Who told women that they couldn't be round, that they had to cut themselves off from their bodies? Who told women that even if they wanted to stay home with their children, they shouldn't be allowed to? It wasn't the patriarchy. If you flip open to any page of The Second Sex or The Feminine Mystique, you are bound to find more misogyny than in the writings of Aristotle and Norman Mailer combined-sexist as they might have been, at least these men never called women "parasites." Simone de Beauvoir: "What is extremely demoralizing for the woman who aims at self-sufficiency is the existence of other women . . . who live as parasites." Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root: "Since housewifery and prostitution have the same structure, it is hypocritical to outlaw one and not the other.
( Wendy Shalit )
[ A Return to Modesty: ]
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