet Tubman, only 53
percent had heard of Joseph Stalin, and only 39 percent recognized the
characteristics of the Renaissance.60 Making itself ludicrous as an educational experience
and spreading its radical, unfounded ideas into the rest of the educational
world, the feminist classroom fails to adequately prepare women to survive in
the world of work and culture.
Like the
university, the family, the foundation of society, has taken a tremendous hit
from modern feminism. The number of marriages continues to decline, dropping
nearly 50 percent since 1950.61 At the same time, the divorce rate has increased dramatically,
doubling since 1960 and reaching its peak in the 1980s. In fact, recent
findings published by the Beverly LaHaye Institute (BLI), the research arm of
Concerned Women for America (CWA), expect more than half of today’s marriages
to end in divorce. 62
Astonishingly,
the U.S. Census Bureau found that, in 2000, only 73 percent of couples with
children were married, a sharp drop from 91 percent in 1960, before the
radicalism of the modern feminist movement.63 BLI reports that, in 1980, there were 10 times as
many women cohabiting with men as in 1960. Moreover, over one-third of American
children are born out-of-wedlock.64 These statistics are even more troubling considering
the harm often inflicted on all family members by divorce, the benefits of a
two-parent home, and the emotional, physical and health benefits of marriage
proven in numerous studies.65 In undermining the importance of the family, feminists are
aiding society in its own destruction.
Feminist destruction
of the woman’s traditional role has been a key factor in the family’s decline.
Modern feminists teach today’s women that, when she settles for the role of
wife and mother, she subjects herself to an inferior position. Phyllis
Schlafly, who helped to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s,
correctly states, “The women’s liberation ideology teaches women to seek their
own self-fulfillment over every other goal. Those who choose to establish that
as their priority are free to make that choice. But that goal is simply
incompatible with a happy marriage and motherhood.”66
Sadly, too many
women take the feminist message to heart, contributing to the decline in
marriages and a considerable drop in the birthrate. According to the National
Center for Health Statistics, the birthrate has decreased by 43 percent since
1960.67 This drop reveals
an alarming truth. In the words of Alicia Colon:
In our
quest for equality with men, we have lost supremacy in what matters most in
life—the care of the young entrusted to the sex that was designed to bear them.
… [0]ur physiology is specifically designed for the protection of the future
civilization. … This awesome responsibility was granted to us but we no longer
deserve that honor. We can’t handle it.68
Abortion, the
ultimate denial of the role of child-bearer, symbolizes all that has gone wrong
in current society. Since the 1973 feminist victory in Roe v.
Wade,
there have been more than 43 million abortions reported in the United States.
Every year, about 1.33 million take place. Approximately 48 percent of
pregnancies are “unintended,” and, of these, half result in abortion.69 To many Americans,
abortion is simply another form of birth control. They have bought into the
feminist lie about the insignificance of millions of humans—the unborn.
In 1973, theologian
Francis Schaeffer predicted that legalized abortion would start the nation on a
downward spiral, culminating with increased cases of infanticide and legalized
euthanasia. He wrote, “Will a society which has assumed the right to kill
infants in the womb … have difficulty in assuming the right to kill other human
beings?”
Today, his
prediction has come true. The “Right to Die” movement, and even some leading
scientists, have openly embraced infanticide and euthanasia.70 The number of
babies intentionally killed before their first birthday has increased by 36
percent for white babies and 51 percent for black babies since 1980.71 Oregon law permits
assisted suicide, while the Netherlands and Belgium allow assisted suicide and
euthanasia. Everyday, women—and men—consumed with the idea of self-fulfillment,
allow the sanctity of human life to slip further down the spiral.
Women are becoming
increasingly aware of the cost of the feminist ideology on society. In 1991, 65
percent of college freshman felt that abortion should be legal. Today, only 55
percent agree.72
According
to the “Money and the American Family” survey, 81 percent of adults view
marriage as an absolutely necessary part of a successful life.73 Recent studies have
shown that a large majority of women prefer the role of housewife to that of
career woman. One such study by a New York tracking firm revealed that two out
of four of the 3,000 women polled preferred to stay at home with their children
rather than remain in the workplace.74 Another study found that the number of working women
who believe that a career is as important as being a wife and mother has fallen
23 percent since the 1970s.75
Virginia
Haussegger, a successful ABC television journalist, reflects:
[T]he
truth is—for me at least—the career is no longer a challenge, the lifestyle
trappings are joyless, … and the point of it all seems, well, pointless. I am
childless and I am angry. Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my
feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female
fulfillment came with a leather briefcase.76
As they recognize
the emptiness of a life based on feminist ideals, more and more women turn to
religion and traditional morals for fulfillment. The Center for Gender
Equality, led by Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood, found
that the number of women “embracing” religion grew from 69 to 75 percent from
1997 to 1999, in just two years. Disturbed by the results, Wattleton added her
insight, “It is clear that women are becoming more conservative on a number of
social issues as they become more involved with religion.”77
Consequently, the
number of women who fail to identify with the modern feminist movement have
grown. When asked if she would call herself a feminist, Gabrielle Molnar, a
former Young Businesswoman of the Year, told the WomenSpeak 2003 conference,
“No. I don’t think it supports our cause [the cause of women].”78 In the September
2000 issue of George, supermodel and mother Cindy Crawford stated her
dislike for the word “feminist,” saying, “It has such a negative connotation to
me. It’s like man-hating. I want a guy to open a door for me. … I like being
treated like a woman. I don’t want to be equal in every way.”79
A 1999 CBS poll
shows that, like Crawford, many women are growing increasingly uncomfortable
with the lesbianism, bitterness, radicalism and very liberal politics that
accompany the current feminist movement. The poll revealed that, while, in
1992, 31 percent of women considered themselves feminists, seven years later,
only 20 percent of women called themselves feminists. In fact, three out of
four women polled described the word feminist as an insult.80
These results say
it all—most women no longer support the ideas of radical feminists, and turn,
in increasing numbers, to traditional values, embodied in Scripture and
reflected in the Judeo-Christian values of many early feminists. These women
have recognized that traditional morals elevate them, and that only through the
Christian life can they become complete—in Christ, empowered and truly free.
The Christian legacy of social reform inspired the early feminists to action,
and that same reform-mindedness should motivate Christians to rectify the
abuses of modern feminism. Conservative Christians must seize this opportunity
to wrest the culture from the weakened grasp of the modern feminist movement.
Christians must combat the feminist lies with all-powerful truth, with the reality
that only through Christ can women and men find
fulfillment.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2003
1 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Address: First
Women’s Right’s Convention,” as found at http://www.libertynet.org/edcivic/stanton.html.
2 1 John 3:18 (NKJV).
3 Janice Shaw Crouse, A
Christian Women’s Declaration, (Washington, D.C.:
Institute on Religion and Democracy, 1999), 5.
4 Stanton.
5 “Biography of Susan B. Anthony,” from the Web
site for the Susan B. Anthony House, as found at http://www.susanbanthonyhouse.org/biography.html.
6 Op cit.
7 Christina Hoff Sommers, Who
Stole Feminism (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 34, 35.
8 Mari Boor Tonn, “The Una,
1853-1855: The Premiere of the Woman’s Rights Press” in A
Voice of their Own: The Woman’s Suffrage Press, 1840-1910,
ed. Martha M. Solomon (Tuscaloosa, AL: Randall Publishing, 1991), 48.
9 Op cit., 34, 35.
10 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Seneca Falls
Declaration,” as found at http://www.ku.edu/carrie/docs/texts/seneca.htm.
11 Dee Jepsen, Women:
Beyond Equal Rights (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1975), 37.
12 Sommers, 33.
13 Web cite for The Susan B. Anthony Center for
Women’s Leadership, “History of Women’s Suffrage,” as found at http://www.rochester.edu/SBA/history.html.
14 Crouse, A Christian
Women’s Declaration, 8.
15 Justus Causus, “Modern Feminism: A Guide to
the Ideology and Literature,” as found at http://www.cyad.com/cgibin/pinc/apr97/justus.html.
16 Op cit.
17 Sommers, 19-40.
18 Op cit.
19 Web site for National Organization for Women,
“NOW History,” as found at http://www/now.org/history/history.html.
20 Crouse, A Christian
Women’s Declaration, 8-9.
21 Op cit.
22 Danielle Crittendon, What
Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 20.
23 Sommers, 40.
24 Ibid., 42.
25 Dale O’Leary, The
Gender Agenda (Lafayette, LA: Vital Issues Press, 1997), 14.
26 Crouse, A Christian
Women’s Declaration, 7.
27 Stanton.
28 Jepsen.
29 Patricia Alterbernd Johnson, On
Wollstonecraft (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000), 52.
30 Sommers, 37.
31 Causus.
32 Op cit., 43.
33 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Feminism
Without Illusions (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1991), 11-17.
34 Web site for The Susan B. Anthony List “Susan
B. Anthony,” 3 December 2001, as found at http://members.tripod.com/~danwe/susan.html.
35 David Reardon, “The Changing Face of
Feminism,” Celebrate Life May-June
1994, as found at http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/FACESFEM.TXT.
36 Frederica Matthews-Green, “Susan B. Anthony:
Pro-Life Feminist,” Focus on the Family, as
found at http://www.family.org/fofmag/sl/a0024084.cfm.
37 Patricia Ireland, What
Women Want (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1996), 75.
38 Betty Friedan, The
Feminine Mystique (New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1983),
75.
39 Patrick F. Fagan, Robert E. Rector, Lauren R.
Noyes, “Why Congress Should Ignore Radical Feminist Opposition to Marriage,” as
found at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/bg1662.cfm.
40 Ireland, 166.
41 Web site for Feminists for Life, as found at http://www/feministsforlife.org/who/.
42 Web site for Feminists for Life, “Voices of
our Feminist Foremothers,” as found at http://www.feministsforlife.org/history/foremoth.htm.
43 Web site for The Susan B. Anthony List, “Susan
B. Anthony, “ as found at http://members.tripod.com/~danwe/susan.html.
44 Op cit.
45 Sommers, 67.
46 Karen Lehrman, “MotherJones SO93: Off Course,”
as found at http://bsd.mojones.com/mother
_jones/SO93/lehrman.htm, originally published in Mother
Jones.
47 Sommers, 56, 57.
48 Nellie Smith, “The Feminist Politicization of
the University,” as found at http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/upstream/issues/fem/fempol.html.
49 Christina Hoff Sommers, “Sister Soldiers,” as
found at http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/upstream/people/sommers/SISTER.htm,
originally published in the New Republic.
50 Sommers, 58-60.
51 Smith.
52 Sommers, “Sister Soldiers.”
53 Ibid.
54 Jepsen, 63-64.
55 Crouse, A Christian
Women’s Declaration, 4.
56 Alicia Colon, “We Need a New Women’s
Movement…Now!” as found at http://www.geocities.com/~aliciacolon/cwfa.htm,
originally published in the Staten Island Advance, 10
December 2000.
57 Crouse, A Christian
Women’s Declaration, 12.
58 Christina Stolba, A
Room of One’s Own (Arlington, VA: Independent Women’s Forum,
2002), 32.
59 Smith.
60 Sommers, Who Stole
Feminism, 61.
61 Bridget Maher, editor, The
Family Portrait (Washington, DC: Family Research Council,
2002), 2.
62 Janice Shaw Crouse, Gaining
Ground: A Profile of American Women in the Twentieth Century (The
Beverly LaHaye Institute: 2001), 41, 43.
63 Op cit., 14.
64 Op cit., 38.
65 Op cit., 6-9.
66 Jepsen, 63.
67 Op cit., 16.
68 Alicia Colon, “Are We Women or Wusses?” as
found at http://www.geocities.com/aliciacolon/wusses.htm,
originally published in the Staten Island Advance, 21
August 2001.
69 Web site for Christian Life Resources, as
found at http://www.christianliferesources.com/cgi-bin/home.pl?statsGeneral.
70 “Abortion’s Impact on Society,” CWA Policy
Concerns, April 2000, as found at http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=1421&department=CWA&category=life.
71 Janice Shaw Crouse, Strengthening
American Families: What Works and What Doesn’t Work,
The Beverly LaHaye Institute, remarks delivered at the World Congress of
Families II, Geneva Switzerland, 17 November 1999, 4.
72 Maher, 173.
73 Ibid., 9.
74 Linda Bowles, “Feminism is Dying, We Can Only
Hope,” TownHall.com, 21 June 2000, as found at http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindabowles/lb000621.htm/.
75 “Feminist Follies,” Fall 1999, Clare Booth
Luce Policy Institute, as found at http://www.cblpolicyinstitute.org/fall1999.htm.
76 Virginia Haussegger, “The sins of our feminist
mothers,” theage.com.au, 23 July 2002, as found at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/07/22/1026898972150.html.
77 Op cit.
78 Virginia Hausegger, “Has feminism let us
down?” theage.com.au, 23 April 2003, as found at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/22/1050777253817.html.
79 “Feminist Follies,” Fall 2000, Clare Booth
Luce Policy Institute, as found at http://www.cblpolicyinstitute.org/fall2000.htm.
80 Poll: Slow Progress for Women,” CBSNEWS.com,
1999, as found at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/12/20/opinion/printable141757.shtml.
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