bettyfiedan

Ms Friedan was, of course, considered the mother of the women’s movement in America. Her
book, The Feminine Mystique, (published in 1963) challenged the traditional roles of women in
industrial society. She co-founded the National Organization of Women (NOW), led the crusade
for the Equal Rights Amendment and spoke and wrote about gender in society throughout her
exceptional life. She was also married to, and in 1969, divorced from, an abusive husband
named Carl.

In my efforts to get laughs from my Friedan/Grampa-Separated at Birth/United in Death
observation, I learned that many of my woman friends on St. John considered Betty their hero.
They seemed genuinely touched, almost as if a distant relative had passed away. That got me
thinking. St. John has more than its share of unique and empowered women. How would our
society look if we were still mired in the man/woman interplay of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950’s?
What debt do we owe the courageous, innovative, fed-up women that forced the changes of the
60’s and 70’s? And further, to what degree were those women spurred to action by thoughtless,
chauvinistic, abusive men?

OK, only a knucklehead like me would dare to take the credit away from lofty ladies and give it to
hurtful hubbies. Let me just say, it is only with tongue firmly in cheek that I progress with this
illogical concept. You see, I knew Carl Friedan, who died in December of last year, less than two
months before his ex-wife. My friend Ron’s house shared a backyard boundary with Friedan’s
and it was over that fence that I observed the life of the possible “father of the women’s
movement.” He was polite enough to me, but he was not what one would call a pleasant fellow.
Further, his relationships with street walking crack cocaine bimbos stretched the bounds of irony.

How old men get their jollies is, of course, largely their business. Carl had a one-armed
handyman whose paperhanging extended only to the passing of rubber checks. It was this
lowlife who procured playmates for his employer from alongside the Tamiami Trail (Rt. 41) in
Sarasota, Florida. Later, these characters would routinely slip through a jimmied window and rob
the boss of his electronic devices. Once, while estimating a proposed paint job, I met one such
object of Friedan’s desires as she languished on a divan. She barely tried to cover her
nakedness as a chill ran up my spine.

It was only later that the absurdity of the situation hit me. You could’t make this stuff up and
maybe it should remain unwritten, but what the heck. I researched the Betty/Carl relationship
and learned that by all accounts Carl was a hard-drinking, often violent and verbally debasing
mate who was, no doubt, displeased that his bride was less interested in domestic management
than female rabble-rousing. On the other hand, in an article written shortly after her death,
feminist Germaine Greer described Betty as, “… egotistic, personally demanding, and often
selfish...” Her obituary in the New York Times called her “famously abrasive.” But this still leaves
us with the question: which came first the chicken or the cock? Did Carl’s disagreeable maleness
create the giant personality that altered the role of women forever? Or, did Betty’s independent
nature drive a traditional husband over the edge?

Perhaps we should let Carl have the last word on the subject: “She changed the course of
history almost single-handedly. It took a driven, super aggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic
dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home,
where that kind of conduct doesn’t work. She simply never understood this.”

My own female hero is my wife, Candice, who never became a corporate CEO or entrepreneur.
Instead, armed with courage and common sense and imbued with the confidence and
empowerment that Betty Friedan helped create, as a single mom raised two beautiful, successful
and powerful daughters. Ask me any time; I carry my step-daughters’ pictures in my wallet.

-Jeff Smith