Susan Faludi

"Backlash happens to be the title of a 1947 Hollywood movie in which a man frames his wife for a murder hes committed The backlash against womens rights works in much the same way: its rhetoric charges feminists with all the crimes it perpetrates The backlash line blames the womens movement for the “feminization of poverty” nwhile the backlashs own instigators in Washington pushed through the budget cuts that helped impoverish millions of women, fought pay equity proposals, and undermined equal opportunity laws The backlash line claims the womens movement cares nothing for childrens rightsnwhile its own represetatives in the capital and state legislatures have blocked one bill after another to improve child care, slashed billions of dollars in federal aid for children, and relaxed state licensing standards for day care centers The backlash line accuses the womens movement of creating a generation of unhappy single and childless womennbut its purveyors in the media are the ones guilty of making single and childless women feel like circus freaks"

"To blame feminism for womens “lesser life” is to miss entirely the point of feminism, which is to win women a wider range of experience. Feminism remains a pretty simple concept, despite repeated — and enormously effective efforts to dress it up in greasepaint and turn its proponents into gargoyles. As Rebecca West wrote sardonically in 1913, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: l only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

"The meaning of the word “feminist” has not really changed since it first appeared in a book review in the Athenaeum of April 27, 1895, describing a woman who “has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.” It is the basic proposition that, as Nora put it in Ibsens A Dolls House a century ago, “Before everything else Im a human being.” It is the simply worded sign hoisted by a little girl in the 1970 Womens Strike for Equality: I AM NOT A BARBIE DOLL. Feminism asks the world to recognize at long last that women arent decorative ornaments, worthy vessels, members of a “special-interest group”. They are half (in fact, now more than half) of the national population, and just as deserving of rights and opportunities, just as capable of participating in the worlds events, as the other half. Feminisms agenda is basic It asks that women not be forced to “choose” between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves — instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men."

"The backlash is not a conspiracy, with a council dispatching agents from some central control room, nor are the people who serve its ends often aware of their role; some even consider themselves feminists. For the most part, its workings are encoded and internalized, diffuse and chameleonic. Not all of the manifestations of the backlash are of equal weight or significance, either; some are mere ephemera, generated by a culture machine that is always scrounging for a “fresh” angle. Taken as a whole, however, these codes and cajolings, these whispers and threats and myths, move overwhelmingly in one direction: they try to push women back into their “acceptable” roles — whether as Daddys girl or fluttery romantic, active nester or passive love object."

"Although the backlash is not a movement, that doesnt make it any less destructive. In fact, the lack of orchestration, the absence of a single string-puller, only makes it harder to see — and perhaps more effective. A backlash against womens rights succeeds to the degree that it appears not to be political, that it appears not to be a struggle at all. It is most powerful when it goes private, when it lodges in a womans mind and turns her vision inward, until she imagines the pressure is all in her head, until she begins to enforce the backlash, too — on herself."

"In the last decade, the backlash has moved through the cultures secret chambers, traveling through passageways of flattery and fear. Along the way, it has adopted disguises: a mask of mild derision or the painted face of deep “concern”. Its lips profess pity for any woman who wont fit the mold, while it tries to clamp the mold around her ears. It pursues a divide-and-conquer strategy: single versus married women, working women versus homemakers, middle- versus working-class. It manipulates a system of rewards and punishments, elevating women who follow its rules, isolating those who dont. The backlash remarkets old myths about women as new facts and ignores all appeals to reason. Cornered, it denies its own existence, points an accusatory finger at feminism, and burrows deeper underground."