I'd never read the book myself until recently. My reason for not reading it was that I'd regarded it as something that addressed the troubles of my parents' generation. I went to college in 1969, when everyone was reading "Sexual Politics" and "The Female Eunuch." "The Feminine Mystique" seemed really old fashioned — about June Cleaver and her cohort.
Here's Bazelon:
[W]hat hit me was Betty’s howl of frustration. It’s primal, and you feel its desperate force on almost every page. God, did she feel trapped among the slipcovers of the suburbs and in the pages of the women’s magazines she wrote for, where big ideas and questions were entirely unwelcome. The only way to escape was to pulverize the image of the Happy Housewife Heroine who is the title of Chapter 2. Betty’s fiercest critique in this book is of the “mistaken choice” she thinks traditional gender roles forced middle-class women and their husbands to make....What made me dislike the book — when I finally read it — was that Freidan was not in the role of the housewives she purported to understand so well. She was in the role of writing for women's magazines. She didn't like the limited topics that were the stuff of that kind of magazine. She makes an assumption that women who buy a magazine are only interested in the topics covered by that magazine. But that's absurd! If you bought a magazine about cooking/childcare/fashion, that wouldn't mean you aren't interested in politics or science or whatever else is supposed to be more important. You might have other magazines — or books — for that.
Why the assumption? It might be frustrating for a journalist who's interested in politics to crank out material about topics she doesn't care about, but it was wrong to project those frustrations onto the unknown women who bought the magazines for their own purposes and used the information in those magazines in their individual private lives — perhaps to make a nice dinner efficiently so there would be time to read a good book in the extra time one can make in a day when you don't have a job. The notion that A Job belongs at the center of everyone's life is a huge scam, and the blithe rejection of the 1-earner marriage was an amazing, tragic shift in American culture. The equality of women — the ambition and the fulfilment of women — did not demand that we all get a job.
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R Emmett Tyrrell "Betty Friedan and the Women of the Fevered Brow" _Public Nuisances_
The movement was born amid the sounds of the morning wash being automatically battered and dried in the laundry rooms of suburbia. The last crumbs of breakfast had been lugged away, the coffee was poured, and a scowling Miss Betty Friedan sat with the most awesome circle of women ever gathered under the roof of a modern ranch-type house. Together they deliberated, as rage feathered the linings of their bowels. The whole day yawned before them. Soon it would be back and forth, back and forth to the powder room. Coffee and house work can have that effect. These brave women were trapped with a vast expanse of desolate hours stretching out to that remote time when the kids returned from school and the idiot traipsed in with his evening paper. It was insanity, and still the infernal washing machine kept vibrating in the background. Soon the maid would be emptying it and feeding it, emptying it and feeding it. There would be telephones and shopping and God knows what all. Rosa Luxemburg had been right ; so had -- their genitalia notwithstanding -- C. Wright Mills and Norman O. Brown. It was time to hoist the black flag. Penis envy, ha!
The women began to read, and in time they began to shout. Millions of witches had been burned in the Middle Ages, yet here we were in the early 1960s and still no inquest had been held. Not even many books on the atrocity could be found. There was much work to be done.
The end of the one-wage-earner household was not rejected "blithely." It came as a result of economic forces. Women had to go to work to help maintain their families' standards of living.
There's a great hour-long lecture (somewhere on YouTube) on the subject by a Harvard law prof (woman) in which she runs down all the truly scary consequences of the requirement that both parents work. Basically, today, if one parent cannot work, the family is at huge risk for leaving the middle class.
Friedan wasn't so much a magazine writer as she was a communist propagandist subsidized by a wealthy husband.
Bazelon has profited in this life from being a descendant of a family of illustrious lawyers. Her family inheritance of privilege... well, she takes it for granted and sees nothing wrong with it.
In your own blog, she savaged middle class white men who profit from descending from families of fire fighters, and insisted that their jobs should be taken from them by a racial quota system.
In other words, Emily Bazelon is just a scam artist.
She's in favor of Emily Bazelon getting things. Other people... well, screw 'em.
The feminism is so much superficial hucksterism.
God, did she feel trapped among the slipcovers of the suburbs and in the pages of the women’s magazines she wrote for, where big ideas and questions were entirely unwelcome.
These are now known as "First World Problems."
The success of feminism can be explained in large part by the dynamics of Bazelon's and Freidan's scam.
The tactic is to always call out the chivalrous response in men, in this case in the upper class men to whom they were attached.
And the chivalrous response from those upper class men is to fix things for their little baby girls, and to deflect the blame to those awful lower class men who everybody knows treat their women badly.
This preposterous game continues to this day.
I read it several times and found it entertaining. There was a lot of interesting stuff on advertising psychology that has been written about elsewhere but was all new to me.
It wasn't about me or my mother's generation either. It seemed to be more about Eastern ladies, who went to Seven Sisters schools and married suitably within their class. But I felt similar pressures to act a certain way, which in my obliviousness I proceeded to ignore.
Betty was no angel.
Mr Friedan said that he was no longer speaking to his ex-wife. The war of words between feminism's first couple continues, however, on the internet. He has set up a web site to offer an alternative portrait of their marriage, describing her as "the most violent person I have ever known". He wrote: "Betty. . . tottered on a thin line just this side of insanity." He also claimed that her violent temper was made worse by the use of amphetamines.
Mr Friedan, who has twice remarried, gives details of one incident in which he was forced to pin her against the wall of their New York apartment "like a lion tamer" after she attacked him with kitchen knives. In another explosion of rage, he told the New York Post recently, she used shards of a broken mirror as weapons. "For the first time I seriously believed she could actually kill me," he told the newspaper.
Mrs Friedan, who is said to be increasingly frail after a series of heart valve operations, has not responded to her former husband's counter-attack. She is said to have been surprised that journalists have focused on the wife-beating allegations, telling one interviewer: "It's been sensationalised out of context. He's no wife beater."
If you accused men of being less interested in cooking/childcare/fashion than they are in politics and science the response would be, "Well, of course, what's the problem?" But the reverse of that common sense empirical observation applied to women evinces a "That's absurd!" response from Althouse.
Basically, today, if one parent cannot work, the family is at huge risk for leaving the middle class.
This is actually more complicated than you say. Consider two families, each with a couple young children.
In Family A, both parents work. Because of that, they have to spend a considerable amount of their income on child care. Due to the shortage of time, they're more likely to buy prepared meals instead of cooking meals from scratch. And due to their higher family income, they're likely to pay a lot of taxes.
In Family B, one parent stays home so there are no childcare expenses. That parent has more time to shop wisely and prepare meals so they can not only save money, they can eat healthier food. Their income will be lower than Family A but so will their taxes. It's quite likely that when all costs are factored in, they'll have more total net income than Family A.
Of course, it all depends on what kind of income each parent can earn and where they live, but I've seen situations where having both parents work results in a lower income for the family.
I was well into my 30s before I understood the game... which is blaming men lower in social status.
This has always been everything that feminism is about. There is nothing else to feminism. The history is a lie. The ideology is a lie. Women playing on men's chivalry to incite hatred of lower class men is the sum total of feminism.
Young men get trapped into this nonsense as a way to please young women and get laid. Men don't mind slandering other men to get what they want, so the chances of this cycle of stupidity ever ending are just about nil.
The apotheosis of this blaming down the social ladder sickness is the current hate attack on middle and lower class hetero white men as the cause of all evil.
Basically, today, if one parent cannot work, the family is at huge risk for leaving the middle class.
This is actually more complicated than you say. Consider two families, each with a couple young children.
In Family A, both parents work. Because of that, they have to spend a considerable amount of their income on child care. Due to the shortage of time, they're more likely to buy prepared meals instead of cooking meals from scratch. And due to their higher family income, they're likely to pay a lot of taxes.
In Family B, one parent stays home so there are no childcare expenses. That parent has more time to shop wisely and prepare meals so they can not only save money, they can eat healthier food. Their income will be lower than Family A but so will their taxes. It's quite likely that when all costs are factored in, they'll have more total net income than Family A.
Of course, it all depends on what kind of income each parent can earn and where they live, but I've seen situations where having both parents work results in a lower income for the family.
She makes an assumption that women who buy a magazine are only interested in the topics covered by that magazine. But that's absurd!
Althouse readers are clearly only interested in borrowed dogs, politics, law schools, Amazon purchases, The Great Gatsby, and men in shorts.
Oh, and breasts. Can't forget the breasts.
ST nails it in the nuts. Friedan was a total poseur who was ANYTHING but a harassed middle-class housewife.. Same for Brazelton. Rather they both are lefty ideologues--provocateurs who despise the middle-brow, middle-class life that built this nation with every fiber of their pampered beings--and it shows.. The Nomenklatura always have their limos and country-side Dachas even as they enveigh against the sort of money and social system that allows lesser mortals to enjoy them as well--witness AlGore--these people are little but hypocritical parasites on society..
Don't forget Hathaway vulva!
I pity the Americans who don't understand the need to do the math Larry J is describing.
...and the idiot traipsed in with his evening paper.
And the modern misandry movement began.
These are now known as "First World Problems."
Hee. Also, 'slipcovers of the suburbs'??? Ugh.
If she didn't like writing for whatever womens magazines she wrote for she could have branched out. If Jane Austen could write awesome novels round about the 1800s then I don't have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Friedan because she had to write the kind of stuff that sold.
Larry J said...
Basically, today, if one parent cannot work, the family is at huge risk for leaving the middle class.
This is actually more complicated than you say. Consider two families, each with a couple young children.
In Family A, both parents work. Because of that, they have to spend a considerable amount of their income on child care. Due to the shortage of time, they're more likely to buy prepared meals instead of cooking meals from scratch. And due to their higher family income, they're likely to pay a lot of taxes.
In Family B, one parent stays home so there are no childcare expenses. That parent has more time to shop wisely and prepare meals so they can not only save money, they can eat healthier food. Their income will be lower than Family A but so will their taxes. It's quite likely that when all costs are factored in, they'll have more total net income than Family A.
Of course, it all depends on what kind of income each parent can earn and where they live, but I've seen situations where having both parents work results in a lower income for the family.
The reason usually for family A possibly having a lower net income is because the second working parent, Mom A is basically working to pay the two primary expenses that the family has, childcare and the taxes. That is basically the role of women in a two parent household that both work.
I used to listen the Slate podcast with Ms. Bazelon, David Plotz and John(Destroy the Republicans) Dickerson. Plotz and Dickerson regularly, constantly and visciously mocked Emily for being a little ditzy! Let's just say she was the weak link in the trio!
Most are leaving the middle class, thanks, Barry!
Also Kudos to Larry for pointing out the two income trap issues.
This is why if you learn nothing else about business you need to learn how to do a cost benefit analysis. And a breakeven point.
"The end of the one-wage-earner household was not rejected "blithely." It came as a result of economic forces. Women had to go to work to help maintain their families' standards of living."
True, but only in part. For example, both my parents worked so they could afford send us to a private christian school. They didn't really care about the religious aspect, but they wanted us to have a decent education. And they knew that the public schools they had attended, and which they were also paying for, were now ineffective and dangerous.
As it is now, the economics argument isn't nearly as compelling as it once was. Childcare costs and taxes can burn through that second income pretty fast.
Larry J arithmetic works well until you send them to Madison to cheer for the Badgers!
" pages of the women’s magazines she wrote for, where big ideas and questions were entirely unwelcome."
I wonder how may writers for "Field and Stream" felt the same about the prison of men's magazines.
Unfortunately for Ms. Friedan, there are women who want to stay home with their children. Some even work part time at Wal-Mart and suck up Medicaid.
Unfortunately for Ms. Friedan, biology still rules.
Males & females learn differently, etc.
Didn't Camille LaPaglia write something or was it another feminist reflecting that they screwed the younger generation over?
It was in the past few years, she said she was wrong.
Althouse is also playing the game.
Her recent denunciation of the political and economic interests of middle and lower class white men as "stupid" is just another example of an upper middle class woman calling on the chivalry of men of her class, and condemning those awful lower class men who must compete against illegals for low wage low skill jobs.
Such men are supposed to have more sense than to exist. Their existence is in bad taste, and is assumed to be threatening to the poor women who must associate with them.
Feminism is women playing out this game of class hatred. That's all it is.
Oh, and breasts. Can't forget the breasts.
Never.
Florence King seems to have done all right for herself not writing exclusively for women's magazines...
Being a full time housewife and mother IS a job. It is a job that has value. As Larry said the financial contribution to the family unit from the stay at home spouse is quantifiable.
When I was discussing life insurance with a married couple, the topic of the value or worth of the stay at home spouse [generally the wife] would come up. The wife would say, well I don't need much insurance because I'm not working. When we discussed, what would happen if you were gone/dead and brought in the costs to hire someone to do all those tasks....house cleaning, child care, transportation, shopping, bookkeeping etc etc. The blinders would come off and they would realize that the cost to replace the wife or stay at home spouse was really quite large and it IS worth insuring your life.
Ah, here's that Harvard Law prof video. From 2008.
Turns out this prof is now quite a familiar face.
Regardless of what you think of her, it's a compelling speech...here
I understand the frustration of unwelcome big ideas, though the problem is that subjects of conversation tend to be what women have in common (kids) and not what they probably don't have in common (the impracticalities of ones preferred political set-up implemented on a space station).
What bothers me about feminism is that it falls into the same trap of avoiding the big questions in favor of the female questions. There's an inescapable element of marginalization built into the concept itself.
Never did read it, and I was in college in 1969 too.
I never understood the concept of having to choose one over the other, work and family. I know plenty of people, a relative included who was CEO of a company, has been married for 42 years and raised 2 productive, well adjusted children.
I never wanted a piece of literature to define what I can or can't do with my life.
Anger is soooo counter-productive.
Vicki from Pasadena
It seems to me that feminism was the answer to an economic problem that only lasted for a brief period of time.
Until the great migration to the cities (late 1800s?) women had all they could handle working as partners on the farm. For a relatively brief period of time after the turn of the 20th century some women actually had leisure - or at least no where near the back-breaking work of farming - and then society constrained them from working.
Along came WWII and women went back to work. After WWII the economic question was: What to do with the scarce economic resource - women? The answer: put them to work!
Friedan was just a shill in a great economic game!
If you have two or more kids, then a stay home parent can definitely save the family enough money to equal having a job outside, and the non-monetary benefits are very worthwhile.
If you could get a tax rebate for homeschooling then bam! you get a smarter, better-behaved kid, and the money.
If I was a stay-at-home dad with two or three kids, I know I could make that into the equivalent of a decent job, and I would have a home business ta boot. I'd have those kids weaving baskets or packaging medical marijuana or packaging it in little woven baskets, or something useful.
Larry J said: Of course, it all depends on what kind of income each parent can earn and where they live, but I've seen situations where having both parents work results in a lower income for the family.
I've noticed that sort of thing a lot, too. Also, if only one person is working, the other can support his/her career in various ways - go out and make connections/clients for the worker, help the worker gain new skills, etc. Also, if the kids are sick, the worker doesn't have to miss work, and if the worker gets a better opportunity, the family can move fairly easily.
The dual-career family is extremely inefficient for a lot of reasons.
My name is Emily Bazelon. I’m a feminist.
is processed in my head as
Hmmm...a crashing bore named Emily
and I stop reading.
It's like the new acquaintance that just has to tell you he owns a Porsche.
Basically, today, if one parent cannot work, the family is at huge risk for leaving the middle class.
When you also consider all working-age men, including those who are not working, the real earnings of the median male have actually declined by 19 percent since 1970. This also factors into the cost benefit analysis...if a standard of living is to be met, somewhere, somehow, someone has to pick up the slack.
BTW, we were a two-income family, who cooked from scratch...to save our pennies for other things.
Bryan C.: As it is now, the economics argument isn't nearly as compelling as it once was.
Economics never was IMO; just a diversion. It was always about empowerment and equality and family roles. Economics is the fall-back excuse we overuse.
Larry and Bryan make a stronger case.
My mother went to work in the same manufacturing plant that my dad worked in, where my grandmother also worked as a riveter during the war. No, her name was Jenny.
My mom was a welder right beside the men for 25 years, and I doubt she ever considered herself different or a feminist. Both parents worked 7 - 3:30. I never felt neglected. I had a baby sitter, but mostly was in school or playing anyway. The options can all work, and they have all along. A lot of feminism was just as popular fad of the chattering classes.
Althouse has slowly seen the light. Her great civil rights crusade for feminism was bullshit. The "oppression" of women" was a self-serving myth.
The same is true of the "oppression of gays." It's a bullshit self-serving myth.
So, the question is... Althouse, when are you going to stop peddling the self-serving bullshit?
Freidan was from a well-off family of Jewish commies.
In much of her early years, she was both into Jewish causes and Stalinism, herself.
To hopefully help in the manipulation and transformation of backwards, repressive capitalist American society to a more Progressive Ideal.
She was anything but an average middle class American housewife. Unless you see that typical housewife coming from wealth, a grad of Smith College, and attending weekly meetings devoted to helping advance Comrade Stalin's vision for the world.
Bazelon? Same basic deal, except for the Stalinist part.
"The equality of women — the ambition and the fulfilment of women — did not demand that we all get a job."
And yet the ardent and strident feminists insist on it.
Well, Prof. Althouse, I ask you the same question I posited to Linda Ellerbee when in one of her columns she bemoaned the loss of many of the things she fondly remembered as a girl, such as "convertibles": and just who the hell's fault is THAT????
As posted to your comments yesterday, it was YOUR carde of baby boomers that threw the baby out with the bath water. You get exactly zero sympathy from me.
Larry J hit the nail on the head. I live in a very middle class area. Most of the women I know stay home (at the very least) when their kids are small. They might work later when their kids have gone to school. The ones that do work have their parents watch their kids as nannies (FOR FREE!). I see a lot of harried grandmothers at the library.
Althouse is right to pity those who cannot do the math. This is the difference between the poor and the middle class. The poor have taken to heart all the progressive's social views: children don't need to be born in wedlock, you must both work to support a family, fathers are not necessary for a well developed child. It is clear that the middle and upper classes have not changed nearly as much from June Cleaver's day as Bazelon would have us believe.
Being at home with kids can be isolating and not everyone can deal with that well. And then you go to "mom" groups and talk about kids instead of space stations (and you absolutely don't bring up politics) or you go to church and they stick you in the nursery with the kids. (I think this was all worse for me because we moved to places I had no established family and friends.)
In any case, I don't dismiss the real need to have adult-time and activities that actually interest you (instead of just the "mom" groups). And I'd advise stay-at-home moms or dads to work out part time if at all possible, even if it costs as much as you make doing it, just to keep a job history current and active for when the kids are grown.
Different people are different. I think sometimes that most men would do better stay-at-home than most women do. I don't think I'd give up the years I spent at home, though. There was an immense amount of freedom in ordering your own days, take off for a month or two to visit grandma with the kids, stuff you could never do even with that part-time job.
Come to think of it. I probably could have used a no-nonsense "how to be a housewife" magazine. There was a huge rebellion against the concept of home economics but some of us really could have benefited from being told how to properly manage the laundry or arrange the pantry.
I pity the Americans who don't understand the need to do the math Larry J is describing
Except he left out Family C.
Family C is just like Family A except they remodel their house to add a mother-in-law apartment. Then the widowed mother of one spouse moves in, and does all the things the stay-at-home spouse does in Family B. The mother-in-law loves the arrangement because she gets plenty of time with her grandchildren, it's rent free to her, and it comes with the promise that she can stay there and be taken care of down the road in old age.
Been there, done that. A win for all parties.
Althouse is right to pity those who cannot do the math. This is the difference between the poor and the middle class.
Some of the poor are women who are not married, with no shall I stay home or shall I work math calculations to make, aside from if they can make more than the government gives them. Actually, this is one of the things we discussed in my labor econ class in college - which was one of the more interesting classes I took. How all of the different economic factor, pay level versus govt benefits etc...how they impact the decision people make at every level. It's never a simple answer, you always have to do the math.
[W]hat hit me was Betty’s howl of frustration. It’s primal, and you feel its desperate force on almost every page.
What a selling point for a book! Just what I want to read, a book wherein a frustrated, desperate woman howls at me from cover to cover!
I think sometimes that most men would do better stay-at-home than most women do.
Heresy!
"The end of the one-wage-earner household was not rejected "blithely." It came as a result of economic forces. Women had to go to work to help maintain their families' standards of living."
"There's a great hour-long lecture (somewhere on YouTube) on the subject by a Harvard law prof (woman) in which she runs down all the truly scary consequences of the requirement that both parents work. Basically, today, if one parent cannot work, the family is at huge risk for leaving the middle class."
2/13/13, 2:09 PM
St George, that woman professor from Harvard, who's lecture regarding the necessity of a both partners being wage earners to get by in today's economy....wait for it..... is Elizabeth Warren.
I think Althouse is dead on in her analysis.
The economic question comes down to "which came first"--women's increased labor-force participation or the wage/cost-of-living squeeze. The evidence I'm aware of suggests that the movement into the workplace by women was not induced by economic forces.
You can interpret an amazing fraction of the fundamental economic trends since 1970 as the consequence of a massive and relatively sudden increase in the total labor force and in the number of women training for and pursuing full-time careers.
I was involved in with a men's issues group for about six months, and even served as editor of their quarterly magazine.
I quickly sized up the situation as hopeless.
The chivalrous willingness of men to rat out other men as abusers of women destroyed any ability of the group to function.
Women are very skilled at playing men against one another with the call to chivalry. I see little hope that men will ever devise a coherent response. The crazy pick-up artists, like Heartiste, hav decided just to amuse themselves with vicious revenge. While that is amusing, and perhaps justified in a certain sense, it is not a coherent political response.
I just moved on. My private, personal relationships are forged with women who don't play these vicious games with men. Such women do exist. You'll have to find them on your own.
Deirdre Mundy,
Another Florence King fan here. Yep, she certainly branched out from writing for women's magazines (I love her account of dashing off "I Committed Adultery in a Diabetic Coma" for one such). And judging by When Sisterhood Was in Flower (possibly the funniest book I have ever read), she had more than a passing acquaintance with the written-porn market.
When I worked at the late, not-really-that-great Borders, they had coded The Florence King Reader as to be filed in "Women's Studies." Yes, really.
St.George, Ah, I see you posted a link further down thread, good.
As many here have stated, two incomes for a family, does not guarantee any better financial situation and a parent at home (or even homeschooling as we did) can have definite advantages. Yes there was a need to adjust the gender roles in the culture, its been going on but its not always been done correctly. Not matter which side comes out ahead its the children who lose.
Larry J arithmetic works well until you send them to Madison to cheer for the Badgers!
Or until a divorce, and the stay-at-home parent then has to work but has no current skills.
Or until the kids are in school, and the stay-at-home parent tries to re-enter a workforce with skills that are 10 years out of date.
I agree with Larry J. absolutely, by the way. I get the impression that people are just waiting for childcare to become another free item, like tubal ligations under PPACA. It will not happen, folks. It's expensive by nature, unless you can rope a relative into providing it free, and most of the time, it makes more sense, economic and otherwise, to do it yourself. It's almost always better for things to be done freely for love than under contract for money.
Such women do exist.
Agreed. But they tend to be from outside the US.
MadMan,
Excellent points. As Synova mentioned, having a 10-year gap on the resume has consequences. Overall, the stay-at-home's future earning potential is decreased. That needs to be considered as well.
She was exercising her right to do whatever she wanted, good for her. It was then up to others to react to it and accept it or reject it. Are you saying she somehow victimized women with her thesis? Women who weren't victims of any traditional system, of course, but were somehow victims of Betty Friedan and feminism? Contradiction.
My name is Emily Bazelon. And I am an alcoholic.
DBQ,
"As Larry said the financial contribution to the family unit from the stay at home spouse is quantifiable"
Shut up! SHUT UP!!!!! Good grief, do you want them to start taxing it?
MadisonMan,
Or until a divorce, and the stay-at-home parent then has to work but has no current skills.
Or until the kids are in school, and the stay-at-home parent tries to re-enter a workforce with skills that are 10 years out of date.
In the first case, can't we assume child support and/or alimony? In the second, surely children are in school a lot younger than that. (Yes, I realize you're imagining a number of children in close succession. How common is that pattern, and how often is it ten years between the birth of the first child and the time the last can go to school?)
Also, it is possible to work from home, you know, or to do freelance work that entails relatively little absence from home.
My name is Emily Bazelon and I am a feminazi.
@ Madison Man.
Oh yes, the middle class would be better off farming children out to daycare because we wouldn't want any resume gaps!?!?
Seriously, there are more important things to worry about . . . it all goes back to that stubborn pay gap between the sexes and the reason that it exists (and its not discrimination).
@ Shanna
As I said, the poor believed they were ok raising children out of wedlock. Its a lie.
G Joubert said...
Except he left out Family C.
I grew up in a Family C.
My name is Emily Bazelon and I am a Big C-U-NEXT-Thursday.
I was twelve years old, in 1973, when my parents separated, so I've always thought that the point of feminism is to give women the ability to stop having sex with their husbands while still claiming the moral high ground.
"Also, it is possible to work from home, you know, or to do freelance work that entails relatively little absence from home."
It's possible for *some* people to work from home. I'm too ADD. I'm either watching my kids or doing something that takes no concentration at all, or I'm oblivious to the world.
And working from home doesn't give you adult time, which wasn't so much of a problem in eras with extended families living and working together.
And it's not that the gap in the resume is horrible because you don't make as much afterward, it's that it can be near impossible to find a job at all. And it doesn't take widow-hood or divorce, it can just take the kids growing up or being done with home school.
I'm a proponent of one parent staying home and homeschooling kids and having a general separation of roles in a cooperative domestic effort.
But a person has to be realistic about how well they cope with the role they've taken on. Not everyone is naturally good at the same things.
I actually met Betty Friedan in, probably, 1968 at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa. She was promoting her book and philosophy. What struck me was that someone asked a question and she turned purple screaming something about the guy having a penis. I left right after that.
"Except he left out Family C."
I much prefer Family D.
Guy stays single, keeping his disposable income to himself. Guy bangs the many sexually liberated skanks that modern feminism has produced, replacing them with new models like some people do with leased vehicles. Or socks, to each their own schedule. Girls grow old with many cats. Guy buys boat.
Men age like a fine wine, women age like a carton of milk.
With the destruction of the nuclear family, why not a family of one?
50 years and still complaining about the terrible feminine position.
The bottomless pit of grievance.
"Being a full time housewife and mother IS a job. It is a job that has value."
It involves a lot of work, but it actually isn't a job, unless you want to define the word broadly. But why would you?
A full-time job is a 40-hour-week thing. That's not want the stay-at-home spouse is doing. It's 24-7 and the other spouse, when he/she is home starts doing it too. Most of the time you are merely on call, however. It's not the same kind of work you leave the house and do for money. It's on-and-off, undefined, and unpaid. And you don't pay taxes on the in-kind economic contribution you make to the family.
It's an economically beneficial arrangement, but it takes some skill to do it. First of all you need a relationship with your spouse, with mutual commitment to making the single-earner system work. You need mutual respect and understanding of why it is fair and what each person is doing for the good of the family. Often people lapse into sore feelings one way or the other.
Betty Friedan was encouraging the kind of sore feelings that make the system fail.
While I believe in planning for the future, you can't base your family life around the idea that the marriage might not last.
I do think its odd how much people seem to think having a paying job increases the value of who you are, like its your obligation to society. Yet in reality, if everyone took care of their family, we'd have a lot fewer social problems.
You broads think too much.
Being a full time housewife and mother IS a job. It is a job that has value. As Larry said the financial contribution to the family unit from the stay at home spouse is quantifiable.
While it is a job, it isn't a lifetime job. The financial advantages for a two-job family don't manifest during the time the kids are growing up -- they manifest in the decades after the kids are out of the house.
"in the pages of the women’s magazines she wrote for, where big ideas and questions were entirely unwelcome."
Slick magazines exist to sell stuff. Advertisers- not readers- pay the bills.
And housekeeping problems tend to have tidy, commercial solutions. Big ideas, not so much.
Women's magazines are magazines. Could she truly have been so dense as to not realize that magazines are advertiser-supported media?
I can not relate to this aspect of feminism. My maternal elders worked, the older relatives male or female(too old work) raised the children. The women worked along the husband's whether it be in the mills, farming or fishing. Where they came from taking care of a home/cooking/cleaning really did take up the whole day by one person.
The women had great relationships with their husbands, and enjoyed a good social life whether it be dancing, playing music, or a game of cards. They read the newspaper, not magazines. No domestic abuse or getting drunk. Even if they had traditional roles, husbands were cooperative and considerate of their work.
Money or work wasn't a tool to use as a means of power, the man's whole pay check went into the family pot. If your male ancestors were not jerks in this time period, as a woman it is hard to relate or be angry.
No matter if is 1963 or 2013, if you partner/husband/father is an abusive jerk day to day and your spend your free time reading Cosmo or its online equivalent, life is pretty miserable.
"St George, that woman professor from Harvard, who's lecture regarding the necessity of a both partners being wage earners to get by in today's economy....wait for it..... is Elizabeth Warren."
Ha ha ha. It's the lefty vision: everyone is a worker. Workers of the world unite. The woman, left in the home, feeling good about it, is supposed to see her false consciousness, how privilege is not privilege, and go out to join the workforce. But feminism imposes its own false consciousness: that working will be satisfying. But the real left-wing plan is that you won't be satisfied working. But you will be one of the workers, demanding the transformation of everything to suit the needs you have come to share. Get out of your comfortable houses and go to work. Why was that an attractive imprecation? Friedan openly tells us that she hates HER job, writing for those terrible magazines. But that was a relatively nice job. Where did she think women would go?
As virgil notes, Shout nails it anent Friedan, a Commie front - and the ugliest woman of the feminist movement (no mean feat).
PS Does anybody honestly belive a one income middle class household wouldn't be viable if taxes were cut in half?
Having thoughtfully considered the question of gender, the Althouse commenters light up the boards with discussion.
Said nobody ever.
"Girls grow old with many cats. Guy buys boat."
I like the way the guy was winning in this scheme and then he bought a boat. Ha ha. He was getting off free of burdens and then he had to get himself a boat. Oops!
You are an Althouse commenter, harrogate.
"But feminism imposes its own false consciousness: that working will be satisfying."
That's a good point but it isn't the only ideology that imposes this false consciousness. The juxtaposition ought not to be against homemaking alone. How about juxtaposing against the long lunch break and the vacation and not needing a full time job for health insurance so that you can work 20 hours a week and make that work. Or even lollygagging.
Inside these seemingly extreme examples is nonetheless a way of looking at the world that merits high valuing, by men no less than women.
"Where did she think women would go?"
Law school and medical school, right?
Having thoughtfully considered the question of gender, the Althouse commenters light up the boards with discussion.
Said nobody ever.
In other words, you disagree, but you have nothing to say, except that you speak for a broad based constituency which you can't identify.
MayBee, yes I am. One difference might be that I don't think I have said anything thoughtful about gender on this thread, either.
Law school and medical school, right?
That's true for a very few.
For the rest, it's clerical work and sales.
Ann, did you listen to her lecture? That's not what Warren was saying at all. She spelled out the economic realities of a two person wage earner family in our current economic situation. It had nothing to do with one's self worth, IIRC. I will have to relisten to it to be sure.
It was the extra's like two cars, a bigger home, a pool, uneccesary things that modern couples felt they needed, that drove the spouse to get a job, the job wasn't the measure of worthiness, it was the "stuff".
MayBee, yes I am. One difference might be that I don't think I have said anything thoughtful about gender on this thread, either.
You're an idiot, harrowgate.
Althouse has a devouring intellect. She's clearly changing and readjusting. If she wanted, she could isolate herself in a world where she encounters only ass kissing sycophants. I'm often hard on her, but I appreciate the fact that she doesn't want to be sealed into that.
What you call "thought" about gender is recitation of the PC party line.
Hello everybody I'm Emily Bazelon and I am a feminist! I never did read that book everybody else read and that my life's work is based upon but I did know that woman when I was a little kid and went coat-shopping with her once with my grandmuthuuuuuuuurrrrr. And other stuff and other stuff and other stuff too. So, say, what do you think our main issues are now? Huh?
Then I can start being fierce.
How about juxtaposing against the long lunch break and the vacation and not needing a full time job for health insurance so that you can work 20 hours a week and make that work
Translation: "It sure would be nice if somebody else paid my bills so I could do as I pleased!"
Well yeah, it would. It just isn't a system that scales well, for obvious reasons -- who wants to be the sucker left working full-time to pay those bills?
I read Warren's book. Her argument isn't one or two incomes. Rather if you have two incomes, live as if you have one and put the other income to better use. A bigger home, a better car, or a luxury vacation may not be the best of use of the second income for the working middle class. For many of us it is a waste, but her book is a definite guide for those who live on one income.
One man's burden is another man's freedom.
Or woman for that matter, for the nautically inclined dames out there.
At any rate, you can abandon a boat or declare bankruptcy to get rid of a boat if it becomes a burden, in a way that is legally and morally prohibited when it comes to spouses and children.
Hello Everybody I'm Chip Ahoy and aren't my anecdotes and opinions so quirrrrky even as I say the same thing everyone else is saying on every thread? Now watch this drive.
Revenant,
Fair enough, but then if you put Ann's post and comments together with yours, one thing you wind up with is high value for "A Job" for men (else he's a lazy ass), but for women, not so much (only if it satisfies them!).
In other words you wind up in a sitcom that you've confused with a documentary. If it helps, "Leave it to Beaver" and "Happy Days" were not documentaries.
she turned purple screaming something about the guy having a penis.
geeezus..she must have been on some awesome drugs, probably valium and diet pills. The middle class women were even more into pharma than they are now.
I highly recommend Kate Millet's the Looney Bin Trip, wherein she tries to kick lithium.
Some women marry rich husbands and don't need to work. For all other women out there working a full time job and raising children is the norm. Call it feminism if you want. I call it reality.
Where feminism comes into the picture [especially in the 1960's] was the rejection of women working by some [rich] conservatives who prefer women stay at home to raise the kids. Not always that easy though is it?
Fair enough, but then if you put Ann's post and comments together with yours
Why yes, if you merge the comments of two different people with different viewpoints you CAN create something silly. You can even try attributing this new Frankenview to the both of them.
How clever of you to notice. :)
Renee said...
I read Warren's book. Her argument isn't one or two incomes...
Warren's problem is not that she has no accurate ideas about personal finance. Her problem is she feels it a legitimate government function to dictate what transactions people can enter into amongst themselves. She believes the government can deny people access to services they deem beneficial simply because the government deems it possible somewhere someone might make a bad decision.
Apalling.
Rev,
Based on your previous comments I am not surprised that you see the silliness of that position. Most today, do. But not everyone, as the gender threads here always reveal on the comment boards.
Okay, I just finished reading Chapter 14 from " The Feminine Mystique", A new Life Plan for Women. It appears to me that the perfect example of a woman who solved Friedan's "problem with no name" was born exactly one year after "Mystique" was first published.
Girls, your ideal model for living what Betty Friedan would have considered an "actualized" life:
Sarah Palin.
Okay, I just finished reading Chapter 14 from " The Feminine Mystique", A new Life Plan for Women. It appears to me that the perfect example of a woman who solved Friedan's "problem with no name" was born exactly one year after "Mystique" was first published.
Girls, your ideal model for living what Betty Friedan would have considered an "actualized" life:
Sarah Palin.
Lefty heads exploding everywhere.
"Being a full time housewife and mother IS a job. It is a job that has value."
It involves a lot of work, but it actually isn't a job, unless you want to define the word broadly. But why would you?
Well, it isn't going out of the house for 40 hours a week and getting paid, it that is the definition of a job that people want to use. However, there are many people who work from home and have 'jobs' that don't require 40 hours of work or even leaving the home. Some people work MORE than 40 hours, some less.
I think that psychologically that the stay at home spouse and the spouse who is working outside of the home SHOULD consider the home based occupation a "JOB". In that you have duties, scheduled time frames for those duties, a budget to work within just like in an office..... and most importantly, that you get some scheduled time off from the 'job'.
Time off could mean an afternoon away doing some activity that is relaxing and interesting. It could mean a night to yourself where you can just relax and pamper yourself.
If everyone looks upon the home based occupation as a "job" and not just as a thing you do all of the time or you as some sort of a willing slave, the home based person will have the respect of the rest of the family and respect for himself/herself.
As Synova said. Working part time if you can, just to keep your credentials up is not a bad idea. Adult time is very !!! important too. Scheduling time to be off duty and with other adults is vital to psychological health.
I am not surprised that you see the silliness of that position. Most today, do. But not everyone, as the gender threads here always reveal on the comment boards.
And yet instead of quoting one of these unnamed people, you opted to kludge together a straw man from the remarks of two people who DON'T think that. How odd.
It is almost as though nobody was actually promoting the "Happy Days" scenario you're trying to mock. :)
Inga, I believe you are correct. What Warren is saying is that people should not want all that stuff because they dont "need" it. People like Warren will decide what you need, including why you should work.
Inga, I believe you are correct. What Warren is saying is that people should not want all that stuff because they dont "need" it. People like Warren will decide what you need, including why you should work.
Work and job aren't the same thing.
Imagine if she'd been writing for Tiger Beat.
Yeah, I know people where it made tax sense for the female to stay at home and so that is the choice they made - but there's no denying that that choice has affected her development. And that's hurting them both now that the economy is in the dumper and it'd be better if she had worked and could get professional employment to help out, but her resume is subpar now.
She made the choice; she knows it; she's lucky and privileged in one sense, blah blah blah, but I can't say that it's been great on a fulfillment of potential level.
How many yoga classes and craft fairs can you go to after all?
Is it really necessary that you attempt fulfill your potential and youthful dreams? In the case of which i am speaking, it seems to matter as she get closer to death and realizes her potential will never. ever. be fulfilled. Never. Dead. Boom. OTOH, it allows her to keep her youthful, misty, romantic view of her own potential. It's very similar to the position of rich son who never really gets it together. Nice problems to have, right? But still.
I haven't ever considered reading Friedan actually, but she seems like a high-powered intellect. Of course, she'd have gone crazy back in Mad Men times, come on.
Michael, what she is pointing out is that for many couples, those luxuries require two incomes. She's not saying one way or the other, whether you should or should not have them. Nice try twisting her words.
The REALITY for most average wage earners is that there must be sacrifice for one spouse to stay home.
Meade,
Indeed, for sure Palin would have been idolized by the media if only she had that magic (D) after her name.
jacksonjay said...
I used to listen the Slate podcast with Ms. Bazelon, David Plotz and John(Destroy the Republicans) Dickerson. Plotz and Dickerson regularly, constantly and visciously mocked Emily for being a little ditzy! Let's just say she was the weak link in the trio!
WAR ON WOMEN or pretend ones...
So we are going to ignore post #1 from rhhardin who said...
R Emmett Tyrrell "Betty Friedan and the Women of the Fevered Brow" _Public Nuisances_ . . .
rhhardein also posted that comment in 2008 on this blog entitled "THE TIME THAT BLOG FORGOT."
The blogger is none other than Ann Althouse.
President-Mom-Jeans said...
"Except he left out Family C."
I much prefer Family D.
Guy stays single, keeping his disposable income to himself. Guy bangs the many sexually liberated skanks that modern feminism has produced, replacing them with new models like some people do with leased vehicles. Or socks, to each their own schedule. Girls grow old with many cats. Guy buys boat.
Men age like a fine wine, women age like a carton of milk.
With the destruction of the nuclear family, why not a family of one?
This dovetails with a WSJ article I read last year: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448.html that basically highlights the man-baby syndrome. Which is to say that you have physically aged adult men, who are in effect children or in-limbo adolescents that are not required to grow up, grow a pair, and be real men. Why? The heavy toll that feminism has taken on the male population of this country. Misandry is a hell of drug and when women, the politerati, and government instituted political correctness have aimed their sights on the simple gender of the masculine, then there are no lengths to which feminism will go as a matter of public policy to neuter an entire gender. What do you think Title IX is about? How about the glass ceiling, women in combat, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, etc. etc. so on and so forth.
Besides, even Althouse bemused us with a thread topic one time not to long ago about what is in it for men to get married? And to dovetail with what you've said, then there is really no incentive to ever get married for a man. None. He can fuck as many women as he likes when he likes whenever he is inclined to hang himself out that far. He can keep his money to himself. He can enjoy the fruits of his labor and he never has to worry about being buggered by anyone. If I had my choices of getting married or no, I have to be honest and tell you that I would seriously consider being a life long bachelor. What is really saddening about the whole thing is that women have been sold a bill of goods with feminism.
They've basically adopted a way of thinking that gets to fuck them over without all the foreplay.
There are two different Elizabeth Warrens. She has the brains, but she does some really dumb things like over-emphasizing family folk-lore in a minority law professor directory and not registering with the Bar in Massachusetts when she moved there over 20 years ago.
The Two Income Trap, brains.... her with with Obama, dumb, to push an economic agenda that comes from the left. Her authentic voice wouldn't endorse.
She does the stupid stuff for personal gain, she would of push for an economic agenda for a conservative if it meant personal gain. I still don't know what she had to gain by NOT registering with the Bar in Massachusetts? It wasn't like they would of denied her.
"Ann, did you listen to her lecture? That's not what Warren was saying at all. She spelled out the economic realities of a two person wage earner family in our current economic situation. It had nothing to do with one's self worth, IIRC. I will have to relisten to it to be sure."
I was talking about what Friedan was saying.
But no, I didn't listen to Warren's lecture. I didn't mean to sound like I was criticizing that. I assume she was talking about the economic realities experienced by people today who can't get the hang of a one-earner family setup. It was embedded in the culture once, with a gender-based division of labor and a strong resistance to divorce and sex for most women restricted to marriage and without birth control. No way to get back to that! It takes conscious planning now, and people don't know how to do it.
Ann, ah I see.
I feel sorry for young couples like my daughter and son in law, who are newlyweds, in their early 30's, wanting to start a family and wanting one spouse to stay home to care for the child. It won't happen for them, student loans to pay back and a house to save for, a bad economy and a start up business to build.
I am however glad she has a profession in which she can be pregnant and not have to work hard physically.
I'm not saying that her job is a piece of cake by any means, but I'm thinking of pregnant nurses running for eight hours straight, with barely a 15 minute break.
Inga. I wasnt twisting her words, dumbass, I was using yours from your post.
I would dearly have loved to spend my working hours with my two younger baby girls, as I did with my eldest daughter. But my ex-husband (a physician in solo practice) was incapable of running his business without my help. I so regret those days I lost with my sweet babies having to babysit a grown man who couldn't understand the concept of charging for his knowledge and managing a small staff. I worked 10 hour days and still was responsible for the care of our home and children after work. I wish I could have that time back.
Ann...
I was a house husband for more than a decade. Four children. Fun and satisfying for a good, long while, though I was often in the job market. Then the ex-wife up and married her boss. C ya!
Maybe I should be writing "The Masculine Mystique."
"Maybe I should be writing 'The Masculine Mystique.'"
St. George,
Do it. I'll buy the first copy.
"What Warren is saying is that people should not want all that stuff because they dont "need" it. People like Warren will decide what you need, including why you should work."
2/13/13, 5:29 PM
Michael. This is what YOU said. You attributed my words to her.
Things never change, elitist always have and always will believe that the folk producing the clothing they wear, cars they drive, roofs over their heads, etc. are idiots and need to be guided intellectually and morally by the elite.
"I was a house husband for more than a decade. Four children. Fun and satisfying for a good, long while, though I was often in the job market. Then the ex-wife up and married her boss. C ya"
My heart goes out to you.
Inga, my dear lady, your words were meant to explain what she wrote. You do understand that dont you?
My dear Michael, I also added my own thoughts in my statement regarding what she wrote, now you are getting annoying.
What's with you anyway? It's getting old.
I have cats and a boat. :-D
Renee
Does she have the brains? I can't detect any evidence of it in anything she's put out for public consumption.
Is it really necessary that you attempt fulfill your potential and youthful dreams? In the case of which i am speaking, it seems to matter as she get closer to death and realizes her potential will never. ever. be fulfilled
What kind of potential are we talking about here?
The discussion here, as I understand it, is when did we decide a paying job is *the* way to fulfill your potential? Or development, as you say.
Shouldn't one be interesting outside his or her career? Shouldn't we be able to develop and grow completely independently from employment? It's such a limiting way to look at life.
I pity anyone who cannot apprehend that the math LarryJ describes is irrelevant to the point he asserts.
Anyone unable to apprehend that would be vulnerable to easy manipulation by all manner of frauds and quacks.
God, did she feel trapped among the slipcovers of the suburbs and in the pages of the women’s magazines she wrote for, where big ideas and questions were entirely unwelcome.
And yet, after decades of intervening "consciousness raising", women's magazines are dumber, more infantilized, more "little womanish", in their characteristically trashy contemporary way, than they were in Friedan's time.
"Big ideas and questions" seem to be "entirely unwelcome" in modern women's television programming, too, though I would bet that its executive ranks are now full of Bazelons.
Whence comes the notion (still current), that housewifery inhibits picking up a book more than any other common work? It doesn't.
Ann Althouse 4:24 PM "Ha ha ha. It's the lefty vision: everyone is a worker."
Equally important is that when everyone is a worker then all children must be put in day care where their minds can be properly formed by bien pensant "child care professionals". No more parents passing on their reactionary ideas to the next generation.
I just can't get work up over affluent privileged upper middle class women seeing themselves as victims, poor things.
I am heartened to read and hear the recent conversations about the damage we have done to our young men during the past 20 years. BUT, what we must get to--the conversation and the understanding that is critical--is the discussion about the damage we have done to our young women. The value system we have inculcated into them during these years is terrifying and without moral guidelines. The idea that it is ok to steal a white man's work is ok is most clearly acknowledged as the norm in academia. The idea that young women can use the shout of "rape" in order to get a white male supervisor to do anything at all that will help her get the position she wants. There are so many, many examples of fraud and theft, and mobbing and. . . all of which is organized as a young women's mentorship program. A teaching by the old gals of NOW of how to work in collaboration with young women around the country. Not to correct an evil--but rather to demand that a white male be made to work for them as they instruct or else! So now some of these gals are in their early 40's and others in their particular profession have come to know that these gals are not as competent as a leader, or administrator should be at the higher levels--now what do we do? So many, many women have been moved up the glass escalator so fast that when they arrive at the top they are simply not capable of independent leadership, thought, or personal courage. Mostly though along the way they have lost any sense of morality, values, or ethics. That is the conversation we must have.
What is not mentioned here is what it used to be like for women in the workforce. When I was a young single woman looking for my first job (I had 3 years of college but no degree), I was always given a typing test, which I always did poorly on. I did do well on the standard intelligence tests, and was told that I was too smart, that I would get bored in the job. There were separate application forms for men and women, and the women's form asked for the date of one's last menstrual period (some asked twice!).
I was asked, "What are your plans for children?"
"Excuse me? I'm not married."
"But you will be some day."
There were things that needed to be changed, and many people who rail against "feminism" are too young to remember, or even believe that such attitudes were real and pervasive.
So, am I correct? Are there millions of older women out there who believe that the best way to correct flawed systems was by instituting new evil? What you describe is exactly as I remember the times also. However, I did not teach my daughter that "anything goes". I taught her to continually learn and develop her professional skills, to be honest with all, customers, vendors, co workers, etc. Mostly, I taught her to be honest with herself about herself. She knows right from wrong. And, replacing the old system with the value system and the weak young women we have now is equally wrong!
Jeannette said...
There were things that needed to be changed, and many people who rail against "feminism" are too young to remember, or even believe that such attitudes were real and pervasive.
I don't know anyone against changing these sorts of policies. These parts of feminism are so widely accepted they're now part of our culture. And the changes ocurred quickly because they were so obviously the right choices.
When people push feminism today they mean entirely different policies. The merit of these current "feminist" policy preferences is not changed because someone else called themselves by the same name and advocated for things we all believe in.
"The merit of these current feminist policies. . ." I am not sure which policies you are referring to: is it the policy of 'I am a woman and therefore I get what ever I want and demand.' Is it the policy of teaching young women to falsely accuse young men of rape? Is it the policy of mobbing professors because they refuse to give you a higher grade than you deserve? Tell me please which new 'feminist strategy' is so worthwhile as to install in all young women the belief that the end justifies the means?
"I pity anyone who cannot apprehend that the math LarryJ describes is irrelevant to the point he asserts.
Anyone unable to apprehend that would be vulnerable to easy manipulation by all manner of frauds and quacks."
Ding, ding, ding. We have a thread winner. And, heh.
When my first wife and I lived in Buffalo in the early 70s she had to fly to New York for business. She attempted to book an early flight that was labelled the Businessman's Flight, but the nice person at the airline said she could not -- it was only open to Business MEN. Women in later generations who scoff at the early feminists need to learn some history and find out how all the rights they take for granted were won.
In the early 70s, when my first wife and I lived in Buffalo, she had to go to New York on business, and tried to book an early flight known as the Business Man's flight. The nice person at the airline told her she couldn't take that flight -- it was a Business MAN's flight. Women of later generations who scoff at the early feminists need to learn some history and find out how all the rights they take for granted were won.
I'm sorry. I have no intention of claiming that a terrible situation did not exist THEN. But, what I am deeply concerned about is what exists NOW. You are referring to a condition that was in place more than 30 years ago. What I am trying to get you to look at is the terrible, terrible situation we are creating for ALL children of tomorrow by putting place people of a particular gender who are NOT QUALIFIED, NOT CAPABLE, and most importantly NOT PREPARED to lead.
Not to lead a company; not prepared to lead a corporation; not prepared to lead a local agency; not prepared to lead a governmental agency. MOST IMPORTANTLY ---- NOT PREPARED TO LEAD OUR MILITARY. NOT PREPARED to lead our educational systems. NOT PREPARED to lead our investigations into corruption in banking. NOT PREPARED to lead our informed confrontation into corruption.THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE are quite simply NOT PREPARED TO DO THE JOBS THEY HAVE ACQUIRED THROUGH THE USE OF ORGANIZED POWER NETWORKS.
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