Re: but we have ruined our generations......
Marriage is fine form of rape.....!!!!
The sixties were a period of cultural revolution for much of the West, however one factor seems to stand out as a primary contributor to declining birth rates in the West: gender feminism.
In radical feminist theory, the very concept of "gender" is seen as being simply a social construct formed by patriarchal societies to control and oppress women.
It was this patriarchal dominance, feminists argued, that forced the woman into the role of the mother and wife. As Betty Friedan wrote:
When woman was denied access to satisfaction of those needs in society as a person in her own right, she made home and the family into a vehicle for her power and control, status and self-realisation [which] then became her Frankenstein monster.
This Frankenstein monster is commonly called marriage, and it was a monster that feminist ideologues such as Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem set out to destroy. By doing so, the feminists hope to free women from the shackles of patriarchic domination.
So intrinsic was the destruction of the idea of marriage to feminist thought, that the much-lauded 1971 Declaration of Feminism stated categorically that, "the end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women".
Robin Morgan, who was later to become the editor of the flagship feminist magazine Ms. Magazine, wrote in Sisterhood is Powerful in 1970, that:
*We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage. *
Many feminists went so far as to liken marriage to a form of enslavement. Sheila Cronin, the leader of the feminist organization NOW, said:
Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.
Others likened marriage to prostitution. Sonia Johnson, writing in Taking Our
Eyes Off the Guys, wrote:
Women have been seasoned as slaves and prostitutes...But no matter how we're seasoned -- as prostitute or as wife, which is the same thing -- we're seasoned in the patriarchal family almost exclusively to serve sexual functions.
Andrea Dworkin, author of Pornography: Men possessing Women, claimed that marriage was nothing more than a refined form of rape:
Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
Writing in WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, in Fall, 1969, Linda Gordon elucidated clearly the object of the feminist struggle and the reasons:
The nuclear family must be destroyed, and people must find better ways of living together. ... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. ... "Families have supported oppression by separating people into small, isolated units, unable to join together to fight for common interests. ...
Families make possible the super-exploitation of women by training them to look upon their work outside the home as peripheral to their 'true' role. ... No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. ... Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people's needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor, or any external roles, at all.
As Gordon notes, one means by which the women could free herself from the 'oppression' of the family, was to enter the workplace on a full-time basis. The en masse movement of women into the workplace could not occur, however, without significant social and structural change, which the feminists worked to bring about. Men would have to assume some responsibilities for the domestic tasks. "Affirmative action" programs would need to be established to facilitate the escape to the workforce.