I really feel for the women of the baby boom generation.
They spent 1970s being treated as toys and having their hearts dragged through the dirt by their unscrupulous player boyfriends.
They spent 1980s being battered and verbally and economically abused by their violent and domineering Reaganist husbands.
They spent 1990s getting attacked by their daughters, who bought into the vicious form of feminism that existed at the time and saw their mothers as “breeders” and “sluts.”
And they spent the following decade being attacked by their sons, who bought into the militant misogyny of Osama Bin Laden and Eminem and treated their mothers as worst of sinners.
Are these women, as some claim, “selfish” or “narcissistic”? I do not think so. They came of age in 1960s, where they fought for civil rights, workers' rights, women's rights, personal liberties, peaceful solutions to problems of the world and wiser treatment of the environment. These altruistic ideals were attacked in the name of self-interested capitalism. That these altruistic-minded women be seen as more selfish than the people who attacked them in the name of selfishness is absurd.
I want to see these women – and their original principles – vindicated. In my generation and the generation X that preceded it, there is a lot of misconception about these women; and it comes from both the Left and the Right. I have found these women to be far wiser than generation-X Third Wave feminists, and I have found them to be far more ethical than Reaganist right-wingers or Eminem-style misogynists. They do not deserve the attacks that they have been getting, and it is time that someone stand up on their behalf.