No political/social movement can be launched nor hurled
forward by the faint-of-hearts. The second wave feminism required no less
gumption and fierceness than the first wave. The first-wave feminism—that of
the suffragists who won for women the rights to vote and own property—surged
with the second wave, which started in the 1960’s and gained momentum in the
1970’s. It sought to broaden women’s rights to equality in family, sexuality
and employment and sounded the battle cry for fights in areas unique to women
such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, marital rape, paid maternity
leave, sexual harassment, affordable child care, and changes in divorce and custody
laws.
Paradoxically, civil rights, students’ rights and labor
unions often failed to include women within their leadership ranks, nor did
they give credence to women’s issues in either their ideologies or policies
until feminists fought them internally to be heard and included.
While in this excellent book Phyllis Chesler claims to not
have written the history of second wave feminism, she nevertheless does so
through her own eyes and personal experiences that were deeply intertwined with
the fabric of the movement. She recounts her involvement with almost every
aspect of this gut-wrenching years-long struggle, and most importantly, offers
an intimate introduction of the many players—their strengths and weaknesses,
idiosyncrasies and yes, madness. The battles that raged on the road to women’s
liberation were not only against the male hierarchy and dominance of political
and social views that held women as childish, given to hormonal fluctuations,
and incapable of thinking straight, but also internally. The fire in the belly
that fueled feminists’ fervor and made them effective in ultimately achieving
many of the movement’s goals burned also in the intensity of their diverse
worldviews that often targeted other women. Backstabbing, public shaming, envy
and demands for conformity crippled many talented women leaders. Many fell by
the wayside, slunk away to lick the wounds inflicted not by their powerful male
opponents and their centuries-old beliefs, but rather by their colleagues and
fellow Amazonians—often close friends—right inside the movement and in the many
organizations that sprouted within it.
Luckily, Phyllis Chesler is one who remained standing
through it all, albeit not unscathed. Her personal achievements as a
psychologist who confronted the entire industry and forced it to change its
perceptions and treatment of women patients is documented not only in this
book, but in the astounding success of her ground-breaking book, Women and Madness (a book that was
followed by over a dozen other best-sellers, each stepping into arenas no one
had ever dared enter before.) Time and again, Chesler paid a personal price
when she became the target of envy by those who did not wish to see stars
rising within the feminist movement, by those who held the paradoxical idea
that for true equality women should not publish over their own bylines (an
unimagined demand to be made from male writers,) or by early Lesbians who
discredited heterosexual women who chose to marry and become mothers as Chesler
did. The reasons for rancor could be many—or any—as Chesler analyzed in her
book Women’s Inhumanity to Women, and
as I experienced years later in a mini version when I traveled for three weeks
with a group of fifty women to the 1995 International Women’s Conference in
Beijing: Environmentalists against those who brought plastic forks; blue-collar
working women against executives; Lesbians against heterosexuals; non-Jews
against Jews; women of color against Caucasians; West Coast women against
“Yankees”; health-conscious against coffee-drinkers….
Yes, reading the book reveals that indeed, the movement was
created by “bitches, lunatics, prodigies and warriors,” as the subtitle
describes. Yet, overall, they were Wonder Women, because they lurched our
society forward into the changes of the late 20th century and early
21st century—and to what we are now experiencing as the “third-wave
feminism.”
I was younger, yet growing up across the ocean I was unaware
of any of these developments when I cultivated my own brand of feminist
ideas—and was labeled by some friends “a castrating female.” Later, in New
York, when I was drawn into a vicious custody battle, the judge listened to the
argument that I should not be allowed to raise my two baby daughters because I
had attended a conscious-raising seminar, and as my former marriage counselor—a
renowned psychologist—testified against me because I was “a feminist.” At the
same time, the judge refused to put into evidence my lawyer’s presentation of
the father’s passport proving that he traveled two to three weeks each month.
Reading Phyllis Chesler’s book I recalled how, a new immigrant to the USA, I
had sought out someone who could explain this. I checked with the local
university, where I was studying for my masters’ degree, but in those days of
pre- “Women Studies,” which Professor Chesler helped introduce, I couldn’t even
articulate what kind of an expert I was looking for. Phyllis Chesler, a
psychotherapist and a warrior, and the author of Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody, would have
been perfect.
The reluctance of women to acknowledge greatness and give
credit to feminists who have paved the way for us continues. Several years ago
I proposed to the Women National Book Association to honor Phyllis Chesler, a
prolific author of eighteen books that changed the landscape of our society and
helped shape for the better the lives of millions of women, to receive the
Association’s yearly award. Her candidacy was rejected because she was “too
controversial.” Controversial because, as she describes in A Politically Incorrect Feminist she demands that American
feminists take a stand against the subjugation and brutality that is the lot of
hundreds of million women in Muslim countries. Controversial because her unique
research of “honor killing” in Western countries of daughters of Muslim
families that shame their families by assimilating into Western culture or dare
refuse arranged marriages is perceived as politically incorrect against Islam.
Yes, “the personal is political,” and this book that charts
the bravery and valor of so many amazing women has inspired me anew to fight
for women’s rights and dignity both at home and abroad.
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