April 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Note: The following is an excerpt from a recent talk by Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America, at the United Nations. To read the complete talk, click here.
In the 1970’s, famous feminist Gloria Steinem said: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
The message: Women are self-reliant, and men are superfluous. Men are unnecessary and incompatible with women. Her cynical view was, no doubt, colored by her father’s abandonment.
At our core, human beings are relational. Attachment to others is a basic human need. Our first attachment is to our parents. From our mothers we absorb what it means to be a woman. From our fathers, we learn how women ought to be treated by men. These kinds of lessons cannot come from classroom lectures, but through the intimacy of daily living.
When Gloria Steinem and other feminists belittle men, marriage and family, they are denying a basic truth: women need male relationships.
But in adopting the flippancies of the Gloria Steinems of the world, what is ideal for women has been set aside as unnecessary or unrealistic. Instead, full attention and resources are devoted to what is far less than ideal, and even harmful to women and society.
We are faced with two competing views:
1. The first is: Women are complete by themselves. Men and women are different only in the area of reproduction. Men are like ladders, useful only to support a woman as she climbs through life.
Here is an example: In the draft resolution on “Fertility, Reproductive Health and Development” for the Commission on Population and Development, the only significant mention of men is:
OP14. Urges Member States, the United Nations and civil society to include in their development priorities programmes that support the critical role of men in supporting women’s access to safe conditions for pregnancy and childbirth, contributing to family planning, preventing sexually transmitted infections and HIV, and ending violence against women and girls.
This minimal list is silent on the critical role that women need men to play in family life, as if there is no need for men to be intimately invested in providing companionship, security, protection and care for their wives, and a father for their children. There is no room here for a husband’s masculine, life-long embrace of his wife and their children. And there is certainly no expectation of fidelity.
Frankly, this is the kind of man that women don’t want. Distant, non-committal, giving only the bare minimum, but not giving himself. In their very low view of men, the Gloria Steinems teach men to treat women poorly – which, when men do, naturally leads women to believe that they’re better off without men. It’s a self-fulfilling expectation.
Demeaning either men or women, treating either as utilitarian, or dismissing marriage as irrelevant damages us as human beings and destabilizes society.
2. The second view is that: Women and men are complementary. We are different in marvelous and various ways, yet in our differences fit together to complete one another. The most profound relationship is marriage — because it perfects the purpose of the two sexes, male and female.
While women may list professional accomplishments when presenting ourselves to the world, we find our primary identity in our relationship with our family — particularly, as a wife and mother. The most influential relationships, the ones that impact us the deepest, are those within our family.
It is these relationships that complete the purpose of what it means to be a woman. And marriage, in which both husband and wife completely give of themselves to the other, provides the security to fully live out this identity of womanhood.
Too often women and sex are viewed in isolation — Women are separated from men and from family, and sex is seen as a mere physical act that has nothing to do with relationships.
When policies are shaped by this view, they produce programs and laws that end up isolating women from real relationships and encouraging extramarital sex— which is the source of many diseases, pathologies and heartaches.
The transcendent wonder of femininity, marriage and sexuality is difficult to describe when crafting policy documents. However, we can point out the benefits of marriage and the rightful place of sexuality.
Humans are relational. We need to belong to others. This is particularly true for women. It is within family and marriage that we are most likely to find safety, security, selflessness, and satisfaction. Marriage joins two families together and creates a new one, enlarging our relationships.
The sexual encounters promoted in comprehensive sexuality programs are the opposite — fleeting, insecure, unsafe, self-centered. The programs deliberately separate children from parents, leaving children vulnerable to adults who would exploit them. Non-marital sex damages a person’s ability to bond to another in marriage.
At the demands of the Gloria Steinems of the world, we’ve accepted a very low standard. Women have paid the price of devaluing marriage. Sexual partners are so interchangeable, and the unique nature of womanhood so denied that now we’re told that men can replace women in marriage.
What an insult to women.
Yet there is hope. Gloria Steinem — the woman who didn’t need a man — came around. In 2000, at age 66, to everyone’s surprise, Gloria Steinem got married.
In the Genesis account of the beginning of mankind, the Creator announces, “It is not good that man should be alone.” Even these many years later, women still need men and marriage is a definite good for women.