[dropcap]B[/dropcap]etty Friedan is the author of the 1963 publication many people consider the foundation of modern feminism, “the Feminine Mystique”. She also founded the National Organization for Women, running it from her apartment starting from 1966.
Friedan stepped down from her position as NOW’s first president in 1970 and pursued political activism which included the nation-wide Women’s Strike for Equality on August 26 1970. This strike was successful enough to significantly broaden the feminist movement. In 1971, Friedan joined other leading feminists to establish the National Women’s Political Caucus.
As the founder and early organizer of the movement which is now one of the largest hate organizations in the world, it would be easy to rationalize inclusion of Friedan in the bigot category of register-her.com, but it would be incorrect.
The corruption, the tradition of fraudulent statistics, the routine employment of logical fallacy in feminist rhetoric, and the numerous other failings of modern feminism do not belong to Betty Friedan.
To be sure, much of her philosophical position was strongly opposed to the humanist libertarian point of view many MRA’s lean towards. However, Friedan was a curmudgeon, and though her social movement in its modern form opposes human rights, Friedan herself was a strict adherent to what she saw as the truth. Unlike many later feminists, her version of feminism did not rest on a foundation of hatred.
Friedan’s obituary[1], published in the UK Independent makes this clear; “because I’m not anti-marriage and anti-family. I always thought it was dangerous to go against the idea of the family. I don’t even like the phrase “women’s liberation” because that idea of being set free from everything doesn’t seem right to me. I like to think of the women’s movement as a fight for equality. Friedan’s The Second Stage (1981) aimed to set the record straight, stating that men were not the enemy”
Friedan was briefly a candidate entry in the database of Register-her.com, listed under the category of offence as Domestic Violence False Accuser. As a moderator of the registry, it seemed that founder of the world’s most successful hate movement should be listed in an alternate category of offence. The candidate entry, while noting her claim of accusing an ex husband of battery and refuting that accusation with: “she later admitted this was not true,” this entry to the registry was short of detail or corroboration. This motivated me to conduct my own research, and to assume a better category would be that of bigot. My assumption proved incorrect and I deleted the candidate entry in the registry for the founder of NOW.
In her autobiography, published in 2000, she stated that her ex husband, divorced in 1969 has beaten her during her marriage. This claim was disputed by Carl Friedan. The Register-her candidate entry submitted contained the statement that “Friedan later admitted this was not true”. Unfortunately, the description of that statement of admission is incomplete. Referring back to Friedan’s obituary:
“She said that her husband had beaten her, a claim which Carl Friedan strongly rejected. Betty Friedan then admitted they had exchanged blows, commenting, “Look, I’m not a doormat. We did have our battles.”
Sometimes a political opponent is just a political opponent, and not a criminal. Friedan’s monster continues to cut a swath of destruction through the social landscape, but Friedan is not the ideologue who turned an erstwhile fight for equality into persecution of half the human race.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/betty-friedan-465800.html
