{"id":877,"date":"2026-09-04T23:37:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T23:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=877"},"modified":"2026-09-04T23:37:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T23:37:43","slug":"the-gloria-steinem-i-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=877","title":{"rendered":"The Gloria Steinem I knew"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I first met Gloria Steinem at the Caf\u00e9 des Artistes in October 1997. That bohemian spot in Lower Manhattan was the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin\u2019s favorite meeting place. She once told me that she often held \u201cfeminist mafia\u201d summits in its backroom. Indeed, visiting Dworkin was the main purpose of my trip to New York that year; I\u2019d asked for her help to establish an international campaign to improve criminal justice responses to rape and sexual assault. And Dworkin was Steinem\u2019s close friend and feminist ally.<\/p>\n

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A number of feminist icons were at the Caf\u00e9 that day \u2014 but all heads turned when Steinem walked in. Dressed in skintight jeans, heeled boots, a brightly colored cowl-neck sweater and eye-catching jewelry, she oozed confidence. She looked so different from the rest of us, dutifully clad in our \u201cfeminist uniform\u201d of ill-fitting jeans, slogan t-shirts and sneakers. Nevertheless, I noted a palpable affection between Dworkin and Steinem that day, though both told me that they had had to agree to disagree on certain important issues, not least the Lewinsky fiasco.<\/p>\n

The scandal had broken three months later, in January 1998. In March of that year, Steinem published her defense of Bill Clinton in The New York Times<\/em>. I received a fax from Dworkin the same day: she couldn\u2019t understand how Steinem could possibly defend the world\u2019s most powerful man against so many allegations of abuse from women. \u201cFeminists,\u201d she wrote, \u201care supposed to stand by all women to whom this happens. Gloria has betrayed those women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Steinem was adamant: she said that even if the allegations against Clinton were true, feminists were right not to demand his resignation or impeachment. She argued that as long as Congress was controlled by conservatives \u2014 who were hostile to women\u2019s rights in general \u2014 it was better that he remain in power: since he was a crucial defender of abortion rights and had committed to ending violence against women. In practice, this led to some strange moral contortions. In the case of one accuser, for instance, Steinem defined what Clinton had done as a crude, clumsy sexual advance. In fact, at least technically, it was sexual assault.<\/p>\n

This tension \u2014 between principle and strategy \u2014 would persist throughout her life. I had long labeled her a liberal feminist, insofar as she was committed to reform rather than a root-and-branch shake up of the patriarchal system. Yet Steinem often described herself as a radical feminist, saying that women were oppressed under a \u201csexual caste system\u201d. These attitudes were clear in 1987, when she publicly disagreed with feminists like Susan Brownmiller about whether Hedda Nussbaum had been complicit in the brutal killing of her six-year-old adopted daughter at the hands of her common-law husband Joel Steinberg, a wealthy lawyer accused of first-degree manslaughter. For allowing the death of a child, Nussbaum initially faced charges herself \u2014 but these were dropped once it emerged Steinberg had terrorized and beaten her too.<\/p>\n

Alongside other prominent feminists \u2014 including Dworkin,\u00a0 Martina Navratilova, Susan Sarandon, and Shirley Chisholm \u2014 Brownmiller accused Steinem of seeing Nussbaum as a \u201chelpless victim\u201d: one who dodged responsibility for failing to protect her daughter. \u201cAs an extreme victim,\u201d Steinem responded, \u201c[Nussbaum] forces us to do one of two things: reject and blame her, or think we could be her. It\u2019s hard to think we could be her \u2014 so we\u2019d rather blame her\u201d.<\/p>\n

That familiar blend of empathy and pragmatism was equally apparent in 1999, when Dworkin reported being drug-raped in a Paris hotel room. Some feminists abandoned her, thinking she had gone crazy. But not Steinem, who sent a psychiatrist specialized in PTSD to assess her. Dworkin never forgot this, even reminding me of it the last time I saw her. Despite their huge difference of opinion on the Clinton scandal, she and Steinem remained close. She was, by all accounts, a deeply loyal friend. I witnessed this first-hand. Despite disagreeing with my views on prostitution, she she enthusiastically agreed to blurb my 2017 book on the subject, in which I outlined the abolitionist position.<\/p>\n

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This flexibility was also clear when it came to gender ideology.\u00a0 In a 1977 essay, commenting on Jan Morris\u2019 medical transition, Steinem argued that a sexist, polarized society is often a factor in pressurizing individuals to alter their bodies \u2014 rather than fight the prejudice that comes from sex stereotypes. Yet that didn\u2019t stop Steinem from later establishing herself as a full-blown ally of transgender rights. As late as 2012, she expressed agreement with Janice Raymond\u2019s book The Transsexual Empire<\/em>, dismissed by gender ideologues as \u201chate speech\u201d. But just a year later, she shifted on the issue, writing in The Advocate <\/em>that \u201ctrans people should be celebrated, not questioned\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rachel Moran, author of Paid For<\/em>, also disagreed with Steinem on the transgender issue \u2014 but appreciated her \u201crespectful tones\u201d and the \u201copen way\u201d she discussed such matters. \u201cThat\u2019s rare in this cultural moment,\u201d Moran says. \u201cShe certainly understood prostitution as a system of misogynistic exploitation, we had numerous conversations about it. She did a lot of good in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

That subtlety sometimes cost her. Fiona Broadfoot, a British sex-trade survivor, got to know Steinem following a 2017 summit on how to eradicate the practice. \u201cShe always stood with prostitution survivors, despite getting a load of flak from the pro-prostitution lobby,\u201d Broadfoot tells me. \u201cShe saw women like me as her equal, there wasn\u2019t an ounce of snobbery or superiority about her.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last time I was in contact with Steinem was on her 85th birthday, in 2019. She joked about looking forward to a good-natured sparring session the next time we met. There are lessons to be learned from this approach to politics. Though Steinem battled to end other kinds of institutionalized oppression \u2014 including racism \u2014 she never embraced the omnicause. Her absolute priority was the liberation of all women and girls globally. More to the point, she didn\u2019t believe in a tick-box list of prescribed opinions, despite remaining firmly on the Left. Ultimately, she believed in building bridges across difference, now a dying art, particularly among younger generations.<\/p>\n

Steinem lived long enough to see many of the rights feminists of her generation won being lost again. What will her legacy be? Beyond an openness to dissent, younger feminists will hopefully recognize how tenuous those rights are. May that momentum keep the fight going.<\/p>\n

There are reasons for optimism. Whatever feminists think about Steinem\u2019s views \u2014 or her relationship with the US government \u2014 there seems to be universal respect for her tenacity and outspokenness. Her role in the women\u2019s liberation movement was pivotal, in that she didn\u2019t try to hide the fact that she believed that the larger goals of feminism mattered more than any individual woman\u2019s interests. That\u2019s a hard path to tread, and I for one couldn\u2019t do it. But Steinem did so with honesty and integrity, her principles intact until the end.<\/p>\n

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I first met Gloria Steinem at the Caf\u00e9 des Artistes in October 1997. That bohemian spot in Lower Manhattan was the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin\u2019s favorite meeting place. She once told me that she often held \u201cfeminist mafia\u201d summits in its backroom. 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