ACLU Women's Rights Advocate Honors Gloria Steinem's Legacy

Reeling from the crushing results of the presidential election in 2016, I wrote Gloria Steinem a letter. I detailed my plans to attend law school to pursue gender justice work, and I included a small request. Although she coined so many legendary phrases, the simplicity of one has always resonated with me: “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” I asked her to write that pivotal quote down so I could have her words tattooed in her handwriting. Two months later, I received a manila envelope in the mail with a piece of paper that had the quote and her signature. I promptly got both tattooed on my rib as a physical embodiment of her enduring and indefatigable spirit.

When I first learned that Steinem had died, I couldn’t imagine a world without her. In fact, I can’t recall a time when I didn’t know who Steinem was. She has been a figure so ingrained in the fabric of our culture for over 60 years as one of the architects of the feminist movement. She saw women’s lives in all their complexity and refused to accept the world as it was, fighting for structural, legal, and political change so that women could live their most authentic lives. The feminist movement is larger than any one person, and she would be the first to admit that. Yet, it’s difficult to imagine the movement being where it is today without Steinem.

It feels especially devastating to lose Steinem as the Trump administration’s unrelenting attack on women’s rights threatens her life’s work. With reproductive rights, childbearing, and gender roles at the center of our cultural discourse, the fights of the future remain the fights of the past as we work to defend our progress. And while it’s easy to feel despondent about the current rollback of so many civil rights we hold dear, we must remember that Steinem, who knew the work was never finished, remained an eternal optimist. She would often say, “Hope is a form of planning.” The ACLU Women’s Rights Project, of which Steinem served on an advisory committee that guided our early work, shares Steinem’s vision of imagining the world as it can be — one of full equality — and will continue to work tirelessly to make that vision a reality.

Steinem challenged systems of power through trailblazing journalism and co-founded Ms. Magazine in 1971, creating one of the first national platforms dedicated to feminist voices. As an organizer, she founded the National Women’s Political Caucus to elect women to office. Steinem also founded the Women’s Action Alliance, which created a network of feminist activists that helped open the first domestic violence shelters among other accomplishments. She also founded the Women’s Media Center, which addressed issues of women’s representation in media. Steinem knew that real change begins when we recognize our collective power, and she put that into practice each day.

Steinem rose to prominence in the 1960s in an ecosystem that cast a white woman as the face of the feminist movement. However, she used her visibility to uplift all women, adopting the mantra, “We are linked, not ranked.” Steinem traveled across the country on speaking tours with Black activists, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and Flo Kennedy. Mainstream media continuously tried to paint Steinem as the singular embodiment of the feminist movement, but she would time and again acknowledge the sources behind her politics, and used her standing to redistribute the access, power, and authority she held.

The right to reproductive freedom brought Steinem into the feminist movement in 1969 as a journalist covering a speak-out of women discussing the illegal abortions they had. Steinem dedicated her 2015 memoir, “My Life on the Road”, to a doctor in London who performed an abortion she had when she was 22 years old. Steinem’s foundational belief that reproductive autonomy was essential for women’s equal citizenship informed her work. For Steinem, feminism does not mean women should reject marriage or parenthood, but that they should have the freedom to decide for themselves. Steinem herself chose not to have children, a decision she publicly stated she never regretted. “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer,” she said in a 2011 interview with comedian Chelsea Handler on her show “Chelsea Lately.” Steinem’s candor feels particularly relevant today with the rise of tradwife influencers, who advocate for a return to traditional gender roles and the wave of pro-natalist policies at the federal level.

I had the privilege of seeing Steinem in person this past July, just two months before her death. I became overwhelmed seeing her frailty in person at 92 years old. Steinem had been such a guiding light in my life and that of so many others that I thought she would live on forever.

I took gender studies classes in college that expanded my understanding of Steinem’s work and inspired me to first pursue a career in film, recognizing the power of media to shift social consciousness. After several years, the interminably slow pace of reform in the industry made me want to have a more tangible and immediate impact, influencing my decision to attend law school. As a staff attorney in the Women’s Rights Project, I push for change and systemic reform in institutions that perpetuate discrimination against women and girls. Steinem’s wisdom has been at the core of all the work I’ve done and all the work I’ve yet to do.

“People often ask me if I’m ‘passing the torch,’” Steinem said in a speech to the National Press Club in 2013. “I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much. And I’m using it to light the torches of others.” Steinem’s monumental legacy carries on in the countless number of people whose authentic lives were made possible because she made it so.

My torch has been lit, and for that, I will be forever grateful. May her memory be a blessing and may she rest in power.