the cliff richard generation
When the horrific Josef Fritzl story hit the headlines around the world, Patrice was immediately taken back to her childhood - a time when Cliff Richard was crooning about living dolls being locked up in a trunk, a time when men were masterful, women were submissive, nobody believed little children when they told about daddy's dirty little sex game (or the priest’s), western male men thought they were superior and civilized and the bearded man in the sky looked down upon us all and was pleased.“The Cliff Richard generation was the one before the baby boomers – loosely covering those born 1935 to 1945,” explains Patrice, “and being born right in the middle of this generation I remember it with mixed feelings.”
“Everyone’s childhood in this generation was overshadowed by a terrible war,” says Patrice, “and everyone’s teenage years were blighted by the brutal patriarchal values of an older generation that hushed up wife bashing, child sexual abuse and abominable attitudes towards women.”
“The boy band baby boomers swept aside all of those values – along with crooners like Cliff,” says Patrice, “but feminism and the sexual revolution came too late for women like me – and Rosemarie Fritzl – who married straight from school, never knew the independence of working and whose sole purpose in life by then was to have babies and do what their breadwinning husbands told them to do.”
“I am independent now, and so glad that younger women have opportunities and freedoms that I missed out on,” says Patrice, “but my whole life has been blighted by a childhood that was ruled by the brutal values of the generation before mine.”
“I have a special dislike of men my own age and older because they still act as though they ‘own’ women and can do what they like with them,” says Patrice, “and what happened in the Fritzl family is more common than most people believe.”
“The Cliff Richard generation is totally out of step with modern values and is fraught with psychoses.”
Read more by Patrice on this issue:
Labels: Amstetten, Austria, childhood, Cliff Richard, dependence, dolls, Elisabeth Fritzl, families, Fritzl, incest, Josef Fritzl, motherhood, protective shells, Rosemarie Fritzl, sex addicts
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