The National Organization for Women (NOW) celebrated forty years of “herstory” last week at a gathering in Albany, New York. Two correspondents from the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) note that the future doesn’t look all that promising for feminism, given the average age of the attendees and the shopworn 1970s sound of the rhetoric.
Charlotte Allen reports on the meeting for the Wall Street Journal, while Allison Kasic does the same for the Weekly Standard.
Both see the Joan Baez feminism of the NOW gathering to be a signal that the movement is losing steam. Allen sums up the meeting this way:
“Once upon a time, NOW wielded a great deal of influence too. A member of the Veteran Feminists of America, a NOW offshoot, spoke of the days in the 1960s when NOW could call the New York Times and, instead of requesting a meeting with top brass, simply dictate the time and place–and know that reporters would show up. Those days are gone. The reason may be that there are now many other organizations with similar agendas. But some of the decline is simply that there is no new blood there. One of the founders, a former holy terror, who was instrumental in the creation of Catholics for a Free Choice, currently devotes herself to animal rights. ‘Help the animals,’ she stood up to say, apropos of nothing, after one of the sessions.
“It is hard to say how big NOW’s influence is today. The organization currently claims 500,000 members. But who knows? Muriel Fox, a NOW founder, admitted at the meeting that the organization fudged its numbers upward when dealing with the press in the early days.
“The weekend ended with a march for ‘equal marriage.’ I chose to get a bite to eat at Quizno’s instead. How did it go? I later asked a white-haired NOW member. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘But I’m glad it was only two blocks.'”
Kasic describes the feminar this way:
“For the most part, what the participants feel like doing is reliving past glories.The favorite subject is the Equal Rights Amendment, which went down to defeat in 1982. Speakers from Tyne Daly to a screaming Eleanor Smeal (twice president of NOW, in 1977-’82 and 1985-’87) call for the return of the ERA, to rabid applause from an audience that includes many veterans of the fight a quarter-century ago. Even at the Youth Feminist Summit on the first day of the conference, it’s the old guard that dominates the podium and the floor.”
I’m not so sure that the IWF assessment of this is right. Yes, NOW is seen as outdated and almost parodic. But maybe that’s because they have won the argument. Who needs to chant with Eleanor Smeal or march with Gloria Steinem in an American culture that is so thoroughly egalitarian?
And this is true in churches as well as in the larger cultural arena. A paper on feminist theory from a 1960s teach-in could be given today at almost any given evangelical seminary, to yawns from the students. An article from a 1976 copy of Ms. magazine could be printed in almost any given evangelical magazine, as long as the author included a testimony about living the Spirit-filled life, right along with all the Grrrrl Power.
Yes, the feminist groups may be aging, but it doesn’t mean the movement is dead. That’s why we need churches and families that can recapture something older, something ancient, something countercultural. A biblical message on gender will not get any easier.
Don’t be fooled. When it comes to the spirit of the age, the future is NOW.
