Dear Letha,
As I sit down to write this letter, I find myself sipping tea, listening to Rachmaninoff, and surrounded by many piles of books and articles! I have been delighted this evening to have several hours to read, and I somehow ended up reading about inspiring Quaker women of the past including Margaret Fell, Lucretia [...]
Continue reading about Quakers, Gender Roles, and “Chickified Men”
Dear Kimberly,
I loved your “Mr. and Mrs. Christian” wordplay on the “Mr. and Mrs. Human” title that I used for my previous post. Yes. sadly, many churches still teach that a woman finds her true identity in her relationship to a man — that he is the primary entity, complete as a human being, representing [...]
Dear Letha,
Thanks for recommending the essays of Dorothy Sayers. I have not yet read them, but it’s time! I love the distinction her editor makes about male and female being adjectives to describe human, and that the “substantive governs the modifier.” And then when you brought up “Human and Mrs. Human” I think I laughed [...]
Dear Kimberly,
I thought I’d continue our dialogue about our respective readings of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique as we became familiar with it during two different time periods.
I liked the way you summed up the basic message of Friedan’s book in the previous post. I think it really boils down to these questions: What does [...]
Dear Letha,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on what your world was like when you first held The Feminine Mystique in your hands. You are right that it can be hard for me to understand the kind of blatant sexism my mother and grandmothers experienced. The gender discrimination today can seem so much subtler than [...]
Continue reading about “The Feminine Mystique”– Then and Now, Part 2