Posted on 02/06/2006 6:08:43 PM PST by madprof98
NEW YORK - Betty Friedan, who championed the once-radical assertion that women needed more than husbands and children to find fulfillment, was eulogized Monday as a feminist pioneer and loving mother — if not always an easy one to live with.
"I truly believe that Betty Friedan was the most influential woman, not only of the 20th century but of the second millennium," said Muriel Fox, one of the co-founders with Friedan of the National Organization for Women.
Colleagues from the women's movement as well as her three children and their families were among more than 300 mourners at the funeral for Friedan, who died of congestive heart failure Saturday on her 85th birthday.
Friedan's son Jonathan remembered his mother hard at work writing "The Feminine Mystique" — the 1963 manifesto that shattered the cozy Ozzie-and-Harriet ideal of the prosperous postwar era — while her three children bounced around their New York City apartment.
"Betty was not the perfect mother," he said. "Emily, Daniel and I ate TV dinners growing up way beyond the recommended limit." But when tens of thousands of people cheered his mother at a rally when he was 17, "my heart, despite its adolescent shell, burst with pride."
Friedan's daughter, Dr. Emily Friedan, called her mother "a mass of contradictions."
"She made so many connections and yet was exquisitely lonely," she said. "Maybe the ultimate contradiction was that Betty just didn't fit into this world. That was her curse, and yet she started a revolution."
Former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman said she struggled to keep up with Friedan at women's rights marches because Friedan "had enough energy for all of us."
"Betty liberated our minds, and the gift of freedom is one of the most important things that we can have," Holtzman said.
Several speakers remembered Friedan as a loving person who could also be feisty and difficult.
"She was always very sweet and loving to me but when it came to other people she just didn't take any (expletive) from anyone," said her 23-year-old grandson, Raphael Friedan. "She was definitely the coolest grandmother that a young guy like me could ask for."
He recalled how his grandmother took him to Cuba and let him throw big parties at her summer house in Sag Harbor on Long Island.
Six of Friedan's nine grandchildren accompanied her plain wooden coffin out of Riverside Memorial Chapel after the service. She was to be buried in Sag Harbor.
He recalled how his grandmother took him to Cuba and let him throw big parties at her summer house in Sag Harbor on Long Island.
Reminds me of Teddy taking the Kennedy kids out to binge and rape.
There are plenty of reasons to hate this woman, but I'm going to take this opportunity to be really petty: does anyone else think she looked like Klinger from M.A.S.H.?
And they are more miserable than ever. My impression of today's modern woman is that she's more self-focused and correspondingly less satisfied than before.
Oh man! That made me laugh out loud!
What happened to the femi chick with Hobo Kelly glasses wonder if she spoke at the funeral?
My mom came back from a rally in the late 60s and pretty much told us she would never do anything for us again, just live for herself. Those weren't the words she used, but that's what we heard. Friedan was one of the first to institutionalize selfishness and hail it as a right.
Pictures?
Actually what I think she should of said should have been geered twoard Older Women over 40 after you have raised you're kids realize you still have alot of potential to be a smart, happy desirable woman. Take care of you're body mind and spirit don't let menopause turn you into a fat complaining, boring old hag because you're husband will leave you in a New York minute, because you lack luster for life.... I am sure that is her story, she turned into a pill...She had no mate.
Ergo.....children can be an obstacle to fulfillment.
Ergo....we need ways to liberate women from the burden of children.
Ergo.....women's fulfillment depends on the availability of abortion.
Thanks Betty. You penned a modern day "Final Solution" that has helped to exterminate millions.
Sounds like the typical commie from the 30's to me. The family never felt her real love because, after all, her first love, her real love, her only love was for the Party.
You could have written this script from afar, it's just so typical. (and so unbelievably pathological and sick).
Very telling...
One telling point is that two of them refer to her by her first name rather than "Mom" or "my mother".That's a 100% reliable sign that the kid doesn't have a whole lot of respect for the parent because the title "Mom" and "Dad" are the two most noble titles that exist in human civilization.
Actually, Klinger in drag is better looking than the marxist. Boy, is she ugly!
You may be chastened for your harshness...but not by me.
This woman's personal misery, broadcast large, undid hundreds of thousands of marriages...planted the seeds for a couple morally shiftless generations...and simply brought untold misery to millions. Hell with her.
"does anyone else think she looked like Klinger from M.A.S.H.?"
No. Klinger was handsome, in a rough-looking way.
And Klinger looked better in a dress.
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