The sexual revolution and women’s liberation
What has been gained?
Thoughts for a Sunday morning
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone has maintained that “the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ . . . destroyed the intrinsic connection between sex, marriage and child bearing and rearing. This was the first step in applying to the sexual realm the principle of relativism, i.e., defining reality the way I want it to be and imposing my idea of it onto nature, rather than the classical understanding that things have a nature of their own that we should seek to discover and understand.” This is a profound insight, one not frequently heard in Western societies at present, which deserves our reflection.
I would like to add a related thought. The emancipation of women since the 1960s and the ascent of individual women to positions of authority in Western institutions has not had positive social consequences. Political, economic, and social institutions have not become more just and more humane, as one might expect, taking into account the prior influence on women’s consciousness of the traditional female role. Indeed, Western institutions are perhaps less humanist, especially at the national level. Perhaps we need to reflect further on the meaning of the modern emancipation of women in the context of the traditional Catholic and Islamic teaching on the complementarity of women and men, rooted in nature. Perhaps this would lead us to ask, what understanding should upwardly mobile women in Western societies have concerning their moral responsibilities to humanity as women?
In revolutionary socialist Cuba, I have observed, Cuban women have assumed positions of authority with a strong sense of their responsibility as Cuban citizens and revolutionaries, and also as women. Cuban commitment to health care and education are well known. Perhaps less well known is the fact that it was Cuban revolutionary women who made it so, by taking possession of what was rightfully theirs, with the knowledge that it was for the good of all. Today, the leaders of the Cuban mass organization of women only secondarily make demands with respect to their interests as women, and they almost never present women as victims. Rather, their primary orientation is to claim credit in the name of all Cuban women for the humanist society that Cuba has become.
Perhaps the self-confidence and purposefulness of Cuban women were rooted in the quality of the revolutionary leadership. Its highest echelon included ten or twelve persons, three of whom were women, and one of whom was named to direct the newly formed Cuban Federation of Women. Fidel, the leader of the revolution, clearly affirmed that the new society was to be built with the full participation of women, and anyone who said otherwise was counterrevolutionary. But this revolutionary proclamation of women’s emancipation was confined to the principle; no one was telling people what words they ought to use.
In the societies of the West, however, the process of the emancipation of women has been more conflictive, and the positive results have been less clear. Perhaps our premises with respect to opportunity and liberation have been flawed. Perhaps we need to reflect more on the meaning of human fulfillment.
I have questions here, not answers. Perhaps readers have thoughts or suggested readings.
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