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Helen Porath's avatar

Why do you write that women's Lib was something concocted by men, for men?

Women "bought" the Revolution whole-heartedly, and yearn for Abortion on Demand until today... That is to say, the Women who see themselves as Leaders of other women pushed this

Revolution forward until it engulfed not only women like themselves, but women eho didn't want to be part of it.

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Phyllis Chesler's avatar

Perhaps you misunderstand my point. It was the SEXUAL REVOLUTION that ruined the FEMINIST revolution. Free sex, male style, brothel style. This was not the aim of radical feminists at the outset.

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Scriber's avatar

Women wanted to be able to have sexual expression without having to marry and take on the whole kit and kaboodle of a man's life (as it was then) in order to experience that. They wanted more time to enjoy their sensuality and enjoy being adult for a while. They didn't want to be considered sleazy if they did, while their boyfriends accumulated experience elsewhere with lower-class girls or prostitutes and brought that experience to their relationships with girls they were courting--and did not feel a distracting sense of sexual deprivation because they weren't sexually-deprived as the girls were. Sylvia Plath wrote about this in The Bell Jar and her journals.

Sure, there were a few good-time girls who increased the number of good-time-girls-and-boys who were just after consequence-free, recreational sex, but much of the drive for the Sexual Revolution was by women who wanted to explore being adult and sexual without fear of pregnancy so they could grow up more and choose someone after having been around more men (not necessarily sleeping with every man that they knew, but not being in a fast funnel to marriage) and done more in life before settling down. The number of marriages that used to be precipitated by pregnancy is huge (probably still is).

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Steven Brizel's avatar

The number of marriages and children also have plummeted since the dawn of the so called sexual revolution

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Lucie Ramsey's avatar

Excellent review of Phillips’ book and the many insightful issues raised!!!

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