Gloria Steinem

From New World Encyclopedia
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem at news conference, Women's Action Alliance, January 12, 1972.jpg
Gloria Steinem at news conference, Women's Action Alliance, January 12, 1972
BornMarch 25 1934 (1934-03-25) (age 90)
Toledo, Ohio, USA
OccupationFeminist activist, Journalist, Writer, Political leader
Spouse(s)David Bale (2000─2003)

Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist, journalist, social critic, and political activist. Rising to national prominence in the 1970s, she became one of the decade's most influential voices and a major leader of the second-wave of the women's rights movement.

She is the founder and original publisher of Ms. magazine, the founder of the pro-choice organization Choice USA, co-founder of the Women's Media Center, the Women's Action Alliance and was an influential co-convener of the National Women's Political Caucus.

Biography

Early life

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem's mother, Ruth (née Nuneviller), was part German and her father, Leo Steinem was the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Poland. His mother was the noted suffragette, Pauline Steinem. Gloria's family traveled in a trailer across the country so that her father could buy and sell antiques. As a result, the young Gloria did not attend school but received her early education from her mother. The family split in 1944, when Leo left for California to find work. At the age of 15, Gloria went to live with her older sister in Washington, D.C..

At 34, Ruth Steinem had a nervous breakdown that left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that occasionally turned violent. Before her illness, Ruth had graduated with honors from Oberlin College, worked her way up to newspaper editor, and even taught a year of calculus at the college level. Steinem's father, however, demanded that her mother relinquish her career, and divorced her after she became sick. The subsequent apathy of doctors, along with the social punishments for career-driven women, convinced Steinem that women badly need social and political equality.

Gloria graduated from Western High School in Washington, D.C. and then attended Smith College, where she graduated in 1956 (Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude). She won a fellowship to study in India for two years, helping to develop her social conscience.

Journalism and Political careers

In 1960 Steinem was employed by Warren Publishing as the first employee of Help! (magazine). Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker her what she later called her first "serious assignment," regarding contraception. Her resulting 1962 article about women being forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique by one year.

In 1963, working on an article for Show magazine, Steinem took a job as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club. The article, featuring a photo of Steinem in Bunny uniform and exposing how women were treated at the clubs, was a sensation, making Steinem an in-demand writer.

File:Playboy bunnies.jpg
Steinem exposed the treatment of women in the Playboy clubs in a '63 article when she worked as a New York Bunny

After conducting a series of celebrity interviews, Steinem eventually got a political assignment covering George McGovern's presidential campaign. She became politically active in the feminist movement and brought other notable feminists to the fore and toured the country with lawyer Florynce Rae "Flo" Kennedy. In 1971, she co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus as well as the Women's Action Alliance. Steinem was also a member of Democratic Socialists of America.

In 1972, Steinem co-founded the feminist-themed Ms. magazine. When the first regular issue hit the news stands in July 1972, its 300,000 test copies sold out nationwide in eight days. It generated an astonishing 26,000 subscription orders and over 20,000 reader letters within weeks. (Steinem would continue to write for the magazine until it was sold in 1987. Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board.)

Steinem co-founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974, and participated in the National Conference of Women in Houston, Texas in 1977. She became Ms. magazine's consulting editor when it was revived in 1991, and she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.[1]

The Women’s Action Alliance (WAA), created in order to coordinate resources and organizations at the grass-roots level, was founded by Steinem, Brenda Feigan, and Catherine Samuals. The Alliance’s initial mission was, "to stimulate and assist women at the local level to organize around specific action projects aimed at eliminating concrete manifestations of economic and social discrimination." Steinem played a variety of roles within the organization, including chairing the board from 1971-1978 as well as being involved in fundraisers to assist the Alliance. By the 80s, the Alliance had three main arms: the Non-Sexist Childhood Development Project, the Women's Centers Project, and its information services. From the late 80s and throughout the 90s, the WAA began placing more emphasis on women’s health issues as well as launching projects such as the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Project, the Women’s Alcohol and Drug Education Project, the Resource Mothers Program and the Women’s Centers and AIDS Project. By the 1990s a large part of the Women's Action Alliance was funded by New York City and state budgets. In 1995, 65 percent of its funding was cut, and in June 1997, a vote of the board of directors dissolved the organization altogether.

Political campaigns

In contrast to many prominent leaders of the feminist second-wave like Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, and Shulamith Firestone, Steinem was an influential player in the legislative and political arenas. Her involvement in presidential campaigns stretches back to her support of Adlai Stevenson in 1952.[2]

1968 election

A proponent of civil rights and fierce critic of the war in Vietnam, Steinem was initially drawn to Senator Eugene McCarthy because of his "admirable record" on those issues. But in meeting and hearing him speak, she found him "cautious, uninspired, and dry."[3] Interviewing him for New York Magazine, she noted that he gave "not one spontaneous reply." As the campaign progressed, Steinem became baffled at "personally vicious" attacks that McCarthy leveled against his primary opponent Robert Kennedy, even as "his real opponent, Hubert Humphrey, went free."[4]

On a late night radio show, Steinem garnered attention for declaring, "George McGovern is the real Eugene McCarthy."[5] Steinem had met McGovern in 1963 on the way to an economic conference organized by John Kenneth Galbraith, and had been impressed by his unpretentious manner and genuine consideration of her opinions. Five years later in 1968, Steinem was chosen to pitch the arguments to McGovern as to why he should enter the presidential race that year. He agreed, and Steinem "consecutively or simultaneously served as pamphlet writer, advance "man," fund raiser, lobbyist of delegates, errand runner, and press secretary."[6]

McGovern lost the nomination in the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention. Steinem gave McGovern credit for standing on the platform with Humphrey in a show of unity after Humphrey had clinched the nomination, whereas McCarthy refused the same gesture.

1972 election

File:Steinem Clev. State U, 3.31.72.jpg
Gloria Steinem speaks at Cleveland State University, March 31, 1972.

By the 1972 election, the women's movement was rapidly expanding its political power. Steinem, along with Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug, had founded the National Women's Political Caucus in July 1971.

Nevertheless, Steinem was reluctant to re-join the McGovern campaign. Though she had brought in McGovern's single largest campaign contributor in 1968, she "still had been treated like a frivolous pariah by much of McGovern's campaign staff." And in April 1972, Steinem remarked that he "still doesn't understand the women's movement."[7]

McGovern ultimately excised the abortion issue from the party's platform. (Recent publications show McGovern was deeply conflicted on the issue.) Actress and activist Shirley MacLaine, though privately supporting abortion rights, urged the delegates to vote against the plank. Steinem later wrote this description of the events: {{cquote|The consensus of the meeting of women delegates held by the caucus had been to fight for the minority plank on reproductive freedom...Shirley MacLaine also was an opposition speaker, on the grounds that this was a fundamental right but didn't belong in the platform. We made a good showing. Clearly we would have won if McGovern's forces had left their delegates uninstructed and thus able to vote their consciences.[8]

The cover of Harper's that month read, "Womanlike, they did not want to get tough with their man, and so, womanlike, they got screwed.[9]

2004 election

In the run-up to the 2004 election, Steinem voiced fierce criticism of the Bush administration, asserting, "There has never been an administration that has been more hostile to women’s equality, to reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right, and she has acted on that hostility." She went on to claim, "If he is elected in 2004, abortion will be criminalized in this country."[10] At a Planned Parenthood event in Boston, Steinem declared Bush "a danger to health and safety," citing his antagonism to the Clean Water Act, reproductive freedom, sex education, and AIDS relief.[11]

2008 election

Steinem was an active political participant in the 2008 election. She praised both the Democratic front-runners, commenting,

"Both Senators Clinton and Obama are civil rights advocates, feminists, environmentalists, and critics of the war in Iraq....Both have resisted pandering to the right, something that sets them apart from any Republican candidate, including John McCain. Both have Washington and foreign policy experience; George W. Bush did not when he first ran for president. Nevertheless, Steinem later endorsed Senator Clinton.[12]

She made headlines for a New York Times op-ed in which she called gender "probably the most restricting force in an American life," rather than race. She elaborated, "Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women."

Following McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Steinem penned an op-ed in which she labeled Palin an "unqualified woman" who "opposes everything most other women want and need." Steinem described her nomination speech as "divisive and deceptive" and concluded that Palin resembled "Phyllis Schlafly, only younger."[13]

Later life

Gloria Steinem speaking at the Rangeview Public Library, Brighton, CO on November 3, 2008.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Steinem had to deal with a number of personal setbacks, including trigeminal neuralgia in 1994[14] and the diagnosis of breast cancer in 1986. In 1992, Gloria co-founded Choice USA, a non-profit organization that mobilizes and provides ongoing support to a younger generation that lobbies for reproductive choice.

At the outset of the Gulf War, Steinem, along with prominent feminists Robin Morgan and Kate Millett, publicly opposed an incursion into the Middle East and asserted that the ostensible goal of "defending democracy" was a pretense.[15]

During the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment scandal, Steinem voiced strong support for Anita Hill and suggested that one day Hill herself would sit on the Supreme Court.[16]

According to two Frontline features (aired in 1995) and Ms. magazine, Steinem became an advocate for children she believed had been sexually abused by caretakers in daycare centers (such as the McMartin preschool case).

In a 1998 press interview, Steinem weighed in on the Clinton impeachment hearings when asked whether President Bill Clinton should be impeached for lying under oath, she was quoted as saying, "Clinton should be censured for lying under oath about Lewinsky in the Paula Jones deposition, perhaps also for stupidity in answering at all."

In a March 22, 1998 Op/Ed piece in the New York Times, Steinem effectively gave support to the notion that a man may: (1) uninvited, open-mouth kiss a woman; (2) uninvited, fondle a woman's breast; and (3) uninvited, take a woman's hand and place it on the man's genitals; and as long as the man retreats once the woman says "no" that this does not constitute sexual harassment. This has become known in the popular culture as the "One Free Grope" Theory. The Op/Ed piece was written in an attempt to defend then President Bill Clinton against allegations of sexual impropriety that had been made by White House volunteer Kathleen Willey.

File:Christian Bale.jpg
Steinem married actor Christian Bale's father

On September 3, 2000, she surprised many people because at age 66, she married David Bale, a South African businessman, and father of four, one is actor Christian Bale. The wedding was performed by her friend Wilma Mankiller at her home, formerly the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation. The marriage ceremony was defiantly unconventional, a Cherokee ceremony. The bride wore jeans, and the couple subsequently referred to each other not as husband and wife but as "the friend I married." Steinem and Bale were married for only three years before he died of brain lymphoma on December 30, 2003, at age 62. When criticized for getting married, she replied that marriage had evolved considerably allowing women much more freedom.

Since 2002, she has actively supported young women through the Gloria Steinem Leadership Institute. She has lived in the same New York flat since 1968.

She continues to write and wrote an obituary of her friend and fellow campaigner, Senator Shirley Chisholm.She has not published a book since Moving Beyond Words in 1994, but is working on a memoir based on 30 years of campaigning through the center of America, which she considers her most important work - her touring and speaking in support of women's groups.

She hope to be remembers as a writer of a brilliant sentence, or for the invention of some perfect phrase, "something as brief and pithy as 'reproductive freedom'." She has a talent for witty titles, with essays If Men Could Menstruate and What If Freud Were Phyllis, and at Equality Now's evening reception Jane Fonda proposed a toast to "Gloria Steinem, the quintessential phrasemaker". [17]

Feminist positions

Steinem's social and political views overlap into multiple schools of feminism. This problem is compounded by the evolution of her views over five decades of activism. Although most frequently considered a liberal feminist, Steinem has repeatedly characterized herself as a radical feminist.[18] More importantly, she has repudiated categorization within feminism as "nonconstructive to specific problems. I've turned up in every category. So it makes it harder for me to take the divisions with great seriousness."

Steinem continues to support feminist causes with the younger generation.

Abortion

Steinem is a staunch advocate of reproductive freedom, a term she herself coined and helped popularize. She credits an abortion hearing she covered for New York Magazine as the event that turned her into an activist. At the time, abortions were widely illegal and risky. In 2005, Steinem appeared in the documentary film, I Had an Abortion, by Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich. In the film, Steinem described the abortion she had as a young woman in London, where she lived briefly before studying in India. In the documentary My Feminism, Steinem characterized her abortion as a "pivotal and constructive experience."

Pornography

Along with Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, and Catherine MacKinnon, Steinem has been a vehement critic of pornography, which she distinguishes from erotica: "Erotica is as different from pornography as love is from rape, as dignity is from humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure is from pain." Steinem's argument hinges on the distinction between reciprocity versus domination. She writes, "Blatant or subtle, pornography involves no equal power or mutuality. In fact, much of the tension and drama comes from the clear idea that one person is dominating the other." On the issue of same-sex pornography, Steinem asserts, "Whatever the gender of the participants, all pornography is an imitation of the male-female, conqueror-victim paradigm, and almost all of it actually portrays or implies enslaved women and master." Steinem also cites "snuff films" as a serious threat to women.[19]

Female genital mutilation/cutting

Steinem brought to light the prevalence of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) in Africa. (Map indicates estimates)

Steinem wrote the definitive article on female genital cutting that brought the practice into the American public's consciousness.[20] In it she reports on the staggering "75 million women suffering with the results of genital mutilation." According to Steinem, "The real reasons for genital mutilation can only be understood in the context of the patriarchy: men must control women's bodies as the means of production, and thus repress the independent power of women's sexuality." Steinem's article contains the rudimentary arguments that would be developed by philosopher Martha Nussbaum.[21]

Transsexualism

Steinem has questioned the practice of transsexualism. She expressed disapproval that the heavily-publicized sex-role change of tennis player Renée Richards had been characterized as "a frightening instance of what feminism could lead to" or as "living proof that feminism isn't necessary." Steinem wrote, "At a minimum, it was a diversion from the widespread problems of sexual inequality." Apparently concerned for Richards' effect on the legitimacy of women's sports, Steinem asked, "Why should the hard-won seriousness of women's tennis be turned into a sensational circus by one transsexual?" She writes that, while she supports individuals right to identify as they choose, she claims that, in many cases, transsexuals "surgically [mutilate] their bodies" in order to conform to a gender role that is inexorably tied to physical body parts. She concludes that "feminists are right to feel uncomfortable about the need for transexualism." The article concluded with what became one of Steinem's most famous quotes: "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?" Although clearly meant in the context of transsexuality, the quote is frequently mistaken as a general statement about feminism.[22]

Quotes

  • "Evil is obvious only in retrospect."
  • "The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn."
  • "The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."
  • "Slavery still exists, indeed it is more diverse and entrenched than it was before""
  • "Women's bodies are valued as ornaments. Men's bodies are valued as instruments."
  • "I don't trust any religion that makes God look like one of the ruling class. I guess I'm a pagan or an animist."

List of works

  • The Thousand Indias (1957)
  • The Beach Book (1963)
  • Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983)
  • Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986)
  • Revolution from Within (1992)
  • Moving beyond Words (1993)
  • Doing Sixty & Seventy (2006)

See also

Notes

  1. Women of the Hall of Fame Retrieved January 19, 2009.
  2. Lazo, 1998. pp. 28.
  3. Steinem, Gloria. Outrageous Acts, 1984. p. 87.
  4. Ibid. p.88.
  5. Miroff, 2007. pp. 206.
  6. Steinem,Outrageous Acts, 1984. p. 95.
  7. Ibid. p. 114.
  8. Ibid. pp. 100-110.
  9. Harper's Magazine Archives Retrieved January 19, 2009.
  10. Buzzflash Interview Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  11. Feminist Pioneer Gloria Steinem: "Bush is a Danger to Our Health and Safety" Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  12. The Houston Chronicle.Has Gloria Steinem Mellowed? No way. Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  13. "Palin: wrong woman, wrong message" Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  14. A disorder of the trigeminal nerve that causes episodes of intense pain in the eyes, lips, nose, scalp, forehead, and jaw.
  15. The New York Times. "We Learned the Wrong Lessons in Vietnam; A Feminist Issue Still." Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  16. New York Times. "Anita Hill and Revitalizing Feminism" Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  17. Feminism? It's hardly begun Retrieved January 19, 2009.
  18. Marianne Schnall Interview Retrieved January 19, 2009.
  19. Erotica and Pornography: A Clear and Present Difference. Ms. Magazine. November 1978, pp. 53. & Pornography—Not Sex but the Obscene Use of Power. Ms. Magazine. August 1977, 43.
  20. "The International Crime of Female Genital Mutilation." Ms. Magazine, March 1979, pp. 65.
  21. Nussbaum, 1999. pp. 118-129.
  22. Outrageous Acts, pp. 206-210.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Attebury, Nancy Garhan. Gloria Steinem: Champion of Women's Rights, Minneapolis, Minn.: Compass Point Books, 2006. ISBN 9780756515874
  • Brokaw, Tom. Boom!: voices of the sixties: personal reflections on the '60s and today, NY: Random House, 2007. ISBN 9781400064571
  • Butler, Judith. "Critically Queer," in Bodies that Matter: on the discursive limits of "sex". Routledge: New York, 1993. ISBN 9780415903660
  • Daffron, Carolyn. Gloria Steinem, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. ISBN 9781555466794
  • Gilbert, Lynn, and Gaylen Moore. Particular Passions, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, distributed by Crown, 1981. ISBN 9780517545942
  • Gorman, Jacqueline Laks. Gloria Steinem: Trailblazers of the Modern World, (Elementary and junior high school), Milwaukee: World Almanac Library, 2004. ISBN 9780836850932
  • Heilbrun, Carolyn. The Education of A Woman: The Life and Times of Gloria Steinem, Dial Press, 1995. ISBN 9780385313711
  • Henry, Sondra, and Emily Taitz. One Woman's Power, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Dillon Press, 1987. ISBN 9780875183466
  • Lazo, Caroline. Gloria Steinem: Feminist Extraordinaire. New York: Lerner Publications, 1998. ISBN 9780822549345
  • Miroff, Bruce. The Liberals' Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party. University Press of Kansas, 2007. ISBN 9780700615469
  • Nussbaum, Martha C. Sex & Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 9780195110326

External links

All links retrieved January 5, 2008.

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