On Feminism, A work in progress

In wandering around the internet today while watching football I came across the following comment. The feminist she quoted sounds much like many of our homegrown ones.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/columns/column141.html

Yes, leave it to the women's movement to turn itself into something that keeps women from moving. It was supposed to be about sensible stuff like equal pay for equal work -- fantastic idea -- and giving everybody the vote. Then, a bunch of rad-fem loonies like Sheila Jeffreys (England's Andrea Dworkin) jumped into the fray: "When a woman reaches orgasm with a man, she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression."

The first sentence struck me as exactly what I have been thinking for quite some time. I ‘came of age’ in the 70’s when it seemed as though women were being freed to do anything that they would like to do. I fell into the thinking of the day readily as my Mother, a practically saintly Mother of eleven, had been raising my sisters and me not to fall into her role but to be strong independent women. My Father taught me to make an electromagnet, helped me with calculus, and ensured I could keep my car in good repair.
I found myself consciously making choices that were out of the typical ‘feminine’ role. I took science and math and German, and jumped into politics. I eschewed the typing class, (much to my chagrin now as I spend so much time in front of a key board, who knew?) Anything that had even the slightest flavor of female I thought through carefully before deciding to go ahead.
Looking back now, as a Mother, Grandmother and an elder sister of women practically young enough to be my own I have been re-thinking feminism. What started out as very sensible ideas about (among many other things) equal pay and making the decisions best for ones self has become a strident demanding philosophy, which in my opinion has been terrible for our society.
What seemed to begin as the ability to be anything one would like to be regardless of gender turned into women should be free to do anything they would like to do as long as it fits into a narrow feminist agenda. The choice to have children and raise them from home does not fit into this agenda.
What seemed to begin as an honest fight for equality in a practical sense turned into a campaign to make men less than they can be.
What seemed to begin as freedom turned into the right to be irresponsible or selfish.
These are harsh words indeed but one need only look at our current society to see the ills that I believe have some root in the extremist feminine cause, divorce, violence, children that have no real parents to guide them, obesity, and poor education to name the first ones that come to mind.
Please do not get me wrong, there have been many sincere thoughtful women at the forefront of women’s rights and not just in this century. We can vote or even run for office; we can do any job we wish to do and are capable of doing, we run businesses, dig ditches and join the army. We have surely come a long way baby but perhaps in the interest of the future of our society we should take a step back, or at least a pause to reflect on whether we are going where we want to.