DeCrow’s Echos on the Born-Again Children of 2nd-Wave* Feminists (abridged)
This article has been abridged since it was originally posted. The full version can be found here.
My mother is pro-life, and every vote she has cast in a presidential election as an adult has come down to whether or not she thinks a candidate will place justices on the Supreme Court that’ll overturn Roe. Yet, I have never heard her espouse any candidate, local, state, or federal based on their views of child support.
Her own mother was a feminist in the early 70s. She had just given birth to my mother, and her husband was fighting in Vietnam. She had to put her life on hold, and the idea of women taking charge of their own house was very appealing to her in these stressful times. These same years also saw Karen DeCrow’s rise to stardom, culminating in her presidency in the National Organization for Women from ‘74 to ‘77. However, DeCrow had some views which are debated today among feminists.
While DeCrow was rising the ranks, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v Wade that laws against abortion, state and federal, were void. During and after her presidency, DeCrow reasoned that in a post-Roe America, men should have the option of not raising a child they sired that the woman wishes to bring to term. This views do not advocate justice. They advocate symmetry.
For those reading who think the idea of the “paper abortion,” as it is called, still sounds good in theory, there are no other contexts in which one can make a major mistake that impacts other people and completely shrug off financial responsibility. One can’t (easily) shrug off responsibility for a car wreck, medical or legal malpractice, property damage, or banking mishaps. It is not “just” to let men abandon their children, no matter what euphemisms you, or second-wave* feminists, or MRAs, or PUAs, or MGTOW’s, or libertines, or anyone else uses.
DeCrow’s important position in such an important feminist organization surely let her imprint her views on the thoughts of American feminists for years, including my grandmother more than likely. She would divorce my grandfather when my mother was in high school. Ideological shifts are often brought about from stress, and combined with the pressures of her turbulent family life, responsibilities of early adulthood, and the (perceived) looming threat of nuclear annihilation from the Soviets, my mother became a born-again evangelical in college, and wholeheartedly jumped onboard this crusade against the clinics, and started voting accordingly.
While my mother had tried to eschew many tenets of feminism, her own mother hadn’t, and was convinced the whole time my father was the one running the show and pressured my mother into being a housewife. My grandmother lightened up about the whole situation in 2019, a few months before my parents’ twenty-ninth anniversary, just to give you an idea of how little she approved of their marriage. All this is to say that, despite the clear contrast in my mother’s views and actions with the tenets of second-wave* feminism, sufficient to cause a long-standing familial bitterness, there still seems to be the carefree attitude towards men paying child support that could only be a hold-over from DeCrow’s influence.
This fixation on symmetry is also likely why my mother got angry at the idea a female coworker of mine asked me to have sex. After I told her the feeling was not reciprocated, she still was incensed and said that any man would be punished for this, and called it "sexual harassment." Her understanding of the criminal justice system in this field is incredibly myopic, if she believes women generally "get off easy" for sexual impropriety. Jeffrey Epstein was able to work in an office during his sentence lasting less than 18 months, after running an island where he and other men raped dozens of little girls for years. Meanwhile Jennifer Fichter is getting a multi-decade sentence in a state prison for a fling with a practically grown man. When you prefer symmetry over justice, those that care for neither will take control of the instrument of government, and spit on both.
She also thinks women should have to sign up for the draft, and in a few years she might get her wish. She thought it was so oppressive that I had to go through the unbearable anguish of checking a box on my application for a driver's license. Considering how serious the War on Terror and the War in Iraq got without implementing the draft, it is highly doubtful that the draft will actually ever be implemented again. Even disregarding the non-importance of the selective service, her thinking is that women should be sent to the front lines just like men. Just like DeCrow regarding child support, my mother is preferring symmetry over justice.
Moreover, my mother’s upbringing and early adult circumstances are not particularly unique. As stated, the US was fighting Vietnam in the early 70s, meaning there were a lot of women at home trying to keep the family situation under control while their husbands were fighting. Millions of American women from all walks of life espoused feminist ideals during this time. The Cold War-era revivals caused millions of Americans to become born-again evangelicals. How many Americans out there do you suppose shrug at child support despite belonging to the only substantial pro-life voting bloc? Where are the hard-lined pro-child support blocs, for that matter?
Could it be that rich and powerful men, each of whom has left bastards in the double digits, with whom they do not wish to share their dragon-hoardes, have been working in the background? Have these same Crœsi been playing DeCrow and those who listened to her like fiddles this whole time?
*I generally avoid the “wave” model of feminism, but I use it here as shorthand to characterize the (strictly non-foundational) views espoused by major feminists between the 1960s and early 1990s that were not espoused by important feminist voices before and have not really been since except by surviving feminist veterans from this era.
