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Friedan tells us more than we need to know about her sex life. In her marriage, she writes, "we had pet names for his c___ and my diaphragm ...when he put his tongue hard down my throat, I loved the whole melting feeling, not just the clitoral orgasm." After her divorce, she had numerous affairs, and she names names. (Asked about her indiscretion, she replies simply, "They're dead.") She tells of getting a telephone call from Steinem while in bed with a married father of five, and of fooling around with another old flame who fell out of bed and broke his toe. "Despite all this stuff about feminism and the ongoing complaint that men have all the power," she writes, "in some ways we are better off as women. We don't have to get it up."
Friedan, 79, who lives in Washington, says she's astounded that the transformations in women's lives have come "so rapidly and completely and that young women take it for granted." She's still working to improve those lives, with a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation for a research project on the future of men and women in the workplace. "The next phase has to put quality of life before dollars and cents," she says. "I'd call it the 'Get a Life' movement."