On My Mom, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Long Path of the Equal Rights Amendment
Recently, I called my mom to ask her the type of concern just a child can ask her mom. “Did you hate Phyllis Schlafly?”
“I didn’t understand her to hate her. She was just versus feminism,” she reacted. “People used to consider her as the opposite of me,” my mom told me. “They used to put me on television up versus her. I might have argued with her, I can’t keep in mind. She was the anti-feminist, and I was pro-feminism. She thought feminism wasn’t good for ladies.”
I read when that Schlafly had actually read my mother’s books as a method of attempting to comprehend feminists. I have no idea if that’s true, however it makes a specific kind of sense. They were both ladies making their mark in the ’70s: my mom, the author of books that influenced women to have “zipless sex,” and Schlafly, a vitriolic culture warrior committed to protecting ladies’s preeminent position– in the house– through political machinations, and spats with Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and other women like my mother.This episode
from second-wave feminist history came to mind recently, as I mulled over a fundamental but incomprehensible reality: Ladies still do not have the exact same rights as guys under the United States Constitution. I know that appears incredible, but they don’t. In 1972, the United States Congress passed the Equal Rights Change to the Constitution, which enshrined the relatively uncontroversial idea that females should have the exact same rights as males. However because America is hopelessly backward, conservatives chose this notion was too extreme and transferred to derail the amendment’s ratification. Thirty-eight states needed to sign on in order for the change to become authorities; only 35 authorized it in the end.By 1982, the change had stalled, and the due date for its ratification had actually ended. Then in 2017, Nevada signed on, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020– the magic number (38, or three-quarters of the states) had actually been reached. This would imply, in theory, that the United States Constitution would finally say that women need to have the same rights as guys. There were some issues ahead, particularly the fact that the due date had actually passed and some states, like North Dakota, have rescinded their approval. However still, it seemed like progress.
Released at Wed, 24 Mar 2021 16:17:22 +0000