In the late 1960's, from my perspective as a budding teenager, feminism and women's liberation, although clearly needed, came with a bite and it was dragging a heavy load of baggage I did not quite understand then. The movement scared me. It exploded with an "I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore" feel that I could not entirely get behind.
I was too fresh, too new to the scene. I was barely acquiring breasts, tender protrusions I got teased and shamed for that I was overly eager to lock down in a tight restraining "training" bra to minimize their movement as well as the attention drawn to them.
My mother on the other hand, was fed up. She had enough and was not happy being married to my father. Our family witnessed daily evidence of this for many years. She hated feeling stuck in a role of expected chores and never ending slave-like labor that elicited no praise, affection, nor appreciation.
It was hard for me to tell if this liberation movement spurred her behavior within our house, or whether she was organically one part of it. Or whether it was a "One Hundreth Monkey" thing that suddenly bloomed within her as it came to fruition within all women, an awareness that power and freedoms needed a serious shift toward women to be in better balance or all hell was going to break out. All hell broke out in our house because her determination and furry threatened my father and his masculine nature tried to squelch her in many insidious emotional ways.
Her angry upset led to frequent protests against his calm belittling jabs. Her violent resistance directly against my father, became a daily occurrence, any time he was around as well as bad mouthing him when he wasn't. Her violent outburst escalated and became life threatening a number of times.
I felt her pain, I saw her plight and understood her need and discomfort. Her reaction was however unreasonable was in fact reasonable considering what she was up against. However I could not get behind the way her fight came out, explosive and mean spirited, fueled by something much greater, either historically in her own life, or something women had suffered for generations.
Her fight was not something she would ever win gracefully, nor would she simply be granted freedoms for her asking. She was bashing up against a threatened male ego, that knew worse ways to fight and win than she could ever imagine. Her reactivity and tone was a set up for him poke fun at her, to call her crazy, and belittle her, put her down, and not take her seriously, and to slyly use passive aggression to take her down, destroy her.
This resistance to being bullied, put down, manipulated, and controlled was happening in other homes too. Homes where any women challenging her husband's understanding of the limited freedom and roles of women to serve a man within a marriage was as likely to lead to doctor visits and emotion-numbing psychotropic drug prescriptions that rendered a mother nearly dead to her family.
My mother struggled to emancipate herself from being a housewife. When she first filed for a divorce in 1967, it was denied! She was at her wits end needing to get out of her marriage and a county judge had the power and ability to rule, "no!" you can not! divorce denied! (because my father did not want a divorce!).
She tried again in 1968 and her request began a six year process of weekly court battles to determine a settlement, the dissolution of her marriage to my father. It was grueling, loaded with shaming lies. And at times pulled us kids into it when we were requested to testify against one or the other parent. Something I refused to do because I just could not see that working out for anyone. I loved both my parents. And I could see where they each were wrong and suffering, and declaring ultimate power.
Respectful conduct was not part of my parents behavior toward each other. Which apparently is a global problem that has continued in America and many other countries.
My mother loved us, but was not content to just take care of five children she might not have had if she had a choice about when and how she conceived. Being catholic left conception to fate. Which often meant most married women felt obligated to be the receptacle of all sexual inclinations of their mates, and they often had another child as often as her body would conceive.
My mother was an affectionate, sensual, Goddess-like Mexican Indian. She longed to collect on her striking beauty, as a Hollywood actress or model. Or perhaps she might have studied medicine, or flown a small plane to exotic places around the globe or continue teaching, or created a farm school for troubled teenagers.
Instead, she got courted by a nerdy engineer, an outdoor enthusiast who belonged to "The Mountain Dancers" club, a social group that liked to hike, camp and dance. He was a photographer, whose attention on her was too alluring to resist. So, she married this adorable Irish geek with wavy brown hair, horn rimmed glasses, and flirty Irish eyes, who was sexually repressed, touch deprived, and horny.
Her religion did not allow her to prevent conception. So five children immediately followed within eight years. By the time the last one was born, her body and mind were tired of holding up a 1950's facade of the perfect family living in a modern Eichler tract home neighborhood in the picturesque new settlement in Lucas Valley, in Marin County. We have many staged 16mm films showing the effort made to show well.
Due to her stress and discontent, by the time I turned thirteen, I made a pact with myself that I would never marry, have children nor be a secretary, as it was clear to me these roles were wrought with problems in our society that kept women trapped, in demeaning subservient roles, something I felt determined to avoid.
Concurrent with my begging a pleading to finally get a bra to wear to settle the pain on my chest, women were burning them. So, my mother refused to purchase an item of clothing she deemed useless, figuring I only wanted one in order to join the ranks of women in Berkeley who were protesting and taking a very public stand against their expected roles, by burning their bras! A charchol-black roasted bra in flames on a stick became the symbol of a "Liberated Woman". I saw this movement with cautious eyes. I felt wary of the ugliness, destruction, the anger and the hatred of men.
And I could not help wondering even then; if women decline their roles and break free, and acquire rights and abilities to do more of what they want to do in life, what will happen to the men? Will there also be at some point, a Men's Liberation Movement?
I suspected women stepping out of their known roles would disorient men. I wondered, how will men fall if women stop taking care of everything for them, and who will they become if they are forced to do what women do for them, for themselves? I saw men as extremely weak due to their fragile egos that need to be stoked by praise all the time. I felt sorry for men being left behind.
I thought to myself, sooner or later, men will also step up and out of their expected roles... and won't we all be surprised that there is a flip side to women's liberation: men's liberation.
Fast forward nearly fifty years later. What do we have now? A MESS!
I would have expected that things evened out by now, but that is not the case. And instead of WLM being followed a few years later by a MLM... We only gained a little progress. And strangely the male population in general has not stepped up to be emancipated from grueling roles. Instead there's been a backlash. Men have gotten meaner uglier and more controlling. They are far less like;y to protect or look out for women.
There is a lovely movement of men trying a lot harder to appeal to women, by getting softer, more aware, more caring. And surely we have benefited from the writings and progressive perspectives of Iron John, and supportive workshops and men's groups... helping men find themselves and become a bit more aware... but mostly, we now suffer the outcome of women's liberation:
Women can work, and go home and take care of everything at home. In many households women still do everything, or close to everything. Women have had to be more masculine out in the world to hold their own in the work force... and this pretty much robs women of the natural feminine nature. And masculine women completely offsets a balance of attraction and need. Once women were independent, men had no place, and no security with women, which I think has led to them becoming more abusive, in order to try to gain power over women.
Women did not really gain much more than their "independence"... yet also endure getting treated badly for it, versus earning respect.
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