Feminism

There have always been women who protested against the patriarchy of their day, argued

that women were as capable as men in the realms of work and politics, and defied their

culture’s stereotypes about women. Yet the 20th century saw the most successful feminist

movement in history. The women’s suffrage movement of the early 20th century first (women’s suffrage

put women’s agendas on the national scene, but it was Margaret Sanger who most pro — The movement to get women the right to vote

foundly influenced women’s sexuality in the first half of the 20th century.

Sanger, a 30-year-old homemaker, attended a lecture on socialism that transformed her into an advocate for the rights of workers and their children. Sanger defied the Comstock laws by arguing that poor workers, who were having child after child, needed birth control. Her statement “It is none of society’s business what a woman shall do with her body” has remained the centerpiece of feminist views on the relation between the state and sexuality ever since. Because she published information about birth control,

Sanger was forced to flee to England to avoid arrest for violating the Comstock laws. She finally returned when a groundswell of support in the United States convinced her to come back and face trial. Intellectuals from across Europe wrote to President Woodrow Wilson on her behalf, and the public was so outraged by her arrest that the prosecutors dropped the case. She then opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn (which eventually evolved into the Planned Parenthood organization) and was repeatedly arrested, evok­ing much protest from her supporters.

After Sanger, organized feminism entered a quiet phase, not reemerging until the 1960s. In the middle of the 20 th century, women increasingly entered institutions of higher education and entered the labor force in great numbers while men were off fight­ing World War II. At the same time, divorce rates were rising, many women widowed by war were raising children as single parents, and the postwar baby boom relegated middle class women to their suburban homes. Social conditions had given women more power just as their roles were being restricted again to wife and mother. A backlash was soon to come.

The modern feminist movement can best be summarized by the work of three women authors (Ferree & Hess, 1985). In her 1949 book, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir showed that women were not granted an identity of their own but were con­sidered the objects of men’s wishes and anxieties. Betty Friedan followed in 1963 with The Feminine Mystique, a 10-year follow-up of the lives of her graduating class from Smith College, in which she found that these educated, bright women felt trapped in the role of housewife and wanted careers in order to have happier, more fulfilled lives. Finally, at the height of the Vietnam War, Kate Millet’s (1969) Sexual Politics argued that patriarchy breeds violence and forces men to renounce all that is feminine in them. According to Millet, rape is an act of aggression aimed at keeping women docile and controlling them, and men see homosexuality as a “failure” of patriarchy, so it is vio­lently repressed.

Feminists of the 1960s argued that they were entitled to sexual satisfaction, that the existing relations of the sexes were exploitative, and that women had a right to con­trol their lives and their bodies. Some of the more radical feminists advocated lesbian­ism as the only relationship not based on male power, but most feminists fought for a transformation of the interpersonal relationship of men and women and of the male — dominated political structure. Part of the freedom women needed was the freedom to choose when to be mothers, and the right to choose abortion became a firm part of the feminist platform.

Feminism has made great cultural and political strides and has changed the nature of American society and sexual behavior. The pursuit of sexual pleasure is now seen as a woman’s legitimate right, and men are no longer expected to be the sexual experts relied upon by docile, virginal mates. Feminists were at the forefront of the abortion debate and hailed the legalization of abortion as a great step in achieving women’s rights over their own bodies. More recently, women have begun entering politics in record numbers, and the Senate, Congress, and governorships are increasingly counting women among their members. Even so, women still have many struggles. Men are paid more than women for the same work, poverty is increasingly a problem of single mothers, and rape and spousal abuse are still major social problems in the United States. Still, feminism as a movement has had a major impact on the way America views sexuality.