Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

by Susan Faludi

  These were men . . .: Rhode, “Equal Rights in Retrospect,” p. 51.

  Hewlett’s second count . . .: Hewlett, Lesser Life, pp. 61, 66–67.

  The women’s movement, she charges . . .: Ibid., pp. 184, 190. 327 The “antichildren . . .”: Ibid., p. 185.

  This negligence she contrasts . . .: Ibid., pp. 143–44, 167–74. 327 But in fact . . .: East, “Critical Comments,” pp. 7–8.

  In the early ’70s . . .: Klein, Gender Politics, p. 24.

  Three of the eight . . .: Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From the Women’s Liberation Movement, ed. by Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) pp. 576–77.

  When the Yankelovich . . .: Yankelovich Clancy Shulman poll, Oct. 23–25, 1989, for Time/CNN.

  She lingers over . . .: Hewlett, Lesser Life, pp. 31, 43–45.

  Feminists at . . .: Ibid., pp. 31, 44–45.

  The director of the . . .: Ibid., p. 32.

  “If this was the other side . . .”: Ibid., p. 32.

  Jane Gould, the director . . .: Personal interview with Jane Gould, 1988.

  (The Chamber triumphed. . .): Alice H. Cook, “Public Policies to Help Dual-Earner Families Meet the Demands of the Work World,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Jan. 1989, pp. 201–215.

  Hoping to bring . . .: Personal interview with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, 1988; Hewlett, Lesser Life, pp. 367–82.

  “It became this . . .”: Personal interview with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, 1988. (Subsequent quotes are also from the interview unless otherwise noted.)

  Like some of the . . .: Personal interview with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, 1988.

  She would later . . .: Hewlett, Lesser Life, p. 405.

  “I specifically invited . . .”: Personal interview with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, 1988.

  “Our failure was . . .”: Betty Friedan, The Second Stage (New York: Summit Books, 1981) p. 203.

  Not only that . . .: Ibid., pp. 202–3, 244–45, 248, 254, 333–35, 337. Strangely, and as is often the case in this work, Friedan flatly contradicts herself on this very point on other pages. “The women’s movement,” she writes on page 247, “was perhaps the first large-scale political application of the Beta style.”

  “Feminism, which once . . .”: Dinesh D’Souza, “The New Feminist Revolt: This Time It’s Against Feminism,” Policy Review, No. 35, (Winter 1986): 46.

  After The New York Times Magazine . . .: Phyllis Schlafly, “Betty Friedan and the Feminist Mystique,” Phyllis Schlafly Report, 19, no. 8 (March 1988): 3. (This issue of Schlafly’s report also pounced on Lenore Weitzman’s divorce figures and gleefully noted the new fluffiness of Ms. magazine.)

  Literary scholar Camille Paglia . . .: Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Francesca Stanfill, “Woman Warrior,” New York, Mar. 4, 1991, p. 22; Camille Paglia and Neil Postman, “She Wants Her TV! He Wants His Book,” Harper’s, Mar. 1991, p. 44; “A Scholar and a Not-so-Gentle Woman,” Image, San Francisco Examiner, July 7, 1991, p. 7.

  Formerly the media’s favorite . . .: Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (New York: Bantam Books, 1972), frontispiece.

  Greer herself billed . . .: Germaine Greer, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (New York: Harper & Row) pp. 101, 104-105, 243, 257.

  Clitoral orgasms are . . .: Ibid., p. 253.

  By 1986, antifeminist . . .: D’Souza, “Feminist Pioneers,” p. 21.

  Femininity pondered such . . .: Susan Brownmiller, Femininity(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1984) p. 129.

  In her 1990 memoir . . .: Germaine Greer, Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990) p. 12.

  Meanwhile, Brownmiller . . .: Susan Brownmiller, “Hedda Nussbaum, Hardly a Heroine,” New York Times, Feb. 2, 1989, p. A25; Susan Brownmiller, Waverly Place (New York: Grove Press, 1989); Stefan Kanfer, “Out to Make Killings: Crime Pays, At Least for Many Authors Who Write About It,” Time, Feb. 20, 1989, p. 98.

  Women of “my generation,” . . .: Erica Jong, “Ziplash: A Sexual Libertine Recants,” Ms., May 1989, p. 49.

  Yet, here she was . . .: Friedan, Second Stage, pp. 31-32.

  “I don’t use . . .”: Personal interview with Betty Friedan, 1989.

  Feminists, she says, . . .: Friedan, Second Stage, p. 362.

  They shouldn’t have devoted . . .: Ibid., p. 257.

  (Her words recall. . .): Gilder, Men and Marriage, pp. ix-x.

  They lost the ERA . . .: Ibid., p. 207.

  “I do not think . . .”: Ibid., p. 365.

  “Aging, in the right-wing . . .”: Judith Stacey, “Are Feminists Afraid to Leave Home? The Challenge of Conservative Pro-family Feminism,” in What Is Feminism? A Re-Examination, ed. by Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986) p. 229.

  Friedan may say she “easily . . .”: Friedan, Second Stage, p. 245.

  Much of the book is . . .: See, for example, ibid., pp. 101-3. For a particularly

  “I”-strewn passage, in a book that frowns on such “masculine” ego-directed behavior, see p. 28.

  In 1970, she retired as . . .: Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) pp. 273, 317, 336-337, 351.

  In this new stage she envisions . . .: Friedan, Second Stage, p. 230.

  “The power of . . .”: Ibid., p. 297.

  If men haven’t . . .: Ibid., p. 363.

  In the “second stage,” . . .: Ibid., pp. 333, 335, 343.

  To liberate themselves . . .: Ibid., pp. 333-34.

  Friedan is convinced that . . .: Ibid., p. 333.

  In one of the book’s . . .: Ibid., p. 334.

  Betty Friedan’s: “female machismo” . . .: Ibid., p. 56.

  Friedan sketches a grim . . .: Ibid., pp. 113-14.

  She is reacting . . .: Ibid., pp. 31, 45, 53.

  At times in the book . . .: Ibid., p. 41.

  In the ’80s, popular works . . .: Sally Helgesen, The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership (New York: Currency/Doubleday, 1990); Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

  Suzanne Gordon, in her 1990 . . .: Suzanne Gordon, Prisoners of Men’s Dreams: Striking Out for a New Feminine Future (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991) pp. 12, 14. Gordon was not rejecting feminism. She made a distinction in her book between “equal-opportunity” and “transformative” feminism, the latter being the purer, noncommercial version, and defined herself as a supporter of the unadulterated variety. But this distinction was lost on the backlash press.

  In the late ’70s . . .: “Relational” feminist scholarship has gone by other names, among them, “neofeminism,” “social feminism,” and “difference feminism.” For convenience sake, I will refer to it here as the “relational” school, an umbrella term meant to cover varying shades of feminist thought that have arisen out of this new emphasis on women’s “different” or “special” status. For discussions of the rise of “relational” scholarship and its diversity, see Joan C. Williams, “Deconstructing Gender,” Michigan Law Review, 87 (February 1989): 797; Hester Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1983) pp. xii, xviii–xix, 134–135; Ellen DuBois, “Politics and Culture in Women’s History,” Feminist Studies, 6, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 28; Wini Breines, Margaret Cerullo, and Judith Stacey, “Social Biology, Family Studies and Antifeminist Backlash,” Feminist Studies, 4 (Feb. 1978): 43. This preoccupation with sex differences also, of course, spilled over into the media, generating one cover story after another that played up the biological, rather than the cultural, barriers between the sexes. See, for example, Merrill McLoughlin, “The New Debate Over Sex Differences: Men Vs. Women,” U.S. News and World Report, Aug. 8, 1988, p. 50; Ethel S. Person, “Some Differences Between Men and Women,” The Atlantic Monthly, March 1988, p. 71; Laura Shapiro, “Guns and Dolls: Scientists Explore the Differences Between Girls and Boys,” Newsweek, May 28, 1990, p. 56.

  By 1987, the American . . .
: Barbara Reskin, “Bringing the Men Back In,” Gender & Society, 2, no. 1 (March 1988): 76.

  The task,” as she . . .: Miller, Toward a New Psychology, p. x.

  As feminist scholar Ellen DuBois . . .: DuBois, “Politics and Culture,” p. 31.

  The eminent feminist scholar Alice . . .: Breines, Cerullo, and Stacey, “Social Biology,” p. 48.

  Women are willing to forgo . . .: DuBois, et al., Feminist Scholarship, pp. 128–29; Elizabeth Wolgast, Equality and the Rights of Women (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980).

  As one commentator noted . . .: Williams, “Deconstructing Gender,” p. 803.

  Beyond academia . . .: “Men’s and Women’s Reality—Making the Differences Count,” Candle Publishing press release, Sept. 30, 1988, p. 1.

  Even Vogue Kathleen Madden, “Femininity: Do You Buy It?” Vogue, March 1987, p. 445.

  In the media, Ms. named . . .: Lindsy Van Gelder, “Carol Gilligan: Leader for a Different Kind of Future,” Ms., Jan. 1984, p. 37; Francine Prose, “Confident at 11, Confused at 16,” The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 7, 1990, p. 23.

  And when Radcliffe convened . . .: Heather R. McLeod, “The Radcliffe Conferences: Women in the 21st Century,” Radcliffe Quarterly, Sept. 1989, p. 11.

  Gilligan’s work grew out . . .: Personal interview with Carol Gilligan, May 1991. (Subsequent Gilligan quotes are from personal interview unless otherwise noted.)

  Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg . . .: Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982) p. 18.

  “The different voice . . .”: Ibid., p. 2.

  “Clearly, these differences . . .”: Ibid.

  Jake says to steal . . .: Ibid., p. 26.

  Amy waffles . . .: Ibid., p. 28.

  Jake, Gilligan writes . . .: Ibid., p. 26.

  Amy’s reasoning, on the . . .: Ibid., p. 29.

  Gilligan goes on . . .: Ibid., p. 35.

  Gilligan’s “studies” . . .: Ibid., pp. 2-3.

  No effort was made . . .”: Ibid., p. 3.

  In a written defense . . .: Carol Gilligan, “Reply by Carol Gilligan,” from “On In A Different Voice: An Interdisciplinary Forum,” Signs, 11, no. 21 (Winter 1986): 326, 328.

  While the young women . . .: Catherine G. Greeno and Eleanor E. Maccoby, “How Different Is the ‘Different Voice’?” Signs, 11, no. 21 (Winter 1986): 313-14. These studies involve helping a stranger; research on which sex is more caring to friends and relatives has yet to be done. Other researchers who study sex differences have concluded that being cooperative or sympathetic—“niceness,” as it’s been dubbed—is virtually the only human trait that is not significantly affected by genetics. See Deborah Franklin, “The Making of a Personality: New Light on the Debate Over Nature vs. Narture,” San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, “This World,” Sept. 17, 1989, p. 15.

  In a critique of . . .: Zella Luria, “A Methodological Critique,” Signs, 11, no. 2 (Winter 1986): 318. Gilligan’s response to this criticism suggests a certain desire to have it both ways. First she says that Luria’s point is irrelevant because she didn’t mean to define the “different” moral voices in gender terms: “On two occasions, I have reported no sex differences on Kohlberg’s measures,” she notes. But then she defends herself by noting that the authors of two studies that Walker used have later said that their studies do yield sex differences. See Gilligan, “Reply by Carol Gilligan,” pp. 328-29.

  If there is one statement . . .”: Luria, “Methodological Critique,” p. 318.

  The New York Times Magazine’s . . .: “Confident at 11,” p. 25.

  “It seems almost philistine . . .”: Greeno and Maccoby, “How Different,” p. 314.

  Newsweek used . . .: Salholz, “Feminism’s Identity Crisis,” p. 59.

  Antifeminist scholars such as . . .: Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 38. Neoconservative writer George Gilder invokes Gilligan, too. See Gilder, Men and Marriage, pp. 169, 218.

  “Was it really . . .”: Davidson, Failure of Feminism, p. 230.

  “I am well aware . . .”: Gilligan, “Reply by Carol Gilligan,” p. 333.

  CHAPTER TWELVE. IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND

  Inside the Center . . .: Personal observation and interviews with Melvyn Kinder and Connell Cowan, 1987. (Subsequent Kinder and Cowan quotes are from interview unless otherwise noted.)

  [Margaret Kent’s book. . .]: Margaret Kent, How to Marry the Man of Your Choice (New York: Warner Books, 1988).

  Get “power” by . . .: Dr. Toni Grant, Being a Woman: Fulfilling Your Femininity and Finding Love (New York: Random House, 1988) pp. 157, 146, 16.

  Don’t talk back . . .: Ibid., p. 74.

  “Take charge . . .”: Dr. Stephen and Susan Price, No More Lonely Nights (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988) pp. 221, 68.

  The pseudofeminist . . .: Judith Kuriansky, Women Who Marry Down and End Up Having It All, forthcoming from Doubleday from Fall 1989 Upcoming Publications List, p. 14.

  This is a view that . . .: Lynn Z. Bloom, Karen Coburn, and Joan Pearlman, The New Assertive Woman (New York: Delacorte Press, 1975) pp. 23–42.

  The diagnosis was, underneath it all . . .: Chafe, American Woman, pp. 203–5.

  In the popular 1988 . . .: Susan Page, If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single? (New York: Viking, 1988) p. 8.

  “I want to accept . . .”: Ibid.

  “[L]ately it seems . . .”: Dr. Connell Cowen and Dr. Melvyn Kinder, Smart Women/Foolish Choices (New York: Signet, 1985) p. 6.

  It’s not the men . . .: Ibid., p. 37.

  Women are just . . .: Ibid., p. 9.

  All would be well . . .: Dr. Connell Cowen and Dr. Melvyn Kinder, Women Men Love/Women Men Leave (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1987) p. 165.

  Women would be happy . . .: Cowen and Kinder, Smart Women, pp. 250, 245.

  Women could have . . .”: Personal interview with Dr. Melvyn Kinder, 1987.

  But it is exactly . . .: Cowen and Kinder, Smart Women, p. 264.

  “You have been deeply influenced . . .”: Price and Price, Lonely Nights, p. 71.

  “These obsessive . . .”: Personal interview with Dr. Stephen Price, 1988. (Subsequent quotes are from interview unless otherwise noted.) “We’re both feminists . . .”: Personal interview with Susan Price. (Subsequent quotes are from interview unless otherwise noted.) They advise women to “deal with your . . .”: Price and Price, Lonely Nights, pp. 23, 611.

  It’s Up to You to . . .”: Ibid., p. 207.

  The current caller is . . .: Personal interview with Toni Grant, May 1988 and June 1991. Personal observations at the KFI station, Los Angeles, 1988, and audiotapes of the “Dr. Toni Grant Show,” 1988. (Subsequent Grant quotes are from May 1988 or June 1991 interviews unless otherwise noted.) In 1984, she marched . . .: James Brown, “Portrait of a Professional,” Let’s Talk, May—June 1985, p. 24.

  In 1985, she . . .: Ibid.

  In 1986, she told . . .: Ray Richmond, “My Style: Toni Grant in Conversation with Ray Richmond,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, April 21, 1986, p. B5.

  Her singles research . . .: Grant, Being a Woman, pp. xvii–xviii, 7.

  That’s when she began . . .: Ibid., p. 59.

  Then she investigated . . .: Ibid., pp. 19, 25–26, 35–36.

  Her book cites Carol . . .: Ibid., p. 5.

  “What, really, is . . .”: Ibid., p. 156.

  In 1988, Grant issued . . .: Ibid., p. 3.

  This “Feminist Infection” “If the Feminists Are Right, Then Why Aren’t We Happy?” The New York Times Book Review ad, Feb. 28, 1988.

  “The lie of sexual equality . . .”: Grant, Being a Woman, p. 7.

  “Split off from their Madonna . . .”: Ibid., p. 49.

  Clinicians of the late . . .: Kinnard, Antifeminism, p. 309.

  In fact the 1947 . . .: Cited in Friedan, Feminine Mystique, p. 120.

  To her radio listeners . . .: Grant, Being a Woman, p. 10.

  To replenish
the depleted . . .: Ibid., p. 9.

  Also on Grant’s . . .: Ibid., pp. 62, 51.

  “It was eight days . . .”: Personal interview with Toni Grant, May 1988; see Nikki Finke, “Toni Grant: Taking Her Own Advice,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1988, V, p. 1.

  “Dr. Toni Grant to . . .”: “Dr. Toni Grant to Wed Industrialist John L. Bell,” Press release, Michael Levine Public Relations Co., 1988.

  And the fianceée herself . . .: Personal observation, 1988.

  She issued another . . .: “Names and Faces,” San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 2, 1989, p. B2.

  On an unusually sunny summer day . . .: Personal observation, 1987.

  More than a year . . .: Susan Faludi, “Addicted to Love,” West Magazine, San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 29, 1987, p. 6.

  In 1987, when . . .: Ibid.

  Many, many of us . . .”: Robin Norwood, Women Who Love Too Much: When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He’ll Change (New York: Pocket Books, 1985) p. xiv.

  Instead of encouraging . . .: Ibid., pp. 269, 236, 44.

  “Spiritual practice calms you” . . .: Ibid., pp. 235-236; taped lecture by Norwood in San Francisco, 1987.

  I feel it was . . .”: Personal interview with Robin Norwood, 1987; Faludi, “Addicted to Love,” p. 35.

  Oh, it isn’t me . . .”: James, The Bostonians, pp. 69-70.

  It helped to double . . .: It rose from an estimated 5 to 8 million in 1976 to 12 to 15 million in 1988. See Patricia Leigh Brown, “Troubled Millions Heed Call of Self-Help Groups,” New York Times, July 16, 1988, p. 1.

  The professional medical . . .: Kathleen Bell Unger, “Chemical Dependency In Women,” The Western Journal of Medicine, Dec. 1988, p. 747.

  (The individual. . .): Wendy Kaminer, “Chances Are You’re Co-Dependent Too,” The New York Times Book Review, Feb. 11, 1990, p. 1.

  “The codependency movement may . . .”: Audrey Gartner and Frank Riessman, Letters column, The New York Times Book Review, March 18, 1990, p. 34.

  Norwood herself compared . . .: Personal interview with Robin Norwood, 1987.

  As feminist writer Charlotte Perkins . . .: Ann J. Lane, To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990) p. 121.