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Post by pieter on Jan 29, 2021 15:26:45 GMT -7
Gloria SteinemGloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist journalist and social political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the American feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine, and a co-founder of Ms. magazine. In 1969, Steinem published an article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation", which brought her to national fame as a feminist leader.Early lifeSteinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, the daughter of Ruth (née Nuneviller) and Leo Steinem. Her mother was Presbyterian, mostly of German (including Prussian) and some Scottish descent. Her father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Württemberg, Germany, and Radziejów, Poland. Her paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was chairwoman of the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education, as well as a leader in the movement for vocational education. Pauline also rescued many members of her family from the Holocaust.
The Steinems lived and traveled about in a trailer, from which Leo carried out his trade as a roaming antiques dealer. Before Gloria was born, her mother, Ruth, then age 34, had a "nervous breakdown," which left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that occasionally turned violent. She changed "from an energetic, fun-loving, book-loving" woman into "someone who was afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, and who could rarely concentrate enough to read a book." Ruth spent long periods in and out of sanatoriums for the mentally ill. Steinem was 10 years old when her parents finally separated in 1944. Her father went to California to find work, while she and her mother continued to live together in Toledo.
While her parents divorced under the stress of her mother's illness, Steinem did not attribute it at all to male chauvinism on the father's part—she claims to have "understood and never blamed him for the breakup." Nevertheless, the impact of these events had a formative effect on her personality: while her father, a traveling salesman, had never provided much financial stability to the family, his exit aggravated their situation. Steinem concluded that her mother's inability to hold on to a job was evidence of general hostility towards working women. She also concluded that the general apathy of doctors towards her mother emerged from a similar anti-woman animus. Years later, Steinem described her mother's experience as pivotal to her understanding of social injustices. These perspectives convinced Steinem that women lacked social and political equality.
Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo and Western High School in Washington, D.C., graduating from the latter while living with her older sister Susanne Steinem Patch. She then attended Smith College, an institution with which she continues to remain engaged, from which she received her A.B. magna cum laude and graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
In 1957, Steinem had an abortion. The procedure was performed by Dr. John Sharpe, a British physician, when abortion was still illegal. Years later, Steinem dedicated her memoir My Life on the Road (2015) to him. She wrote: "Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, 'You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.'"
In the late 1950s, Steinem spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow, where she worked as a law clerk to Mehr Chand Mahajan, then Chief Justice of India. After returning to the United States, she served as director of the Independent Research Service, an organization funded in secret by a donor that turned out to be the CIA. She worked to send non-Communist American students to the 1959 World Youth Festival. In 1960, she was hired by Warren Publishing as the first employee of Help! magazine.Journalism careerEsquire magazine features editor Clay Felker gave freelance writer Steinem what she later called her first "serious assignment", regarding contraception; he didn't like her first draft and had her re-write the article. Her resulting 1962 article about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique by one year.
In 1963, while working on an article for Huntington Hartford's Show magazine, Steinem was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club. The article, published in 1963 as "A Bunny's Tale", featured a photo of Steinem in Bunny uniform and detailed how women were treated at those clubs. Steinem has maintained that she is proud of the work she did publicizing the exploitative working conditions of the bunnies and especially the sexual demands made of them, which skirted the edge of the law. However, for a brief period after the article was published, Steinem was unable to land other assignments; in her words, this was "because I had now become a Bunny—and it didn't matter why."
In the interim, she conducted an interview with John Lennon for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1964. In 1965, she wrote for NBC-TV's weekly satirical revue, That Was The Week That Was (TW3), contributing a regular segment entitled "Surrealism in Everyday Life". Steinem eventually landed a job at Felker's newly founded New York magazine in 1968.
In 1969, she covered an abortion speak-out for New York Magazine, which was held in a church basement in Greenwich Village, New York. Steinem had had an abortion herself in London at the age of 22. She felt what she called a "big click" at the speak-out, and later said she didn't "begin my life as an active feminist" until that day. As she recalled, "It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: 'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament' was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn't going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn't tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn't [positive]." She also said, "In later years, if I'm remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like 'reproductive freedom' ... as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition."
In 1972, she co-founded the feminist-themed magazine Ms. alongside founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and Mary Peacock; it began as a special edition of New York, and Clay Felker funded the first issue. Its 300,000 test copies sold out nationwide in eight days. Within weeks, Ms. had received 26,000 subscription orders and over 20,000 reader letters. In 1974, Ms. Magazine collaborated with public television to produce the television program Woman Alive!, and Gloria Steinem was featured in the first episode in her role as co-founder of Ms. Magazine. The magazine was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001; Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board.
Also in 1972, Steinem became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club.
In 1978, Steinem wrote a semi-satirical essay for Cosmopolitan titled "If Men Could Menstruate" in which she imagined a world where men menstruate instead of women. She concludes in the essay that in such a world, menstruation would become a badge of honor with men comparing their relative sufferings, rather than the source of shame that it had been for women.
On March 22, 1998, Steinem published an op-ed in The New York Times ("Feminists and the Clinton Question") in which, without actually challenging accounts by Bill Clinton's accusers, she claimed they did not represent sexual harassment. This was criticized by various writers, as in the Harvard Crimson and in the Times itself. In 2017, Steinem, in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, stood by her 1998 New York Times op-ed, but also claimed "I wouldn’t write the same thing now."ActivismIn 1959, Steinem led a group of activists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to organize the Independent Service for Information on the Vienna festival, to advocate for American participation in the World Youth Festival, a Soviet-sponsored youth event.
In 1968, Steinem signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
In 1969, she published an article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation" which brought her to national fame as a feminist leader. As such she campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in its favor in 1970. That same year she published her essay on a utopia of gender equality, "What It Would Be Like If Women Win", in Time magazine.
On July 10, 1971, Steinem was one of over three hundred women who founded the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), including such notables as Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Myrlie Evers-Williams. As a co-convener of the Caucus, she delivered the speech "Address to the Women of America", stating in part:
This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.
Chisholm and Steinem (left) at the National Women's Political Caucus in the early 1970s
In 1972, she ran as a delegate for Shirley Chisholm in New York, but lost.
In March 1973, she addressed the first national conference of Stewardesses for Women's Rights, which she continued to support throughout its existence. Stewardesses for Women's Rights folded in the spring of 1976.
Despite her influence in the feminist movement, Steinem also earned criticism from some feminists as well, who questioned whether she was committed to the movement or using it to promote her glamorous image. The Redstockings also singled her out for agreeing to cooperate with the CIA-backed Independent Research Service. It was also acknowledged that Steinem worked as a CIA agent when this operation was taking place.
Steinem, who grew up reading Wonder Woman comics, was also a key player in the restoration of Wonder Woman's powers and traditional costume, which were restored in issue #204 (January–February 1973). Steinem, offended that the most famous female superhero had been depowered, had placed Wonder Woman (in costume) on the cover of the first issue of Ms. (1972)—Warner Communications, DC Comics' owner, was an investor—which also contained an appreciative essay about the character. In doing so, however, Steinem forced the firing of Samuel R. Delany who had taken over scripting duties with issue #202. Delany was supposed to write a six-issue story arc, which would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic where Wonder Woman was to defend women trying to use their services, a critical feminist issue at the time. The story outlines and the work already done on the issues was scrapped, something that Steinem was not aware of and made no attempt to rectify.
In 1976, the first women-only Passover seder was held in Esther M. Broner's New York City apartment and led by Broner, with 13 women attending, including Steinem.
In 1977, Steinem became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.
In 1984, Steinem was arrested along with a number of members of Congress and civil rights activists for disorderly conduct outside the South African embassy while protesting against the South African apartheid system.
Gloria Steinem is arrested during an anti-apartheid protest outside the South African embassy in Washington, December 1984. Photograph: AP
Gloria Steinem during the anti-apartheid protest outside the South African embassy in Washington in 1984
At the outset of the Gulf War in 1991, Steinem, along with prominent feminists Robin Morgan and Kate Millett, publicly opposed an incursion into the Middle East and asserted that ostensible goal of "defending democracy" was a pretense.
During the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment scandal in 1991, Steinem voiced strong support for Anita Hill and suggested that one day Hill herself would sit on the Supreme Court.
In 1992, Steinem co-founded Choice USA, a non-profit organization that mobilizes and provides ongoing support to a younger generation that lobbies for reproductive choice.
In 1993, Steinem co-produced and narrated an Emmy Award-winning TV documentary for HBO about child abuse, called, "Multiple Personalities: The Search for Deadly Memories." Also in 1993, she and Rosilyn Heller co-produced an original TV movie for Lifetime, "Better Off Dead," which examined the parallel forces that both oppose abortion and support the death penalty.
She contributed the piece "The Media and the Movement: A User's Guide" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.
On June 1, 2013, Steinem performed on stage at the "Chime For Change: The Sound Of Change Live" Concert at Twickenham Stadium in London, England. Later in 2014, UN Women began its commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, and as part of that campaign Steinem (and others) spoke at the Apollo Theater in New York City. Chime For Change was funded by Gucci, focusing on using innovative approaches to raise funds and awareness especially regarding girls and women.
Steinem has stated, "I think the fact that I've become a symbol for the women's movement is somewhat accidental. A woman member of Congress, for example, might be identified as a member of Congress; it doesn't mean she's any less of a feminist but she's identified by her nearest male analog. Well, I don't have a male analog so the press has to identify me with the movement. I suppose I could be referred to as a journalist, but because Ms. is part of a movement and not just a typical magazine, I'm more likely to be identified with the movement. There's no other slot to put me in."
Contrary to popular belief, Steinem did not coin the feminist slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Although she helped popularize it, the phrase is actually attributable to Irina Dunn. When Time magazine published an article attributing the saying to Steinem, Steinem wrote a letter saying the phrase had been coined by Dunn.
Another phrase sometimes wrongly attributed to Steinem is, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." Steinem herself attributed it to "an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston," whom she said she and Florynce Kennedy met.
As for 2015, she joined the thirty leading international women peacemakers and became an honorary co-chairwoman of 2015 Women's Walk For Peace In Korea with Mairead Maguire. The group's main goal is to advocate disarmament and seek Korea's reunification. It will be holding international peace symposiums both in Pyongyang and Seoul in which women from both North Korea and South Korea can share experiences and ideas of mobilizing women to stop the Korean crisis. The group's specific hope is to walk across the 2-mile wide Korean Demilitarized Zone that separates North Korea and South Korea which is meant to be a symbolic action taken for peace in the Korean peninsular suffering for 70 years after its division at the end of World War II. It is especially believed that the role of women in this act would help and support the reunification of family members divided by the split prolonged for 70 years.
2015 Women's Walk For Peace In Korea
2015 Women's Walk For Peace In Korea
She is also the chair of the advisory board of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an organization fighting sex trafficking and inter-generational prostitution in India, founded by Ruchira Gupta. She has also written extensively on her travels, experiences with women and the Indian feminist movement with her colleague and friend, Ruchira Gupta.NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 21: (L-R) Ruchira Gupta, Ashley Judd, Gloria Steinem, Mona Sinha, and Dorchen Leidholdt attend the APNE Aap dinner on September 21, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by CJ Rivera/Getty Images)
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Post by Jaga on Jan 29, 2021 23:32:12 GMT -7
Pieter, as you know I am quite passionate about professional women. I would watch this film as soon as I can. Thank you for pointing me to this. I still have mixed feeling about abortion. It should not be used as a birth control pill. Still, it should noy be forcefully banned. Old men in positions of power should not decide arbitrary what drives women to go there.
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Post by pieter on Jan 30, 2021 6:05:45 GMT -7
Dear Jaga, I know you are passionate about professional women. I posted this thread for you and other female visitors of the Forum. Gloria Steinem is an interesting woman who played and plays here role in the Western world as an influential feminist, activist, writer and journalist. There are a few women with her stature and influence. To name a few; Germaine Greer, Susan Sontag, Noreena Herz, Angela Davis (a key leader in the Black Power movemen), Sharon Zukin, Simone de Beauvoir, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lori Wallach, Betty Friedan, Barbara Walters, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Neelie Kroes, Joke Smit ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke_Smit ), Bell Hooks, Coretta Scott King, Maya Angelou, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alice Walker, Oprah Winfrey, Diane Von Furstenberg, Madonna, Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, the British movie actresss and feminist Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Angelina Jolie, Jane Fonda, Michelle Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Naomi Klein, Alice Wolfson (a veteran political activist in women's reproductive health issues, a lawyer, and a co-founder of the National Women's Health Network), the feminist commentator Debbie Stoller, the Indian Feminist activist Nalini Nayak, Canadian writer, journalist, and founder of Feminist Current Meghan Murphy, and the an activist and leader in the feminist movement against violence against women Dorchen Leidholdt. In a 2018 interview, Jane Fonda stated that up to the age of 62, she always felt she had to seek the validation of men in order to prove to herself that she had value as a person, something she attributes to her mother's early death leaving her without a female role model. As a consequence, she attached herself to "alpha males", some of whom reinforced her feelings of inadequacy, despite her professional success. Fonda said that she came to see that attitude as a failing of the men in her life: "Some men have a hard time realizing that the woman they're married to is strong and smart and they have to diminish that, because it makes them feel diminished. Too bad we have defined masculinity in such a way that it's so easily shamed." I could mention many more women but stop here. These women played a role in the second half of the 20th century and in the 21th century Jaga. Cheers, Pieter P.S.- Some of the women on the list died and some are still alive. They played a role in Steinem’s life. They influenced them and she influenced them.
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Post by pieter on Jan 30, 2021 6:44:32 GMT -7
2013 video
A compliant I heard from a Dutch Feminst was the lack of solidarity amongst women and the fierce competition between women and often women siding with men and other women against another woman. She was disappointed as a leftwing Feminist, socialist, environmentalist woman in the Feminist movement. But since I last spoke her a lot has changed with the MEE Too movement, Male feminists coming out. Today several progressive cause seem to be connected, the BLM movement, the Feminist movement and the GLBT and transgender movement.
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Post by pieter on Jan 30, 2021 11:06:39 GMT -7
Feminism is in a constant state of evolution - so, where will it go next? Hear from some of the world's most dynamic young activists and thinkers about what to expect in 2019 and beyond. Featuring Tunisian activist Aya Chebbi, British cultural commentator Ayishat Akanbi, Indigenous artist and activist Aretha Brown with Saturday Paper editor Maddison Connaughton, this panel considers where feminism might head next.
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Post by Jaga on Jan 30, 2021 20:22:28 GMT -7
Hello Pieter, this is a good stuff. I need some time to looks through all of it. I am not that familiar with American and western European feminism yet.
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