"Men will not be free to be all they can be as long as they must live up to an image of masculinity that disallows all the tenderness and sensitivity in a man, all that might be considered feminine. Men have an enormous capacity in them that they have to repress and fear in order to live up to the obsolete, brutal, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian, napalm-all-the-children-in-Vietnam, bang-bang-you're-dead image of masculinity. Men are not allowed to admit that they are sometimes afraid. They are not allowed to express their own sensitivity, their own need to be passive sometimes and not always active. Men are not allowed to cry. So they're only half-human, as women are only half-human, until we can go this next step forward."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Jews from the United StatesAgnostics from the United StatesAuthors from the United StatesPeople from Illinois
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Abortion: A Woman's Civil Right".
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan (4 February 1921 – 4 February 2006) was an American "second-wave" feminist best known for The Feminine Mystique, a critique of women's role as stay-at-home mothers.
42 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Betty Friedan →
Related Quotes
"Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them …"
"We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it’s hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people,…"
"The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.…"
"The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of…"
"The suburban housewife — she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all …"
"Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, drivi…"
"Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgastic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming…"
"American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if … t…"
"The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive."
"Am I saying that women must be liberated from motherhood? No. I am saying that motherhood will only be a joyous and r…"