Phyllis Schlafly v. Betty Friedan

Draft script for a mock debate between Phyllis Schlafly v. Betty Friedan
This is a fictionalized debate script designed for performance, and is not to be taken as historical fact.

A curtain rises to a stage dressed for guests, modest yet meticulously decorated with flowers and well-polished podiums. Ms. Friedan is on the left, Mrs. Schlafly on the right.

MODERATOR Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to tonight’s event, a thrilling bout of wits and intellect between two women who could not be more different. To my left we have Mrs. Betty Friedan—

FRIEDAN [hissing] Ms. Betty Friedan

MODERATOR [visibly embarrassed] – my apologies, Ms. Betty Friedan, an outspoken feminist and best-selling author of the book The Feminine Mystique. And to my right we have Ms. Phyllis Schlafly, a self-proclaimed pro-family activist, mother of six and noted for igniting a grassroots movement that blocked passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Thank you both for being here Amer FRIEDAN It’s my pleasure

SCHLAFLY Yes, thank you, but just so you know I do prefer Mrs. Schlafly.

MODERATOR My apologies

SCHLAFLY It’s really no problem, I understand the mistake. But as I always say, to me, Ms. means misery, and American women are more privileged than any women in the world.

FRIEDAN (interrupting) now Phyllis that is just ridiculous! You malign the feminist movement and fight against equality but to make so petty a remark about a title! Why is that any of your business what women ask to be called in the professional sphere?

SCHLAFLY Well, Betty, words have meaning and thus they matter. “Ms.” came into use as an intentional way to separate women from both the “Miss” of young pre-married status and the “Mrs.” whom so luckily has a husband. By cleaving from both norms, feminists are trying to create a role for themselves in society that is simply untenable. Being a spinster used to be the horror of any well-wishing woman, yet you have tried to turn it into a badge of honor and to me that’s just preposterous.

FRIEDAN But Phyllis that’s just ridiculous! The whole reason women should use Ms. is to signify that they too deserve to be treated the same as any man, as any Mr., and to say otherwise is quite possibly the most harmful thing a woman can do to herself in the modern day

SCHLAFLY I disagree—

FRIEDAN I know you do! I—

MODERATOR Ladies, let’s calm down here [laughing] the audience is already loving this as you can tell [several yells and slight applause]. However, let’s get to the substance of the debate. I will ask you both about several issues, and both of you will have plenty of time to discuss it. At the end, we may offer the audience a chance to answer a few questions as well. Are both of you ready?

SCHLAFLY Yes

FRIEDAN Yes

MODERATOR Let’s begin. Ms. Friedan, in your book you talk about how women can only reach the most basic level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the physiological level, by fulfilling their role through sex and child-rearing. You proceed to argue that the home and being domestic are not meaningful work. Can you comment on this further?

FRIEDAN Why yes, I’d be happy to. In my book, I believe it’s Chapter 13, I discuss Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a groundbreaking psychological model of how humans can achieve the highest level of their existence, which Maslow terms self-actualization, and for my purposes meant finding the meaning of one’s life. I came across this model during my psychology studies before I raised a family, and it has always stuck with me as a telling way to analyze the whole ideal of a woman belonging in the home. You see, when a woman is relegated to cooking, cleaning and raising her children, and men are told that they are the bread-winners, the ones who go out and have meaningful work and a career, it prevents women from ever reaching any of the other needs and thus self-actualization. I think it’s pretty simple: when the woman is merely a baby-producing machine, she is existing solely on a physiological level.

MODERATOR Thank you, Ms. Friedan a very good explantion [applause]. Mrs. Schlafly, how would you respond to Ms. Friedan and also put forth your role of the home in a woman’s life?

SCHLAFLY Well, first I would like to thank my husband, Fred, for allowing me to come here this evening.^[1]

I am appalled at the notion that a woman’s work in the home is not meaningful. What can be more meaningful than being the master of a domain, a perfect miniature of society, the very building block on which society rests? By ruling one of these, running a home with efficiency and grace, a woman achieves a much more meaning than at some repetitive operating, secretary or assembly line, where the labor is repetitive and expendable. No! The work of a woman in the home is unique, impactful, and irreplaceable. Furthermore, the idea that a woman only finds meaning in sex in the home is very juvenile and reductionalist. What of teaching her children how to think and behave? Praying with them and guiding their growth in faith? These transcend any corporal restraints that Friedan claims traps women. In fact, when a home is working as it ought, when the children are raised to be healthy, polite, and upstanding citizens, a woman has reach self-actualization

FRIEDAN No, Phyllis, that’s a very stunted and ill-informed view of the issue.This is the modern world, and we all know that such elementary actions such as teaching children to wash their hands or say their please’s and thank-you’s cannot be substitute for the gratification of advancing one’s career path. Subjecting women to the sexist idea that only they can be the housekeeper and child-rearer is outdated malarkey that boxes women into a role that leaves most of them unsatisfied. In fact, in the beginning of my book I talk about how statistically many women are unhappy in their vocation of raising their children.

SCHLAFLY Well, the audience and the moderator may not know this, but Ms. Friedan used a good deal of anecdotal evidence rather than careful statistical analysis, and the main problem with this approach, although it does arguably make for a good read, is that one cannot make claims of “many” or “most” based on it. Thus, we should really examine what we already know, that we only notice the women who complain, rather than the vast majority of women who sit quietly at home and happily raise their children as their vocation.

MODERATOR Thank you, ladies. This next question is for Phyllis Schlafly. Betty Friedan wrote, in The Feminine Mystique, that "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own." Do you agree with that?

SCHLAFLY No, I don't. While women can pursue fulfillment however they like, most women find their greatest happiness in their family, in their children, and in their own home. This is a truth handed down generation to generation, and it has helped hold society together as women raise the children and men provide for them in the world. Furthermore, I don’t buy the argument that men can only find happiness through creative work, and I believe that this dangerous assumption that creativity is the root of happiness rests on a disregard for the Creator of all things. When people’s lives are consumed by looking for purpose among temporal things, they lose focus on what is important, and they forget their faith.

FRIEDAN Well that is just absurd! In the modern world one cannot just assert that faith is the foundation for meaning in life! There are plenty of people who are dissatisfied with what their churches and synagogues are teaching, and that unhappiness, in regards to our present discussion, comes directly from the arcane notions that churches claim come straight from God. This is how women become disillusioned by some unattainable and restrictive ideal of femininity, and this is how women are forced to stay at home and mind their own business. I say no. I say that a woman must have the ability to create outside the realm of the home, just as a man does.

SCHLAFLY Well ironically, the Bible does directly teach that, and all Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God, so I’ll tell you where it does occur, in Ephesians, chapter 5, starting from verse 22, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should—

FRIEDAN [hissing] This isn’t Sunday school! I don’t care what the Bible says it’s oppressing women. How can you cite such an outdated fairytale as justification for oppression?

SCHLAFLY [cooly] Well, Ms. Friedan, you made a very obvious attack on religious institutions and claimed that they just manufacture reasons to “oppress” women as you call it, so I would appreciate the opportunity the continue my defense of my faith which you have so ingraciously mocked.

[applause from audience]

MODERATOR Please continue, Mrs. Schlafly

[Friedan mutters incoherently until Schlafly gives her a look, upon which Schlafly proceeds]

SCHLAFLY As I was saying, the Paul goes on the say in his letter to the Ephesians that “each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” Basically, this verse reinforces the proper way to have a household, with the husbands properly loving his wife and the wife obeying her husband’s wishes, which come from a place of love and care. And I think the point that Ms. Friedan made so clear about how not everyone is religious or happy with their faith shows how we have forgotten the Creator and make claims that we need to create in order to be happy. We need to live the way God intended, and while that means all of us have the capacity to create and do it on a daily basis to some capacity, a woman’s primary vocation can never be to create anything more than her children and a happy home to raise them in.

MODERATOR Thank you. Our next question is for Ms. Friedan. You have been a vocal supporter of abortion as a civil right since the inception of the women’s rights movement. You once said, “Abortion repeal is not a question of political expedience. It is part of something greater. It is historic that we are addressing ourselves this weekend to perhaps the first national conference of women and men. Women’s voices are finally being heard saying it the way it is about the question of abortion both in its basic sense of morality and in its new political sense as part unfinished revolution of sexual equality.” Can you explain what women are saying about abortion both its moral and political sense?

FRIEDAN

SCHLAFLY

MODERATOR Thank you once again. Ms. Friedan, you have often said that the women’s rights movement was never about sexuality or identity politics, and you even refused to wear a purple armband in support of lesbians marching for feminism. Can you explain your beliefs and even compare them to Mrs. Schlafly’s?

FRIEDAN [very uncomfortable] Well—um, I do think that women can love other women if that’s what they’re about, so to speak. As adults, they can make that decision for themselves and they can live as they choose. In terms of my own actions and attitude toward the lesbian movement, I think that the main problem is the politicization of sexuality. When I helped launch the woman’s movement, it was never about sex, it was about equal rights and fair pay. If you’re enquiring about same-sex marriage and civil unions, I suppose you can call me lukewarm on it, and I do think children are ideally raised by one mother and one father. I certainly do not think that it is within the women’s rights platform to discuss such matters, and I think if the gays want to bring such issues to the front of the American people’s minds, as my fellow feminists and I have done, they can do that themselves.

SCHLAFLY Well, as a Christian woman who takes the Word of God seriously, I do believe that homosexual acts are a depraved sin that offends God and are written into the natural law as heinous and immoral. However, that does not mean that the temptation to do such is wrong; God gives all sorts of people all sorts of crosses to bear, and if someone struggles with same-sex attraction, they are going through temptation just as you and I are. However, the whole point is that one must struggle with it rather than give in and slip into an unhealthy and immoral lifestyle. Now, of course this leads me to believe that no two men or two women should raise children, as that is the role of a mother and father.

FRIEDAN I suppose on this matter, in a broad sort of way, we agree. We both think that the ideal way for children to be raised is with a mother and father--

SCHLAFLY (interupting) I'm sorry Ms. Friedan but that's not what I said. It can't be the ideal way to raise children, it has to be the only way children are raised. I think we share a general dislike for the LGBTT movement, in terms of similar views, but we certainly are approcahing it with different rationales and different degrees of severity

FRIEDAN (scoffing) Fair enough

MODERATOR Leading off that question, Mrs. Schlafly, you have been quoted as saying certain surprising things about gays in America, such as that “sodomy is a worse crime than rape” and that AIDS education is “the teaching of safe sodomy.” Comments like these have prompted virtually everyone in the LGBT community to label you as a bigoted anti-gay activist. Can you defend these remarks and respond to such claims?

SCHLAFLY Well first of all, the quotes have been taken out of context, as I never said that sodomy is worse than rape per se. What I did do is write an article about judicial tradition<more>

FRIEDAN

SCHLAFLY

FRIEDAN

MODERATOR Thank you, ladies. I’d quickly like to get both of your perspectives on our newly-elected President, Donald Trump. Mrs. Schlafly, you endorsed Mr. Trump early on in the campaign and even wrote your final book about him. Can you explain what you saw in him?

SCHLAFLY Well, I saw a man who by no means was perfect, and critics can, and will, go on and on about Trump having been married three times, and about how, in the past, he boasted about his indiscretions. But anyone who meets him today will meet an old-fashioned man grounded in his two great priorities -- hard work and family -- and a man who in other respects has led a remarkably clean life. This 'straight-edge' living is remarkable especially for a man of such wealth and success.cnn I think that he will make good on his promises to defend the West from the threat of Muslim invasion, as well as protect our Christian brothers and sisters abroad who face such threats of abhorrent violence on a daily basis. I also think that the claims that he is not qualified for the job is ridiculous, as many of the founding fathers were business men who only entered politics to make their country great. And Mr. Trump plans to do just that. In fact, I find his victory remarkably indicative of how fed up the American people are with career politicians who only have their best interest in mind, and I hope it ushers in a new wave of conservatism to rid the blight Obama has made on this nation in the past 8 years.