The feminist movement is another tool the communist specter has used to destroy the family. When it began in the 18th century, the feminist movement (also known as first-wave feminism) started in Europe and advocated that women should be accorded the same treatment as men in education, employment, and politics. The center of the feminist movement shifted from Europe to the United States in the mid-19th century.
When first-wave feminism started, the notion of the traditional family still had a strong foundation in society, and the feminist movement did not advocate directly challenging the traditional family. The influential feminists at that time, such as Mary Wollstonecraft of 18-century England, Margaret Fuller of 19-century America, and John Stuart Mill of 19th-century England, all advocated that in general women should prioritize the family after marriage, that the potential of women should be developed within the domain of the family, and that women should enrich themselves for the sake of the family (such as educating the children, managing the family, and so on). They thought, however, that some special women who are particularly talented should not be constrained by society, and should be free to utilize their talents, even to the extent of competing with men.
After the 1920s, when the right for women to vote was written into law in many countries, the first wave of women’s rights movements gradually receded. In the following years, with the impact of the Great Depression and World War II, the feminist movement essentially laid down its flag.
At the same time, the communist specter began to sow the seeds of destruction for traditional marriage and sexual ethics. The early utopian socialists in the 19th century laid the direction for modern radical feminist movements. François Marie Charles Fourier, called “the father of feminism,” declared that marriage turns women into private property. Robert Owen cursed marriage as evil. The ideas of these utopian socialists were inherited and developed by later feminists, including, for example, Frances Wright, who in the 19th century, inherited the ideas of Fourier and advocated sexual freedom for women.
The British feminist activist Anna Wheeler inherited Owen’s ideas, fiercely condemning marriage for supposedly turning women into slaves. Socialist feminist activists were also an important part of the feminist movement in the 19th century. At that time, among the most influential feminist publications in France were La Voix des Femmes, the very first feminist publication in France, and Free Women (La Femme Libre, later renamed La Tribune des Femmes), as well as La Politique des Femmes, among others. The founders of these publications were either followers of Fourier or of Henri de Saint-Simon, the advocate of modernity. Because of the close connection between feminism and socialism, the authorities scrutinized feminism.
When the first wave of women’s rights movements proceeded in full swing, the devil of communism also made arrangements to introduce a variety of radical thoughts to attack traditional concepts of family and marriage, paving the way for the more radical feminist movement that followed.
The second wave of feminist movements began in the United States in the late 1960s, then spread to Western and Northern Europe, and quickly expanded to the entire Western world. American society in the late 1960s went through a period of turmoil, with the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, and various radical social trends. Feminism, taking advantage of this unique set of circumstances, emerged in a more radical strain and became popular.
The cornerstone of this wave of feminist movements was the book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, published in 1963, as well as the National Organization for Women (NOW), which she founded. Using the perspective of a suburban middle-class housewife, Friedan fiercely criticized the traditional family role of women, and argued that the traditional image of a happy, content, joyful housewife is a myth forged by a patriarchal society. She argued that middle-class suburban families are “a comfortable concentration camp” for American women, and that modern educated women should reject the sense of accomplishment attained through supporting their husbands and educating their children, but instead realize their worth outside the family. [26]
A few years later, more radical feminists dominated the National Women’s Organization, inheriting and developing Friedan’s ideas. They said that women had been oppressed by patriarchy since ancient times and attributed the root cause of women’s oppression to the family. In response, they came to advocate the complete transformation of the social system and traditional culture, and struggle in all aspects of human affairs—the economy, education, culture, and the family—to achieve female equality.
Classifying a society into the oppressor and the oppressed to advocate for struggle, liberation, and equality is exactly what communism is all about. Traditional Marxism classifies groups according to their economic statuses, while neo-feminist movements divide people based on gender.
Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique, was not, as her book described, a middle class suburban housewife bored with her housework. Daniel Horowitz, a professor at Smith College, wrote a biography of Friedan in 1998 titled Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique. His research reveals that Friedan, under her maiden name Betty Goldstein, had been a radical socialist activist since her college years up to the 1950s. At different times, she was a professional journalist, or propagandist to be accurate, for several radical labor unions in the orbit of the Communist Party USA.
David Horowitz, a former leftist and no relation to Daniel Horowitz, reviewed her published articles to understand the development of her views. [27] She was a member of the Young Communist League while in UC–Berkeley. Friedan even requested twice, at different times, to join the CPUSA. Judith Hennesee, her authorized biographer, also indicates she was a Marxist. [28]
Kate Weigand, an American scholar, points out in her book Red Feminism that feminism in fact did not stay quiet in the United States from the early 20th century to the 1960s. During that period, a large group of red feminist writers with communist backgrounds paved the way for the subsequent second-wave feminist movement. These include Susan Anthony, Eleanor Flex, Gerda Lerner, Eve Merriam, and the like. As early as 1946, Anthony applied the Marxist analytical method to draw an analogy between the white oppressing the black, and the male oppressing the female. However, due to the McCarthyism of the period, such writers no longer talked about their red background. [29]
In Europe, French writer Simone de Beauvoir’s iconic work The Second Sex ushered in the craze for the second wave of feminism. De Beauvoir used to be a socialist. In 1941, together with communist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and other writers, she created Socialiste et Liberté, a French underground socialist organization. With the rise of her reputation for feminism in the 1960s, de Beauvoir declared that she no longer believed in socialism, and claimed that she was only a feminist.
She said, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” She advocated that though sex is determined by physiological characteristics, gender is a self-perceived psychological concept formed under the influence of human sociality. She argued that the temperaments of obedience, submissiveness, affection, and maternity are all derived from the “myth” carefully designed by the patriarchy for its oppression of women, and advocated that women break through traditional notions and realize their unrestrained selves.
This mentality in fact lies at the heart of the damaging notions of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and the like. Since then, various feminist thoughts have emerged in a constant stream, all looking at the world through the lens of women being oppressed by a patriarchy, which is realized through the institution of the traditional family—making the family, then, an obstacle to the realization of female equality. [30]
De Beauvoir held that women are restrained by their husbands due to marriage, and called marriage as disgusting as prostitution. She refused to get married and maintained an “open relationship” with Sartre. By the same token, Sartre also engaged in sexual encounters with other women. Her view on marriage is the standard among contemporary radical feminists. Such chaotic sexual liaisons and relationships are precisely the system of communal wives envisioned by Charles Fourier, forerunner of utopian communism in the 19th century.
