The Women's Liberation Movement and Its Various Impacts on American Men

Authors

Arthur B. Shostak, Drexel University

Abstract

Writing in 1974 about women and athletics 26 years ahead in the year 2000 journalist Lucinda Franks foresees a sexist backlash she tags the "New Male Chauvinist Movement." It all begins with a rebirth of the Age of Reason which, after 1980, includes a new celebration of the humanizing potentialities of sport and games. Women, as prime agents of this pivotal cultural reform, will have advanced so fast and so far in competitive and non-competitive athletics that "the Total Human has been born" and " the average body is no longer just a neglected dormitory for the mind." There is an incredulous quality to the memories women have 26 years from now of the dreary 1970's-- "...when there were no integrated golf and baseball teams, when women athletics were not vying for football scholarships, when indeed it was not known that women are capable of being as strong pound-for-pound as men and, with equally strenuous training, can match or surpass them in many sports." What is even more, women, exhilarated with their new sense of physical power, have begun the slow process of throwing over the so-called "feminity game"-- luring, baiting, and netting a husband--in favor of certain far simpler and far more honest ways of relating with men.

Recommended Citation

Shostak, Arthur B. (1977) "The Women's Liberation Movement and Its Various Impacts on American Men," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 4: Iss. 6, Article 8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15453/0191-5096.1207
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol4/iss6/8