“I act like shit don’t phase me, inside it drives me crazy, my insecurities could eat me alive.” – Eminem

Another Mike’s Hard Black Cherry Lemonade later and Effie was contemplating the meaning of life…well, her life as a woman. Why is it that when a woman wants to undertake ‘male’ activities such as voting (pushing a ballot through a slot), she is flying in the face of what God and Nature had created for her. Why?

Well, at the age of 3 or 4, Effie had discovered the Difference. She deduced that she had been castrated. This was particularly traumatic since her brothers were favored, a common family pattern since the days of Queen Victoria. In the normal course of her development, per Freud, she resolved the resulting turmoil by accepting her punishment, her mutilation, with total resignation, and adopted the passive feminine role as designated by male society.

But somewhere along the way she changed. Now she strove for physical and intellectual competence, but not because these are a good in themselves – she resents discrimination in education, the arts and employment and is frustrated rather than fulfilled by male domination; but rather, because she perceives these male activities as a symbolic substitution for the penis of which she was robbed in infancy. (You’d think they were hard to come by.)

Effie, in her infancy, misinterpreted the differences between the sexes and spoke lovingly but firmly to the child that still existed in her mind for years, “Little girls are like little boys turned inside out, so they can fit together.”

But with that behind her, she is still far from ready to consider what it means, not to be a woman, but to be a free human being. Effie is climbing out of the social and psychological box of the role definitions she has accepted without examination all her life. Until she sees this conditioning and understands it consciously, she won’t be able to evaluate the female role and choose to accept or reject the dictates of its components. It must be intellectualized before she attempts freedom of choice.

The articles in girls’ and women’s magazines are relatively easy to counteract compared to those forms of indoctrination which infiltrate Effie’s personality on a less conscious level – the animal instinct to imitate her mother, jokes, cartoons, movies, comics, fiction, and above all, advertising, where some of our culture’s better intellects are assigned the task of identifying certain patterns of behavior involving profits for their clients with grace, beauty, sexual felicity, power and love.

Women should undergo this process of self-examination with each other, but away from men. Effie is fortifying herself against the punishment of the male chauvinist and the paternalism of the male liberal.

Effie can’t do this alone; she feels the need to share this with all women – the process of self-discovery and the experience of independent decision-making. Only then will they all be ready for the real struggle.

Women cannot be free until men are free. A less facetious look at her husband Frank is no less discouraging. He still needs to feel resourceful, competent and useful in a world which denies him a social context for his work that will fulfill these needs. He needs work that is honorable, significant and challenging. He needs schools that do not smother his brain. He needs training and opportunity for his creative talents.

At seven in the morning Frank sallies forth from his humble castle to bring home the bacon. All day he contends with the forces of the Real World, which weary and batter him. He’s under the pressure of important, ulcer-making decisions. Or he sells his personality to clients. Or he smothers his resistance to the arrogance of his boss.

His ego is submerged. He is a cog in the corporate machine of technological society. He is one more sardine in the subway; one more ant on the freeway; one more rat in the race.

At five he staggers home, a beaten and belittled man. And there is Effie. She’s got 16 hours to get him on his feet again. To make him feel important, necessary, competent, and resourceful.

No matter how Effie’s day went, she must greet him at the door with fresh lipstick, a cheery smile, and a “how did it go?” Listen to his troubles; fetch him a beer or martini; shoo the kids out so that he can relax.

She mustn’t encumber him with all the petty irritations of running the house; he’s had enough of those at the office. But do ask his advice. Make him feel that he is still the Captain of his little ship.

Build him up.

“Frank, can you get the top off the peanut butter? I’ve been struggling with it all day!”

Effie must be smart enough so that he can be proud of her; stupid enough that he can feel smart by comparison. Make sure he knows she would be lost without him – confer on him the glow of paternalism, and on herself the dwarf-life of eternal childhood. Convince herself that propping up a collapsing male ego is a true vocation and, if he is not too tired, Vaginal Orgasm shall be hers.

He needs a veritable Martha Stewart; but Effie can be Martha no more.

Effie wonders how the young are cared for in a society that offers no alternative to female indentureship. Where do women work in an economy with high unemployment and frequent recessions?

The problems of women are problems of the whole society; the solutions for women lie in solving far-ranging social problems. But this involves nothing short of a revolutionary restructuring of the most basic institutions in society – the tax structures that can give us parks and nursery schools, the economy that can give us jobs, the schools and the arts. The task is almost too great to be contemplated. Effie shrinks from it.

Except for this. There is freedom in the striving.