The war within
McCarthy, Abigail
OF SEVERAL HINDS Abigail McCarthy THE WAR WITHIN TWO STRAINS OF FEMINISM The television cameras and the buses of reporters are long gone from the Wellesley campus. The controversy which swirled...
...Always, even in the most cruel and troubled times, women have had the mission of peacemaking, humanism, mercy, and kindness...
...As the director of Wellesley's women's studies program, Susan Reverby has pointed out there are two strains in feminism one, the struggle for rights and equality...
...Whether a First Lady's support of family values should go beyond example and translate into specifics was a question raised almost ten years ago in this column and, interestingly enough, in connection then, too, with Barbara Bush, a presidential candidate's wife...
...Wellesley teaches that we will be rewarded on the basis of our own merit, not on that of a spouse...
...Bush is no stranger to PR, to the power of the symbolic, to the impression of the photo opportunity...
...And if people in the world today are more confident of a peaceful future, we have to give a great deal of credit for that to women who are active in advocating friendship, cooperation, and mutual understanding among nations...
...She added that the choice raised questions about the education the students are getting "or can college save society...
...She had said, "This choice [of Barbara Bush] tells us that there is a war raging in the hearts and minds of women...many women still want to live in the castle, still believe in the myth of rescue by marriage...
...They are, after all, of the media generation...
...These comments were probably only partly satisfying to the protesters...
...Herjoie de vivre, her confidence, her humor and common sense won the day...
...Bush were celebrities as were all the others on the seniors' list she said, "reflects the power of television and the media on young people...
...But there is a connection to the text of the letter that was left evidently by the students of the protest petition on the five thousand folding chairs of the graduation audience...
...Two First Ladies doubled the impact at Wellesley and, incidentally, added a grace note to the orchestration of the coverage of the summit...
...The letter requested that the First Lady "take a definite and vocal stand on critical issues that shape the lives of women in the United States," and it cited such issues as family and medical leave, day care, welfare services, etc...
...By the day of the speech the question raised was a tired one: Does a woman whose status and activities are the result of her marriage have anything to offer by way of advice or example to today's young women...
...Raisa Gorbachev in her more traditional speech struck this second strain: "We women have our special mission...
...her invitation to Mrs...
...And Wellesley's seniors enjoyed the publicity for their 1990 graduation, the prospect of which had probably been one of their reasons for choosing her...
...A psychiatrist associated with Wellesley, Dr...
...One hundred and fifty of Wellesley's senior class had thought not...
...She recognized the dedication and hard work that the graduates must devote to their careers but pointed out in a memorable statement: "At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal...
...To honor Barbara Bush as a commencement speaker is to honor a woman who has gained recognition through the achievement of her husband, which contravenes what we have been taught over the last four years at Wellesley," they said in their petition...
...The original question was almost lost sight of in the excitement but each First Lady endeavored to answer it in her own way...
...Mrs...
...Gorbachev to accompany her to Wellesley was ample evidence of that...
...Obviously the rewards the protesting students spoke of have not been enough for many of the women who have gone before them...
...Of late there has been a spate of articles about their immediate predecessors, career women in their late thirties and early forties trying to become mothers by conception or adoption before it is too late...
...What she is is a woman who has, as far as outsiders can see, made the very best personal use of the life she chose and its eventualities...
...Perhaps it is time to address it again.ess it again...
...Barbara Bush stressed the need for the acknowledgment of diversity and the need to make the effort "to learn about and respect difference, to be compassionate with one another, to cherish our own identity, and to accept unconditionally the same in others...
...They knew that a highly visible woman speaker would add luster to the occasion...
...Indeed they were probably not satisfying at all to onlooker author and psychologist Phyllis Chesler...
...She faulted the First Lady for her closeness to administrations which have done little for the poor, the homeless, and minorities, and noted that "picking her isn't going to solve the problems of women...
...As the president said in defending her, "She's not trying to be something she's not...
...She's not an Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, and has never wanted to be...
...It is fair to ask the First Lady to do that...
...the other, the recognition via women's history of the caring, unpaid contributions women have made to the world...
...Jean Baker Miller, seems to agree...
...You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend, or a parent...
...That both Alice Walker (the seniors' first choice) and Mrs...
...We all know how the First Lady's response on graduation day added to her enormous popularity...
...Even the protesters, whether they think of their future careers in terms of making money or contributing to society, whether they own up to it or not, hope for personal lives enriched by love and friendship as well as satisfying work...
...The controversy which swirled around the choice of Barbara Bush as commencement speaker is fading from memory...
Vol. 117 • July 1990 • No. 13
