The New York Times unfurled a 5,000-word near-hagiographic obituary for feminist and militant abortion advocate Gloria Steinem: “Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92 -- She challenged sexist assumptions, helping women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at work, at home and in society at large.” She even deployed a line that has become a rallying cry for liberal women: “Nevertheless, she persisted.”
Reporter Katharine Seelye retired from the paper in 2022 but still works part-time writing obituaries. She really pulled out the stops for Steinem:
Gloria Steinem, the feminist crusader who, in galvanizing the modern women’s movement, helped millions of women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at home, at work and in society at large, died on Wednesday at her home in New York City. She was 92.
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Calling herself “an entrepreneur of social change,” Ms. Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom.
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Her own feminist awakening didn’t come until her mid-30s, when, as a journalist in 1969, she attended a “speak out” of women discussing their illegal abortions. Charismatic, articulate, media savvy, deeply empathetic and a workaholic, she evolved into a political and cultural force.
Seelye boasted Steinem's “lifestyle and unapologetic feminist beliefs made her a lightning rod, adored (though not always) by liberals, demonized (always) by conservatives” because “she and other single women were caricatured as man-hating, bra-burning lesbians intent on upending the social order and destroying the American family.”
“Much of the hostility toward her was public and overt — especially with the rise of the religious right and the conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly — but it was also woven into the fabric of her everyday life,” she added.
Regarding Phyllis Schlafly: The Times marked the 2016 death of the conservative anti-feminist activist with a graceless farewell -- a literal “hatchet job.” Obituary writer Douglas Martin declared: “In her time, Mrs. Schlafly was one of the most polarizing figures in American public life, a self-described housewife who displayed a moral ferocity reminiscent of the ax-wielding prohibitionist Carry Nation….”
Going back to Steinem, Seelye credited economic and cultural trends that enlarged the scope of female agency solely to the efforts of the left-wing “women's movement”:
Some of the achievements of the women’s movement — greater economic independence, more legal rights and protections, inroads into all levels of virtually every profession, more men sharing domestic responsibilities — may be taken for granted today. But they were unimaginable when the movement began.
And for Ms. Steinem and many others, that struggle never ended.
Women still earn less than men for the same work (81 cents for every dollar made by a man, according to the 2024 census). The Equal Rights Amendment, prohibiting discrimination on account of sex, was belatedly ratified but is still not part of the Constitution. The 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, a central goal of the movement, was overturned in 2022; some states went on to reverse or curtail other hard-won reproductive rights. No woman has been elected president. Anti-female bias remains entrenched.
Seelye's dire pronouncements above are questionable, but that “81 cents for every dollar” figure was simply factually misleading because those figures aren't controlled for things like experience and education. When they are, the gap almost disappears.
Seelye shared some history about Steinem’s rivalry with first-wave feminist Betty Friedan then continued the advocacy journalism: “She moved to New York in 1960 and began working as a freelance journalist. At the time, women were not taken seriously as writers; she wanted to cover politics but was stuck with celebrity profiles and fashion.”
Tell that to Dorothy Parker, Joan Didion, Pauline Kael...
Seelye briefly mentioned Steinem’s hypocrisy in the case of serial womanizer (and worse) Bill Clinton, in which she elevated partisan Democratic tactics over the supposedly vital issue of treatment of women, suggesting in a New York Times op-ed what was quickly mocked as the “one free grope” rule:
Over the years, her defense of Bill and Hillary Clinton landed her in political hot water. In an opinion column in The Times in 1998, she defended President Clinton against numerous sexual allegations, saying that his advances toward various women had not been unwelcome or coercive.
Seelye probably thought this was cute: “That [feminist] movement was repeatedly declared passé during Ms. Steinem’s lifetime. Nevertheless, she persisted."
Of course, that was an “ironic" reference to what Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said about liberal feminist hero Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2017, after the Senate voted to order Warren to cease reading a letter Republicans said impugned the character of Trump's attorney general nominee, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”
