Feminine Cognitive Dissonance

In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique that dispelled the mystique that surrounded womanhood and the many myths that went with it. But we are seeing today is nothing like the mystique of the 50s. What we are seeing today can only be called Feminine Cognitive Dissonance.


Women are told to say "no" to contraceptives and family planning (and have all the children they can), "no" to too many children (that they can't feed), "no" to short skirts (or they run the risk of being raped), "no" to drab clothing (or they run the risk of not catching a husband), "no" to having an opinion (for that's a man's job), "no" to the wrong opinion (for they must know right from wrong, or they will be wrong), "no" to having a career (homemaking is a woman's proper role), "no" to being on welfare (for no one should get a free lunch), "no" to being unattractive, plain, or shapeless (for a woman is public property, and we all have a right to comment on her looks), and "no" to being considered an individual (a mom is not a person, she is mom). 

Let's go over this one more time.

Essentially, what we are saying is that a woman must be what ever others want her to be. The ultra-religious want her to have a quiverfull of children, but children cost money, which leads to the question who is going to feed them? The husband of course is the usual answer, but what if there is no husband? What if he died in Iraq or Afghanistan, doing what he was told was his duty? Welfare is the last resort of more than one single parent, but those who believe they have a right to keep their earnings, reject welfare, which helps single parents. So what is a woman to do? Stay single? Oh no! that's not an option, not at least in the religious circles, for women were created to have children - and so the argument goes on ad infinitum.  

The problem is that we have too many ideologies that define womanhood according to their own restrictive principles. Yet, what it means to be a woman cannot be defined by an economic model or a religious dogma. A woman is a woman, regardless of what the supporters of ideologies would like her to be. Yes, women have children, and yes, they are her children, but imagine a world in which women have no more children. That world would end in a generation. We all know it, and we fear it, which is why we put pressure on young women to marry early, and have as many children as possible. But when the moment arrives that these same children must be fed, another fear kicks in: what if there isn't enough for me? And so we hoard to secure our own survival, and let the very same children, whom we know are the key to our own future, die. But because we can't handle the idea that we are the cause of it, we put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of women. "You deal with it," we say, as we demand that they produce the future generations and feed them too.

The Feminine Cognitive Dissonance is caused by a global cognitive dissonance. We all participate in it, but few recognize it. While we point our fingers at "bad mothers" and "welfare queens," women are being slowly crushed under the weight of this global denial as they try to do the impossible. Like most problems, this isn't going to go away on its own. If we as a society demand that women have children in order to secure the existence of humanity, women have an equal right to demand economic support in order to secure the existence of those children. Otherwise, what's the point?