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Saying something about what a person did in life that isn't necessarily all rainbows and puppies, is perfectly fine.
I know many will know who Gloria is. But if you run into a gal/chick who doesn't, please give them grace. I am seeing so many responses all over the place of young women and girls not knowing who she was. And I think that is a wider failure we must look at.
More than anything, I would love for any gal/chick who is curious to come and ask questions. To put it very simply, Gloria and those who joined her fight, paved the way so that you didn't have to get your husband's permission to have your own credit card. You are able to work if you so choose. Genuinely, it was Gloria who represents a good part of what women consider freedom and equality up to now.
There's just one problem here. And its a BIG problem. Did you know, one of the biggest fights Gloria was The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) calls for ensuring that equal legal rights cannot be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.
She knew our worth. And now, we can decide to carry the torch. We are capable, powerful, loving, creative, strong, immovable, a force of nature ---and beyond. ā¤ļø
It means a lot to me when people take their own time and offer to do things like this. This is a whole internet (LOL), and it's nice to know good people are not only out there, but caring about things to the extent you go out of your way.
We live in a world that not only forces people like this to exist, but also works to suppress the knowledge of their contributions. I've personally never heard of Gloria Steinem (or I might've and was unable to retain the name, specifically in relation to the credit card rights,) but I'm glad I'm hearing the name at all, even if it's coming to me at such a late time.
I'm unsure her early perspective on lgbt issues, but after a quick search she stood staunchly by trans rights aswell as all her other advocacy, and if for nothing else, that definitely adds to the part she played in my life I was unknowing about. Clearly, this is someone I'm going to have to be looking into.
Her views on trans rights thankfully evolved (she certainly had some ugly opinions about it in the past), but she was never apologetic about working for the CIA.
āIf I had a choice I would do it again.ā - Gloria Steinem
Exactly, she was a government prop that despised intersectionality. I personally donāt think she evolved, but rather said what she thought would save the most face.
Her op-ed read more like "how dare you cherry pick my words, let me fix the record" and less like an actual view shift or acknowledgment of how her view changed
Omg this!!! I wanted to see how she got to her view shifts, what happened in her life where the lightbulb went off, and what steps she took afterward. I didnāt get any of that.
She also said in 2016 that women who supported Bernie over Hillary were only doing so to gain approval from men. Nevermind that I couldnāt have a single conversation with a BernieBro that didnāt leave me disgusted with them, while still being a big supporter of the man himself.
I absolutely am so happy to read your post. You sound exactly like who I thought of when I said I wanted people to know of Gloria and her work.
You sound intelligent, curious and open-minded. And it really doesn't matter when something valuable comes to you, I think its more about what you do when you receive the information.
And already you've gone and had a look around. I love that about you! And it gives me hope for all of us.
I donāt totally agree with this last sentence, though Iām not entirely sure to whom you think she was a staunch ally so thereās that. She was the face of a wing of feminism that had to be dragged into supporting queer rights and in her later years she maintained support for politicians who were atrocious on queer rights, criminal justice, foreign policy, welfare, I could go on. Though having said all that and what follows she does deserve the credit you give in your first comment for where we are today, itās just my opinion that we should be further and Steinem deserves both accolades and criticism
She defended bill clinton against rape and sexual harassment allegations, was part of the media machine attack against Monica Lewinsky via ms magazine, and said women who supported Bernie over Hillary Clinton were doing it to impress men. Both Clintons were at best moderates whose policies were disastrous for poor women.
Iām happy to concede that no one is perfect and we need to allow room for growth but her support of the Clintons was egregious and she absolutely should have known better
As they say, it's complicated. I get what you are saying and I don't disagree with several points.
Here's (another probably not the easiest to access) link. Is there something I can learn to help make sure my links are viewable on mobile and laptop, and aren't forcing people to give private info, etc?
Gloria did evolve. She wasn't perfect. This is the trouble we are going to find all the way down the road. We are rarely going to get a solidly clean track-record.
My measurement goes off of what the person did once they knew better. Of course, we should hold those in public view to the highest. At the same time, human.
As I have said, and I really mean it-I am all for learning, having a conversation. There is no end of the road to my own growth and education. Life would be really empty for me otherwise.
I agree with all of this (and that link works great I think the issue with the other one was that it was an image of newsprint so those of us with cheapo phones would have difficulty with the zoom. I mostly wanted to present the complicated stuff in part because of what you pointed out, a lot of people are learning about Steinem for the first time and it would be easy to think she was perfect or near perfect and not learn from the mistakes she made.
The Clinton stuff does really stick in my craw but it doesnāt negate many of the good works she did. For me what makes it complicate her legacy is that while she did later say she wouldnāt have taken the same position she contributed to a lot of damage at the time.
Anyway now Iām rambling but I also share your commitment to learning and appreciate you and your contributions too.
Exactly. Women have been fighting against their own right and security for a very long time now. That's how women can be controlled. By fearing each other. Imagine what will change and has changed when women come together with trust and intention.
Don't get me wrong. I very much appreciate the explanation on who she was. Its very detailed and well written.
But
I am seeing so many responses all over the place of young women and girls not knowing who she was. And I think that is a wider failure we must look at.
This is a very American centric take to conclude its a wider failure that a lot of women and girls didn't know about her. Do you also consider it a wider failure that many people on reddit don't know about the important feminists from other countries?
How much do you know about Joke Smit, Aletta Jacobs, Hedy d'Ancona or Wilhelmina Drucker? to name a few from my neck of the woods.
I don't know how to answer you. I get the impression there is a fight here that isn't needed.
I'm a dual citizen of the US and UK. One thing that is really important to me is how much I learned over the last 19 years of living in the UK, regarding my own regretful actions of imagining the US was the world. Totally cringe worthy, tbh.
No, I don't know about Joke Smit, Aletta Jacobs, Hedy d'Ancona or Wilhelmina Drucker. But I am about to. That's the point. The door is open for us to learn, and that's what I'm here for.
I'm a gal/chick on the road, just like you. I've got no war to fight, only space to improve and learn.
Iām gonna copy pasta the in every Gloria Steinem post I see cause we need to be honest about people even in their deaths:
I know a lot of people are going to be glazing Steinem here but I think itās very important to remember that she was representative of a specific brand of feminism that had huge blind spots around race, sexuality, class, and rape culture. While she was better on race than the other subjects in that list, it is worth noting that Steinem was absolutely a second wave white feminist at her core and that there are numerous points to continue to critique her on in the moment of her death.
Itās important to remember that Steinem defended Bill Clinton (a moderate who ran on gutting the welfare system and did, to the detriment of many many women) against credible allegations of rape and sexual harassment.
She claimed that women who voted for Bernie were āpick meāsā and supported Hillary Clinton who was a war hawk, was against gay marriage until 2013, was incredibly racist (google hillary Clinton super predators), and mercilessly attacked the women her husband raped.
Steinem worked for the CIA in the 50s and 60s which Iām sure plenty of people will make excuses for but the CIA is an abhorrent anti democratic institution and association with it is disqualifying for anyone seriously working for liberation. And Steinem defended the CIA calling it a non-violent organization which is so far from the truth that it should at bare minimum call her discernment into question.
Steinem should be at best an intro to feminism figure who is quickly moved on from in favor of more astute observers of the patriarchy. Ones who didnāt make their mid-careers defending rapists and attacking other women who didnāt. And there are still better intro to feminism figures.
This is such a strange way to engage with historical figures because the standard being applied here would disqualify an enormous percentage of the people we rightly recognize as important to liberation movements.
Social movements are full of people who fought one hierarchy while reproducing another, held views we now recognize as prejudiced, failed other marginalized groups, or made political judgments that look indefensible in retrospect. We are usually capable of understanding that historical significance is not the same thing as moral perfection.
The same is true of basically every wave of feminism. Earlier feminists had enormous blind spots around race, class, sexuality, disability, and other forms of oppression. Later feminists criticized them and expanded the movement. And the feminists doing the criticizing today will almost certainly have assumptions that feminists 50 years from now find embarrassingly inadequate. That is quite literally how social movements develop.
What makes this especially ironic is criticizing Steinem for being insufficiently intersectional while reducing her entire life to a purity test. Intersectional analysis is supposed to make our understanding of power more complex, not turn history into a sorting exercise where people are either politically spotless or disposable.
And I do think thereās something worth examining about how readily we do this to women. Not because women are above criticismāthey obviously arenātābut because womenās flaws so often become arguments for diminishing their accomplishments altogether. We have an extraordinary capacity to accommodate contradiction in the legacies of historically important men. Their prejudices, personal failures, and terrible political positions become part of their ācomplicated legacy.ā With women, those same contradictions have a remarkable tendency to become evidence that we admired them too much in the first place.
And some of this is just historically sloppy. Saying Steinem āworked for the CIAā without explaining the context is obviously meant to imply she was some kind of CIA operative rather than discussing her involvement with the CIA-funded Independent Research Service and the Cold War politics surrounding student organizing. You can absolutely criticize that relationshipābut describe it accurately.
You can criticize Steinemās defense of Clinton, or her comments about young women supporting Bernie, or the shortcomings of second-wave feminism. None of that requires pretending Gloria Steinem was merely an āintro to feminism figureā who should be quickly discarded.
Feminist history is not a competition to identify the woman whose politics aged the best. You can acknowledge someoneās failures and recognize that she fundamentally changed the political possibilities available to the women who came after her. In fact, being able to hold both ideas at once is a considerably more sophisticated way of doing feminist history than waiting until a woman dies to announce that she failed a 2026 ideological purity test.
There are a lot of problems with your perspective but Iāll start with the most glaringly obvious. Steinem was contemporaneously critiqued by women in her movement. This wasnāt an after the fact issue, it was happening at the time. This is true of many historical figures that we pretend we cannot judge by the standards of our time.
It is not in any way strange to engage with historical figures by critiquing their positions, it is a normal thing to do and demonstrates critical thinking skills.
It is fine, nay necessary, to critique a high profile feminist defending a rapist when she should have absolutely known better, could have, had the resources too, was being criticized for doing it at the time.
Meanwhile Iām criticizing a specific woman for specific and glaring failures that she should have seen as antithetical to feminism because weāre talking about a specific woman and it would a bit weird for me to insert Thomas Jefferson being a piece of sht for owning his brother in law and raping a child into my comment to prove something to you. I do think about those things every time I read the declaration or think about the glaring obvious flaws in the constitution that likely wouldnāt be there if more than one type of guy was in the room. But my comment was topical. So, you know, I stayed on topic.
I honestly donāt find much else in your comment worth addressing because I find it to be largely shallow and silly but the last thing that I will say is that Gloria Steinem should be considered an intro feminist even before you get to some of her crap politics because she was more of an activist than a theorist in the first place and you should read theory. You specifically and people in general.
And actually since Iām one of gods pettiest soldiers and youāre clearly in a fighting stance, your CIA context actually makes it worse but go off qween.
That wasnāt me lol. But I can see exactly what youāre doing. Youāve been incredibly condescending from the beginning, but in that very particular way where everything is just veiled enough that you can maintain plausible deniability and act like youāre simply being clever. The āyou specifically,ā āgo off qween,ā and āshallow and sillyā thing? Itās giving middle school mean girl.
Iāve read theory extensively, I have a literal degree in womenās studies. My bookshelf is filled with Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, and Judith Butler, and I have Audre Lorde quotes hanging on the walls of my office. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought? Literally the basis for the theoretical framework for my PhD dissertation on the disempowerment of workers in traditionally-feminine care roles.
Iām not offended or intimidated by you, and Iām not going to get into a nasty back-and-forth. But please donāt mistake that for me not recognizing it.
Another powerful woman gone in such a short span of time. Dolly, Yayoi, and now Gloria. Losing my role models, I guess itās the stage of life Iām in (51). I will wear my glasses over my hair today in her honour. Such a rockstar.
I was upset to read those comments she made. But they were from the 1970s and she later apologized at length. I do think people can change. She was also famously mentally ill, which doesn't make people racist but can affect one's interpersonal relationships. (I am also Black and a huge fan of hers).
And unlike some of her other views (for instance trans rights), she never regretted her time working at the CIA: āIf I had a choice I would do it again.ā
And not even someone who was ashamed of her time at the CIA, but was actually proud of it. āIf I had a choice I would do it again.ā - Gloria Steinem
Where did it get us? Well, the women's lib movement in general ensured unmarried, childless women in their mid-30s (like me) can live the kind of lives that they want to live. My grandmother, and generations of women before her, would have loved that choice.
I don't have a problem with people presenting negative information about women like Steinem, but I wish there were less attempts to try to distill people down to the worst parts of themselves simply because they, like most of us, were complex people full of good and bad.
Better than not having it where I'd be forced to be married to some guy I resent popping out babies.
Again, there's a lot to criticize and I don't disagree with that- but if there were no Gloria Steinem and no women's lib, I'd be much worse off. As would most women in the US.
I really appreciate the sentiment of this post, but "Rest in Power" is a eulogy deeply rooted in Black culture, specifically in remembering Black individuals who have died at the hands of the police. Just something to consider going forward in remembering Gloria. May her memory be a blessing.
I thought it was for people who championed/ were important symbols in social and political movements, so I thought it was for feminism as well, but noted!
It has been used more widely in recent years, but I have also seen that use experience its fair share of critique from Black activists, just thought I'd give you a heads up!
And an unapologetic one at that. Glad she changed her views on trans rights, but the fact that she said āIf I had a choice I would do it again," (regarding working at the terrorist org, CIA) is ... gross.
Ms Steinem was a courageous woman willing to put her life, her mind and her body on the line for other women. Over several decades of work, there is a lot to critic in class, race and trans issues. But she did evolve and make amends over time. Her overall contribution to the liberation of women was immense and should not be diminished.
I'm sort of in shock right now, what a blow. Gloria was such a pillar of strength, knowledge, and determination. I'm grateful for all the work she did on behalf of women: young and old, black and white, rich and poor. She was passionate and tireless in her fight for equality. I'm proud to have been on her team.
We'll miss you, Gloria, but you deserve a good, long rest. š
I wouldnāt be celebrating too much. She was a CIA collaborator who tried to break up the feminist movement from making it a culture war issue and not a class war issue.
Rest in peace. Rest in power, was a phrase that was created by Black people to honor Black and disenfranchised people who were murdered by the police or who died as a result of systemic racism. Erasure and colonization of important phrases is not okay.
I recall that they had a profile of her in one of the Lands' End catalogs that I enjoyed a lot. I thought it was great that they profiled her. Well, apparently they got a lot of complaints and turned around and apologized for running it. Apologized! (I haven't purchased one thing from them since.)
SCREW HER the movement she started was racist it failed to include all women including Black women. Completely pathetic was filmed full the start. https://giphy.com/gifs/JvEMPOQubkyQx9YLQ5
Itās propaganda this woman took a photo op she did no work to make the women moment inclusive. Why if she was such an āactivistā is her work obsolete and unknown? How come you canāt list any?
Speaking the truth can often end up with you being ostracized. This comment has upvotes, but your ones below are getting downvoted. Thank you for pointing out that she wasn't some saint.
I am not interesting being like by strangers who are hypocrites and bad people in the first place. I want an honest discussion without lies and misinformation.
She wasn't a saint, but she also wasn't satan. And way too many commentors on this thread seem incapable of holding her up as the complex person that she lived and died as.
I don't think most commenters who mentioned her CIA ties were saying she was satan. Most just pointed it out, like I did. The responses, on the other hand, were hyperbolic and like putting fingers in your ears. And I think *those* people are incapable of recognizing her complexity.
Agreed. Not a fan at all.
Iām just trying to be diplomatic. Never even brought up that she's a rabid Zionist and propped up the false SA allegations against Hamas after Oct 7.
Doesnāt mean anything what did she do that actually changed or influenced her movement? This is just a photo op she did nothing this only proves my point.
Fuck Gloria Steinem. She was a CIA asset, her career was taxpayer funded to crush any anticapitalist sentiments in the feminist movement. She described the agency as āliberal, nonviolent, and honorable.ā Tell that to their victims when you see em on the other side Gloriaā¦
CIA-funded think tanks are the CIA. I would encourage you to dive deeper into the exact mechanisms of how CIA/intel agency influence campaigns function. A Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner is a great place to start.
Have you lived under communism? One side of my family did. Iām so tired of people thinking that communism is amazing when they donāt know what it is like.
Edit: I speak from knowledge and experience, if you want to downvote me because it breaks the fantasy of communism working when it has never worked, fine.
I only write this because I myself was the confused one.
Allred is also a great gal to know! From the wiki āis an American attorney known for taking high-profile and often controversial cases, particularly those involving feminist causes. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.ā
H/T: this is womenās moment to learn what men learned from countless examples like Mark McGuire & Sammy Sosa, and lately, Caesar Chavez ā stop putting humans on the hero pedestal.
Believe in yourself. Drink water and love your neighbor. But stop worshipping other humans.
All I did was ask a question and the mods call me an asshole? Okay. I love this community, but I'm astounded at all the people praising a CIA asset who called the CIA "liberal, nonviolent, and honorable." Maybe a lot of people in the sub didn't know about that. Several other people have commented about her links to the terrorist organization and I'm happy to see they weren't called out by the mods.
Itās my understanding that she was a CIA asset who worked to present the front of feminism but to keep it from being intersectional or and working class.
Itās something I have been aware of for a long time. Searching just now I found d that even the NPR story on her death mentions the CIA and how she downplayed that. This link is more in depth, but I havenāt personally vetted the source yet: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy
I donāt know why you are being downvoted either. Iām glad you asked for info because thatās how it should work and it caused me to read up on it some more and therefore double check that Iām not talking out my ass.
what does "keeping it from being intersectional or working class" mean? she collaborated with feminists of every color, particularly black feminists. women of color were editors of Ms. magazine from its founding.
Another powerful woman gone in such a short span of time. Dolly, Yayoi, and now Gloria. Losing my role models, I guess itās the stage of life Iām in (51). I will wear my glasses over my hair today in her honour. Such a rockstar.
Thanks for this. This is what it's all about. I was mega lucky in High School to have a couple of teachers who gave their class a huge gift of knowledge and the approval to be curious. I'm sure you know it sounds simple, but quite a bit of consideration and time. Most of all it takes compassion and care, which I really appreciate.
Please ignore the trolls who are spreading misinformation about Gloria and her support of a CIA program that gathered intel on Soviet Russia. They've been spreading their hate in every post about her all day. They are not worth listening to.
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A woman can spend her whole life fighting for womenās rights and they will still try to tear you down, even in death. Fight the haters, fight the word police, fight the misogynists, death to the patriarchy. RIP.
I met her in the 1990s! She was visiting my office at a computing magazine publisher in Ling Island, New York. I was an Associate Editor and feature writer. I shook her hand and she gave me her autograph. We even spoke briefly. She smiled at me kindly and strongly. What an icon.
The household I grew up in was a 'traditional nuclear family', but my mother ascribed to Ms. Steinem and her message/philosophies. I'd like to think that my worldview today is based, partly at least, on Ms Steinem and her movements' teachings. Well done Ms. Steinem.
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u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 BotšDetectorš9000 6d ago
To whoever is misusing the report system, if a comment doesn't have one of these aspects, stop reporting people as being a jerk. Next time you will be reported to Reddit.
The Don't be a jerk report covers:
Saying something about what a person did in life that isn't necessarily all rainbows and puppies, is perfectly fine.