A retrospective history of feminism's second wave

As any anthropologist, sociologist, or historian can tell you, no true social revolution will take place unchallenged for long, and the same is true for feminism. What is most interesting in the case of feminism is that it has gone unchallenged for a considerably longer period than any other equivalent, non-gender, revolution. That lack of criticism, in itself, speaks volumes about real power relationships between the sexes in our society.

Yet within the past couple of years, an emerging challenge has been forming and, while disorganized, it is becoming increasingly vocal. Author Susan Faludi sensed it and wrote the best seller Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women in response. According to Faludi, Feminism is finishing its "Second Wave," the first wave being that which occurred at the beginning of the century and before the Second World War. The Second Wave, she states, was a quest for equality and access to social, political, and economic power. The backlash she refers to in her title is supposedly the response from the power elite (men) who don't wish to share.

But is it really? Or is Faludi's explanation just a tad too conspiratorially glib? Might there be something else going on? Let's look.

Birth Control Key to Women's Power?
Any future historians of the twentieth century, with their facts arrayed before them, would have to note that the emergence of "Second Wave" feminism correlates more closely to the advent of wide spread birth control than to any other social or economic fact of that time. And they would certainly note the "First Wave" prophecy of Margaret Sanger about the relationship between birth control and female freedom. They might also be forced to note the following in determining the "meaning" of late twentieth century feminism:

• That with the widespread availability of female controlled contraception, sex and reproduction were no longer coupled, so to speak.
• That the ages old social mechanisms which had always required women to be calculating and discrete about sexual behavior could now be suborned.
• That those mechanisms had always previously required a sense of social responsibility in women which was now gone.
• That while women no longer had mechanisms in place which required social responsibility on their part, men still did; nothing had changed for them.

Feminism's Lack of Utility
Despite the emergence of a large and vocal women's movement, social upheaval on a scale not seen since the industrial revolution, and the insinuation of women's issues into every aspect of daily life, there was, after thirty years, little of positive value to show for it. Our historians would be somewhat puzzled that no one seemed willing to point this out for decades. The most notable contributions appearing to correlate with the women's movement would seem to have been socially deleterious: the dismemberment of the family, the destruction of children, and the devaluing of men, all accompanied by a steady stream of bitching that required that everyone shape up except them.

Our historians would note that within the women's movement there had been no "vision thing": no aspect of the movement concerned itself with contributions to society, only with acquisitions. These feminists said they wanted their "rights," but they never gave a thought about what they would do with them. And while they kept acquiring more "rights," men, children, and society at large, were getting nothing; not gaining, not staying even. If they were economic historians, they might be inclined to make an analogy that they were studying the ultimate in a consumer society with female "rights" classified as just another commodity: a socio-sexual shopping trip; a forerunner of Reaganomics.

Laws of History
The result was that after thirty years of accomplishing almost nothing of socially constructive value, the women's movement held that fact up as proof positive that they were "still" being discriminated against.

And what would tell them that all this was an offshoot of female reproductive freedom? Simply the injection by the women's movement of sexual themes and undercurrents into every aspect of modern life which trivialized every issue from presidential politics to education. If sex wasn't involved it didn't count. Sex became their idee fixe.