“This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy, 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.” from her “Address to the Women of America,” at the National Women’s Political Caucus, July 10, 1971
“…When I turned forty, I did so publicly– with enormous relief. When a reporter kindly said I didn’t look forty (a well-meaning comment but ageist when you think about it), I said the first thing that came into my head: ‘This is what forty looks like. We’ve been lying so long, who would know?’ That one remark got so many relieved responses from women that I began to sense the depth and dimension of age oppression, and how strong the double standard of aging remains.” from “Doing Sixty and Seventy”
” What if heterosexual male teachers were prejudged sexual abusers of children, in the way that gay males often have been (which would make more statistical sense, since heterosexual males are the majority of abusers of both girls and boys? What if the jogger who was raped and brutally beaten in Central Park had been a black woman instead of a white one– would she have made the national news? Would she have even made the local news?” From Moving Beyond Words
As one of the primary figures of the Women’s Movement in the Twentieth Century, Gloria Steinem’s voice has spoken for many and made even more people think about the way they view the world and each other. From her work in the 1960s as a columnist for New York magazine, where her 1963 investigative report of the Playboy Clubs’ treatment of women was so powerful because Steinem put herself into the position and was able to tell about the mistreatment first hand. This has served as the strong point of Steinem’s writing: she relates the injustices, biases, and inflexibility of our culture to her own perceptions. She admits her own limitations. She tells personal stories from her own experience and from other people. As happens frequently with such polarizing figures, actually reading Ms. Steinem’s writing paints a far more intelligent, deliberate portrait than the famous quotes and blurbs used frequently in media articles. Her style is worth studying for anyone wishing to be a change agent through his or her writing. And to the point of the power of writing, Steinem herself again says it best: “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”