“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—Is this all?’”

Today is the birthday of Betty Friedan, born in Peoria, Illinois (1921). Her thoughts, like the one above, put forth in 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, roused women into action for equality, challenging the widely shared belief that fulfillment had only one definition for American women: housewife-mother. Friedan was right about the depth and breadth of women's dissatisfaction. The book sold three million copies in three years.

Women had been discouraged from working during the depression to give men jobs. But during WWII they flooded into jobs and college slots vacated by men gone to fight. They were independent. They made good money. They had future careers. They made airplanes, ships, munitions, and tanks. They held technical and scientific jobs for the first time. But all that was lost upon the return of soldiers when the fear of another depression forced women out. It was promoted as the patriotic thing to do, but it decimated women’s lives as they were systematically relegated to pink-collar jobs in law, medicine and business or no jobs at all.

Everybody knows how the brilliant Ruth Bader Ginsburg couldn’t get a job as a lawyer. But what I remember was my mother’s bitterness over being shunned by other women for working in our family flower shop. And the woman who married my stepfather after my mother died: she was forced out of medical school to make room for returning veterans and had to accept a career as a high school biology teacher when she wanted to be a doctor.

But by the 1960s, the nearly psychotic and bored white women of the suburbs (yes, the same women courted by today’s politicians) tossed aside Tupperware, frozen dinners, and tranquilizers to put their racist, Bardot-draped, shoulders into righting the listing ship of women’s equality. They wrote books, marched in the streets, launched legislation, started magazines, ran for office. And strategically excluded women of color, just like the old suffrage days.

That oft-scorned movement put women in congress, allowed us to have birth control pills and the right to terminate unwanted pregnancy, credit and houses in our own names, admission to top-drawer universities, and careers beyond menial labor. It was the second wave of feminism.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 stipulates that women receive the same pay as men for the same work. We're still working on that. And working on even allowing women to hold equal jobs.

Stifling attitudes toward women are woven into our culture, like racism. And for women of color, it’s a double whammy.

I have deeply pondered my own racism. From my late teens on, I did everything I could think of to reject racism. But recently, I was trashed on social media as a racist. At first, I protested. Not ME! But then I realized my trasher was right. I’m racist. I can’t help but be racist. And I have to own up to it because it helps me see my privilege, helps me understand the anger of those who look at me in disgust.

This has led me to believe I am also riddled with bias against women, even though I am one. Even though I experienced decades of sexist slap-downs, forged radical non-Hollywood relationships with men, clawed my way as a single mother to fairly respectable positions, and pride myself on my feminist views.
 
I can’t help it. It’s buried in me. Like racism, it’s part of my foundation.

I was taught. By my family, my teachers, my bosses, my friends. By the lack of female authors, artists, scholars, or innovators available from which to learn. I can fool myself—like I did in the 1980’s, thinking I was no longer a racist because I forgot a Black friend’s color—that I’m not sexist because I have tried hard to unlearn what I was taught.

It’s hard to excavate my biases. Almost impossible to see them. They lie hidden in my dark, irrepressible judgement of women who have chosen paths I deem inadequate—dissing Melania Trump’s plastic-surgery-modeling-rich-guy route when I should just try walking a mile in her ambitious, sky-high stilettos. They seep into my own language, that I must vigilantly correct—calling Joe Biden, Biden; but calling Kamala Harris, Kamala.

Beyond me, out in the larger world, the third wave of feminism is blossoming. I Googled “feminist activists 2020,” and first up came a link to an October 2020 post on Mashable, “6 feminist activists to follow on social media.” Right away, I’m heartened. The women are all colors, shapes, sizes, ages, and religions.

They are probably racist and sexist too, but I’m following them. Closely.​​

And hoping, as this young woman points the way for us all:

        "...And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
        but what stands before us
        We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
        we must first put our differences aside..."
                --Amanda Gorman

Tuesday was Arbogast feast day. I was so busy, I forgot to celebrate. I almost always forget. You'd think I'd remember, because the 21st is also my father's birthday, a memory rich with vats of homemade ice cream and plates heavy with thick-sliced tomatoes. oh well.

Instead I will give a nod to my 5th great grandfather, Michael who, with his wife Elizabeth, started up the Arbogast clan that arose from Virginia. Michael immigrated from Cologne, Germany where he was born in 1734. He arrived on the Speedwell in Philadelphia at age 17, parents and siblings all dead, and threaded his way through the big mountains west of the Shenandoah Valley to Highland County in 1758. These days, Arbogast is known as a "good valley name" and the graveyards are full of Arbogast tombstones, unlike Indiana.

Immigrants from Germany, England and Ireland (plus a few folks wooed from Pennsylvania) were the ones who felled the trees in Virginia to made way for the farms, and to pay off their passage. He was naturalized in 1770, patented 130 acres there in 1773 and added more acreage over the years. He married a natural born Virginian and fathered two rarely noted daughters and seven oft-noted sons (several of whom served in the American Revolution).

He died at age 79. In his will, he left his wife "one-third possession of at the time of my decease for and during her natural life time and her to keep possession of the dwelling house where in I live during the said period of her life and the adjoining to said house and all the under of following articles: to-wit, her bed and furniture, one pot, one baskin, one dish, two plates, two spoons, one fleish fork, one laddle, one kettle, one coffee pot, two teacups and saucers, one set of knives and forks, lisc (?) tin cups, two chairs, one large chest, one spinning wheel, one wool wheel, one pair wool cards, one pair cotton cards, the table in the house, all her books, her saddle and bridle, one tin bucket, three coolers for milk, two head sheep, two of my best milk cows, one horse creature, of not less value than fifteen pounds currant money, all her clothes, and the mulatto girl named Nancy."

I hope things worked out okay for Nancy.

My 4th great grandfather, David Arbogast. and his brother Michael, and "their heirs from them" were excluded. Maybe they had already received their shares when emigrating on to the east, or maybe there just wasn't enough room in Virginia for all of those big Arbogast personalities. Michael moved over the mountain to establish Arbovale, now part of West Virginia. David moved to Indiana, leaving his twin brother behind.

David, who with his wife Elizabeth had five sons and four daughters, died at 109 years of age in Andersonville, in Posey Township - about two hours away in the northwest corner of Franklin County. Originally known as Ceylon, was laid out in 1837 by Fletcher Tevis, and renamed in 1849 after Thomas Anderson, a tavern owner. David was living in Virginia when he was 49, and it looks like all the kids moved with him, so the next 50 years surely were interesting.

Outside the small aluminum frame window, the green maple leaves were stirring softly in dappled late summer sunlight. Inside, I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. My guts were churning and my heart was racing. Unsuitable comments swelled like stuck oatmeal in my throat.

Things weren't going well for me in the discussion group. Across the room a woman was talking about something I wasn't interested in. I wanted to dismiss her. Didn't want to listen to her. Wanted to redirect the conversation my way.

I like to think that I've made progress in learning how to respect other’s opinions, listen, make space in my world for doing things differently than how I would do them. And, I have. I am able to pull back, calm down, and absorb in ways that were impossible for me when I was younger.

But not always.

It’s like having an allergic reaction. All my buttons get pushed, all of my alarms go off, and adrenaline surges through my being. I’m rude. I interrupt. Refuse to acknowledge. Resent that person's very presence. Critically judge how and what is done and said.  Feel my skin ripple with resistance and impatience.

There are some people who have this response to me. Every word that comes out of my mouth annoys. My very presence in the room, or maybe upon the earth, irritates.

While I was thinking about this the other night, a recent The Atlantic magazine article, “Masters of Love,” popped into my head.  It was about what makes relationships work and not work. How it’s really all about how kind, how generous, couples are to each other.

I know, I know. So much pap. But I have to confess since my era of horrible geezer dating followed by falling in love with Steve, my curiosity about what makes relationships work and not work has been high.

The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce, separation or chronic bitterness. Of all marriages, only 30% end up in healthy and happy relationships. The other 70% can barely stand to be around each other. Research by marriage therapist John Gottman shows that people in dysfunctional relationships suffer from the fight or flight response all of time.

Contempt, it turns out, is what tears couples apart. Eye rolling, sarcasm, lip curls. The arrogant, angry disregard of each other. Shutting out. The underlying message to the other person:  you don’t matter.

And kindness is what keeps couples together. Eye contact, indulgence, a slight smile. The generous, warm acceptance of each other. Making room. The underlying message to the other person: you matter.

I think this applies across the board to all types of relationships.

I was telling Steve about this the other day. His question was: “Why? Why does this happen??”

The article didn't really answer that. 

Maybe a few people have a natural inclination to make the space, time and attention needed for kindness. That’s not my inclination. My inclination is to be selfish and focused on my needs. That’s what I know about me, and that’s what I must turn away if I want to harvest all that the world offers me. 

I can be selfish and kind simultaneously for kindness is it's own reward, on the physical level. Kindness elevates levels of dopamine in the brain, giving a natural high. It produces the hormone oxytocin in the brain and throughout the body, dilating the blood vessels and keeping blood pressure low and reducing the levels of free radicals and inflammation in the cardiovascular system that cause aging. Kindness positively impacts the vagus nerve which is sort of an electrical circuit that links our heart, lungs, and gut to the brain-base.

I'm pretty good at being mindful and generous to Steve when he is around, and our relationship might be one of the 3 in 10. 

I'm not so good at paying attention and being kind when it is really hard. When I’m not getting the conversation I want. When someone looks at me with daggers and dismisses me.

Stop, breathe, and relax. Drop my resistance. Set aside my judgments. What good are they?

Bring a spirit of scanning for what's positive, what I can be thankful for, to each interaction.

Be kind. Really, it shouldn't be that hard.