The first resistance to social change is to say it’s not necessary.
Category Archive: Gloria Steinem
In the suffragist and abolitionist era, there were a lot of white women and some black men and women who argued for the old hierarchy and against universal adult suffrage – often on religious grounds.
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
Obviously, there is much similarity among the challenges of transgender people and all women – from health care to harassment to discrimination in the workplace.
For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.
If technology and medicine are used by women to have children or not to have children or to have healthier children – that’s one thing. But if it’s used to say, ‘You’re not a real woman unless you have a child; therefore, take all these dangerous hormones and have one at 54,’ then it’s another story.
The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party.
After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that!
Fashion in the past meant conforming and losing oneself. Fashion in the present means being individual and finding oneself.
Society certainly encourages women to be victims in every way.