"I learned about women from men"

"I learned about women from men," lamented the female character in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. It may be a fiction book, but it's incredible when one thinks about how true that statement was for countless women of yesteryear. Afterall, who else would they learn about women from?

Men were the gatekeepers of not only the media, but popular culture and opinion. This is the way it had been for, well, ever. Women's views simply were not represented in general discourse. Sure, you had a female author pop up here and there, but it was nearly impossible for her ideas and/or opinions, no matter how relevant, logical or creative, to be taken seriously by more than a handful of people. And why should they? Freud spoke for women psychologically, and Hugh Heffner portrayed them culturally -- what more could they ask for?

Isabel, Jong's protagonist from Fear of Flying, offers another striking nugget for contemplation:

Until women started writing books there was only one side of the story ... Until I was twenty-one, I measured my orgasms against Lady Chatterley's and wondered what was wrong with me. Did it ever occur to me that Lady Chatterley was really a man? That she was really D.H. Lawrence?

Eventually, this did occur to women. But for many, it was too late. Women had been defined by men in every conceivable way for so long that it was fully ingrained. Not until authors like Freidan, Greer and Jong came along was the full story presented.