Table of Contents
Introduction
WOMENS UNINFORMED CHOICES
According to a poll conducted by Marie Claire, one-third of women consider themselves to be feminists. But what does being a feminist mean today, some forty years after the birth of the modern feminist movement? After all, since 1963, weve had Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority, and Ms Magazine, capture the popular imagination, influence successive generations of women, and define what it means to be a feminist. The politically correct answer from the leaders of the feminist movement would be that they believe in womens equality. Its a good answer; just about everyone believes that women should be treated fairly and equitably. The problem is that since 1963, real feminism, organized feminism, has evolved into something altogether different.
The modern feminist movement isnt about womens equality. Its about an agenda designed to benefit a special interest group: women who will follow the professional feminists idea of what a woman should want. To further this agenda, the modern feminist movement takes to the airways, Internet, and the print media, and walks the halls of Congress, the federal government, and state capitols to expand government, subsidize politically correct choices for women, and change our culture so that men and women become interchangeable. They also work hand-in-hand with liberal colleges to advance these goals.
The feminist influence on our government, media, and educational system means that many young women are getting a lot of bad information. And bad information leads to bad decisions that are especially harmful when they are made by young women, just starting off on their own.
Consider the many important decisions that a young womanlets call her Amandawill make during the following ten years of her life. Amanda worked hard in high school to get into a good college. She has a nice group of friends and enjoys average college-girl activitiesshe reads magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, indulges in Desperate Housewives and re-runs of Sex in the City, but always manages to complete her studies. Soon, shell have a degree from a respected university and be poised to begin the next stage of life.
Shell get a job and start down a career path. Shell meet potential mates and may consider getting married. Shell make important health decisions: She may consider engaging in casual sex and may face the decision of whether to have an abortion. Shell think about having children. If she decides to begin building a family, shell face choices about her role as a parent and how to balance family with career aspirations. She may also consider divorce.
Does Amanda have the information she needs to make decisions that will improve her chances for long-term health and happiness?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. Most likely, shes been given a lot of bad information, much of it in the name of political correctness.
Amanda grew up in a culture that makes it difficult for her to describe right from wrongshe fears being judgmental. Even as she hopes for marriage, she sees divorce as the natural end for marriages that arent entirely happy. Shes been saturated by popular culture that glorifies promiscuity, and reads feminist literature telling her that its old fashioned to associate sex with marriage and love. Shes sometimes confused about the role sex should play in her own life, whether she should view it as a casual activity meant simply for pleasure, or as something more meaningful. She wants a fulfilling career and has listened to feminist political organizations that say a womens primary goal should be to work full-time and make money. Amanda struggles to reconcile these perspectives with her own hopes and desires.
Can you identify with Amanda? I sure canshe was more or less me ten years ago. A lot of my peers today are learning in their thirties that they wish theyd made different decisions in their twenties. And when I speak to members of the generation just coming out of college today, I encounter women with the exact same hopes and fears that I had and who, much like me, lacked a road map for how to navigate the tumultuous terrain of adulthood.
This book is written to address the misinformation being fed to women. Im thirty-two years old, married, and just had my first child. I know the difficulties that women face during their twenties and thirties as they make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. I feel lucky my life has turned out as it has, but I sure wish Id received better information when I was younger about the trade-offs women inevitably must make during their lives.
This book exposes some of the most frequent myths sold to young women and takes on taboo areas of research not discussed in the politically correct world of academia or in popular culture targeted at young women.
For too long, the feminist movement has dictated whats appropriate to talk aboutand whats off-limitswhen it comes to issues affecting womens lives. An ethic of silence has surrounded issues like the negative sides of casual sex, the relationship between age and infertility, and the effects of daycare and divorce on kids. This silence has real consequences for women, their families, and our society.
This book fills the knowledge gap by highlighting research in areas of critical importance to womens livesfrom sex, love, and marriage to work, daycare, and divorce. It exposes how the feminist vision of what women should want their lives to be often runs counter to the hopes and desires of actual women.
Since this book doesnt pretend to be a comprehensive overview of research on all the topics addressed, readers interested in learning more will be pointed to other textsworks often ignored by academia and popular culture, which provide more thorough analysis. This isnt meant to endorse everything contained in those books, but Ive included them because they are useful resources and offer interesting perspectives.
Women need the unvarnished truth in order to appreciate the consequences of lifes choicesthe decisions that shape our futures. I believe the only way to foster a generation of truly independent women is to present them with the best information available and then allow them to follow their hearts and minds.
A brief history of the womens movement
The first womens rights convention in the United States was held in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19 and 20, 1848. The women who gathered thereincluding Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mottissued a Declaration of Sentiments, which echoed the Declaration of Independence, listing grievances that women suffered in the United States and calling for equal treatment under the law:
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ....
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
