Where The Women's Movement Went Wrong

By Alicia Colon

International Women's Day was celebrated earlier this month and Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond, donned a dress and blonde wig in a short film to focus on the inequality between the sexes. It's only fitting that this masculine movie star made this simpatico gesture because let's face it - the real beneficiaries of the modern women's movement were men. The sixties movement of feminism was completely unlike that of the early pioneers battling for suffrage.

These '60's revolutionaries bare scant resemblance to the heroic suffragettes who picketed President Wilson's White House and were beaten and jailed in their battle for the right to vote. The militant fems have used that hard-fought right to kill their unborn children, bare their breasts in public and generally sanction a whore life style in their misguided search for equality. I was a very young woman when the "revolution" began and frankly to me it stunk of hypocrisy and I refused to carry their banner or to burn my bra.

Betty Friedan with her book, "The Feminine Mystique" (1963) advocated the idea of women breaking out of their traditional roles. She helped advanced the women's rights movement and was one of the founders of the National Organization of Women (NOW). We were supposed to jump off our pedestal and become independent and enjoy all the perks that men enjoyed with their higher paying jobs. That meant of course that being a housewife became very low on the totem pole of life.

The more I learned about these ground breaking radicals the more I found them to be embittered, unhappy women who would have had better relations with men if they had learned to communicate with their spouses rather than with the ya-ya sisterhood.

One of my dear friends met Ms. Friedan at a seminar and afterwards learned that she was in love with a married man whose wife she didn't like. She caught a glimpse of the real Friedan during a drinking session in her hotel room and told me: "Here she was traveling around the country being adored because she said men were the devil and we could all live without one and they were oppressors and pigs and kept women down and the more she drank (of my vodka) the more she started to blubber about how his wife didn't understand him and he was so wonderful and she loved him so much and couldn't live with him. She was like a love struck teenage girl."

Gloria Steinem was the co-founder of Ms. Magazine and one of the leading proponents of feminist advocacy. After many years of touting the militant feminist rant with absolutely absurdist statements, (e.g., while promoting women on as firefighters despite their lack of strength, Steinem said the woman fire fighter could drag the victim along the floor instead of carrying them; She also said that being a POW was no big deal dismissing John McCain's ordeal in Vietnam.) Steinem became just another woman in love with a man. At the ripe age of 66 she married David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale, who unfortunately succumbed to brain cancer three years later. I sincerely hope that during this short married life she learned that men are not the enemy.

I don't expect Ms. Steinem to recant any of her ridiculous statements because she has devoted her life to espousing the mantra of feminist dogma much of which is plain nonsense and hypocrisy. Personally I found her greatest achievement was in introducing the title "Ms." because it did away with the annoying questions about one's marital status. The plain fact is that when it comes to choice the only choice permitted by these liberal feminists is one that will comply with their own agenda.

Thanks to their fierce battle for reproductive rights, men no longer have to take responsibility for careless sperm distribution. Thanks to Steinem, Friedan and other feminist pioneers, women are off their pedestal and free to be as promiscuous as men. The hand that rocked the cradle had better luck ruling the world than this crew.

Marlo Thomas wrote a piece for Huffington Post celebrating the women's movement and she heralded the strides it made. She mentioned Amy Richards whom she called a co-founder of The Third Wave but this woman represents why the revolution had no appeal for so many of us with strong family values. Ms. Richards is a feminist activist who after learning she was pregnant with triplets, terminated two of them in utero so that she wouldn't have to move to Staten Island and shop at Costco. Seriously! She wrote an op-ed about her choice in the New York Times and received support from other feminists that agreed that this culling of human beings made sense.

When Andrea Yates killed all her five children drowning them in the bathtub because she couldn't cope, she garnered support from sympathetic women including Anna Quindlen who wrote in her Newsweek column about how she could understand how stressful raising young children can be. What made Yates so sympathetic to these women was that she gave up a career in nursing to stay home and the militants saw this as the reason for her madness. After a defense fund was set up for her I wrote a column expressing my outrage and Fox News contacted me as I was the only female writer who found Yates' action evil and reprehensible. As the mother of six children, five born within six years, I understood quite well the enormous pressure raising children but I wrote that you don't drown them when it becomes too much. You run away from home.

Abortion rights for the modern feminist is so politically sacrosanct that they will overlook crimes against women as long as the politician is pro-choice. How else to explain their silence when Juanita Broadrick claimed that Bill Clinton raped her when he was governor of Arkansas? There was the same nonsupport for other Clinton accusers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Monica Lewinski et al. and Clinton still remains their darling.

Ms. Thomas' article went on to claim: "Since the beginning, the fundamental criteria of feminism has been for women to help other women. So it is impossible not to acknowledge - and feel a responsibility for - women around the globe who are living neither free nor safe."

Oh if this were only true but the sad fact is that second wave feminist, Phyllis Chesler is the only major activist who has spoken out against the treatment of women under Islamic rule. Chesler correctly views what she sees as the most important threat to Western freedom: Islamic terrorism.

Once Ms. Chesler admitted that she supported President Bush she became persona non grata to the feminist elite at NOW.

In her book, "The Death of Feminism," she charges that liberal feminists have "become cowardly herd animals and grim totalitarian thinkers."

If liberal women would stop viewing the unborn as a greater threat than terrorists than perhaps I'd have as much respect for them as I have for the bravery of Ms. Chesler. C

Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com