The New Feminism
Back in the late 60s I was so enamored of the women’s movement that I joined a male liberation group. The idea was to respond to the women’s movement by attempting to rid ourselves of the bad aspects of being male. Sadly I can’t say it improved me much, but I mention this to make the point that I was sympathetic to the aspirations of the women’s movement and could understand that some assumptions about the roles of men and women were just wrong. It was only through being married that I came to understand that women and men both have issues and harmonizing the nature, goals and desires of men and women is a mighty challenge.
A few years ago I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine. Two men were watching a couple of women walk by. One man says to the other “Women. They get better and better.” The meaning of the cartoon — to me at least — is not that women are getting better, but the man’s perception of women was changing over time. Perhaps the man had matured and the filter of selfishness through which he viewed women was clearing. The destination of this maturation process and shedding of selfishness must be that men look upon women as precious mothers, daughters and sisters.
The women’s movement of my youth to some extent, set men and women at odds. The anger at being oppressed caused separation and many women felt that they needed to define their value apart from men. Ultimately, men and women need and complete each other. In an ideal relationship harmony and mutual respect would rule in such a relationship, men and women would feel appreciated, cherished and valued.
Reverend In Jin Moon, Senior Pastor for the American Unification Church has proclaimed a new era in which women should feel their value as precious daughters of God. Men should learn to appreciate, respect and value women as precious daughters of God. Women should be liberated from the suffering of the past based on this self respect and requirement that they be respected. Nor should their be any limit to their right to self determination or to what they can accomplish. God is the harmonized essence of masculine characteristics and feminine characteristics. Therefore men and women should be harmonized in dynamic giving and receiving action in which neither is to dominate the other.
The goal of the new feminism is not separation, but dynamic unification and familial love.
