Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

THE BACKLASH MYTH 243minority of aware women can be divided into two classes: those who havenot sold out to the patriarchy and those who have. Not surprisingly,Faludi places herself in the first group, while those who disagree withthem are consigned to the second. Faludi includes in their number suchdedicated feminists as Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Sylvia Hewlett,Erica Jong, and Susan Brownmiller.Friedan, who has criticized radical feminists for "wallowing" in victimhoodand who even dared to suggest that feminists were wrong to slightGirl Scout leaders and Junior League members, is accused of using NewRight rhetoric and of being part and parcel of its "profamily" agenda. Butthe question is not why Betty Friedan may be wrong but why she is, inFaludi's words, "stomping on a movement that she did so much to createand lead." Faludi's "explanation" is that Friedan is having "the tantrumsof a fallen leader who is clearly distressed and angry that shewasn't allowed to be the Alpha wolf as long as she would have liked." 55According to Faludi, Friedan's pettiness rendered her susceptible totreason.Sylvia Ann Hewlett is a former Barnard professor of economics who isknown for her work on family-policy issues. She had worked hard in theseventies canvassing for the Equal Rights Amendment. Her shock anddismay at its defeat moved her to ask, in her book A Lesser Life: The Mythof Women's Liberation in America, "Why did women fail to give the ERAthe support necessary for victory?"The conclusions she reached put her high on Faludi's backlash blacklist."In a profound way," Hewlett writes, "feminists have failed to connectwith the needs and aspirations of ordinary American women." 56Accordingto Hewlett, the ERA did not pass because of a widespread defectionof women who no longer felt well represented by the feminist leaderswho advocated its passage. "It is sobering to realize that the ERA wasdefeated not by Barry Goldwater, Jerry Falwell, or any combination ofmale chauvinist pigs, but by women who were alienated from a feministmovement the values of which seemed elitist and disconnected from thelives of ordinary people." 57Faludi is, of course, committed to the view that women as well as menare participating in and abetting the backlash. So Hewlett's contentionsare in that sense not unwelcome to Faludi: both agree that women no lessthan men are responsible for the defeat of the ERA. But whereas Hewlettascribes women's opposition to the ERA to their alienation from thewomen's movement due to its lack of sympathy for "ordinary women,"Faludi insists on seeing it as a direct effect of the backlash that isolatedand discredited the leaders of the women's movement. For Faludi, there