The Real Legacy Of Gloria Steinem

Glowing obituaries are pouring in after the death of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, who was born in 1934. The Associated Press called her “a potent voice of US feminism,” and the Washington Post heralded her as the “lodestar of the modern women’s movement.” It is hard to overstate her influence upon Western women.

Gloria Steinem wasn’t just one among many feminists; she was the “it” girl who normalized feminism and made it broadly attractive. Prior to her arrival on the scene, the movement was populated by angry, cantankerous, and mentally ill women whose irascibility made them difficult to work with: Kate Millett was mentally ill and an “out” bisexual, Angela Davis was an angry Black Panther, and Betty Friedan wasn’t the kind of woman other women dreamed of being like. And then came Gloria. Her long blond tresses, aviator glasses, and lithe physique opened the door to a new chapter for feminism. She was articulate, savvy, and a fresh force for the feminist movement.

Not everyone appreciated the star power she brought to the movement. Prominent feminist Phyllis Chesler wrote of her candidly:

What can I say about Gloria? Only this: My generation of feminists needed Susan B. Anthony but we got Mary Tyler Moore. We needed Harriet Tubman but we got Jane Fonda. We got the blonde, blow-dried feminist in the aviator glasses, the one in the skinny jeans, the feminist who posed in a bubble bath for People magazine. As glamorous as a movie star, Gloria repeatedly gave the same pseudo-apology: “I’m not that attractive. I’m only attractive . . . for a feminist.”

Her attractiveness and comparisons to Mary Tyler Moore and Fonda, however, were exactly what the movement needed to take hold in the imaginations of millions of American women. She became the high priestess, carefully crafting an image of “the new feminist woman” through media, protests, and, of course, the pages of Ms. Magazine.

Steinem’s appeal never seemed to wane, morphing with the culture and rebranding the movement to make sure it maintained its freshness. Her one misstep was the Land’s End photoshoot, which outraged its family oriented customer-base and was quickly removed. But she didn’t need families and was able to maintain the limelight through her powerful friends.  As recently as 2022, she appeared with Meghan Markle to discuss the fall of Roe v. Wade. As I explained in my book “The End of Woman,” she may have been the first to say publicly that a child would have ruined her life:

Steinem and Meghan Markle sat together with Vogue magazine, discussing their concerns as the debate over abortion policy returned to the democratic process. The two discussed their concerns and fears, as well as Gloria’s own abortion. “I would have been stopped there,” the eighty-eight-year-old confessed, ruminating over what would have happened if she had had a baby as a young single woman. “I was working as a waitress in London waiting for my visa to India, where I had a fellowship. I wouldn’t have been able to do that. My life would’ve stopped there.”

Today, Steinem is still deeply relevant, and female celebrities are clamoring to pay their respects. Everyone from Hilary Clinton and Jill Biden to Meghan Markle and Lena Dunham is posting their images with the icon.

Though she was fashionable on the outside, her real power was interior. Steinem deeply embodied the new feminist anthropology that took the West by storm, slowly phasing out the millennia-old Judeo-Christian anthropology of Genesis 1. Instead of understanding that men and women were both created in God’s image and likeness and were meant to procreate and serve one another, Gloria promoted the feminist notion that men are contemptible — and women need to become just like them.

This feminist vision, planted centuries before by Mary Wollstonecraft, took root in her life. It can be seen in her quotes such as, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”; “A gender-equal society would be one where the word ‘gender’ does not exist: where everyone can be themselves”; and “Until the masculine role is humanized, women will tend to be much better at solving dangerous conflicts.”

Steinem’s disregard for men can be traced back to her extremely difficult childhood. Her father was a traveling salesman, gone most of the time while providing very little financially or emotionally. Young Gloria was left for months at a time to care for her mentally ill and bedridden mother — truly something no child should be left to do. This brokenness made her one of the Lost Girls, the women with serious issues who believed that scuttling tradition, morals, and gender were the most effective ways to help others. She, like the other Lost Girls, adopted feminism as a kind of bubble wrap against any kind of vulnerability that comes with being a female. Unfortunately, these Lost Girls and their grasp on the culture have cemented into generations of women the belief that their best life is lived in pursuit of radical autonomy, with men and children along as nice accessories, but certainly not essentials to female happiness.

Today, we live with the results of this tragic twisting of women into ersatz men (and not good men). Mental illness is through the roof, with one in every four women on some kind of antidepressant medication, the war between the sexes is at an all-time high (with the New Statesman reporting that among young women, only 25% have a favorable view of men), and the West faces a birth dearth that threatens us on a civilizational level. Western women are simply not having children. This is the real fruit of feminism and the feminist anthropology. It has slowly corroded civilization from the inside out. Gratefully, more and more women and men are waking up to reality.

Today, Steinem is still heralded a heroine, but future generations will likely not treat her so kindly. Truly, she was the model of everything that has betrayed the vital and beautiful nature of women and men. That’s her real legacy. May she rest in peace.

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Carrie Gress is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the founder and co-editor of the online women’s magazine Theology of Home. She is the author of “The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us” (Regnery Publishing, August 2023).

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