“A gender-equal society would be one where the word ‘gender’ does not exist: where everyone can be themselves.” — Gloria Steinem
On Thursday, September 3, the world lost an incredible journalist, activist, and pioneering feminist, Gloria Steinem. A revolutionary in progressive activism, Steinem used grassroots organizing to advocate for issues affecting all women, from equal pay to abortion access to the legalization of same-sex marriage. In her later years, Steinem was also a staunch supporter of Trans rights.
Steinem’s career as a writer began in the 1960s. She wrote freelance for three years, fighting for recognition in the male-dominated industry. She made a breakthrough at the age of 28, when she published an exposé on Hugh Hefner’s sexist empire and mistreatment of young women. Steinem spent eleven days undercover, disguised as a Playboy Bunny and lying about her age, to gain access to Hefner’s estate.
Despite the acclaim her article received and her talents for investigative reporting, publishers continued to devalue Steinem’s work, assigning her “fluff” articles about ladies’ fashion. Steinem pressed for stories on social issues and, in 1969, published “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation” for New York Magazine, gaining recognition from the growing second-wave feminist movement. By the 1970s, many considered her the face of the movement.
Achievements
After years of fighting for male supervisors to take her work seriously, Steinem made a move that would change journalism forever: she established her own magazine. Ms. was the first periodical entirely owned and operated by women. It gave a voice to feminist writers and activists who otherwise would not have found a place in the traditional publishing world. The magazine combined hard-hitting reporting with satire and prose, once famously arguing that if men could menstruate, “sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free.”
Steinem was a staunch supporter of abortion rights, first sharing her own abortion story at a rally in 1968 and later dedicating her memoir to the doctor who had performed it. As an activist, Steinem coined the phrase "reproductive freedom,” revolutionizing the way many people think about abortion and birth control.
Queer issues
Steinem was a champion for the rights of Gay and Lesbian people throughout her career. In 1977, she traveled to Dade County, Florida, to protest Anita Bryant’s campaign to repeal antidiscrimination laws that protected Gay people. Though not a member of the community herself, Steinem expressed enormous admiration for Lesbians, once saying that the word was “as honorable as any other.” She fought against feminists who sought to exclude Lesbians from the movement, going so far as to publicly call out a columnist who had previously stated that the inclusion of Lesbians in feminism alienated other women.
Steinem’s views shifted over time, and she did not shy away from admitting to growth and an ability to reconsider previous stances. Throughout much of her early career, Steinem was considered a Transgender exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) and argued against the inclusion of Transgender women and girls in sports and against medical transitioning, voicing a now common conservative speaking point that transitioning is something pushed by social groups.
In 2013, Steinem addressed her former positions on Trans rights, admitting that they were harmful and that she had since learned more and changed her opinion. “I believe that Transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives,” she said in an op-ed for The Advocate. “Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.”
Steinem spent the rest of her life advocating for the rights of Trans people. In 2016, she told Memphis Magazine that the feminist movement and the Trans movement are “one and the same.” In 2020, she penned a letter for the New York Times expressing outrage at the Trump administration’s attacks on Trans people’s right to healthcare. The following year, she added her name to “An Open Letter Supporting Trans Women and Girls” for Trans Day of Visibility and Women’s History Month.
Mother of a revolution
Throughout her career, Steinem faced backlash and male outrage, but she held her head high. She paved the way forward for thousands of women by recognizing the inequalities women faced around the world and fighting to change them. When male publishers wouldn’t take her seriously, she became her own publisher. She spoke out against oppression and ultimately recognized how some of her views contributed to it, later speaking out against them.
In her lifetime, Gloria Steinem saw tremendous steps forward for women, from antidiscrimination laws to the passage of Title IX. Unfortunately, toward the end of her life, she also saw major setbacks to women’s rights. The right to abortion, which she had championed at the start of her career as an activist, was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022. She watched twice as a woman nearly made it to the White House, only to be beaten by Donald Trump each time.
Though she had no children, Gloria Steinem was the mother of a revolution. She is survived by everyone who recognizes the shackles placed on people by the societal notions of gender, and who dreams of a world beyond such limiting concepts.
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