In 1971, my first wife became a Mrs.
In 1986, my new, second wife remained a Ms.
Thank you, Gloria Steinem.
In 1971, my job-hunting first wife had to deal with sex-segregated employment ads—Wanted: male doctors, female nurses. Male accountants, female bookkeepers.
By the time I married my second wife, gender-segregated employment ads were no longer legal. She could pursue any job for which she was qualified, and her career took off.
Thank you, Gloria Steinem.
Steinem accomplished a huge amount in her lifetime, most of it focused on gender and sexuality. She didn’t back away from conflict over her ideas, nor stick to any feminist party line. After co-founding Ms. Magazine in 1972, she ran articles about BDSM, the danger of artificial sweeteners, the value of heterosexuality, the various meanings of women’s body hair removal, and the political impact if men menstruated.
Under Steinem the magazine famously featured an open letter signed by 53 prominent American women—including Steinem, Billie Jean King, Judy Collins, and Susan Sontag—bravely acknowledging their illegal abortions.
While Steinem’s political visions were, well, visionary, she was absolutely practical—even disagreeing with colleagues like Betty Friedan when Steinem strategized about compromising to create mainstream support and cultural change.
Steinem embodied the wisdom of “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This aphorism describes the danger of demanding ideological purity, a danger that the American Left has ignored—and been punished for—over and over.
Political change rarely happens because things flip suddenly; especially in a democracy, social change usually happens slowly, behind the scenes without fanfare. From Emancipation to women’s suffrage to criminalizing marital rape to same-gender marriage (and both the gaining and losing of Roe v Wade), significant change occurs due to years of compromise, slow and creative changes to familiar narratives.
PURITY TESTS?
I fear that some liberals need to re-learn this, and fast. Purity tests block or destroy coalitions. Does anyone think enhanced sexual and civil rights will come from Conservatives? In America, alienating the Center and Undecideds is a guaranteed way to lose both support and elections.
Steinem insisted that women have the right to do anything for which they’re qualified, and that norms about women’s feelings, desires, experiences, and sexuality need to reflect women’s actual lives. Both ideas were revolutionary. Second Wave Feminism said it clearly: women are allowed to feel however they feel—and they’re still women. Men obviously benefitted from this as well.
Like the rest of us, Steinem did blunder in her activism—but because of the size of her platform, her mistakes were far more dangerous than yours or mine. Her vocal and financial support for the satanic abuse hysteria of the 1980s and early 90s was egregious. Along with Oprah, she helped perpetuate the now-disproven idea of “recovered memory” that still infects a corner of American psychotherapy. Her idea of “always believe pre-schoolers who tell disturbing tales” no matter how implausible” destroyed the lives of many adults and children.
Steinem also aligned closely with the anti-pornography feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Along with Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, Steinem argued that pornography was a tool of patriarchal violence that degraded and endangered women.
Steinem was willing to sacrifice our precious right of free expression (not to mention sexual fantasy) to prevent this. She seemed to ignore the fact that censorship usually targets women and minority viewpoints first and hardest. Indeed, the first victims of Canada’s adoption of the Steinem-supported MacKinnon anti-porn statutes were lesbian bookstores in Toronto and Vancouver.
As damaging as Steinem’s support of mythical satanic ritual abuse, recovered memory, and the censorship of sexually explicit material was (and whose legacy we’re still struggling to overcome), Steinem was a generous, effective visionary, as titanic as Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, Daniel Ellsberg, and Rachel Carson.
Thank you, Gloria Steinem.
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