I did not even know who Gloria Steinhem was until I read it on WSJ today. She got to live long enough to watch the first wave of feminism succeed and the second wave faceplant over the last decade.
On Jan. 21, 2017, one day into Donald Trump's tenure as president of the U.S., and roughly five decades into Gloria Steinem's tenure as its most famous feminist, Steinem arrived on the National Mall to address the Women's March on Washingtona mass gathering in rebuke of both a president who had bragged about groping women, and the society that had elected him anyway.
At age 82, Steinem looked as she had always looked, only older: tinted aviator glasses, leather jacket, long hair parted down the middle with two lightened streaks at the front. And she sounded like she had always sounded: resolute but coolheaded andeven amid great trepidationadamantly joyful, too.
"You look great! I wish you could see yourselvesit's like an ocean!" she hollered at the roughly half a million bodies in front of her. "This is the upside of the downside. This is an outpouring of energy and true democracy like I have never seen in my very long life."
Gloria Steinem, Longtime Symbol of the Women's Movement, Dies at 92 - WSJTwo comments stood out to me:
Kevin Walker said, "Steinem treated Bill Clinton's taking advantage of young intern Monica Lewinsky as consensual adult sex that did not constitute sexual harassment, and she used it as the example of "yes means yes." She wrote that even if the allegations by Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey were true, Clinton "is not guilty of sexual harassment." Her longstanding rationale, stated in 1998, was that a politician's policy record on abortion and women's issues could outweigh personal conduct if the conduct did not meet a persistent-harassment threshold. Translation: principles be damned. Politicians should be held to a double standard depending on which party they belong to.
Mariah Hoferr said, "She was successfully in making women believe that raising a family was a menial position. She made women believe that they needed to be empowered. This was such a disservice as we were already powerful. It made women jump from the most important job in the world to jobs outside of home. What we weren't taught was that we were going to have to handle both Jobs and be overworked and exhausted. Not to mention having children that are raised by their babysitter. Thanks for nothing, Gloria."