Gloria Steinem:
Feminist Warrior at 75!

Coming to Burlington June 11

Why Steinem Matters More Than Ever

by Sue Gillis, Publisher

Gloria Steinem matters because for the last 40-plus years she has played one of the major roles in the modern women’s movement. Because of her unrelenting fervor as a political organizer, activist, writer, lecturer, author, and editor she is the world’s most renowned feminist and women’s rights activist. The contributions of Gloria Steinem matter because history matters: more specifically, because women’s history – so often unknown, diminished or erased – matters. It is vital that we remember and acknowledge the groundbreaking efforts of individuals such as suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, whose shoulders we stand on.

Future generations, in turn, will stand on Gloria Steinem’s shoulders, their lives all the stronger thanks to her remarkable contributions.

Steinem sees one of her important roles through the years as that of traveling organizer. She makes the trek everywhere from rural college campuses to developing world countries, from major cities and special events to small towns – including, this month, to Burlington as the keynote speaker for the Vermont Woman Speakers Series. By doing so, she intimately connects with people in one room, reaching out, to provide historical perspective, to inspire – and most importantly, to motivate us to commit “outrageous acts” for simple justice, to paraphrase her classic book. On June 11 at the Hilton in Burlington, Gloria will spend some invaluable time with Vermonters, speaking to all of the above and much more.

This will be an extraordinary opportunity to hear the most famous living feminist of our time. The opportunity to be in the same room with this incredible woman is one that should not be missed. Through her life’s work, she has helped change the consciousness of a critical mass of both men and women, who no longer believe that gender should dictate and constrain the lives of individuals. Many men, once presuming superiority, have come to see how this thinking limits their humanness. This is a great leap forward.

Steinem will be the first to caution that there is a very long way yet to go, and much work still to be done.

Power structures are slow to change. Infanticide, inferior or nonexistent health care, genital mutilation, sexual assault, domestic violence, sex trafficking of women and girls, exploited labor, unpaid labor – all these issues and more are all too common in many parts of the world.

In the United States we still need to address issues such as childcare, healthcare, sex education, contraception, maternal mortality, pay inequity, increasing representation on corporate boards, political elective office, the Supreme Court, and in executive levels in religious, education, military organizations.

Gloria often speaks of the links between racism and sexism, sexism being far more pervasive; and the devaluation of women through the booming porn industry (which is about humiliation, pain and control, distinct from erotica) to sexual and gender violence; government control of women’s bodies for production, and media images and coverage. One of her recent endeavors was to establish, with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan, the Women’s Media Center (womensmediacenter.com)

And also – she shows us what 75 can be…

“This is what 50, then 60 looks like —we’ve been lying so long, who would know?” was her mantle quote for women for two generations. Now that Gloria has reached her 75th birthday she reflects more these days on mortality than aging. It is no surprise that much has been written about her aging process and she answers with her grand sense of humor. When asked if she had a face lift she quipped, “I cannot imagine Georgia O’Keeffe or Eleanor Roosevelt or Rosa Parks with a facelift. The truth is I’m afraid I’d become like the guy with a bad toupee; when you are talking to him, you can’t think of anything else.”

At 75 it seems Steinem has no intention of slowing down; as she says “The idea of retiring is as foreign to me as the idea of going hunting.”

On a personal note. Gloria was our keynote speaker for the first anniversary of Vermont Woman in 1986. Perhaps some of you were there that night. Gloria was 52 and the mid eighties were truly a revolutionary time for women. Though always a serious activist, she was funny, generous, and supportive.

For me, in that first year of publishing my first newspaper – particularly one that at the time was thought of as somewhat outrageous (a woman-owned and -staffed newspaper called Vermont Woman, it was the first statewide paper of its kind) she was my inspiration, my model, my hero.

And she still is.