The following commentary on contemporary feminism was presented as part of the Sanctuary Series of lectures held in London, Ontario, in the spring and fall of 1997. Paula Adamick, a regular columnist for Catholic Insight and a publisher of Canada Post, a newspaper for Canadians living in England, now resides in London, England. She is a graduate of St Joseph's High School and the oldest of the ten children of Deacon St. Clair McEvenue (also a contributor to Catholic Insight) and his wife, Marjorie. Paula is married to Dennis Adamick, a banking administrator, and is the mother of two adult children, one of whom lives in England and assists part-time with the paper. Paula Adamick has a degree in journalism from Western Univeristy and a masters in journalism from the London School of Journalism in England. Her experience includes 10 years as London, ON, correspondent for the Toronto Star, as well as many years as a freelance writer. She was a columnist for Scene, an art and culture magazine in London, ON. She fo unded Canada Post in London, England about two years ago and it's been a runaway success, commanding much of her time and energy.
"What do women want?" Sigmund Freud warned to know. Most men want to know.
What Freud was really asking was this: What makes women happy? Well, I'm here to tell you that, as it stands today, many women are not engaged in the things that make them truly happy. They are precisely those things that contemporary feminists ignore completely: the feminine and the feminine arts.
While I know that I have often been branded as heretical, even inimical to the cause of women, I don't care. I am a woman, too, with plenty of experience, some of it painful, but all of it essential.
In my opinion, women have largely lost the plot and the point of life. And they are well on their way to losing their purpose entirely.
Nor is any amount of wishful or wrongful thinking going to put any of this right until we face facts and get back on the rails bound for the life that was intended for us, the one from which we have allowed ourselves to be derailed.
Barefoot and pregnant, you're thinking?
No, not barefoot.
As for pregnant, well, I'll return to that later.
The fact of the matter is that many women these days are deeply unhappy. We all know women like this; and many of us have been deeply unhappy ourselves at times. Why is this?
If feminism is working, if feminists are right about women and what they want and need, then why are so many women miserable?
Ladies and gentlemen, many women are miserable because those of us who don't live in a cloister and who are not brain dead have tried feminism out. Some of us have even swallowed the propaganda whole--and, amazingly, many of us haven't yet figured out what's wrong.
What's wrong? It doesn't work.
Why doesn't it work? Because, although it claims to speak for women, for women's rights and for women's happiness, it's got nothing whatsoever to do with what makes women happy.
Call me radical, but in order for a woman to be truly happy, she must purge her mind of all orthodox feminist thinking and start thinking for herself again. When she does, she will be forced to acknowledge that her deepest womanly longings have nothing to do with neurosis and everything to do with being a woman.
What are her deepest longings? A career? Shattering the corporate glass ceiling?
No. Her deepest longings are marriage, motherhood and homemaking. These are the things that a woman longs for, the things that can fulfill her, thereby leaving her to think that God is in his heaven and she is right with the world.
That is not to say, of course, that a career can't be satisfying. It can. But it requires single-minded dedication and freedom from other responsibilties. For most women, however, if they're really telling the truth, a career can never be as important or as fulfilling as a happy marriage, children and making a happy home. For most women, the job, the career, is what we do to pad the family coffers; it's what we do while we're waiting for our real life to begin, i.e., marriage to the man of our dreams.
TV models
But you wouldn't know it from the propaganda out there.
Let's take a look. Who are the icons these days? Oprah Winfrey? Roseanne Barr, maybe? Ally McBeal? Gloria Steinem? Who, it must be said, is a very intelligent woman who had no childhood of her own, no father, and was left at a very young age to look after her depressive mother. Virtually every day of her adolescent life, young Gloria came home to a dark, cold house to cook supper for herself and her Mom.
To me, her feminist views are honest and …
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