No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.
~Van Wyck Brooks
I'm kind of ticked off today. Those are words that would typically strike fear into my darling husband's heart, but today it's not him I'm ticked at. It's the entire male gender. I think Dan Brown's little book opened thoughts in my head about the sacred feminine, specifically the unholy swiping of our own power by men who didn't understand it for what it was, seeing only through the film of their own ideals.
As women, we're raised in subtle ways to think that men are smarter than we are, to think that they have better logistics skills, to think they are stronger in more ways than simply physical. And as a mother of a teenage boy, I see clearly the influences leading him to believe in his own rights and strengths, his ability to reach for whatever he wants with no superficial limitations placed on his goals. And none of those influences should be changed. But why, as girls, were we not afforded the same influences? Those positive influences that were proffered were often presented or referred to in common culture in an unsympathetic light as feminist nazi bra-burning free-love hippy chicks. Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Sojourner Truth, Betty Friedan, Abigail Adams. The list of women who battled for their rights and those of others can be endless and is peopled with an assortment of class, race, and age. And I'd challenge anyone to call the second First Lady of the United States a hippy chick.
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