Play It Again: Gloria Steinem

Rest in peace to writer and activist Gloria Steinem. The trajectory of Steinem’s life and work was unparalleled. Her cultural and political impact, incalculable. We sat to discuss the life-altering procedure she had completed at age 22, why she helped create the women's liberation movement alongside Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Flo Kennedy, and how she learned to become angry—on her own behalf—about race and gender bias throughout America. Original air date: December 15, 2019 As always, our email: [email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  In that period of time, and especially in places where there was not access to information about what the women's movement was, for me and Flo Kennedy, or me and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, to go out on the hustings and talk, something happens when you're in a room physically with other people that can't happen on the printed page. And I don't think I ever would have learned that if it hadn't been for the movement and being forced out to speak.

• 0:37Sam Fragoso?

  That was Gloria Steinem. I'm Sam Fragoso, and this is Talk Easy. Welcome to the show.

• 0:57Sam Fragoso?

  There are few people who have led a life as interesting, varied, and courageous as Gloria Steinem. For more than half a century, she was one of the defining voices of the feminist movement, helping millions of women gain equality at home, in the workplace, and society at large. She marched and organized, wrote essays and delivered speeches, formed shelters and crisis centers, and in 1971, co-founded Miss Magazine, all in service of a simple, if often contested, truth: that women should be able to live whatever life they chose. For Gloria, the work was never finished. But unfortunately, the work was never finished with her either. Like the rest of us, she lived to see Roe v. Wade overturned in 2022

• 1:41Sam Fragoso?

  in the landmark Dobbs decision. The Equal Rights Amendment, which she began fighting for in the early 70s, has yet to be added to the Constitution, with, of course, many of those rights, values, and mores coming under renewed attack in the era of Donald Trump. "I feel proud, and I feel mad as hell," she told The New York Times in 2022, "we are still dealing with the same issues." But because of Steinem, the country she left behind is profoundly different from the one she entered in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. She passed away this week at the age of 92 at her home in Manhattan. And so today, in honor

• 2:22Sam Fragoso?

  of the late activist and writer, we wanted to replay our conversation from 2019 around her book, "The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off." That title comes from a quote she popularized long ago. But then again, Steinem was always, throughout her career, one step ahead, trying to carry us into a better and more just, if imperfect, future. May she rest in peace.

• 2:51Sam Fragoso?

  This is Gloria Steinem.

• 3:08Sam Fragoso?

  Gloria, how are you doing right now?

• 3:12Speaker 00

  You know, I'm doing OK, because once I actually leave home, which of course takes some doing, you know, we all have a kind of inertia about leaving home, and get out on the road, it's interesting, because you talk to people and learn things that you didn't know. So it's interesting.

• 3:32Sam Fragoso?

  I have, I think, many things I don't know about you that I'd like to know. I want to start, if you don't mind, at the opening of this book. It's called "My Life on the Road," and in it, you wrote the following: "This book is dedicated to Dr. John Sharp 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 22-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

• 4:16Sam Fragoso?

  promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want with your life.'" Can we go back to you being 22, afraid to get a procedure that was outlawed in many places? Where are you at in that moment?

• 4:39Speaker 00

  You know, I was really quite desperate. I was also delusional, because I thought if I went riding in Central Park or threw myself down the stairs somehow, that this would accomplish an abortion. I mean, you know--

• 4:53Sam Fragoso?

  Didn't you do that?

• 4:54Speaker 00

  No, I didn't. But the mythology was very much part of our lives. Remember that I am a product not even of the 60s, but of the 50s. I had left home, and right after college graduation, I was engaged to a very nice man who remained my friend the rest of his life. But I knew that it was really not the right thing for either one of us. And also, marriage was made to seem the end of life then, because you assumed your husband's identity, and it was as if that was the only decision you could make. So because I had

• 5:36Speaker 00

  a fellowship in India, I left early and worked as a waitress in London, trying to waiting to get my visa. And it was there that I realized that I was pregnant, and I didn't know what to do. I had this whole notion that if I went to Paris somehow, surely the French, who were more liberal, you know, forgetting entirely that it was a Catholic country. So just narrowly, and with a lot of desperation, and finding in the London equivalent of the Yellow Pages, the name of this doctor, who turned out to be a wonderful

• 6:16Speaker 00

  man, of, you know, a generous, principled man, who I had so promised that I wouldn't say his name, that I didn't say his name for years. And when I was writing this book, I thought, all right, he is, he cannot possibly be alive now. The laws have changed. It's, I must thank him.

• 6:40Sam Fragoso?

  You picked him by random?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Yes, out of the phone book, right?

• 6:44Sam Fragoso?

  What do you make of that?

• 6:47Speaker 00

  I don't know what to make of that. I mean, it was just luck, or divine providence. But mainly, it was him as a principled, compassionate person.

• 6:59Sam Fragoso?

  I bring that passage up because it seems to me that 22 is a very precarious age. Ideas are not fully formed. Ideas of self are just coming together. A life hasn't exactly been built. You finish college and decide to go to India. Are you afraid at all?

• 7:22Speaker 00

  No, because of the way I grew up, I don't know if I can explain this, the world outside of home was safer than the world inside home. Not because my parents were in any way not good people, they were, but my mother was not able to take care of herself, so our roles were reversed. I was looking after her. And my father, they had separated when I was about 10, and he was on the road all the time, buying and selling jewelry. And, you know, he was a total wanderer.

• 7:57Sam Fragoso?

  And you went along with him?

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Well, when I was a child, I did, yeah. So it always seemed to me that the world outside the house was safer than the world in the house. And that meant that I was not all that brave to be an adventurer. It felt safer.

• 8:18Sam Fragoso?

  It felt just natural?

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Well, natural, I don't know. I mean, I was well aware that other people lived in a different way. But it seemed to me that as long as I had an opportunity to have an exchange with another human being, then I had an equal chance of understanding or being understood.

• 8:37Sam Fragoso?

  It seems to me that when you go to India, some probably dormant quality, that is generosity, was, poor verbiage here, but it sprung up. It seemed that it inspired you in many ways. Is that accurate?

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, this was an India that was only a decade or so after independence. And it was the object of the same kind of hope and optimism that South Africa would become later. Also, it happened that my mother and both of my grandmothers were theosophists, which is a philosophy that comes from India in many ways. So as a little girl, I'd been reading Lotus Leaves for the Young, you know. I mean, I had a kind of sense of connection to India, both from the past and its own very exciting democratic future.

• 9:31Sam Fragoso?

  Were you writing over there?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  I was, because soon the $1,000 scholarship was out, and I began writing for Indian newspapers, writing essays and columns for Indian newspapers.

• 9:46Sam Fragoso?

  I'm very curious to see how those read now.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yes, I should look at them and see.

• 9:52Sam Fragoso?

  You should.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  You know, I think that the reason I was assigned was that people had a curiosity about what someone, an outsider, would see in India. So I remember writing one called "Sari Psychology," which was really about the difference that you feel as a female human being dressed in a sari. And you do feel different. I mean, it is a kind of a mobile dress that you can, you know, wear in many different ways, and that subjects you to the breezes. And, you know, it's very different from Western dress.

• 10:29Sam Fragoso?

  You've talked about how plans are in some ways, they sort of are linked to class in economics, that to even have a plan is usually--

• 10:40Speaker 00

  A measure of class.

• 10:41Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  I do think that that's something we don't think about usually, that the ability to plan ahead is a measure of class, because well-to-do families are perhaps planning for even generations forward.

• 10:55Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Whereas working people, poor people, are just planning for the next week.

• 11:01Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:02Sam Fragoso?

  I think you say, "Plan for Saturday," is what you've written.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:06Sam Fragoso?

  I ask that because at 22 to 24, you're in India. You seem to be smart enough to get there, smart enough to write for an Indian newspaper. I wonder, were you making plans?

• 11:19Speaker 00

  No, I was not. I mean, I was living an adventurous life before I did what I assumed one had to do, which was to marry and have children and lead one the life of the person you married. I mean, that was the message of the 1950s.

• 11:40Sam Fragoso?

  But did you believe you had to do that?

• 11:42Speaker 00

  I did. I just kept putting it off.

• 11:47Sam Fragoso?

  I'll get around to it.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I just kept putting it off. Unfortunately, what we might think of as the women's movement, or feminism, or consciousness, or whatever you want to call it, both in this country and globally, sort of rose up. And suddenly, I realized that not everyone has to do the same thing. You know, it's okay to choose your own unique life. So that is a huge, huge gift.

• 12:18Sam Fragoso?

  Did you have a sense at that time in your 20s that you had been almost gifted this new start? Because there weren't people who were going to perform this operation, and that they did radically change the trajectory of your life.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Yes, no, even at that time, absolutely. Because I could not have gone forward with traveling to India, pursuing the fellowship. I don't know what would have happened to me exactly. I was working in an espresso bar as a waitress in order to make a living. I suppose I would have had to return home. I don't know. I mean, it's kind of unimaginable. But I was enormously relieved and felt free.

• 13:02Sam Fragoso?

  When you returned home, did you feel free coming back to America?

• 13:07Speaker 00

  I did. But I was, by then, after two years in India, also greatly influenced, of course, by and changed, transformed by what I had seen. Because, you know, you suddenly realize that most people in the world do not live the way we live here. And the other thing was that when I came home, and I was staying with my sister and my mother in Washington, I suddenly realized what I should have realized before, which is how segregated we are. Because I had grown accustomed to seeing many different hues of people in India,

• 13:48Speaker 00

  even though, of course, they also have a caste system and problems of division along color lines. But at least every day in the street, you know, you see, you know, many different folks. So when I came home and realized that where I was living, even though in the summertime, I had been the only, when I was in college, I'd been teaching at a swimming pool in Washington, where all the families around that neighborhood were black and all the other lifeguards were black. So I was the only white person. So I, you know, I'd had that experience, which was a good experience.

• 14:28Sam Fragoso?

  Well, you've described that job as the most formative job that you've ever had.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very helpful, I think, to be the only one.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  And they were very patient with me and, you know, very funny and humorous and so.

• 14:40Sam Fragoso?

  Patient how?

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Well, they just waited until I got over being self-conscious. And then they taught me to play bidwist and kunkan and when it was raining and, you know, and made jokes about the kind of racist teenage boys who would, you know, go by on their bikes and say something terrible. So I realized how segregated society was. But I think when I came home from India, it was the first time I got mad on my own behalf. How dare they tell me who my friends are and who my neighbors are? And I think that's quite healthy. Because otherwise, the dialogue is too often assuming that white people have the power

• 15:25Speaker 00

  to include black people and not the other way around. So I think it was helpful that it wasn't a should or a do-good kind of impulse that I got mad on my own behalf. You know, nobody can tell me who my friends are going to be.

• 15:40Sam Fragoso?

  How did your anger manifest itself at that time?

• 15:45Speaker 00

  I think, you know, I just started to realize that if you, especially when the women's movement got started, that if you're starting an organization or a group of any kind, it has to look like the group that you have in mind. You can't start with all white folks and then later on include other, the other, you know, which is already a mistake to say the other. But I was greatly helped because, once the women's movement got started, and I was writing for New York Magazine, so I could write about it there.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  But I couldn't get articles published about the women's movement elsewhere, because it was just not seen as interesting or serious or, I mean, my favorite response was an editor who said, yes, if he could publish my article saying women were equal, but he would have to publish an article saying women were unequal right next to it in order to be objective.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  So I could see that it was going to be tough sledding. And since I was getting a few invitations to speak because of the columns I was writing for New York Magazine, I realized that it was important to do, but I had never, ever, ever spoken in public in my life. And I had devoted much of my life to not doing that. I mean, if.

• 17:14Sam Fragoso?

  You devoted much of your life to not doing that?

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Yes, because, I mean, I went to a speech teacher when I was, you know, trying to do it. And she said, well, you've been two things in your life, a dancer and a writer, and both mean you don't want to talk. So, so I asked a friend of mine, a fearless friend of mine, who was running the first non-sexist multiracial childcare center in New York, if she would be interested in speaking together. And she was. So it was accidental but fortunate that we ended up doing this together, one white woman, one black woman, going out and talking about the burgeoning, growing women's movement.

• 17:57Sam Fragoso?

  Is there something about that period? You know, you get that job at New York Magazine, I think in 1968. You're writing for a bunch of publications before that. A Miss comes around in 1972.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Yes, we started Miss Magazine then, yeah.

• 18:15Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think there's something in that time that people don't often talk about? That gets overlooked?

• 18:22Speaker 00

  I do. And it comes out of the, it comes out of my own experience, you know, speaking with Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Flo Kennedy and, you know, after Dorothy had a baby and wanted to stay home, you know. So it comes out of my personal experience. But then in one of the very early issues of Miss Magazine, we published a Lewis Harris national poll on the women's movement, of women's opinions of the whole feminist movement and issues. And it turned out that 60-some percent of black women supported the women's movement and the basic issues of equality, and only 30-some percent of white women.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Now, that was true then, and I think it's probably true now, because look at the last presidential election.

• 19:11Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  In which some 96% of black women voted for Hillary Clinton and 51% of white women voted for Donald Trump. Yet, the women's movement is frequently, I mean, you see the phrase "white feminism" online, which to me is a contradiction in terms. If it's white, it's not feminism. So the, the image, I think, and to some extent, it's true of the civil rights movement too, because I think the women, the black women in the civil rights movement have not been given their proper emphasis.

• 19:46Sam Fragoso?

  Part of the problem that I saw in revisiting that is how people like you, but especially you, were described in the press. And I want to play a clip here and revisit this for a moment, if you don't mind.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Now, guided by director Carl Charlson, here's a telescope profile of Gloria Steinem, her childhood, her work, and her friends.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Well, everybody's always asked me about her. You know, what kind of, what kind of girl is she? She seems like a real bitch. Oh, she must be very aggressive and pushy. You know, they have these whole preconceived ideas of girl who gets to where Gloria is in life, what one has to do.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  That makes me sad because of the bitch part. I mean, that really gets to me. I guess maybe it's worse than I think. I mean, I don't hear those comments, but what I've come to understand lately is it's not always personal. It's that all women come in for this kind of stuff because I keep meeting women who I've heard all my life are bitchy and pushy and so on and so forth. I meet them and they're nice compassionate people. If you don't play your role, you know, if you dare to aspire to something, then you get it automatically. But it's hard for me to remember that.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Then there are other people who say, well, Gloria's a star, not a writer. A lot of people say that. A lot of people talk about her star instinct, that she's always just slightly too far ahead and in the avant-garde movement. There are people who just make simple fun, like Al Cap, who called her the Shirley Temple of the new left.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Al Cap and David Zoskind, are two of the few people I can accept criticism from and not care because I just, I don't think they know what the hell they're talking about. It's great that you have that clip. That's amazing.

• 21:38Sam Fragoso?

  What do you make of that?

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's true that if you don't play your role, you know, I mean, anger, for instance, in, in women and in black men is viewed as more threatening than anger, which is fairly routine in white men. You can see that reaction to the same injustice or whatever it is that's making us angry is judged differently in who it comes from. And, you know, it finally dawned on me that when I'm called a bitch, it took me a few years to realize that when I was called a bitch, I should just say, thank you.

• 22:20Sam Fragoso?

  There's something else at play, which is the second criticism, which is that Gloria Steinem is less of a writer and more of a star. This tends to happen to anyone who becomes a figure in a movement. It happened to Deray McKesson in the Black Lives Matter movement. It's happened to Noam Chomsky, just as a public intellectual. I'm interested, just Gloria in the seventies and eighties, when this is all happening. Did you feel the responsibility or the weight of being some sort of figure in this movement? Did that weigh at all?

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Only in the sense that I should do my best not to appear by myself, you know, that I should always be part of a group, which I think does make sense. Then also there was the other part of me that felt that I should be writing, you know, that I should be at home because I identify as a writer. So to the extent that I was not doing that, I felt that I was perhaps not doing the right thing. But in the moment, you make the best choices you can.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  And it was clear that it was important, especially in that period of time, and especially in places where there was not access to information about what the women's movement was, for me and Flo Kennedy or me and Dorothy Pitman Hughes to go out on the hustings and talk. Something happens when you're in a room physically with other people that can't happen on the printed page. And I don't think I ever would have learned that if it hadn't been for the movement and being forced out to speak. And it's true, I mean, I've asked my friendly neighborhood neurologist if it's true that

• 24:23Speaker 00

  you don't produce oxytocin, you know, which is the tendon befriend hormone that allows us to empathize with each other, not just to learn intellectually, which is very important, but also to sense what the other person is feeling. If you produce that on the, from the page, much as I love books, or from the screen, and she said, no, you don't. So when male or female, when we're holding a baby, we're flooded with oxytocin. When we see somebody who has an accident, even if we don't know them, we have an impulse to help. Certainly, the human species could not have survived without oxytocin.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  And what I learned from going out to speak is how different it is to be with all five senses in a room together. I learned to have enormous faith in it.

• 25:14Sam Fragoso?

  I see a very interesting woman in that clip. I see someone trying to stay composed, a little bit nervous.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  And smoking, how about that? Even though I wasn't inhaling. I guess I thought it was sophisticated to smoke.

• 25:35Sam Fragoso?

  You look sophisticated. I think you probably were sophisticated. But I also sense someone who is trying to do the right thing, but is being pulled from all different directions. And this happened throughout the seventies as Miss grew and you became more of a public figure. I could see in those appearances that you made, that you were trying to do the right thing and yet you had so many people constantly throwing punches. And I have to imagine at some point, you felt some of those.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Yes, no, I definitely did. I mean, the most painful experience is being misunderstood by people who are your friends and allies. It's one thing to be accused by people who disagree with you. That's sometimes painful, but somewhat inevitable and makes sense. But especially in groups of people who have not been able to exercise their power before, there comes to be what is known in Australia, I think, is the tall poppy syndrome, of what

• 26:56Speaker 00

  is known in the black community as crabs in the basket, you know, one person, one climbs up and the other's pulled. That was more present in the earlier days of the movement. It's really not anymore. I think we've, we've all realized there's a place for all of us and that's the point. But at the time, there was a feeling of scarcity, I think, of attention. And so there was sometimes resentment from people you loved, you know, and so that was painful.

• 27:28Sam Fragoso?

  You know, it seemed clear in the documentary, In Her Own Words, I think it's called, on HBO, you talk about this time when your career is taking off and this movement is in, you know, full swing. Your mother is sick. She gets increasingly sick and your sister is taking care of her for a majority of this time. You have this quote that I will say, kind of broke my heart. You said, "I distanced myself from my mother because I was so fearful of becoming her." How do you feel about her and how you were in that time now?

• 28:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I do have regrets. I mean, we, especially because we were living on our own for such a long period of time. So we kind of understood each other. And then she lived with me, she couldn't live on her own, but she lived with my sister, who had six children. And she managed to have a small job in a, you know, I mean, she was, she was feeling better. But we didn't have the kind of intimacy that we had had when I was growing up. I was traveling, she was living with my sister. And I regret that.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  But even more than that, I regret that she couldn't live her own life because she had been a journalist, a pioneering, very early journalist, when there were very few women. She'd actually been the managing editor of a newspaper in Toledo, which is very rare.

• 29:08Sam Fragoso?

  In the beginning, writing in a man's name.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Yes, right. See what great research you've done? When I, I'm beginning to lose my memory, so I'm going to call you up.

• 29:17Sam Fragoso?

  Call me anytime.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:19Sam Fragoso?

  I'll give you my number after.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Okay. And most of all, I regret that she couldn't live her own life. Secondarily, I regret that I, because of our closeness, wasn't there enough before she died. And I've already outlived her.

• 29:41Sam Fragoso?

  But the fear of becoming her, it seems to me on paper that you were far distance away from becoming her. I mean, you were on the road. I mean, in this time, there's two decades here where you say that you never spent more than eight days consecutively at home. It seems like you're very different from her.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Well, being mobile doesn't mean that you're different inside.

• 30:12Sam Fragoso?

  Right. Maybe that's what I'm getting at. Where are those similarities?

• 30:16Speaker 00

  She led a very different life. In terms of travel or autonomy, which eluded her for, you know, most of her adult life, she really couldn't function on her own. So that's quite different. But internally, I think we were way more alike. And it's haunting to think who she could have been. Those are maybe the saddest words in English, what could have been. And I hope that even though a lot of us, me included, and perhaps you too, are living out the unlived lives of our parents or other people close to us, which is a worthy thing to do,

• 31:01Speaker 00

  that we arrive at a place where each person can live out their own unique talents, you know? And I used to say this to my mother, you know, because she would say how she wanted to go to New York and work as a journalist. And I would say, well, and also she fell in love with another man who was not my father, who was working in the newspaper office. And I would say to her, well, why didn't you, you know, marry the other man? Go to New York, do, I mean, whatever it was that you felt you truly wanted to do. And she would say to me, but then you never would have been born. And I never had the courage to say, but you would have been born.

• 31:41Sam Fragoso?

  Right. In this case, maybe both of you are right.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Well, what is, is, you know? And we, we can move forward, I think, by being our own authentic, individual, unique selves and helping other people to be their own authentic individual selves without group judgment. And I get huge pleasure out of that, I have to say. I mean, I realize that we're supposed to feel rewarded by money. And I'm certainly in favor of everybody having a nice place to live and food and dancing. You know, I'm all for that. But when somebody comes up to me in the street and tells me that something I ever said or did helped them to do what they wanted to do, that is so much more rewarding

• 32:32Speaker 00

  than any amount of money I can think of.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  I wouldn't have admitted the equality and inequality in my own life, even though I was continually discriminated against in journalism. Journalism, which allows women to write about women and black people to write about black people and keeps the editorial decisions in white male hands. I would not have admitted my own inequality, even though I had been refused apartments by landlords who would not rent to women and refused access to supposedly public places. I would not admit it, even though I have been refused full participation in politics. Now, thanks to the spirit of equality in the air

• 33:20Speaker 04

  and to the work of many of my more foresighted sisters, I no longer accept society's judgment that my group is second class.

• 33:31Sam Fragoso?

  Was falling in love something you thought about or did in that time?

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, absolutely. No, I mean, you know, you, I probably was a romance junkie. I mean, there's something about.

• 33:45Sam Fragoso?

  What does that mean for you?

• 33:45Speaker 00

  Well, you know, you, you fall in love with somebody. There's this intense period of getting to know each other and exploring and so on. I mean, it's, it's, uh, there's a reason I, I'm told why when you fall out of love, you crave chocolate because the epinephrine, whatever it is that.

• 34:04Sam Fragoso?

  Right, right.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  There's a word for it.

• 34:06Sam Fragoso?

  There is a term.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  I've forgotten. Yeah, right, right. Is present in both cases. There is a difference between romance and love. And hopefully romance leads to love. But there is something infinitely exciting about really getting to know another person.

• 34:27Sam Fragoso?

  Did those partners at the time want you to be someone that you couldn't be?

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Yes, in the beginning, you know, because they're all living in an era in which, you know, marriage was the be all and end all.

• 34:43Sam Fragoso?

  I guess I bring that up because a lot of the criticism of you at the time, which is mystifying to read from my perspective, especially in 2019, but it's that, how could you write about women and feminism when you do not have children and you are not married? That was a constant attack. It's still even lingering now, although it's much less amplified. Did that matter to you?

• 35:10Speaker 00

  No, it really didn't because it always seemed to me that feminism meant that you got to live the way that was right for you. And I would devoutly argue, you know, that women who are mothers are probably the least equally treated. I mean, men are, some men are becoming equal fathers, but a lot are not. Actually, economically, at a minimum, we should be able to say, to assess what mothers or women who work in the home do at replacement level and make that tax deductible. Why not? You know, we could do that with a simple legislation.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  And yet, that work, which is so indispensable, is not counted as work. So we need to, to advocate for each other. But I never was made to feel that I had to live in a way I was not. On the contrary, the movement let me understand that it was okay to live your own life and your own individual choices.

• 36:18Sam Fragoso?

  We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 36:28Sam Fragoso?

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• 37:12Sam Fragoso?

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• 37:57Sam Fragoso?

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• 38:41Sam Fragoso?

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• 39:29Sam Fragoso?

  When you turned 50, there seemed to be a dramatic turning point in your life. In 1987, Miss closed, at least temporarily. And the movement, I wouldn't say slowed down, but I think it changed speeds.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Well, it didn't. It became a foundation and then eventually it became published by the-- I mean, it was continuously published, but yeah.

• 39:53Sam Fragoso?

  But personally for you, you've described that time as being particularly difficult. You felt some depression. It's hard to switch gears.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  That was actually less connected to the magazine than that I was really, really, really tired.

• 40:12Sam Fragoso?

  Naturally.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Seriously tired. And I did something I've never before or since done in my life, which is to fall in love with a man with whom I had nothing in common.

• 40:24Sam Fragoso?

  Really?

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, right, right.

• 40:26Sam Fragoso?

  How did you do that?

• 40:28Speaker 00

  I was tired. And he was a great dancer, what can I say? And, and he--

• 40:33Sam Fragoso?

  Those two things seem contradictory. He was tired, but we danced, so it was okay.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  But tired of, you know, work and not having any other life. And he, he was funny. He was a great dancer. He also was successful in his field. So all I had to do was show up for dinner. I never had to worry about, you know, I mean, he took care of absolutely everything. And it was fun. It was educational, but it was-- I mean, all, all of the other, not that there are so many, but the other men I loved are still my friends. Absolutely all of them. But we were just too different. We, you know, we're not enemies, but we were just too different.

• 41:19Sam Fragoso?

  How did that affect you transitioning into your 50s?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  I think I got depressed by it because I was so tired and aware, you know, that I had done something that wasn't true to who I was myself. So it, it did, you know, I must say that up to then, I thought that therapy was totally wonderful for other people, but maybe I would rather do something practical like learn to roller skate, you know?

• 41:50Sam Fragoso?

  I can't roller skate.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  I mean, I had no, I had a Midwestern attitude towards therapy, I think. But at that point, I found a-- also, the other thing was that I had breast cancer for the first time, and that was shocking. So between those two things, I did kind of pause and say, you know, I want to wait and think and figure out what I'm doing with my life. I did.

• 42:17Sam Fragoso?

  Well, something you did do in the aftermath of that is write a book called Revolutions From Within. You did an interview in 1992 on NPR in which you said, "Women become ourselves again after 50." I believe you were quoting Carolyn Helber, right? From her book, Writing a Woman's Life. Do you believe that? Do you feel like you became yourself after 50?

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Well, I'm not trying to overgeneralize, but I do think that there's a way in which,

• 42:51Speaker 00

  and maybe this is true somewhat for men too, but I think especially for girls and women, we are our own selves climbing trees and saying, "I know what I want. I know what I think," and so on, up until we're about 10 or 11. Then the so-called feminine role, the gender role, comes down upon us. And it doesn't let up until we're about 50. So I do think there are ways in which the people we are after we're 50, 60, 70, more resemble the little girl who was climbing trees in the first place

• 43:26Speaker 00

  because the central years of life are more influenced, whether you are going along with the gender role or fighting the gender role, it's enmeshed with the gender role. And that, that's because those are the childbearing years and childrearing years in which there is more social imperative to act in a certain way.

• 43:48Sam Fragoso?

  You know, you do this thing in your writing, and you even do it a little bit here, where you are very good at talking about women, other women, specifically friends--

• 44:00Speaker 00

  You think I'm not talking about myself enough?

• 44:03Sam Fragoso?

  I think you admitted to it. In fact, the first draft of Revolutions From Within, you submitted, or you sent it to a friend, and your friend said, "You're not in here."

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Right. No, that's true. I was writing the book that I wanted to read, but I wasn't putting myself in, which you have to, because--

• 44:21Sam Fragoso?

  You have to.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  You have to be, you have to give the reader a person.

• 44:26Sam Fragoso?

  Well, so I'm going to give you something here, because in one of my favorite chapters of this book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, there's a chapter called "In Praise of Women's Bodies." The year is 1981, and you're writing about your time at an old-fashioned spa in the company of 90 or so women. You then go on to praise some of these women. And I'd like to read a couple of descriptions here, if you don't mind. You describe one woman as "a small, sturdy, young masseuse with strong hands who dreams of buying a portable massage table so that she can start a business of her own." There are two women friends who speak only Spanish and whose arrival causes uncertainty among locker mates who speak no Spanish at all.

• 45:10Sam Fragoso?

  From them, we soon learn that the language of bodies and gestures is universal. The third woman, "a tough, witty criminal lawyer who wants to figure out how to use her legal talents to advance other women. In nudity, she relaxes enough to gift us with an epigram. Most men want their wives to have a job at."

• 45:32Speaker 00

  And there was, there were one or more other--

• 45:35Sam Fragoso?

  There's many more.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Women, yeah, who had the stretch marks and the scars of cesarean birth.

• 45:41Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  And I was so struck by that because the bravery of the scars that come from giving life as opposed to taking life in more--

• 45:54Sam Fragoso?

  How would you describe yourself?

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Physically?

• 45:59Sam Fragoso?

  All of it, because you're capturing a bunch of different qualities in those passages. And that's the one thing I kind of wanted in here, is where Gloria fit into the equation.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Well, I was, I'd never been with a group of nude women before. And of course, I was nude too. So you feel first exposed and then communal. You know, you feel literally your commonality. I think, I love the feeling of being useful, you know, of, it's the fun of organizing. Well, we have this problem. If we did this and that, maybe that would help. It's just infinitely interesting. I get hooked on it. And I also love, my idea of heaven is an editorial meeting because,

• 46:54Speaker 00

  because you're all sitting there, especially for magazines, you're kind of thinking of the current events and what you're-- And if it works, you come up with something collectively that you could not have come up with individually. And it's a real high. It's absolutely my idea of heaven.

• 47:16Sam Fragoso?

  You described still some other people in describing you.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, what can I say?

• 47:22Sam Fragoso?

  I think that's--

• 47:23Speaker 00

  You ask, ask me a question that, that will deliver what you have in mind.

• 47:28Sam Fragoso?

  No, I think it's your journalistic roots. I understand. I'm the same way. I started in journalism.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Well, I'm quite willing to ask, answer anything you ask me.

• 47:37Sam Fragoso?

  Well, that's very kind of you. Okay, let's do it. You're married for the first time, 66, in 2000. How did that feel?

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Shocking. I mean, I couldn't have done anything more dangerous than jump out of a plane by myself without a parachute, because we hardly knew each other. But we had fallen in love, and he had been born in South Africa, and he had all kinds of difficulty with his legal status here. We were, we had consulted with lawyers about how to help him with his legal status. It would have been possible to get an individual congressional bill passed through Congress, but it sounded quite unlikely. And they kept saying to us, "The only real way that you're certain of is if you marry,

• 48:30Speaker 00

  because then it is the right of you as a citizen to marry, and, you know, he will have legal status and so on." And I thought, well, you know, we have spent 30, 40 years making the marriage laws equal. I wouldn't anymore lose my name, my credit rating, my legal domicile, and so on. And we were also about to go to the Cherokee National Reunion in Oklahoma because my friend, Wilma Mankiller, I had often gone there, and we were going there together. So I, I called up Wilma and I said, you know, I explained the situation. And I said, you know, "I'm thinking of getting married. What do you think?" She said, "Well, I'll call you in the morning."

• 49:15Speaker 00

  She went out and sat under the stars and came, called me in the morning and said, "Yes, I think," you know, it's-- So we were married in a Cherokee ceremony, you know, who could resist that, walking around the fire? And, you know, I say dangerous because we didn't really know each other that well, but we were in love. We would have been together anyway. And it just seemed to make sense. And actually, it did in the end make a profound sense because he lived 100% in the present, absolutely in the present. You know, he was always rescuing animals on the roadside. And so, I mean, he was just totally in the present.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  And I live in the future, when of course, you can't live totally in the future with all five senses. So I learned from him, or at least I learned more from him to live in the present. And he, as it turned out, because he became very ill after a couple of years, he needed someone to accompany him on his journey out of life. So it was right in, in, in both ways, even though, you know, we could not have known that at the time.

• 50:36Sam Fragoso?

  What did that experience teach you about mortality?

• 50:44Speaker 00

  I mean, of course, you know, we're all conscious of mortality and denying mortality, our own mortality, every minute. But what I remember most about it is that Wilma, mankiller, my friend, the chief of the Cherokee Nation, had almost died once herself in a very serious car accident, very serious. And she came to visit David in the hospital. And she told me that when she had this near-death experience, she imagined, she felt that she was flying through faster than any human being could fly, that she was full of warmth

• 51:27Speaker 00

  and a kind of worldview and just feeling, okay, now I know what life is about. And that she wanted to continue, but she had two little girls, so she realized she should turn back, and she turned back. And her description, which I'm not doing justice to, was, you know, longer and more fervent and unforgettable, of that near-death experience, was something I'll never forget. And I so hope that David had that experience. And I so hope that I and you have that experience.

• 52:03Sam Fragoso?

  Well, it's very kind to offer that to me.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  I can't offer it, but it-

• 52:10Sam Fragoso?

  Or suggest it.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, because, you know, we're such a death-denying culture. And death, of course, is-

• 52:19Sam Fragoso?

  I'm not denying it, I'm just afraid of it.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  You know, other cultures are not as death-denying as we are. So I think we don't think about it, and we sometimes, even physicians who should know better, view death as a defeat, instead of a normal, natural part of life that makes life more precious.

• 52:43Sam Fragoso?

  Do you fear it?

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Well, I fear, I just don't want to be dying, lying there, saying, but, but, other than that, I don't think I fear it. I mean, I just spent a weekend with a couple of women friends, talking about what we individually want at the end of life, because we thought it was something, you know, that people don't talk about and we should talk about. It was fascinating.

• 53:17Sam Fragoso?

  I get the sense that there's still more for you to do.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, no, there's no shortage.

• 53:25Sam Fragoso?

  There's no shortage. And I want to bring this a little bit full circle, if we can. You know, going into 2020, we have done a wonderful job. We should both be proud of ourselves for not mentioning the person who runs this country. And I'm not going to, still. But it's going to be a long, arduous year. Something that is happening right now, something you've been part of since 1970, which is the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1970, you gave a testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the ERA. And I have a quote here from it, if you don't mind. You said, "During 12 years of working for a living, I have experienced much of the

• 54:08Sam Fragoso?

  legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country. I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places, and turned away from apartment rentals. Most important to me, I have been denied a society in which women are encouraged, or even allowed, to think of themselves as first-class citizens and responsible human beings." That was in 1970. It passed Congress but failed to gain ratification in the US. It's looking like, because of Virginia, which flipped to a Democrat majority, that there will be 38 states that ratified this. And it seems possible, going into 2020.

• 54:52Sam Fragoso?

  You have been part of this movement, this amendment, for 50 years? Do you think it's still deeply important right now?

• 55:01Speaker 00

  Yes. You know, the problem with the Equal Rights Amendment, it always had two problems. One, people thought we already had it. And the other was that people didn't realize how much it could transform. So, you know, that has been its problem and continues to be its problem. But I do think now it might be possible. The remaining barrier is that it was the only constitutional amendment that was given a deadline. And now the House will have to vote, and the House Judiciary Committee has voted to remove the deadline, the limitation. So it's possible that it will be.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  It is crucial, after all, the Constitution was patterned after the Iroquois Confederacy, which included women and did not have slavery. I mean, we could, at least after all these years, finally be true to what we were imitating in terms of a real democracy. It wouldn't impact reproductive freedom necessarily, which is, I mean, I think we still have to demonstrate that bodily integrity, male and female, that our autonomy and independence begins with authority over our own physical selves. But it would be very, very important and very helpful in all kinds of ways.

• 56:30Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think it'll happen?

• 56:32Speaker 00

  I don't know, because I don't know whether the deadline will be removed. I'll just explain some of the past problems, and you'll understand why.

• 56:42Sam Fragoso?

  Your trepidation.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, for a long time, we didn't understand why it would get up to the last two votes, say, in Illinois, and different people each time would vote against it, and that would happen state by state. It took us a long time to understand that the insurance industry, and the, at that point, the average, the most frequent occupation of a state legislator was insurance agent, because the insurance industry was the last big, big, big industry that was not regulated federally. It was regulated state by state, right? They were the real opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, because they would have

• 57:25Speaker 00

  to stop sex segregating their actuarial tables. What that means is that even now, frequently, a woman who doesn't smoke pays a higher premium than a man who does smoke, because she might live longer. Right? Okay? So they had to stop race segregating, but they haven't uniformly stopped sex segregating. And it took us a while to realize that that was the opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

• 57:54Sam Fragoso?

  I didn't want to go too into politics, for a lot of reasons, but I feel I need to bring this up to you before we leave. The 2016 election seems to me to be a very crucial moment in American history. That feels like an understatement. And there's a quote you have, that you've been saying, I think, 30 years, and it's on the nature of hope. And you say, "When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say, because I travel." You seem to have a lot of hope in the basic decency of people across this country, and outside of this country.

• 58:36Sam Fragoso?

  Did 2016 at all shake your sense of hope?

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Well, I don't think we can deny each other hope, because it is a form of planning, you know, so we-

• 58:48Sam Fragoso?

  Which is another good quote.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, we can't, you know, but it is important to remember that Trump, who I've never once called president, lost by 6 million votes, three for Hillary Clinton and three for other candidates. He only won because of the Electoral College, which is leftover from the will of slave states that wanted extra power, even though many of their residents were slaves.

• 59:17Sam Fragoso?

  Yes, but you saw those people demonstrating. I mean, you heard his base. I agree with you, it's an outdated format, but I'm talking purely about the human spirit of people.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think that, I mean, if you look at the polls, it's some 30, 40% of the people who support him and the majority who don't. We should have won last time, in terms of one person, one vote. And now people are getting rid of state by state, the Electoral College. I think he, it's very dangerous, it's like a big wake-up call there, to see so much that is wrong with the country represented in the Oval Office. And, you know, I'm not downplaying the danger for a moment, but it is also true that we have the majority. And it is true, just in my wandering around the country, that I have never seen before

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  in my life the degree of activism that I see now. So he has made us woke, big time, right?

• 1:00:20Sam Fragoso?

  Accidentally.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  A very dangerous, a very dangerous way of getting woke. And I'm not trying to predict what's going to happen. I think we each have to do the most we possibly can in order to- Get our democracy back, obviously, or not even back, move forward. I mean, we've never had a perfect democracy anyway. But the people who voted for him, the most, when asked why, the usual reason was because he is a successful businessman and therefore he'll be able to run the country. Of course, those of us in New York who know him know he was absolutely not a successful businessman. He had gone bankrupt many times.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  Banks would no longer loan him money. That's how he got in trouble with Saudi Arabia and Russia and so on. Somebody figured out that if he had only invested the money he inherited at the going rate, he would be richer than now. So

• 1:01:19Sam Fragoso?

  Don't tell him that.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  He's, he's an accident of history in every way. But if we learn from this, if we learn to get rid of the Electoral College, if we learn to, that if we don't vote, we don't exist. If we learn how profoundly racist and clinging to the old hierarchy, at least a third of the country is, then we'll have been almost, I'm not sure, worth the learning.

• 1:01:49Sam Fragoso?

  I know you are always someone who's going to say, I'm just part of a movement. But I am curious, because you are 85. Maybe you think about this from time to time. But what do you want your legacy to be? Or what do you want to have left behind?

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  Oh, that's not up to me, I don't think. I mean, I, you know, in a kind of general way, I would hope that people think I did my best and I tried to leave the world a little more just than it was when I showed up. But I don't think it's up to me. You know, I think I find inspiration or learning in the lives of people who came before me that probably they wouldn't have predicted. I will leave with trust.

• 1:02:39Sam Fragoso?

  You have a poem that you wrote 25 years ago. And you wrote, it's one of the very few poems I've ever written from two decades ago when I was just beginning to discover the blessings of aging. I was going to read it, but perhaps you wouldn't mind reading it?

• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  Okay. If I can see, wait a minute. Dear goddess, I pray for the courage to walk naked at any age, to wear red and purple, to be unladylike, inappropriate, scandalous, and incorrect to the very end.

• 1:03:23Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think you've done that?

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  No, probably not.

• 1:03:31Sam Fragoso?

  I set you up so nicely. All you had to do was say yes.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  No, I just mean that I, you know, that in communal situations where I, anyway, am not that conscious of the role I'm playing, but I think that basically I've done that. Greatly aided by the fact that I've never had a job. Nobody can fire me. So, you know, and that is a gift of freelancing. It makes it harder to pay the rent sometimes, but it's a gift. So I do think that because of that, I've been more able to be who I actually am and not worry about getting fired or what's going to happen the next day or the next.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  And that's a gift of my situation, a gift of my parents, a gift of the movement, a big gift.

• 1:04:28Sam Fragoso?

  Well, you may not have had a job, but I really do appreciate all the work you've done. So it's been an honor having you.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  And I would like to say that you are by far and away the most careful and thoughtful and best-prepared interviewer I've ever had. And now that I am losing my memory, I'm definitely calling you up.

• 1:04:56Sam Fragoso?

  We'll have to give you my number.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:04:58Sam Fragoso?

  Gloria Steinem, thank you so much.

• 1:04:59Speaker 00

  Thank you.

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• 1:06:48Sam Fragoso?

  History gets written, then rewritten, sometimes by scholars correcting the record, sometimes by committees deciding what a generation of kids will and won't learn. The version that makes it into the textbook isn't always the only story. It's the one that won out. That's the kind of thing Ground News was built for. It shows you how outlets across the spectrum tell the same story, side by side, so you can spot the shading for yourself. Ground News gives each outlet a factuality rating, so you know how much weight to give the source and shows you who owns it, so you know what's behind it. The Nobel Peace Center called it "an excellent way

• 1:07:29Sam Fragoso?

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