Posted on April 30, 2014
Joy of Resistance is heard on the 1st & 3rd Wednesday of the month @WBAI, 99.5 fm in NYC (& the tri-state area) & streams at wbai.org. Follow JOR @twitter.com/joyofresistance
A re-airing of our classic feminist conversation between Stephanie Coontz, author of “A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960′s” and Fran Luck (Joy of Resistance’ Executive Producer).
The discussion will center on how Betty Friedan‘s watershed book “The Feminine Mystique” (1963) changed the conceptual landscape for American women–and will focus on the social conditions that prevailed for women in the 1940′s ’50′s & early 60′s, when“Help Wanted: Female” ads, “Head and Master” laws (which gave men legal control of marriage) and a Freudianism that diagnosed ambition in women as a neurosis –combined to proscribe women’s lives.
We’ll examine how the feminist history of the 1920′s was erased and images of earlier feminists were distorted so that women of the 1950′s were denied their feminist history–just as the backlash against the feminists of the 1960′s going on today is denying today’s generation of young women their real history. We’ll look at how women were pushed out of the good jobs they held in the 1940′s (which they were able to get because men were fighting World War ll), sold a bill of goods that the only path to “true womanhood”was through becoming stay-at-home wives and mothers–and how these images of American womanhood were then used as part of the “Cold War.”
We’ll look at how feminist periods run in “cycles”, with each feminist upsurge, followed by a period in which a “crisis in masculinity,” is declared–supposedly caused by“women going too far”--followed by attempts to take away gains achieved by women during the previous feminist period.
The show will be accompanied by period music from the 1950′s, including “Sincerely,”sung by The MacGuire Sisters; “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?” sung byPatti Paige; “Mr. Sandman,” sung by The Chordettes and the “I Love Lucy”themesong, sung by Desi Arnaz.
Joy of Resistance: Multicultural Feminist Radio @ WBAI airs on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month, at 9-10 PM. We cover the “ongoing worldwide struggle of women for full liberation, equality and human rights.” You can tweet us attwitter.com/joyofresistance and follow/read our blog at joyofresistance.wordpress.com and also communicate with us through the “comments” section on our blog. Programs stream live @ wbai.org where they are archived there for 90 days.
WBAI @ 99.5 FM broadcasts to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and is part of the Pacifica Radio Network, one of the few alternatives to the corporate-controlled media that dominate the airwaves–and it needs your financial support to continue broadcasting!
Please consider going to www.wbai.org and contributing whatever amount you can to help keep alternative radio alive. If you join as a “WBAI Buddy” you can help sustain the station permanently for as little as $10. a month (automatically taken out of your bank account/credit card) and be entitled to a range of gifts. Go to Give2WBAI.org to become a WBAI Buddy or find out other ways you can support the station. If you join as a “Buddy” in the name of Joy of Resistance your contribution will be counted as a “listener vote” for continued and expanded feminist programming at WBAI.
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