Remembering Gloria Steinem

30:15You mentioned in passing that your older sister has six children and you don't have children. And I am always wary about asking women about the subject. But the reason I want to ask you is actually is a personal thing for me, because I have tried and failed to have children on several occasions and it's been very painful. And therefore, I really admire and need women like you to be in the public eye saying that they don't have children. They're OK with it. And I just wonder if I could ask you about that, about whether not having children was an active decision or whether it was something that just didn't happen.

30:58It wasn't a decision in the beginning, because remember that I was growing up in the 1950s, not even the 60s. So I assumed that women had to marry and have children, that there wasn't an option. So there were a lot of years when I just kept putting it off into the future. Oh, yes, I'm going to do that. Just not at this moment. But fortunately, the women's movement came along and said, wait a minute, not all women have to live the same way. You have a choice. And I just kind of discovered that I was happy as I am. So I think I was in a more privileged position in a way, definitely, than you were because I didn't have an unfulfilled wish.

31:46I just discovered that I was okay with the way I was living. And have you ever regretted not having children? Not for a millisecond, no. You know, this is so deep and individual. So I so respect what you were saying. We all have different kinds of regrets, but that is not a regret I have. Thank you for saying that. And I absolutely hear the respect that you have for it. And I really appreciate it. One of the reasons I bring it up is because of what we were talking about there about insidious sexism in medicine, because my experience of fertility medicine was absolutely that, that I was predominantly seen by male clinicians who use language that was designed to make me feel like the failure is a defective woman.

32:37And I wonder if you have seen that in other areas as well, the insidiousness of that language of the other that is so embedded in societal norms. Yes, I think so. You and I together should come up with a list of terms that are bizarre. I wonder what men are told when their sperm are not impregnating someone. Do you think they're told their sperm are incompetent? No, and I would love to say they should be, but no, they shouldn't be. We should just like lift the language up for both of us. Yeah, no, I mean, it's not, how can you assign blame? It just means that they're, the sperm are not twirling at the right speed or the walls of the womb are not, I mean, you know, surely we could put it in a less judgmental way.

33:32Do you think you've ever been judged for not being a biological mother? Yes, I think so in a way that people assume I must be unhappy or unfulfilled or not everyone. But some people, I think, assume that just because they were I think they perhaps would not assume it about a man. I think the other assumption that people make about feminists and activists generally is that they are angry. and the language of female anger is very different from the language around male anger and this is something that I quote you saying all of the time and that you're actually in my latest book where there's a whole chapter that I talk about female anger and I quote you saying there was a whole movie named 12 angry men and that was a good thing when men are angry it's usually assumed to be for a reason when women are angry it's been considered unfeminine or a character defect Where do you think we are now in handling female and male anger?

34:40Have you seen progress in your lifetime? Yes, certainly I've seen a lot of progress and there is an understanding that women have a right to be angry. But I notice it especially in the difference of treatment, including in the press, of political candidates. There was such an emphasis, say, on Hillary Clinton's demeanor. If she was righteously angry in the cause of social justice, suddenly she was an angry woman in a way that a man would not have been. It's seen as a character flaw or trait instead of a realistic reaction to events in the world. Exactly. And male anger is seen as righteous and powerful rather than true-ish.

35:32And it's true racially, too. That is certainly with racism in my country. Clearly, people of color have a right to be angry. But the caricature of an angry black man, as well as a woman, is of a dangerous person rather as somebody who's reacting to reality. Are you angry? Yes, and I do think anger is an important source of energy, because when you see something or experience something that is just not right, anger gives you the energy to do something about it. So anger is an energy cell. And when was the last time you were really angry? The last time I looked at the White House, which was like an hour ago.

36:20It's inescapable. Because we have a virus in this country who happens to be president. There's another Steinem quote. It's a classic. And I would like to say in defense of my country that he lost by six million votes. He did not win the popular vote. He's only there because we have something called the Electoral College, which was a creation of the slaveholding states in the first place, and we should get rid of it. So in defense of this country, we did not vote for him in the majority, and hopefully we will get rid of him soon. I apologize for imposing him on the world. He does not represent, well, I guess he represents peak 30 % of the country, which is in kind of racist backlash against change and sexist backlash and, you know, only interested in money or something, but he doesn't represent the vast majority of this country.

37:22Does that backlash that you describe feel dispiriting to you? Or does it feel more like, I heard someone express it recently as the death rattle of the kind of old order. It's just like flailing around madly trying to impose itself again, but ultimately we'll rid ourselves of it. Well, I do understand. I mean, on the upside, it is not the majority. As I was just explaining, you know, he was not elected by the majority. And it is a sign of change in the sense that the folks who still feel as if they've been deprived of a hierarchy they were born into and now they see slipping away are here. You know, let's say it's something like a third.

38:07And it is a sign of enormous change that it is not the majority. They can see the change. For instance, the first generation of babies in this country who are majority babies of color have already been born. So soon this will not be a majority, quote, white, unquote, country. And they can see that and they feel displaced by that. So it is a backlash against change that is inevitable. And that is cheerful in a sense, but it's also dangerous. I mean, the best analogy I can think of is when a woman who is experiencing domestic violence, we know that the most dangerous time, that is the time she's most likely to be beaten or even killed, is when she is about to escape or has just escaped because she is escaping control.

39:01So in a sense, I think this country is in the position of a woman who is escaping. The good news is she is about to be free. The bad news is it's a moment of maximum danger. so we need to be conscious of both things and look after each other but of course we're not turning back that is such a powerful metaphor

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41:01Your third failure is actually to do with a different country. You mentioned earlier that after graduating from Smith, you spent two years living in India and your failure is related to when you came back. So tell us about that one. I'm so grateful that I had the chance to live in India for two years. I learned so much, including from the huge women's movement there that was very much part of the independence movement. And as one of its great leaders, Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay, said when I was asking her about Gandhi, because she knew him, of course, she listened to me very patiently. And then she said, well, of course, my dear, we taught him everything he knew.

41:48but when I came home I thought all right what I've learned there in terms of the women's movement and its power and importance the method of non-violence so much organizing from the bottom up from the village level up everything that I'd learned there I continued to think was peculiar to India. It wasn't really until I was awakened by the civil rights movement and then the women's movement that I realized that those were universal. So I did waste a couple of years or parts of a couple of years compartmentalizing, thinking geographically instead of thinking humanly. And is that experience, that solitary experience in India when you were in your early 20s, Does it affect you still?

42:37Do you think about it a lot? Oh, yes, I do. Yes. First of all, my oldest friends are there. My oldest continuous friends are in India. Secondly, they are going through some of the same heartache that we are here, because they also have an outrageously undemocratic leader. Modi, the prime minister, is divisive and punitive towards Muslims. In a way, he's more dangerous than Trump, because he's smarter. He's rational. So I'm in touch frequently with my friends who live there and with some friends who go back and forth who were born there and, you know, go back and forth from this country to there.

43:21So I feel very connected to what's going on there. And is there a sense in India that religiously speaking, which I guess then infuses the broader culture, that things are circular rather than hierarchical. I mean, that's a generalization because I understand there's the caste system. But is there something in that, that thing that you were talking about at the very beginning about being linked rather than ranked? Did you bring that back from India? That's interesting. I hadn't thought about making that connection. There is a caste system. There are all the divisions that people are struggling with there.

44:00But on the other hand, there is a strong sense of reincarnation. So the continuity of life is perhaps more part of the culture there than it is here. And I know that you've done a lot of study into sort of Cherokee outlooks and the idea that many other original language don't have gendered pronouns for he and she. And I just sort of found that really beautiful. And I just wondered if you could tell us a bit more about it. Yes, I'm fascinated by that, because I began to think about it because of friends here in what we call Indian country, that is all the many different nations, tribes, cultures that were here before Europeans showed up.

44:46And I'm not sure about all their languages. But in many of them, There is no he and she. A person is a person. And so I began to think about the oldest languages in other parts of the world, in Africa and Asia, and realize, too, that pronouns are not gendered. And to think about the whole concept of gender as political, as an invention, that obviously what joins us as human beings, male or female, regardless of caste or race, is hugely more than the very minor related to reproductive or, I mean, perhaps in the case of race, so-called race, maybe it has something to do with vulnerability to diseases.

45:32But all that is really situational. The truth is we are each uniquely individual. We could never have happened before or again. We're a unique combination of heredity and environment. And we share our humanity, especially in the last 20 years or so has become so clear to me that we invented gender. We invented race. We invented class. We invented caste. And we can disinvent them. And have you felt restricted by the invention of your own gender in intimate relationships ever? Yes, I'm sure. We're raised with a whole set of expectations. When you say that, I think, you know, something as simple as the man you're with will say, well, what movie do you want to see.

46:26And a woman will say, well, what do you want to see? Instead of saying, oh, here's what I'd like to see. So I think generationally, that's getting much, much better. I think younger women are much more likely to actually say what they think and feel. You got married when you were 66. And I wonder why you chose to get married then at that particular age. Well, I mean, the most important reason was that we were in love and we wanted to be together. However, we would not have thought about getting legally married at that age, except that he had been born in South Africa. He was continuously worried about his legal status here.

47:12And clearly, the easiest way to affirm his legal status, and so he could stop worrying about being deported, was to get married. So that was one reason. And then another even more immediate reason was that we were on our way to see my friend Wilma Mankiller and her husband and family in Oklahoma. And she offered us a Cherokee ceremony. So, you know, who could resist that? So we had a wonderful wedding in which Wilma's husband, I have no idea what was said because it was in Cherokee. But the two of us walked around a fire and Wilma got a local woman judge to come and sign the certificate. This was before breakfast.

47:58And then we all had breakfast and that was it. I mean, it was kind of irresistible. I was so sad to read that your husband, David Bale, died four years after you got married in this beautiful ceremony. And I just wanted to say I'm so sorry for your loss. We're living during a time, as we've mentioned, of a global pandemic, and we're recording this remotely. And I know that a lot of people listening will also be suffering some form of loss. And as someone who has really weathered those kind of storms, I wonder whether you had any advice or something that you wish you had known when you were experiencing your own grief that you could share with us?

48:44It's such a individual experience. I'm not sure that I can give advice, but I guess it's to just treasure the time that you had together and try to understand that as long as you remember and other people remember, that person is still with us. I remember sitting in my living room after he died with a yellow pad, writing him a letter. It's not rational, but somehow it meant to me, you know, that he was still here. I related to his grown-up children who are wonderful. I think it's helpful to understand that as long as we remember the person, they are still with us. Mm. You wrote to me that the reason that you chose that failure when you came back from India to interpret and integrate what you'd learned there into the feminist movement is because you felt you had wasted a lot of time.

49:52And then you wrote this gorgeous phrase, and time is all there is. And I wonder how you feel now at the age of 86. What age do you feel inside? side. Well, it's interesting, isn't it? I don't know what your experience is, but I now, for instance, I watch on television, all the authorities saying that the most endangered group are older people, you know, over 75, 80 or whatever. And I think, oh, that's too bad. It takes me a full minute to understand that I'm part of that group. Yeah. So I'm not sure that I'm very good at so far at understanding the reality of age or how precious the remaining time is because we have this both blessed and unfortunate notion that we're immortal somehow.

50:51But I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm sort of making more lists of what I want to do, hoping that I can understand that I'm not immortal. Well, except by your rationale, you actually are immortal because so many people will remember you and have been formatively influenced by you that you leave such an incredible legacy that you will still be around. So you actually are immortal, Gloria Steinem. Well, no, that's very comforting. But don't you feel that there's so much you haven't written or done or said. And certainly my publisher thinks so. I feel exactly the same. And I'm 41. And I had a similar thing recently when they were talking about age groups affected by the pandemic and how they were going to potentially let out young people in their 20s and 30s.

51:46And I was like, well, I'll be fine then. And I was like, no, actually, I don't fit into that category. Do you think that each person has a kind of psychic age? I do. We feel different people feel different. Somebody feels perpetually 30 and somebody else perpetually 40. I can only speak from my own experience, but I do believe that. And I feel perpetually 32. And I felt 32 when I was 10. And why do you think you've picked 32? Such a good question. I think I always felt like an older person trapped in a child's body. And it always really frustrated me because I couldn't wait to have control over my own life and to have independence.

52:29And similarly, I think in my head, I thought 20s were the decade of kind of going out to parties and having fun. And I'm quite introverted. So that didn't appeal to me. Whereas 32 felt like just the right balance of everything. And I thought by then I would have two children. You know, I imagined my life in a very conventional way. And obviously it didn't turn out like that. But when I was 32, I really did feel in sync with myself. Well, that's interesting. And I think you should continue to ask people this question, because I bet each person has a different psychic age. While you were saying that, I was trying to think what mine is.

53:06And I think it's early 40s. Yes. Because that was the time in which I feel like I finally came into the life that I was meant to live and stop trying to live a life that I was expected to have. Oh, my gosh. It's like you are in my head. That's exactly how I feel about my 40s. It's exactly how I feel about my 40s. All right. Well, now you have a whole series of programs. Ask people their psychic age. It's a new podcast. Before I let you go, Gloria, I'm very interested in this notion that you've spoken about in the past about how women become more radical with age. And that's definitely been my experience.

53:50So how radical do you feel now? Well, I think the reason that that is the case is that we outlive society's expectations. And actually, society doesn't have for both good and bad reasons, expectations of women beyond childbearing and childrearing age. I think older men are discriminated against too, but less so because there's a connotation of wisdom or power that comes with older men and not necessarily with older women. So just to be beyond society's expectations is a kind of freedom. And, you know, I always thought that the most revolutionary thing to happen would be for an army of gray-haired women, or concealing their gray hair, but anyway, gray-haired women, to take over the earth because they will be less likely, it's not that all women are virtuous, but they're less likely to be afflicted with the gender need to be in control, more likely to have a familial model of leadership, which depends on cooperation.

55:03And even now, did you see this survey that shows that female-headed nations have responded to this COVID crisis much better than any other nations? Yes, it's extraordinary, particularly nations like New Zealand are just leading the way. Yes, it's not inevitable. It has to do with culture. It's not that women are in any way inherently more virtuous. But given the cultural differences and the differences in women's lives, that older women in league acting together could be a very positive force in this world. I'm very intrigued to know what is on those lists that you are writing of things that you want to do.

55:47Well, first is to meet my book contract that I'm working on with two friends. The image of the women's movement here, perhaps you see online every once in a while the word white feminism, you know, well, if it's white, it's not feminism, obviously, because either it includes everybody or it doesn't. But people think about the women's movement and the civil rights movement, and they divide it racially. And so they don't understand that in my country, black women have always outnumbered or been disproportionately more likely to be creating and part of the women's movement. So we're writing a book about that.

56:29Interesting. And who are you writing it with? Well, Beverly Guy-Sheftel. Do you know who that is? She's a great scholar of women's history at Spelman College. She's been head of the Women's Studies Association, a great woman. And Paula Giddings, who also is an author, a journalist, a professor, and they are African-American women. And so the three of us are bringing our experiences together in this book. I can't wait to read it, but first you have to write it. My final question, Gloria Steinem, is that for me, you are one of the most impressive people I have ever had the privilege to interview.

57:09But I wonder for you, who is the most impressive person you've ever met? Oh, that's so hard. That's your hardest question. I'm sorry, it's a horrible question. Feel free to ignore it and say you can't answer. No, I'm trying to think. I mean, in a way, the person who changed me the most is someone who's a friend and I have only written about briefly. And that's Wilma Mankiller, because she was a pathway into my belated discovery, because our school system doesn't explain to us, You know, our books still start when the first Europeans showed up, not with all the millennia of people who were here before.

57:55That there was and still is on my own subcontinent here, cultures that were and are matrilineal that don't honor gender in the same way that the paradigm of social organization was the circle, not the hierarchy. She was, I think, among and maybe the most influential person I ever interviewed. That is, she changed me in the process of talking to her. I mean, in a way, I've had the luck to interview a lot of people from whom I learned a lot. You know, I mean, in a way, being a journalist is like having a license to learn, to ask questions. Actually, I read somewhere that you interviewed John Lennon, and I just wondered what that experience was like.

58:42They were just coming here. The Beatles had just dawned on the world. And I was assigned by a magazine here to follow them around New York during their first visit, which literally meant I was just following along and writing about them. So it wasn't as if I was able to spend a lot of time with him. I wasn't. But it was clear even then that he was a gifted and imaginative and a wonderful writer. He had written his little book of doggerel prose, wonderful, with that great sense of sound and alliteration that comes with England's understanding of English and speech and all of its different forms of class and so on.

59:27So though I didn't really get to know him, it just was always clear how imaginative and gifted he was even then. Gloria Steinem, I cannot thank you enough, not only for finding the time to come on my podcast, but for spending a life shaping my ideas and challenging me to think and writing the most brilliant things. and you are one of my heroes and it's just been such a privilege for me to talk to you. So you have lived up to every single expectation, if not exceeded them. Thank you so, so much. Well, and I just want to say that I feel about you that I just had to wait for some of my friends to be born.

1:00:11Oh my God, that's the most beautiful thing you could say. I'm so grateful for your work, for your words, for writing, interviewing. Thank you so much. Thank you.

1:00:30The wild world of college football continues Labor Day weekend. On Saturday, East Carolina looks to shock Alabama, and Baylor and Auburn battle it out in Atlanta in the Aflac kickoff game. Then, Clemson hits the road, looking to spoil Lane Kiffin's Death Valley debut. Sunday night, it's Louisville versus Ole Miss in Nashville in the inaugural Liberty Mutual Music City kickoff game. College Football Labor Day weekend continues Saturday and Sunday on ABC and the ESPN app.