Backlash

I am currently reading Susan Faludi's Backlash. It was published in 1993 but still makes frightening reading as you can see similar things happening today. The media presents an even narrower selection of acceptable roles for women and dictates far more what is an acceptable appearance for women to present to the world. Nearly every week there are heartfelt testimonies from high flying women who have given up their careers to look after children. The sub text of such articles is always that the only acceptable role for women is as wives and mothers.

In my opinion there is a 21st century backlash against women who step out of line. Women are held responsible for the prevalence of anti social behaviour of children. Women are responsible for men not staying in marriages. Women want too much from life. Women are always criticising men and emasculating them. You shouldn't criticise you should support everything they do and give up your own interests if that's what they want.

Women disadvantage their children because they work outside the home. Strange how a child can grow up well behaved and adjusted when it only sees its father briefly in the evenings when he comes home tired from work, but the same child will be an anti-social thug if he/she only sees the mother for the same length of time. Something not very logical here.

I would urge everyone to read Backlash in the hope we can stop the backlash happening again. The interviews with the New Right campaigners in the USA are masterpieces of irony and show these women for the hypocrites they are. In nearly every case these women are campaigning for women to return to the home and yet their own lives are examples of feminist principles. Husband at home looking after the kids when they're on the campaign trail, sharing household chores etc. They make marvellous reading.