Although gender inequality is of course still rampant if you bother to look, many who were not around for the women’s movement Friedan was pivotal in jumpstarting in the ’60’s have no context to appreciate the extent it reversed the egregious sexism previously built into the American social fabric. That the gains women have made remedying oppression since the ’60’s are taken for granted these days is a testimony to the now-unsung enormity of the movement’s achievements. Much as a fish is not aware of the water, feminist issues now fade into the background rather than remaining a foreground struggle — for better and worse.

This foreground awareness — “consciousness-raising” — was undergone and undertaken by men who were supportive of the feminist movement too, and it had a central role in redefining masculinity and modulating the destructive influence of testosterone in our society. As the women’s movement has faded into the background a generation later, this effect on men and maleness is going by the boards as well, I fear. As someone who tries to raise his son without his falling into conventional male stereotypes, even in a liberal community, it often feels like bucking a trend.

Friedan, it seems, grew to feel that the women’s movement was being hijacked by man-hating elements. From my perspective as someone who was a part of it, the consciousness-raising of the ’60’s or ’70’s male with feminist sensibilities inherently required a self-effacing and self-critical stance. This was supposed to be encouraged, supported and welcomed by women in the movement, but it made for a great deal of vulnerability to anti-male elements. In a curious way, this went some distance toward standing the old social order on its head, replacing the traditional oppression and self-loathing of women in our society with oppression and self-loathing of men, which I guess was the point for some. It seems to me that this played a great role in alienating male sympathizers and stemming the tide of the reform of maleness that many saw as a crucial part of the women’s movement.

Some in the movement, those with whom Friedan eventually broke, would of course disagree that the reform of male consciousness was germane at all, putting it that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” (to continue with the fish motif). There’s that self-effacement again — having to correct myself if I dare to suggest that the feminist movement was as important to me as it was to women, needing to reassure that I don’t belong to the ‘Virginia Slims’ contingent of the movement threatening to co-opt it with a conventional male powerplay…