Betty Friedan more.....

I have so much to say on this subject but being pressed for time.....and this is a book in itself.....I will do my best. I was sixteen when I read "The Feminine Mystique" was incredibly moved and became controversial in high school, and under attack, for bringing her up. So.....many things on this.....I found out years later that she was attacked in the second wave feminist movement as being too middle of the road, too "nice," a cleaned up Simone de Beauvoir. A lot of the things the radical feminists wrote were very inflammatory and they were under scrutiny and espionage by the FBI .....sad but honestly it's naive to assume every female is a "sister" and automatically take a person's word.....because female agents sat in on meetings then reported on what was happening to the agency.....nice, right? A nasty, devious and nefarious betrayal by their own. But Friedan  was criticized by the far left for not being radical enough and equally by the far right for being a closet radical as she was involved in many "leftist" activities in the forties. When she said she had lived according to the feminine mystique she did and did not. Interestingly, she was living a life in the fifties similar to what "career moms" do now: juggling work and family and kids .....was fired from her newspaper job for being pregnant (that still goes on). She wrote ......one chapter if FM called "Progressive Dehumanization The Comfortable Concentration Camp" which was highly controversial but .....in my opinion one of the best. She wrote about women being confined to a ..  .how do I say ....."dumbed down" environment and spending their days doing drudgery and monotonous tasks .....leaving no room for any kind of intellectual or mental growth. The problem, thirty some years later.....women entered the workforce..... the more conservatively minded upper middle class as lawyers and doctors......but yet someone still has to do the monotonous drudge work of cleaning. The bed will always have to be made.....so this is......I don't know how to say it nicely......relegated to other women poor women, many from minority backgrounds or the the third world. .......it's very disturbing to see........in Manhattan young white (blond)  schoolchildren.......none of them are with their parents but with babysitters, most of them Latin or Carribean women.....I mean the world is what it is I understand the need for babysitters. I had them but they were local girls this in Evanston and I was in daycare.....I guess being from a middle class background I have to be honest the idea of being raised by nannies is ..... I don't like talking about this it's a really ugly subject...... I don't like saying these things but it's how it is .....I had two working parents and all was fine I can tell you. Speaking of high school......I suppose they meant well but guidance counselors and social workers were constantly telling me and parents how "traumatized" I am/was by moving to NYC and them (my parents) getting divorced. Divorce is not a nice thing but not the root of any crisis of mine. Nor is going to day care. I speak of this now because it's more the norm presently than not. The hypocrisy behind so many of these right wing women is coming to surface......they wrote or spoke in such a pious, supercilious tone and very, purposely dismissively.....yet who are they to criticize? I guess I don't go as easy on them because my generation was subjected to endless.......I read so much editorial and commentary that was both condemning, condescending and at best a sweeping and vague generalization.....often untrue.....