IS FEMINISM OUTDATED? YES.
Put down the placards, women; we've won.
The world needed feminism in the 70s and 80s to fight a serious gap between the sexes. It is all too easy to forget that a woman of the nuclear family sitcom era couldn't purchase a house on her own or in many places could not have an independent bank account, couldn't testify in court against her husband, couldn't hope to get the kind of money he did for the same amount of labor in the same position. Bob beat Judy to the boardroom every time. Sexual harassment in the workplace marked men's resentment against those women who dared to break through the pink lace ceiling into the world of cigar smoking and political discussions. Even in the nineties, men were making so much more than women doing the same job.
But that world is changing. Women sit on the Supreme Court. Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin made it to the national presidential election ballots. Women are CEOs and college presidents. Women own their own homes and businesses. In most places a woman takes home as much money as a man does. Often the only difference between men and women in the workplace is the cut of their suits or which restroom door they walk through.
The persistence of the feminist movement beyond the achievement of its goal as an equalizer and an awareness raiser for men is comparable to the persistence of the Iraqi War beyond Hussein's capture. When a thing goes on too long it becomes not a cause, but a habit. Too many women expect men to be abusive, lecherous, foul-mouthed, and conniving, and give them no opportunity to show that they can be any different. In reaction to their fears of the illusory monster they have given too much power to, women project onto men the image of bungling idiots, who serve only the useful purposes of sperm donation and jar opening. They dutifully pass these projections on to their daughters, who fight bravely against a cause they didn't create and don't understand.
Men have learned to cry, as they've come to understand a major reason why women outlive them: women's ability to let pent-up rage, disappointment, pain and grief mist from their eyes in the form of healing tears. With the exception of a few rappers, their would-be emulators and some out-and-out crazies, most men at least recognize when they've done something stupid to a woman, and more than a handful are willing to apologize and do it right next time.
Men have learned to nurture. One is pleased to see the number of men tenderly wiping little kid noses in the park or dandling their progeny on their knees. They've taken to the kitchen, they've learned how to use the vacuum, they've become experts at teaching toilet training shoelace tying and two-wheeler riding.
The task for women who would be equal has been not losing their femininity to feminism. A woman should be able to stay at home and raise children, if she wants to. And she should be able to walk among her fellow CEOs without having to dress like them, become cutthroat, or vie with them over who can drink harder or tell the dirtiest jokes. It should never be a woman's goal to become a man to prove what a capable woman she is. Women are wired differently. That extra X chromosome does more than just give women the ability to produce children or suffer through their monthlies. A world of compassion, intelligence, and wisdom not superior to, but different from the makeup of men lies in that extra X. It makes a great difference in how woman perceives, copes, and overcomes in life. That difference in the home means everyone can prosper. That difference in the world means there is still hope for peace to guide this planet.
As the whole world slides into the trough of economic disaster, men clutching their pink slips are contemplating blowing their brains out. Women are standing strong, because that is what women do. Women scour through their pantries and they put together a meal of rice and catsup, if that's all there is. Women cut down the legs of Jimmy's jeans and give them to Billy, they get busy with their best friend, duct tape, on those leaky pipes behind the sink, and women go on, not infrequently with a little smile of pride at what they did. Could June Lockhart do that? Could Jane Wyman? They could and probably did, but society never gave them the chance to show that side on TV. What a show that would have been!