Rape Culture 101 -- My Comfortable Suburban Concentration Camp -- Not

by Connie Chastain*

Many years ago, when I was a young woman, I tried to read The Feminine Mystique. I don't remember how far into it I got before I couldn't read anymore, or what specific bit of nonsense made me close the book.

But I don't think you have to read the whole thing to know it for what it is--leftist propaganda. Destruction of the family is a leftist aim, as their writings reveal, and feminism has greatly advance this aim.

My apologies to any liberals in the FRS readership. Liberalism and leftism share some similarities, some overlap, but they aren't the same thing. As a staunch cultural and political conservative, even I have some liberal leanings now and then, on some subjects.

For example, I don't mind a taxpayer financed safety net for families with children who are facing unexpected financial difficulties through no fault of their own. Sometimes, there's just nobody else to do it.

What I do mind is generational dependence on the government, the learned helplessness as a way of life, largely because of the absence of a father in the family, which I perceive to be directly related to the grip feminism has on our culture.

I got nothing against, say, women voting -- although I am happy to admit the country got along just fine before women got the franchise. Well...except for that little civil war thingie a hundred and fifty years ago, although I don't see how female suffrage would have made much difference in that.

What I do object to is feminism's destruction of the family and its war against men, seen nowhere more clearly than in the false rape epidemic chronicled daily in this blog.

And while there are a multitude of hardworking feminists, famous and obscure, who share culpability for bringing our culture to the sorry state it's in now, nobody is more responsible than Betty Friedan, author of the aforementioned destructive tome, and founder of the National Organization for Women.

I never had the "problem with no name." Most of the women I've known never had it, either. For us, the question wasn't, "Is this all?" It was, "Can I go on break now?"

It takes only a glimpse of my background to see why I can't relate to Freidan's world, and her complaint. At all. And I do not believe I'm an isolated case. There are lots of us who can't relate.

My maternal grandmother came down out of the mountains to go to work in a cotton mill -- at age thirteen. She met my grandfather there. They both worked in the mill until they retired, and raised five successful daughters while doing so.

My paternal grandmother was widowed when a horrific car-train collision took the life of her husband, two days before her youngest child was born. She never remarried, but raised her five sons herself, with a little help from her own parents.

My mother worked outside the home most of her adult life. In our world, husbands and fathers were the breadwinners. They headed the household and directed the family. Wives and mothers took care of the home and children, and helped out with a supplemental income when they could. Marriage and parenting was a cooperative effort.

Comfortable suburban concentration camps? Not in my experience. It took both parents working hard, and some blood and sweat, and occasional tears, to make it; but by and large people were happy in their family accomplishments.

I sincerely believe the women of the two previous generations were far stronger than mine and those that have followed. There are a lot of things I can't forgive feminism for, but turning two generations of women into perpetural, whining children, with audacious and conscienceless false rape accusers sprinkled liberally among their numbers, rates near the top.

*Connie is a member of the FRS team whose column appears here every Friday.  Her blog is is http://conniechastain.blogspot.com/