Sonia Johnson Quotes
Women cannot serve two masters at once who are urgently beaming antithetical orders.... Either we believe in patriarchy the rule of men over women - or we believe in equality.
Johnson, Sonia. From Housewife to Heretic. Doubleday, 1981.
She was the First Lady, who in many ways was also one of the nation’s leading feminists. Betty Ford, Barbara Bush, and Hillary Clinton were also First Ladies who supported key feminist position but ER was 30 years ahead of them—a time when conservatives and sexists viewed her as a dangerous radical. For example, see {585211}.
Mrs. Roosevelt thought that with the rate of improvement in society’s perception and treatment of women was improving so steadily that women in America were not far from equality. Because of the shortage of men on the home front in WWII women had performed well in virtually all occupations including welding, heavy construction and management and it was just a matter of time to reach equality of pay and parity. However, she and most feminists did not take into account the 2 million men returning from military service who wanted their jobs back. Sexists, who had been suppressed during the war when they objected to women in non traditional occupations, were no longer silenced by national necessity. An occupational backlash developed. Then a sexual one regarding contraception and family planning, (Condoms for example were illegal up to 1963 as birth control device). Each major step forward was accompanied by its own backlash and even in the Presidential Campaign of 2012 contained debate on women’s control over their own bodies relative to abortion and contraception.
Sonia Ann Johnson, is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She eventually was excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker.
