“The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.”

— Betty Friedan , book The Feminine Mystique

Ch 13 "The Forfeited Self".
The Feminine Mystique (1963)

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Betty Friedan 33

American activist 1921–2006

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“The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Opening lines, Ch. 1 "The Problem That Has No Name".
The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Context: The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — “Is this all?”

“Men insist that they don't mind women succeeding so long as they retain their "femininity". Yet the qualities that men consider "feminine" timidity, submissiveness, obedience, silliness, and self-debasement — are the very qualities best guaranteed to assure the defeat of even the most gifted aspirant.”

Elizabeth Gould Davis book The First Sex

The First Sex, ch. 22 - Woman in the Aquarian Age (1971).

“Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved the way for contemporary feminist movement-it was written as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women-housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.'" That "more" she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife. She made her plight and the plight of white women like herself synonymous with a condition affecting all American women. In so doing, she deflected attention away from her classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes clear that the women she saw as victimized by sexism were college-educated, white women who were compelled by sexist conditioning to remain in the home. … Specific problems and dilemmas of leisure class white housewives were real concerns that merited consideration and change but they were not the pressing political concerns of masses of women. Masses of women were concerned about economic survival, ethnic and racial discrimination, etc. When Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, more than one third of all women were in the work force. Although many women longed to be housewives, only women with leisure time and money could actually shape their identities on the model of the feminine mystique.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

p. 1-2 https://books.google.com/books?id=uvIQbop4cdsC&pg=PA1.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory

“The suburban housewife — she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife — freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother … had found true feminine fulfilment.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 1 "The Problem That Has No Name"

“What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Notes on 'Camp'" (1964), note 9, p. 279 http://books.google.com/books?id=e3qgRrVlEH4C&q=%22What+is+most+beautiful+in+virile+men+is+something+feminine+what+is+most+beautiful+in+feminine+women+is+something+masculine%22&pg=PA279#v=onepage; originally published in Partisan Review, Vol. 31 No. 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=qEwqAQAAMAAJ&q=%22What+is+most+beautiful+in+virile+men+is+something+feminine+what+is+most+beautiful+in+feminine+women+is+something+masculine%22&pg=PA519#v=onepage, ( Fall 1964 http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/books/PR1964V31N4/HTML/#519/z)
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“We will also discuss the role of women in the Church. Remember that the Church (la chiesa) is feminine.”

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“Large breasts are associated with feminine women, regardless of the slenderness of their hips. The capacity of a milk container cannot be told by its outside dimensions. Femininity is more accurately displayed by generous hips. Guess you can tell I favor women with big asses. All Democrat women have made themselves big asses, welcome.”

Anton LaVey book The Devil's Notebook

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“All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

“In 1960, only sixteen million Americans did not trace their ancestors to Europe. Today, the number is eighty million. No nation has ever undergone so rapid and radical a transformation.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

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“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

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“The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.”

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