High Profile
Sister traveller
Elaine Storkey
For decades, the journalist and activist Gloria Steinem has been
(as she put it) a'somewhat accidental'symbol of the women's
movement. ThirdWay caught her briefly at home in New York.
I'm looking at a lovely picture of you by Annie
Leibovitz in the February issue of Vogue, which shows you sitting
pensively at your desk, exuding peaceful solitude…
It must have been a rare moment!
In your latest book, My Life on the Road,1 you describe
a struggle in yourself between individualism (inherited both from
your father and, I suppose, from US culture) and community. I'm
curious to know when that conflict was resolved for you, and
how.
I understand what you mean, but the tension in my life was more
being on the road versus making a home. I think it was always
fairly clear to me that I needed a community wherever I was, and
the social justice movement certainly provides a community; but it
doesn't necessarily provide a home.
I had not had a home when I was growing up - or, at least, not a
very consistent home, since we were living in a trailer much of the
time and I wasn't going to school. I found myself longing for the
life I saw in the movies, in that way that as children we want to
be like everybody else. I kept thinking that I wanted a normal
house and to go to school like the other kids, and to have a horse,
you know?
I found your account of your upbringing quite moving -
your father's restlessness and optimism, your mother's
struggle,mentally and emotionally, with the kind of lifestyle you
had.What questions would you ask them now about the way they
brought you up?
Well, the most important thing about my parents was that they
loved me and they treated me better than they treated themselves. I
recognise their struggle in their own lives, and that [affected]
me; but I also feel lucky that I had that kind of parenting. You
know, they treated me like an individual, no matter how young I
was, and asked me what I wanted -which many parents don't.
I love the story that you pointed out to your father
that you couldn't have dessert because you hadn't finished your
first course, and he said: 'But sometimes you're hungry for one
thing and not another.'
That was so, so like my father!
You identify the National Women's Conference in Houston
in 19772 as one of those events that divide life into 'before' and
'after'.Why do you see it that way? You were already a very strong
feminist then, weren't you, and already changing people's
lives?
Well, I see what you mean. I could also divide my life into
before and after going to cover an abortion hearing [for New York
in 1969] and hearing women tell the truth in public for the first
time. That was also a dividing line. It's just that - how shall I
say? - that hearing made me understand what was wrong, that we had
a right to stand up and speak about unequal treatment; but I'm not
sure that before Houston I understood that women could do
everything in the world that men do. In my heart I think [that]
because I had never before seen women running massive national
events, I had internalised certain unconscious ideas of what women
were and were not capable of. And suddenly I realised that of
course we can do anything that men can do, and vice versa -we're
all human beings.
For instance, we were worried about security because there were
massive right-wing protests against that conference and so,with
money we could ill afford, we hired a group of retired police
officers who had previously provided security for the Democratic
Convention. As it turned out, there were hundreds of women in red
T-shirts who were accustomed to doing movement events and they were
the ones who provided the real security.The cops hadn't a clue what
was going on.
I laughed my socks off when I came to that
bit!
So, you might say that what I learnt from the abortion hearing
was more remedial, but this was more positive.
You talk about the three stages of your political
involvement: your volunteering as a student, and then the founding
of the National Women's Political Caucus 3 in 1971, and finally the
independent campaigning, undertaking real democratic enquiry that
got to the heart of what representative government is all about.
Why do you think that campaigning was so successful?
Social justice movements are trusted more than political
parties, so it seems important to contribute what we can uniquely
contribute, as opposed to just volunteering inside a political
party and repeating what's already been done and saying the words
that are already being said. There's a general principle that you
and I are probably doing the right thing when we do what we can
uniquely do, and I think that's true of groups as well.
How easy do you find it to deal with misrepresentation
by the media?
It's very frustrating, because there seems to be a generalised
media [assumption] that only the negative is news, which is, I
think, part of the reason that, in [the US] at least,many people
don't feel positively about the media. As our networks say, 'If it
bleeds, it leads.' And that [applies to] the movement - or any
social justice movement - so that only conflicts within it are
news. It's important to know the negative news, but it's also
important to have news of solutions - that is crucial.
What about when you are misrepresented
yourself?
Well, for a long time it was very difficult. I felt as if I was
standing on the ground and I was holding the string of a large
balloon which was floating in the air, which the media were
treating as if it were me. It just felt out of control. Over time,
it has gotten better, just because, you know, the impressions
[given] of a single human being can't remain completely inauthentic
over a long period of time. So, now that it's, like, 40 years later
- or almost 50 years - it's not as bad as it was; but it is still
annoying. I mean, I'm 81 years old and I'm still introduced
sometimes as an ex-Bunny!4
Your attitude to organised religion is often very
negative - which is completely understandable - but you describe
yourself as a pagan who sees God in all things and you also
identify with religious people who you feel express a similar sense
of God, such as Father [Harvey] Egan. 5
He was a wonderful man, yeah.
But there are many other people you clearly admire -
Rosa Parks,Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson - who were involved
in institutional Christianity.
You know, I have a great respect [for] and kinship with people
inside monotheistic institutional religions who are striving to
restore spirituality to those religions; but I do feel, myself,
that monotheism is part of the problem, not the solution.
In what way part of the problem?
Because… 'If God is male, then the male is God,'6 you know. Even
India has different manifestations of godliness, so that there are
female and animal personas and it [leans] a little more towards God
in all living things.
Have you ever gone on a trip down the Nile?When you go, in a
kind of houseboat, from the African [reaches] of the Nile towards
Cairo, you go ashore and see the remains of old temples and so on,
and in the oldest ones you can see that everything is
represented:men,women, birds… When you [next] go ashore, it's a
thousand years later and suddenly there's not so much nature and
the goddess has a son but no daughter. Then you get back in the
boat and it's another thousand years almost and the son has grown
up to be a [divine] consort. And this continues until you get to
the mosques,which (like churches in Europe) are often built on top
of pagan sites, and in mosques no representation of females or
nature is allowed.
I was reading the [early-20th-century] Egyptologist James Henry
Breasted and he said, you know, monotheism is but imperialism in
religion. Withdrawing God from females and nature was part of
making it possible to conquer females and nature.
I can see that completely. I think that's why Christian
theology today is focusing more and more on escaping from a
gendered God to a God that is beyond gender but also is directly in
touch with and delighting in creation.
You know, I can't find any comfort in monotheism, but I do
understand that there are many people within it who are trying to
restore a sense of godliness in all living things, and I think we
have common cause.
What do you think are the central issues for women
globally today?
The central issue is, of course, women's bodies. You know, the
one thing men don't have are wombs and the impulse of male-dominant
cultures has been to control reproduction and therefore to control
the bodies of women. So, establishing our right just to control our
own lives from the skin in, and to be physically safe, is the
central issue - or themost basic issue, I would say.
And then, of course, comes the question of work. Women's work is
often not paid at all, because what we do is not considered work,
you know? I mean, what is considered work is something men could
do, whether or not they are doing it. But physical safety, I would
say, and the ability to protect our own bodies have to come first,
because (for instance) violence against females, in all of its
forms, whether it is sexualised violence in war zones or female
genital mutilation or domestic violence -
Honour killings.
- or son surpluses and daughter deficits in China and India… For
the first time that we are aware of, there are now fewer females on
earth than males.
I've just written a book that looks at the ubiquity of
violence against women.7 I kept encountering this phenomenon when I
was president of Tearfund - in different forms, for different
reasons, with different justifications.What do we do about
it?
I guess the short answer is 'everything'.We do our best to
protect each other, to change laws and police practices to show
that anti-female violence is taken seriously and is not just seen
as inevitable or even attracted by the victim(as sexualised
violence frequently is).
There is a book called Sex and World Peace,8 by Valerie
Hudson and other scholars, which points out that the single
greatest determinant of whether a country is violent within itself,
or will be willing to use military violence against another
country, is not poverty, not access to natural resources, not
religion or even degree of democracy, it's violence against
females.
It's not that female life is any more important than male
life, no, but that it's what we see first and most intimately.
[Violence against females] convinces us that one group of people
has a right to dominate the other, which then normalises racism and
[religious discrimination and so on], and normalises
violence.
The more we can explain that, the more likely we are to
have foreign-policy-makers who understand their stake in combating
violence against women because it's what normalises all other
violence.
It gladdens my heart to hear that articulated so
strongly! My book was reviewed by a bloke who said: 'I can't
understand why Elaine Storkey bangs on about violence against
women. There's farm ore violence against men in the
world.'
Yeah, well… When was the last time he walked in the street
and was fearful in the way that many women are fearful?
Exactly. Can I ask what you feel about militarism
and the kind of wars we are fighting today?
Well, it just seems obvious that the only reason for
violence is immediate self-defence. I can see no other
justification.
Actually, the single most frightening thing to me is that
the ability to destroy large swathes of humanity with the hydrogen
bomb and other doomsday weapons will coincide with the religions
that are still teaching that life after death is better than life.
I mean, as long as we want to live we can talk to each other, but
when people believe that suicide will land them in heaven with all
kinds of benefits, it's very dangerous.
Who could argue with that? But are you saying that
a religion that focuses on our human flourishing here and now is in
itself better than a religion that claims that if you do the right
things now, you'll go somewhere better when you
die?
Yes. And actually these very elaborate ideas of heaven
came with patriarchy. The oldest cultures didn't have elaborate
ideas of heaven, they just said:When you die, you join your
ancestors, or something. The idea that you might have a reward in
heaven came with patriarchy, because the power of giving birth is,
obviously, a huge symbolic power and essentially the patriarchal
religions took it over by saying: Yes, you were born of woman, and
therefore you were born in sin, but you can be reborn through men,
and we will sprinkle imitation birth fluid over your head and give
you a new name and - if you obey the patriarchy -we can go one
better than women and give you everlasting life.
How would you conceive of heaven if you believed
in such a thing?
I don't believe in heaven. I mean, I think we all - all
living things - change form. As physicists are always telling us,
nothing is destroyed, it just changes form.
So, what will become of your human identity? Or is
there no such thing?
You know, I don't know. I was the child of a mother and
two grandmothers who were theosophists, so they believed in
reincarnation. I don't think I do. There is a cycle of life, but I
am not so egocentric as to think that you're just going to turn up
as some other person. It doesn't make sense tome.
Do you see justice as something transcendent or is
it just a matter of doing as you would be done
by?
Well, certainly [you should] treat other people as you
would want to be treated. I mean, the Golden Rule is quite
practical.However, I do think that women have to reverse it
sometimes, because we need to learn to treat ourselves better - as
well as we treat others.
Yes, absolutely.
But in any case there is some sort of balance there - a
sense that you and I are not more important than anyone else but
we're not less important, either, and that any hierarchy that is
based on sex or race or ethnicity is unjust. It's just plain wrong.
Each of us is a unique miracle of heredity and environment combined
in a way that could never have happened before and could never
happen again.
That's one truth. The other truth is that we are human, we
share humanity, so we are each of us unique and each of us part of
a shared human family that is a circle, not a hierarchy.We are
linked, not ranked.
It's interesting that I am within the Christian
framework and you are somewhere outside it and yet we agree
fundamentally about the unique significance of every human person
and the wrongness of hierarchy, which nearly always leads to
injustice and the abuse of power.
You know, I suspect that the paths that you and I have
chosen, different paths to the same goal, probably has to do with
the way we were brought up.
Oh, it probably has a lot to do with
that!
Right! And both paths are fine.We couldn't possibly be all
on the same path, right?
Of course not. I suppose I'd want to say that for
me there is something very significant about prayer: bringing my
needs, as well as what I see as the needs of the world, to what I
believe is a personal God. That certainly helps to articulate what
is wrong and what needs to be done.
Right. Well, you know, prayer and meditation are the same
thing, really. I mean, we're… How shall I say? We're putting a hope
and an intention out there,which is crucial.Hope is in and of
itself a form of planning.
I suppose the main difference between us is that
my hope ultimately is in a Saviour. I can understand that you would
see that as part of the patriarchy…
Well, I read Elaine Pagels' book The Gnostic Gospels9 and
it did seem to me that Jesus was a far nicer guy than he is often
portrayed.
Yes, I think so.
Imean, he presented himself as a teacher. According to The
Gnostic Gospels, he didn't say he was the Son of God and he made
fun of the idea of heaven - sort of 'If heaven were in the air, the
birds would be there. If heaven were in the ocean, the fish would
be…' You know? In the gnostic scrolls, he seems like an utterly
admirable person.
Even in the traditional Gospels, he shows enormous
respect for a menstruating woman and he tells her that it's
actually her faith, her initiative, her sense of rightness that
have freed her. I think there's lots of positive
things going on there.
Yeah, and there's a lot of rewriting going on there, but
there still remains that verse 'If you bring forth what is within
you, what you bring forth will save you.'10 You know, that is still
so present.
Is there anything you would have done differently,
looking back…?
Oh, I'm sure. Hundreds of things! Hundreds of
things!
The thing that comes to mind is that I wasted time - and
since time is all there is, really… I mean, I wasted time by
continuing to do things I already knew how to do, rather than
pressing the boundaries.
For me, this has a lot to do with writing, because the
irony of a social justice movement is that it gives you what you
want most in life to write about but it takes away the time to do
it. I do wish I had written more.
What would you have written?
Well, you can only write things at certain times in your
life, so if I'd been writing in Toledo [where I grew up,] I
probably would have written a novel called 'Getting
Out'!
Would it have had a heroine?
Well, I'm no heroine, but it would have had a personal
voice, yes. Actually, I can't imagine myself writing fiction,
because I'm just too interested in what's actually going
on.
There's something I should have written long ago when
Wilma Mankiller was still alive, who was the chief of the Cherokee
Nation - and I'm still going to try to do this, to write about
features of indigenous cultures that we could learn from and
restore now, because there is a past, in pretty much every part of
the world that I know about, of circular rather than hierarchical
structures. There were indigenous cultures which did not have the
same kind of gender roles - indeed, their languages didn't even
have 'he' and 'she'.
You know, the degree of violence in society is related to
the whole idea that hierarchy is the only form of social
organisation. What gives me faith that we can have a culture once
again in which there is not the same kind of hierarchy based on
birth is that it did exist for most of human history, so it could
exist again in a new way. I'd like to draw attention to those
cultures.
Biography
Gloria Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1934 and was educated
at Waite High School in Toledo and Western High School in
Washington. She attended Smith College, a private women's liberal
arts college in Massachusetts, graduating in 1956.
After two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow, she
was hired in 1960 as assistant editor of the satirical magazine
Help!. Esquire gave her her first 'serious' freelance assignment,
on contraception, in 1962. In'63 she wrote 'A Bunny's Tale' for
Show and in '64 she interviewed John Lennon for Cosmopolitan.
In'65, she wrote a regular segment for NBC's weekly satirical revue
That Was the Week that Was.
In 1968, she helped to found the magazine New York, for which
she wrote a political column. In'69, her article 'After Black
Power,Women's Liberation' brought her to national attention. In
1970, Time ran her essay 'What It Would Be Like If Women Win'.
In 1971, she was one of more than 300 women who founded the
National Women's Political Caucus. She also co-founded the Women's
Action Alliance with Dorothy Pitman Hughes.
The following year, again with Pitman Hughes, she co-founded the
liberal feminist magazine Ms., of which she was an editor for 15
years.
In 1992, she co-founded Choice USA (now Urge).
In 1993, she co-produced and narrated an Emmy-
Award-winning documentary for HBO called Multiple Personalities:
The search for deadly memories and coproduced for Lifetime a TV
movie, Better Off Dead.
In 2005, she co-founded the Women's Media Center with Jane
Fonda and Robin Morgan.
Her books include Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
(1983), Revolution from Within: A book of self-esteem (1992),
Moving beyond Words (1993) and, in India, As If Women Matter
(2014). My Life on the Road was published by Oneworld last
October.
She has received numerous honours, including the
Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill
Medal in 2013.
She was married from 2000 until her husband's death in
2003.
This interview was conducted on January 21,
2016.
1 Oneworld Publications, 2015
2 The Conference was held over four days and attracted some
2,000 delegates and 15-20,000 observers. The goal was to agree a
'plan of action' on women's rights to be presented to President
Carter and Congress.
3 See www.nwpc.org/about.
4 In 1963, Steinemworked undercover for a month at the Playboy
Club in New York, to write a two-part exposé for the magazine
Show.See bit.ly/1LgGhBu.
5 A Roman Catholic parish priest in Minneapolis who
controversially invited Steinem to speak from his pulpit in
1978
6 Mary Daly in Beyond God the Father: Toward a philosophy of
women's liberation (Beacon Press,1973)
7 Scars across Humanity:Understanding and overcoming violence
against women (SPCK,2015)
8 Columbia University Press, 2012
9 The Gnostic Gospels(Vintage Books, 1979)
10 From the Gospel of Thomas