Gloria Steinem, the trailblazing feminist journalist best known for embodying the American second wave, has died at 92.
Steinem was a co-founder of Ms., a magazine that debuted the honorific unrelated to marital status. From 1971 to 1987, monthly issues of Ms. found their way into desperate living rooms, where they radicalized and consoled girls and women. The mag ran endorsements for both Shirley Chisholm and a re-empowered Wonder Woman. It broke stories about the wage gap, the Equal Rights Amendment, date rape, and domestic violence.
Many articles in its pages set the national tone for the (late) Roe v. Wade ruling, including the famous open letter that ran in 1971. Aiming to de-stigmatize abortion and demanding “a repeal of all laws that restrict our reproductive freedom,” the letter was signed by dozens of celebrities who admitted to having abortions—including Susan Sontag, Nora Ephron, Lillian Hellman, and Billie Jean King.
Steinem typified and took flack for embodying a very specific femininity. As a cis, white, straight, thin, conventionally beautiful person, her early activism centered conundrums specific to those categories. (See: her 1963 expose in Show magazine, “A Bunny’s Tale,” reporting on indignities at the Playboy Club.) The Black feminist Alice Walker famously left Ms. over elitism charges in the 80s. But Gloria’s personal remit and multicultural commitments grew wider over her career.
After shifting up the Ms. masthead, she turned to activism. And per Belinda Luscombe’s remembrance in Time,
She campaigned on behalf of native people, was arrested while protesting apartheid, publicly opposed the first Gulf War, advocated for disarmament in Korea, spoke against child abuse, female genital mutilation and pornography, and was an early supporter of LGB rights. (It took her a little longer to endorse the transgender movement.)
She found friends in unlikely places, and enemies in the proto-manosphere. Her books included My Life on the Road, Revolution From Within, and the forthcoming An Unexpected Life.
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I got the chance to meet Gloria back in 2018, when I was an understudy in a play about her life. Emily Mann’s Gloria: A Life was inspired by several of Steinem’s own autobiographies, including My Life on the Road and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.
All I really knew of Ms. Steinem before jumping into this project could be summed up in signifiers. (Specifically: Playboy, Ms., and Aviator sunglasses.) Despite my awareness of this image, there was also the dim sense that her kind of glamorous feminism didn’t directly apply to the kind my grandmothers had needed. I was excited, that’s to say—but a little skeptical. Anyway, they say to never meet your heroes.
When we walked into the first read-through, Gloria was fluttering around the space, giving all the actors bespoke thank you bracelets emblazoned with feminist slogans. (A friend of hers had made these.) She was warm and present and weirdly humble about the task ahead.
She kept insisting she’d signed up for the biopic treatment for one specific reason: inspired by her work with the late Cherokee Nation leader Wilma Mankiller, act two of our play was designed as an open forum “talking circle,” i.e., a space where any audience member might air grievance or offer insight to the end of raising our collective consciousness.
That will be the best part, she kept repeating, dismissing the life story we’d all been hired to interpret. To prove her point, she would come and moderate as many talking circles she could, and on evenings when she was busy changing other lives, other feminist luminaries would be tapped to hold the space.
Again, I was skeptical. (Audience participation…) But her self-effacement was charming. As we dug into the play and I started connecting the dots about this “life” Gloria kept relegating to the sidelines—from the unstable Ohio childhood, to the landmark stint at the 1977 Women’s Conference—I got even more shook. It was hard to imagine living as much as this woman had and not wanting to talk about it.
Her commitment to the cadre, her anti-hierarchical ethos, these things will stay with me. Our play slid off the personal details of Gloria, preferring to center her work. Her points of connection with Bella Abzug, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Flo Kennedy, and Wilma Mankiller.
At the talking circles, Gloria exemplified her lifelong practice. She was a deep listener, frank and curious and welcoming. But whenever anyone thanked her for changing the world, she waved it off. Look around, not up, she liked to say of heroes. We build solidarity side to side.
Our show was up and running during the Kavanaugh hearings. There were a few nights following Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony when the talking circle was filled with rage and tears. I remember looking over at this octogenarian icon, chic and robust as ever, as she held the group’s consciousness. All that thorny feeling. All that unruly life.
And I remember thinking, Gloria, you were right. This is the best part.
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