Steinem brought a feminist perspective into the mainstream through rigorous journalism, public speaking and activism. The author of nine books, she campaigned against domestic violence, female genital mutilation, the pornography industry and the Vietnam and Gulf wars. She also worked in support of causes including Black Lives Matter, the reunification of Korea, female reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and the Times Up movement. In 1984, she was arrested while protesting against apartheid outside the South African embassy in Washington DC.Gloria Steinem was one of my first heroes. When I was 11, 12, 13 and coming into more of an awareness of the bullshit inequality of my gender, not just at home but in this world (to put it ultra mildly), Gloria Steinem was a beacon – someone I could turn to (well, Ms. magazine anyway – when I could get my hands on a copy, that is). She was someone who wasn’t going to tell me that my future was limited to baby making, housewifery, and maybe a gig as a junior high music teacher.
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She also credited black feminists including Florynce Kennedy, Evelyn Cunningham, Shirley Chisholm and Fannie Lou Hamer for teaching her the importance of activism. “It was like finding a family,” she said of that time. “As wildly different as we may be, and we certainly were, women share hopes and a certain vision of the world, and a certain shit detector.” (source)
Ahhh, small town Midwest America in the early ‘70s where men and boys ruled. If you were a girl or a woman with a mind of your own, if you didn’t play by the rules or fit into any tidy categories, you were ostracized. That and called a slut whether you slept around or not. Boys who fucked anything that moved (or tried to and this included cows and sheep) – were they called sluts, were they shamed? OF COURSE NOT! THEY were lauded. 🙄 😡 💥
Not enough is said about the other woman in this famous double portrait.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes was a community activist in New York City. She organized the first shelter for battered women there (WOW!) and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development which broadened childcare services. She established a community center on the West Side which offered day care, job training, advocacy training and more. Pitman was also a co-founder of Ms. magazine.
Steinem and Pitman Hughes met in 1968 when Steinem was writing a story for New York Magazine about Pitman Hughes’ West 80th Community Childcare Center. They became fast friends. From 1969 to 1973, they spoke across the country at college campuses, community centers, union halls and more. At the time, Steinem did not like public speaking, but was encouraged by Pitman Hughes, who “as a former nightclub singer, was perfectly at home on the stage.” They worked well together, demonstrating “the possibility of interracial sisterhood, of being ‘sisters under the skin,’ as they frequently put it.”
“Dorothy’s style was to call out the racism she saw in the white women’s movement. She frequently took to the stage to articulate the way in which white women’s privilege oppressed Black women but also offered her friendship with Gloria as proof this obstacle could be overcome,” said Lovett. (source)
Dorothy Pitman Hughes died four years ago, in December of ’22, at the age of 84.
Both women died peacefully at their homes, surrounded by loved ones. Causes of death? They were old. Bodies break down. We die.
A few words of wisdom from a departed sage:
A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.
America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.
the most reliable predictor of whether a country is violent within itself—or will use military violence against another country—is not poverty, natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy; it’s violence against females. It normalizes all other violence.
Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.
There are black doctors and doctors and women novelists and novelists. Any less powerful group gets the adjective, while the powerful group takes the noun. The less powerful group usually knows the more powerful one much better than vice versa. People of color have to understand white people in order to survive; women have had to know men. Only the powerful group can afford to regard the less powerful one as a mystery.
Women have two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist.
I was angry because young men in politics were treated like rising stars and young women were treated like - well - young women. {...}
I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one.
Voting isn't the most we can do, but the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one.
