What is a feminist? To some, feminists are a breed forever tarred as “bra burners”: radical left-wingers dedicated to the destruction of the family and the emasculation of American men, bull-dykes from central casting, abortion enthusiasts, latter-day kibbutzniks who want to turn their children over to someone else–usually the government–to raise, at no cost to themselves.
I worked for the Title XX legislation that allowed women to take shop and boys to take Home Ec. And yet people have this idea that in feminism you are a man hater, you don’t like men, you’ve got to write laws to give women a break.
JH: When I was growing up, there wasn’t any mother in any house [in the neighborhood] who couldn’t have told me, “This is wrong,” or “That was bad.” And any one of the kids would have gotten into trouble if he didn’t listen to that mother–because she was respected, she was authority, and she knew what was right and what was proper. And if I disobeyed her, it would have been just like disobeying my own mother.
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BM: We’ve cut out religion and don’t really have anything in its place–which is why some of the people whose religion seems to be liberal politics are trying to substitute the government for the church. I’m not convinced it’s an improvement.
HH: But it’s the same thing–government by authoritarian men in a patriarchal society.
BM: So who is responsible for changing the meaning of what a feminist is from what my great-grandmother would have considered it to what it is today?
