S01.E04: Betty

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Quote

As Stop ERA grows and gains media attention, Betty Friedan, the mother of the Feminist movement, makes it her mission to take down Phyllis.

Promo:

Original air date: 4/22/20

Edited April 23, 2020 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Cara]

Tracey Ullman is completely miscast! She is not nearly ugly enough to play Betty Friedan!

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I'm glad we got a Betty centered episode because she is a fascinating person. I first read The Feminine Mystique for a history course when I was in college and even that that age, I remember thinking THANK FUCK that I have more options for my life because I can't imagine spending all day cleaning the house, planning dinner, and watching kids. I was taught that feminism means giving women options and the right to choose what they want to do, so if you want to stay home, that's totally fine. It's the idea that you MUST and there are no other options that made me shudder because that's as ridiculous as saying everyone has to become an astronaut or a basketball player.

What I liked about this episode is that it continued to show the internal strife within the women's movement and how there were people with different agendas and goals. Gloria has clearly been focused on abortion while others made passing the ERA their main focus. I liked seeing Margaret branch out into her own organization because she clearly did not feel heard, despite Gloria's well-intentioned "tell me if you ever feel like that" remark.

[AgentRXS]

On 4/17/2020 at 1:49 PM, Cara said:

Tracey Ullman is completely miscast! She is not nearly ugly enough to play Betty Friedan!

I'm not too familiar with the real life Betty,so all I when I looked at Tracey was Bea Arthur. I kept thinking she would be perfectly cast to play her if they should ever do a biopic on her, so I giggled when she mentioned Maude.

I loved Margaret organizing her own group and loved Niecy Nash's character shutting down those two women who didn't support lesbians joining their group. Very interesting episode.

[tennisgurl]

Very interesting episode, the various factions within the greater liberation movement is fascinating. I dont know much about Betty Friedan beyond her writing the Feminine Mystic, but its really interesting to see her feeling like she is being left behind and shut out of the movement that she basically created, both due to her personality (she is really not good at playing nice or playing politics) and some of her views that others in the movement dont support anymore (like her apparent dislike of the LGBTQ community) and how she is dealing with that. 

Always happy to see Niecy Nash, and rocking that 70s wear!

[BrownBear2012]

Another great episode...I wish all the episodes were up so I could binge watch. Showing the schism in the movement was a big part of the behind the scenes story. And not just in the national stage...at state and local levels it was just as prevalent. I know the group I joined at a college had members that were local residents and were looking to be a part of our chapter...they had totally different agendas and experiences than most of the other members that were college students...personally, I thought it was a good thing and energized our chapter. I felt badly for Betty Frieden in this episode...she clearly had a lot of personal baggage and pain. She was tough, unpredictable and difficult to deal with but she was the heart and soul of the movement. My mother read her book "The Feminine Mystique" and felt Frieden was describing her own experiences and life. A few years later my mother was divorced and living in Manhattan trying to find her way. Freiden spoke for a lot of women who got married in the late 40's early 50's and had no options or voices...having to share the spotlight with a younger more attractive leader like Steinem must have brought up her own insecurities about her appearance and brash personality. They were a mismatched couple but found their way to work together eventually. All the casting is perfect and Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug is amazing.

On 4/17/2020 at 1:49 PM, Cara said:

Tracey Ullman is completely miscast! She is not nearly ugly enough to play Betty Friedan!

😡

[bmoore4026]

I was wondering when they were going to get to the lavender elephant in the room.  Yeah,  I'm not a Freidan fan.  I'm less of a fan of hers after that "pedophiles" comment.  I mean, it was probably written for dramatic effect, but I wouldn't put it past her to make such a comment.  But we're finally getting to the hypocrisy of the ERA movement - the near total exclusion of black women and the total exclusion of lesbians.

Despite what I think of Berry Friedan, I am in love with Tracy Ullman's performance of her.  She'd better get an Emmy nomination...and win.

And as much as Schlafly was not a good woman, she was smart.  Her thinly veiled comments about Freidan's husband leaving her was Savage with a capital S.  And I loved the shot of her when she realizes her son is gay.  Just a look of serene dawning devastation. 

 

[Slovenly Muse]

On 4/23/2020 at 4:58 PM, bmoore4026 said:

But we're finally getting to the hypocrisy of the ERA movement - the near total exclusion of black women and the total exclusion of lesbians.

Yes. I am so glad they're really hitting this issue. I don't know if I would say "hypocrisy" though, since the systems of resistance at the time developed this way for a reason. It reminds me of another historical docu-drama, "When We Rise," about the evolution of the LGBTQ-rights movement in America. Something they did extremely effectively was show the separate bubbles that all these different groups were working in at the time. Women, blacks, lesbians, gays... even though they all had the same oppressor (a patriarchy made up of straight, white men), they had almost no solidarity or understanding of their common cause. Everyone was so caught up in their own movement, they couldn't see how groups that should be their allies were being used against them by The Powers That Be to keep everyone separate and minimize the change they could effect. Groups of feminists dedicated to advancing women in the workplace would eject lesbians from their organization, because the presence of even one lesbian on the roster meant the entire group could be discredited as "a bunch of man-hating lesbians who want to disrupt the good, healthy, natural order of American life." Which left the lesbian feminists to form their own groups whose goals were more in line with becoming self-sufficient women-only groups who had no reliance on men whatsoever, which made them a completely different movement from the gay rights groups, made up of gay men who were dealing with the entirely different problem of having their bars and clubs raided and getting arrested and beaten every night. Trans rights were basically invisible, not really represented in any of the other groups. This show, thankfully, delves into people like Shirley Chisolm, prominent black women who were not supported by black men, because it's expected that she'll fight for EITHER women's rights OR black rights (and for that same reason, not supported by white women).

That's just how it was done at the time. It was a tactical maneuver to focus exclusively on your group's particular issue, and it was thought to delegitimize you or undercut your message if you cooperated or organized with other groups. There wasn't much of an understanding of the political need to address the undertones of racism, sexism, homophobia, or transphobia that might be present in your organization. It's an alien mindset to us now, but this show has done a pretty admirable job of putting us back in that setting, and letting us see how discrimination between different groups prevented the full cooperation that was needed to mount a meaningful resistance against these disparate groups' singular oppressor.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Betty vs. Phyllis

 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

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