Earlier this week, Broadsheet tackled Gloria Steinem's much e-mailed New York Times Op-Ed in which she declared, "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life." Catherine Price wrote that while Steinem claimed to not be "advocating a competition for who has it toughest," she was, well, clearly "advocating a competition for who has it toughest." When Salon's Rebecca Traister wrote about Hillary Clinton's surprise New Hampshire victory, she also touched on Steinem's piece: "God, it was so embarrassing, so 1972, so Women's Studies 101. What was more embarrassing was that it was so right on."
Now comes another take that refuses to pull any punches on the Steinem essay and it's perhaps from the unlikeliest of places: Glamour magazine's Glamocracy blog. Caille Millner writes:
Sure enough, women of color didn't join your movement, Ms. Steinem, and I'm guessing it's because you talked to them back then the way that you did in this essay. You said, "the sex barrier [is] not taken as seriously as the racial one." How would you know, Ms. Steinem, having never been on that other side? You pulled out that old I'm-the-bigger-victim routine, complaining that black men were given the right to vote before white women, while forgetting that black men were prevented from exercising that right because of poll taxes and the threat of being lynched.
The battles of the 1960s are over, Ms. Steinem. But there are new battles to be fought that affect all women, young and old, rich and poor, black, white, Latina, Asian. Right now you're not helping us in those battles. You're being -- yes, that word you hate, "divisive."
Thoughts?
Shares