Blog post written by Liberation is Lit's intern, Kendra Nunnery! As first posted on the Substack The Modest Solid Blog
“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone.” —Betty Friedan, from the Feminine Mystique
It’s these words of Betty Friedan, a feminist author and advocate, that are credited for beginning the second wave of feminism during the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was these words that motivated suppressed women to make—no pun intended—waves in the political sphere. While the first wave of feminism was primarily focused on legal recognition of women’s suffrage, the second wave of feminism focused on social inequalities such as workplace equity, reproductive rights, and challenging typical gender norms. Incredible strides were made for women, by women, during this era: the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Roe v. Wade, and social recognitions of women’s contributions to society.
Unfortunately, for as influential as she was, I simply loathe Friedan. I loathe her in the same way someone loathes an old, feral cat that hisses every time you walk by, never asking for pets but brushing up against your leg anyway. I loathe her in the same way I loathe doing laundry, yet I still do it because I need clean clothes and have a penchant for wearing the same outfits over and over. I loathe her in the way I loathe my cowlick that never sits quite right, the water in my shoe on a rainy day, or interrupted naps.
I loathe her because, in all her wisdom, she viewed lesbian feminists as ‘lavender menaces.’ She did not want feminism associated with and tainted by ‘man hating’ and ‘lesbianism.’ Her manifesto on women’s rights, called the Feminine Mystique, was pages upon pages of the issues of only one specific group of women: middle-class housewives. Friedan believed only certain women should join the broader feminist movement, while lesbians, transgender women, and women in other racial groups should be excluded from participating in the influential National Organization for Women (NOW), of which she was the founder. She used the Civil Rights Movement to propel her own agenda, sidelining many African American women from the movement. She sounds quite familiar to another author who, quite infamously, also thrives on exclusion.
For all of her incorrect beliefs regarding feminism, I see her everywhere. I see her in modern feminist spaces where she doesn’t belong. I see her in political figures, celebrities, and authors that believe feminism is only for white, cisgender women. I see her in the many ‘feminist’ celebrities that claim to care for all women, yet stay silent on issues regarding women of color or queer women. I see her in the faces of Taylor Swift and Brittany Broski, who position themselves as for women’s rights, yet only in certain situations.
Taylor Swift: White Feminist
With the release of Swift’s new album The Life of a Showgirl, I’ve been ruminating on my old gender studies curricula I took in undergrad quite thoroughly. Swift has caused many first drafts, deletions, rewrites, and videos of me attempting to explain my thoughts concisely. In her own sick way, she’s haunted the narrative the same way Fridan haunted my undergrad years.
I call Swift a white feminist because there is a sort of sanitized, clean way she presents women’s rights. With Swift’s presentation of feminism, she presents a sort of ‘diet’ feminism, the kind that thrives on phrases like ‘girlboss’ or ‘I’m just a girl.’ It’s the kind of shallow feminism that has women painting their period blood on canvases in a vague statement of acknowledgement of periods. Meanwhile, actual women in other parts of the world struggle to even access clean, reliable period products. Her engagement with the feminist movement is shallow at best and, at worst, a purposeful tactic to gain more fans. Her past is rife with racist and frankly strange associations. In no particular time order, she…
-
Dated Matt Healy, who made racist and xenophobic comments about Ice Spice, a Dominican and Nigerian rapper, and other women of color.
-
Has a number of strange, insensitive lyrics, including “We would pick a decade, we wished we could live in instead of this, I’d say the 1830s, but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid” and, in her lastest album, “I just want you…have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you” (racial purity much?)
-
This picture of her at a Halloween party, posing next to a person wearing a swastika shirt.
