Gloria Steinem, now 88-years-old, emerged as the most popular Feminist in the U.S. during the 1970s when I attended college--assuredly more popular than the egregiously unattractive Betty Friedan, who allegedly even beat up her husband, from time to time.
Steinem graduated from Smith College, worked under-cover as a Playboy Bunny, then wrote an exposé about the exploitation of women by the sex-industry. She used the proceeds from her exposé to start up the magazine Ms., which is still in circulation today.
While the East German government only wanted to increase the living standard of women, Steinem and Friedan used feminism to do battle with the male sex. I can understand how women might dislike men, and vice versa, but Steinem publicized the mother of all putdowns when she said that "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
Steinem later said she did not originate the quote. She only circulated it and added that the quote originated with an Australian educator named Irina Dunn, who said she scrawled it on a bathroom wall at her college. Both Steinem and Dunn laughed it off as inconsequential and disavowed responsibility for demonizing the male sex , which was the way the males read the quote.
Since then, the Feminist tendency to cast off egregiously on the males troubles me. It also troubles man-hungry women who want to get married and have families, and don't share the modern Feminists' lusty castrative tendencies.
Feminists, to a large degree, use man-hating to conceal depression, low sex-drive, and ego-strength. The ludicrousness of hating the male sex, who provides support, intimacy, and physical comfort, has to reflect fear of intimacy.
I remember a scene in the French movie Peppermint Soda (in French Diabolo Menthe), directed by Diane Kurys. The 16-year-old Frédérique goes on a camping trip with her boyfriend Marc; but when she returns from it, she breaks up with him. When her sister Ann asks her why, she replies off-handedly, "He gets on my nerves."
Ann, sitting in the bathtub, starts weeping, and Frédérique angrily starts splashing her. Ann understands that Frédérique can't handle letting herself be intimate with a guy. The movie shows a collage of photographs of Frédérique and her boyfriend on the camping trip. She looks mopey and cow-eyed, like any young female during a first romance.
