It’s really tough loving Gloria Steinem
As students, we should problematize the praised and polished legacies of the white public intellectuals and icons whose wisdom is mainstreamed at the expense of black and brown voices.
On September 2nd, American feminist activist and journalist Gloria Steinem passed away in her New York City home at the age of 92. At the time of her death, Steinem had spent nearly six decades articulating, organizing, and fighting for the Women’s Movement, which began in the 60s and incrementally grew momentum in the 70s, and of which Steinem had become the most visible and recognizable face of. So much so that in the United States, Steinem to this day is referred to as the “Mother of the Women’s Movement,” denoting her decades of activism, journalism, and political and ideological defiance to the fangs of the patriarchy that thwarted a woman’s potential. At least in the US. At least for upper-middle-class white women.
I’m a Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies (WGS) student, and here at UTM, the WGS department offers a wide selection of intellectually rigorous courses with an emphasis on transnational and intersectional feminist scholarship—work that centers voices from across national borders, racial lines, economic stratas, historical contexts, and different bodies and sexualities too. We are taught to read, write, research, critically form arguments, and be creative all in the attempt to dismantle the ways in which norms dictate our lives, especially as black and brown students.
I’ve come across Steinem’s journalism as an entry point into the type of discourses that defined the early seeds of reproductive justice and equality movements in the 60s and 70s. I’ve also engaged with Steinem as a figure whose representation of an exclusionary feminism has produced much harm. Others have probably had their Instagram feeds spun with her witty quotes, public speaking videos, or her infamous “If Men Could Menstruate” polemic. And yet, with Steinem’s death, the many public statements put out by other feminists, activists, celebrities, politicians, and everyday folks (including many of my peers active in social justice spaces) reveals a sort of quiet and normalized dissonance between her whitewashed image as the trailblazing feminist who refused to wear miniskirts and her unwillingness to engage with class liberation at the expense of the true, all-encompassing march towards justice.
Yet, I would be remiss to say Steinem did not achieve anything. She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 to elect more women into office; she also co-founded Ms., a leading magazine for feminist journalism at a time when most women’s magazines only wrote about the latest fashion trends or how to use ovens and dishwashers so that American husbands could come home to a clean house and a three-course meal. Steinem’s organizing and advocacy also led to the mainstreaming of reproductive rights and wage equality as the pillars of the Women’s Movement. Her journalism pushed the boundaries of what women were allowed to say and think. Years and months leading up to her death, Steinem was giving talks, writing articles, and in podcasts speaking about Trump, masculinity, and the growing divide between men and women, politically and socially.
But it’s time that we—as students, future scholars, future leaders, and women and gender diverse folks ourselves—learn to hold two truths at once. We need to be able to grieve for someone we once viewed as an indomitable force for women’s rights while also recognizing that said force not only failed to center liberation for all, but actively prevented lower-class black and brown women from accessing and participating in mainstream movements supposedly posited towards justice.
How do we respectfully acknowledge the passing of Steinem as a feminist icon, but also understand that our collective sorrow might come from a place of having been fed deliberate propaganda about the true nature of Steinem’s work? Does mainstream academia, public representations, and the media give us the right tools and knowledge to digest these contradictions about her legacy, and ask why we are so quick to valorize white activists for doing only a fraction of the labour that non-white and less privileged activists and organizers do with far more barriers in place? I don’t think so.
Engaging with diverse voices within the feminist political space—voices that contend with race, gender, class, ableism, militarism, borders, sexuality, colonialism, and capitalism—we have an obligation to question the limits of Steinem’s feminism and the ways she used her racial, economic, and intellectual privileges to create a women’s movement that demonized intersectional analysis and power-making. An intersectional analysis that examines how class, race, and geopolitics factored into gender liberation.
We also have a collective emotional tendency to paint people as saints following their deaths, but I think the rose-tinted lens through which the world sees Steinem’s life and legacy is an unsurprising reflection of the convenience of her feminism—which itself is inevitably tied to the convenience of her identity as a white, middle-class American woman.
During her decades of public service—the importance and hard work of which I am not negating or underestimating—Steinem believed that reforming the government to allow greater political participation for women would fix our world. She believed that making women economically and socially equal to men would be enough. She also worked with American institutions to export anti-socialist and anti-communist rhetoric to communities abroad, furthering the government’s agenda at a time when many Americans were only waking up to the lies of the Vietnam War and American imperialism.
Her goal was to give (white) women a seat at the table of patriarchy and capitalism without questioning who built the table and why. Her ambitious journalism, however, did give millions of women the language to articulate their frustrations with their husbands, fathers, and brothers—but whose frustrations did she really echo? By pursuing equality through inclusion within existing institutions and logics, the feminism that Steinem popularized only worked to legitimize, protect, and expand the same systems of domination that made and continue to make women powerless. Steinem’s feminism simply had no space for the majority of the world’s women whose identities, experiences, and desires for liberation failed to fit into the neat musings and frameworks of the white, suburban fantasy of mere equality.
Meanwhile, the disproportionate pressures that black and brown academics and intellectuals face within institutions continues to get tucked under the rug in favour of the self-congratulatory narratives about how accepting and liberal our universities are. I believe the recent death of Dr. Jason Arday, a black professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge, was a direct result of him being subjected to impossible levels of public abuse fuelled by the media mob that is the British press. This abuse and exposure, entirely disproportionate and racially motivated, is being justified due to instances of academic misconduct that Dr. Arday was accused of. After being forced to resign and hundreds of articles about his supposed unworthiness as an academic later, he was found dead in his home on August 14th. The mob of cancel culture killed Dr. Arday.
And so, how does Dr. Arday’s death help us reckon with Steinem’s legacy? I believe that juxtaposing Dr. Arday’s and Steinem’s recent deaths reveal a deeply uncomfortable but widening crack within the landscape of public and academic voices: that white voices, accomplishments, and legacies will always receive more praise, empathy, consideration, grace, and protection than those belonging to black and brown folks—whether by the press, the public, or the universities we consider to be beacons of intellectual freedom and institutional progressivism.
I believe that if we are to properly grieve Steinem and understand her contributions to feminism—both the good and the bad—we have to be brutally honest about her life and influence. As students especially, we need to muster the knowledge and audacity to build alternative narratives of public figures that have long been heralded as the epitome or the ideal. The ideal feminist does not exist. The ideal legacy is a fantasy. We cannot move forward towards justice if our appetites can only stomach whitewashed, convenient narratives of the people and legacies that shape our world. We have to be willing to take the uncomfortable bite.
Opinion Editor (Volume 51); Associate Opinion Editor (Volume 50) — Mashiyat (Mash) is a third-year student studying Neuroscience and Professional Writing and Communication (PWC). As this year’s Opinion Editor, Mash hopes to use her writing, editorial, and leadership skills in supporting student journalism in the essential role it plays in fostering intellectual freedom and artistic expression on campuses. When she’s not writing or slaving away at school, Mash uses her free time cooking cultural dishes, striking up conversations with strangers, and being anxious about her nebulous career plans. You can connect with Mash on her LinkedIn.