I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, which is why a quick obit on Gloria Steinem is hard. I used to admire her and wanted to follow in her footsteps way back when I saw the world very differently. She was the pretty feminist. The cool one. Fashionable, independent, an icon.
She was indeed all of the things they will say about her now, her legacy firmly intact because she never ruffled the feathers of the keepers of culture: trailblazer, legend, pioneer, activist.
There is no doubt her impact on American history is deep and lasting.
Steinem’s efforts back when she started seemed to be a necessary step toward women's rights in dire circumstances. Illegal abortions led to unimaginable horrors, like baby farms where children starved, were beaten, mistreated, and killed. Women dumped their babies because they had no husbands, no welfare, no way to raise their kids.
My own mother almost died trying to give herself an abortion. My grandmother tried to abort my father but failed. I was taught to believe that children are an obligation and a burden unless you have the perfect life. I would find out later that it isn’t true.
But somewhere along the way, we went from “safe, legal, and rare” to an act of empowerment so casual and widespread it might as well be getting a tattoo. It was never about the baby’s rights because to even think like that made you “one of them,” those bad people on the other side.
My own feelings about abortion have completely reversed. I am not quite ready to write about it, but when I do, I will have to face down my life’s biggest regrets, the beautiful babies that might have been, and my willingness to go along with the feminist lies that brought me to that point, not to mention my own carelessness.
Last year, there were one million abortions, like the year before. One million. How can that possibly be? Because women use abortion as birth control, then pretend it’s all about rape and incest. But we know it isn’t. This is the only right the feminist movement had left, and they are not giving it up.
At some point, feminism had to be sectioned out to make sure everyone was elevated except white women. The more divided women became, the less power they had to protect women, ironically. When it came to standing up for women and girls to play fairly in sports, for instance, icons like Steinem, Jan Fonda, and Hillary Clinton did not have the courage to do so. Instead, they shrank back in fear.
Steinem not only refused to stand up for women to protect themselves in sports and in their private spaces, but she stood firmly in support of biological men playing in women’s sports, even signing a letter in March of 2021 by GLAAD.
Why? Because being called a TERF, like being called a “white feminist,” gets you booted out of utopia. Just look at what happened to JK Rowling.
So it’s hard for me to write about Gloria Steinem in any way that isn’t an indictment of a life that helped take women backward but also turn them into sociopaths who have become disconnected from their vital connection to their own children.
One million abortions because they feel like revenge on “the patriarchy” and an act of rebellion and empowerment. What a time to be alive.
With Lindsay Clancy’s fate still to be determined, thousands of women are online right now, seemingly prepared to wage a new war on the patriarchy: the right to kill even their living children because motherhood is too much of a burden seems to be on the table.
But even so, I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, so I’ll just say, rest in peace.
In a country where effective birth control is basically free to any woman who wants it, how do we have 1 million abortions a year?
It’s almost like they are deliberately choosing abortion over birth control.
Wittier people than me have certainly mastered the challenge of saying nothing nice, or ill, of the Dead.
You came close.
On balance though, Ms. Steinem was an awful woman. I suppose she was a Heroine to some far lefties. But Steinem was an outright coward if she couldn't even say boys should NOT be in girls' sports.
It's easy and reasonable to say, unless you are petrified of the backlash you might get.
You create a Frankenstein, you perish by it.
There, I said it for you.