More from Bob Wallace:
https://ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle579-20100718-05.htmlFriedan's most famous book is The Feminine Mystique. A Marxist tract written by a Stalinist, it was about "patriarchy" and "capitalism" and "female oppression," A best-seller and a very influential book, it was, in many ways, the start of '60s feminism.
Yet, when Friedan wrote it, she was married to a very wealthy man and living in a mansion on the Hudson River in New York. She was not employed, and in fact never had a job in her life—unless pontificating counts as one. The housework in the mansion, not surprisingly, was done by a maid. All of this is of course rank hypocrisy. A woman speaking of downtrodden and oppressed women while living a life of luxury so opulent that the housework was something done by domestic servants? How could she possibly know anything about the average woman's life?
