Gloria Steinem Stayed Positive, Even as the Manosphere Took Hold
New York Times · LC · trust 59/100
The feminist icon thought many women would carry on her legacy. But at an unsteady time for feminism, how will the movement carry on?
Listen · 8:05 min Share full article 0 Gloria Steinem hosting a discussion at her home last year, focused on women’s health. Credit... Nina Westervelt for The New York Times By Julie Bosman and Ruth Graham
And in recent years, after the fall of Roe v. Wade and the election of Donald Trump, some of the attendees arrived with the expectation that their host would feel as despairing as they did.
“People would walk in and say, ‘God, she’s going to be so depressed,’” said Cindi Leive, an executive producer of “Dear Ms.,” a documentary series on the magazine Ms. Steinem co-founded. “This woman is seeing everything she’s worked for crumble all around her.”
But people who were close to Ms. Steinem, who died on Wednesday at 92, said that she was more focused on counting victories than defeats, even in her later years when feminism was dealt a series of bruising setbacks. As reality shows and social media influencers glorifying traditional gender roles help shape popular culture, and access to contraceptives and abortion was abruptly curtailed in many states, Ms. Steinem held a longer view, her friends said.
After she made speeches at college campuses and conferences, she would come back home with stories of the progress that she was seeing around the country, a continuation of the transformations that she helped usher in beginning in the 1970s.
“She felt that battles were unfinished,” said Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who with Ms. Steinem and other women founded Ms. magazine. “But she focused me and everybody else on the future. She really didn’t want to give the tradwives and the manosphere the credit for being long-lasting.”
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