WE WILL NOT WHITEWASH GLORIA STEINEM

The death of Gloria Steinem has been predictably followed by a familiar wave of media-led tributes.

The BBC writes ‘Gloria Steinem: An icon of American feminism’. The New Statesman titles their tribute ‘Gloria Steinem saved us all.’ The Telegraph describes Gloria Steinem as a ‘chic feminist writer who brought women’s rights to the mass market’.

However, the rights of women and marginalised genders are not something to be packaged, marketed and sold back to us as the achievements of one individual.

Feminism did not begin with Gloria Steinem. Nor was she representative of the struggle of all women.

The mainstream history of second-wave feminism that the likes of Steinem benefited from, often elevated middle-class white women to the forefront of movements that had already been running for years, at the cost of Black women, lesbians, working-class women, trans women, disabled women, migrant women, etc. This is an intended outcome of the media lifting up certain voices while discarding others.

Liberation to many women and marginalised genders is not just about getting a seat at the table, but more about being able to afford to live, travel safely, access childcare, fair division of labour, access adequate healthcare, and so on.

• For Black women, their oppression couldn’t be separated from racism.
• For trans women and non-binary people, their oppression couldn’t be separated from transphobia.
• For disabled women, their oppression couldn’t be separated from ableism.
• For working-class women, their oppression couldn’t be separated from class.

The list goes on and the struggle remains intertwined with one another across intersecting identities.

Steinem herself had also recognised this and noted that the media wanted to assign middle-class white women as the face of the feminist movement. Which is especially important considering Steinem also worked alongside Black feminists like Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Florynce Kennedy and Margaret Sloan-Hunter — all of whose politics challenged white, middle-class dominance within mainstream feminism and argued from an intersectional point of view that sexism could not be separated from racism, class and sexuality.

Feminist writer bell hooks even went so far as to criticise the mainstream feminist movement as repeating the same racial and class hierarchies that it should be opposed to.

However, simply spotting a gap in representation doesn’t provide opportunity to others and knowing all of this, it’s hard to then understand Steinem’s involvement in the Independent Research Service.

Before Steinem became known for her activism in the feminist movement, she worked for the Independent Research Service, an organisation funded by the CIA and involved in organising an anti-communist presence at youth festivals, making her a willing participant in the CIA’s campaign of American imperialism.

This story was uncovered by Ramparts magazine, which focused on anti-war politics and exposing US government activity, becoming particularly influential in the American New Left.

When asked about this, Steinem defended her involvement in the project and said ‘given the choice, I’d do it again.’

This was not the only time Steinem’s position shifted alongside principles she had claimed to champion.

In 1998, when Bill Clinton was accused multiple times of sexual misconduct, Steinem publicly defended him, even going so far as to argue in the New York Times that feminists should resist calls for his resignation or impeachment.

She then argued that even if the allegations were true, that Clinton was not guilty of sexual harassment and that, in Kathleen Willey’s case, because he had taken no for an answer, then his behaviour was irrelevant to sexual harassment, but instead a ‘gross, dumb and reckless pass’.

Instead of supporting the women involved, Steinem used her position as a prominent feminist figure to publicly cast doubt on allegations of sexual harassment and defend a man in power.

When the media pushes the idea that Steinem was a radical, or pioneered the feminist movement, it’s important to remember that Steinem, like a lot of other feminists, was not immune to the ways her ‘brand’ of feminism was absorbed by capitalism or the patriarchy.

Women and marginalised genders do not want to simply be allowed into positions of power, they want the power transformed.

The idea that feminism can succeed within capitalism if women and marginalised genders simply break enough glass ceilings is a fallacy.

We want to smash the ceiling, and the floor beneath it.

Feminism must be built on equality and should value and recognise the women and marginalised genders from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences and identities.

Liberal feminism too often reduces liberation to individual advancement, when liberation belongs to all of us.

A polished story about one famous woman does not erase the decades of work by marginalised women and genders towards their collective liberation.

Feminism doesn’t need to be respectable. It doesn’t need to be palatable to the ruling class.

We remember Steinem’s history, not the marketable version.