Did Betty Friedan "recant"?

[Gabriela]

I thought I heard that Betty Friedan "recanted" a lot of what she said in The Feminine Mystique. Is this true? If so, can someone point me to an online source that discusses what she "took back"?

[Basilisa Marie]

Nope, I highly doubt that's true.  Wikipedia doesn't say anything about it, and knowing what I know of Friedan and her philosophy, the idea that she'd "recant" the Feminine Mystique doesn't make any sense.  

[Gabriela]

She definitely didn't like the direction that radical feminists took her ideas in. I know I read an article about this a long time ago. Wiki doesn't say hardly anything about her at all, so it's not a good source for this.

 

Anyone? Sources?

[Basilisa Marie]

"Radical" is a term people use to describe any kind of feminism that they don't like. True radical feminists today want men to live underground and be used for breeding purposes only.  Or that the only real, non-harmful relationship a woman can have is with another woman (the first I made up, the second I didn't).  

 

If Friedan had done something as major as recant her Feminine Mystique, it'd be all over the place.  But that doesn't make sense with everything else she worked and stood for.   Most thinkers develop and fine-tune their ideas over time.  Karl Rahner didn't like what his students did with his idea of Anonymous Christians, but he didn't "recant" the idea.  

You're probably asking the wrong forum for something like this.  As far as I can tell, there aren't very many people who have actually studied feminist writers (and if you exist please say hi so we can be friends!).  

[Gabriela]

"Radical" is a term people use to describe any kind of feminism that they don't like.

 

Critical scholars actually divide feminist scholarship into three main periods:

 

(1) Liberal feminism, from the early 19th century to around women's suffrage

(2) Radical feminism, from the 1960s to about the early 1990s

(3) Critical feminism, from about the early 1990s to the present

 

Friedan (from what I understand) specifically did not like the way that (2) took her ideas (even though that turn in feminism started with her). (2) is commonly conflated with second-wave feminism, but (2) is a scholarly division, whereas "second-wave feminism" is largely social/political.

 

beatitude has studied feminism, I believe, but I don't know if she's fond of it. I know she has social-constructionist ideas about gender.

 

Maybe I should move this to the Debate Table. HEY! MODS! Can someone please move this thread to the Debate Table? :please:

How do I get their attention? I have no idea...

[beatitude]

"Radical" is a term people use to describe any kind of feminism that they don't like. True radical feminists today want men to live underground and be used for breeding purposes only.  Or that the only real, non-harmful relationship a woman can have is with another woman (the first I made up, the second I didn't).  

 

It is true that people use 'radical' to describe any feminism they don't like - I keep seeing it done around this phorum, and it makes me roll my eyes every time, as a lot of the ideas that people dismiss as 'radical feminism' are not radical feminist at all or even diametrically opposed to radical feminist thought.

 

But your own definition is not quite correct. I am part of a few radical feminist groups, and while some rad fems do believe that women can only have real and non-harmful relationships with other women, many do not. It's reasonable to say that they look at relationships between men and women a lot more critically than liberal feminists might, and they are powerful defenders of the necessity of women-only space for political organising, but this does not necessarily translate as a dismissal of all male-relationship relationships.

 

As for Friedan, she was herself influenced by the radical feminist movement, especially in her early years of activism, and I have never seen any suggestion that she took back any of what she wrote. Initially she was opposed to lesbianism being framed as a political issue, a position she renounced later on, but I don't think this will be what curiousing meant.

Edited March 24, 2013 by beatitude