GLORIA STEINEM AND THE DOMESTICATION OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Gloria Steinem became the most famous establishment face of American feminism. But her political legacy is also one that considerably undermined women's liberation.
Before becoming a feminist celebrity, Steinem directed the Independent Research Service, secretly financed by the CIA to send anti-communists to the 1959 Vienna and 1962 Helsinki World Youth Festivals to carry out pro-imperialist propaganda. When the CIA connection was exposed, Steinem acknowledged and defended it.
This was consistent with the politics she subsequently represented: liberal anti-communism, support for American capitalism, and confidence in the institutions of the existing political order.
The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was potentially far more radical. Millions of working women demanded equal pay, childcare, reproductive freedom and economic independence. Mass demonstrations placed abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment on the national political agenda.
Steinem helped channel much of this insurgent movement toward lobbying, electoral campaigns and loyalty to the Democrat Party. She became a millionaire and embodied a bourgeois feminism increasingly concerned with middle-class and wealthy women's advancement rather than transforming the material conditions confronting working-class women.
The contradiction was enormous. The Democrat Party itself contained powerful forces hostile to abortion rights and the ERA. The 1972 Democratic National Convention rejected an abortion-rights plank. In 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter opposed federal funding for abortion and declared that government should not attempt to make opportunities equal. Carter campaigned for and signed the Hyde Amendment stripping millions of poor women of meaningful access to abortion.
Yet liberal feminism increasingly instructed women to look toward Democrat politicians, courts and professional lobbying organizations rather than building an independent mass movement.
The consequences were disastrous. The ERA passed Congress in 1972 but died three states short of ratification in 1982. Instead of drawing the necessary conclusions from that defeat, the institutional women's movement became still more closely integrated into Democratic electoral politics.
Abortion rights followed the same trajectory. Bill Clinton popularized the formula that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Hillary Clinton repeatedly embraced and restated that formulation, including as a senator and presidential candidate. Instead of unapologetically defending abortion as a woman's right, Democrat leaders accepted the reactionary premise that abortion was something regrettable that should be minimized.
Meanwhile, working-class women did not benefit from female politicians, executives and millionaires. They needed decent wages, strong unions, universal childcare, paid maternity leave, healthcare, housing and unrestricted reproductive freedom.
After half a century of dependence upon Democrat politicians and the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
It would be wrong to hold Steinem personally responsible for every defeat suffered by American women, or to claim that she opposed abortion rights or the ERA. She supported both.
However, Steinem personified a bourgeois feminist strategy that subordinated the independent struggle of women to capitalism and the Democrat Party. Unfortunately that political legacy continues to undercut the fight for women's rights today, as most middle class "feminists" remain loyal to the Democrat Party that will never allow a real fight for women's rights.
A feminism capable of producing women senators, corporate executives and millionaires while millions of working women remain without childcare, adequate healthcare or reproductive rights has achieved equality principally for wealthier women. That is not women's liberation.
Only the working class has a material vested interest in the full emancipation and equality for all women.
___________________
Inside the Second Wave of Feminism
Boston Female Liberation, 1968-1972 An Account by Participants
Feminism was always only concerned with middle-class and wealthy women's advancement. They cared naught about the material conditions confronting working-class women and still don't. Privileged, entitled women who never even notice working-class men who have zero privileges and never have had such.
You mean that recuperation of it. Or all feminisms or the question of womens rights in general in the public sphere and at home in relation to civilian law, and socio-economic rights, etc..
That "fenimism" that is "bourgeois", from that time in question is just a brand, the values behind being pushed selectively absent all other social justice or just justice concerns is how it is a value being coopted, under the perception threshold.
I think the point here is about the way mental exceptions can be nurtured while pulling on those voters that do seek better social justice where their perception and life trajectory of learning brought them. I am not sure of the meaning of the buzz word "feminism" in your concise statement. And perhaps in that of the quote author. And that is the problem with brands... many of them.. Concision and vagueness traps, that allow by its vagueness all sort of public discourse manipulation of the minds of those with such values, and even perhaps other values to express if only there was not the gating by omission and the gating by recuperation of the flow of knowledge (information, news, education, entertainment, art and culture, science, research, and on the ground reporting) by such language shortcuts strangulating reality, and the little chosen trickle of it: reframing it with buzz word mantras.
Sorry, this is not just commenting on your concise statement, I can't guess what you really meant.. But I am still curious about what you meant by "feminism" as if it was one thing. The "bourgeois" for another conversation, also needing refreshing with more data that might be accessible since it was meaningful or with known meaning. and useful one. It might need some dusting off.. relying on frozen words augments the divergence of meaning (never putting sme flesh on it=frozen) at large population and many years of social structure evolution passed.
I like to humansplain to myself first what I am really thinking behind just written words.. Mixture of reply and journalling.. a mini diquisition. for free.
Women have reproductive rights. If you don't want to reproduce, use contraception, or abstain. Reproductive rights do not include murdering preborn children. Calling it "reproductive rights" is just sugar coating the ugly truth: Abortion is murder.
There would never be a need for abortion if MEN just kept it in their pants, used condoms and stopped raping women. Instead you fall on the utterly stupid nonsense that women should just 'keep our legs closed' which you also say because you have nurtured the idea that our private parts smell bad.
You've never known about the kinds of forced sex and rape that women do everything to prevent. You've never noticed that birth control of all kinds is fallible and often results in unwanted children. You've never noticed how little men actually WANT children once they've finally managed to reproduce.
It is time for men to STFU and listen to women instead of blaming us for every single problem you create by yourselves.
Try to imagine if men were the ones who carried a 'foreign body' inside their own bodies for almost TEN MONTHS. Abortion would be free and provided on every street corner, safely and just fine.
However I know men have zero imagination when it comes to women's bodies and our issues that result and of course zero empathy as well. So have fun being celibate and watching birth control rates drop all over the world as you continue to hate on women and continue to drop your 'necessary' poisons all over the planet 'because that's business'.
And now you've gone ahead without consulting women and legislated that men can be women on their say so and created a massive industry around this insanity. Have fun impregnating men once they get their uteruses from female corpses (yes this is actually a medical 'business' now.)
Feminism - whatever you mean by it - is a mere gnat compared to the constant and ongoing attack on the entire human race BY MEN.
Not so. Reproduction freedom means women have choices, as do men. Our most accepted contraception does not always work, it can be hard on the body and women are asked to be the only ones responsible for birth control. Also, since 'having sex' is an appetite, similar to eating food, one might not always have 'control' on the mind when having it. Shall we punish humans for over-eating or choosing unhealthy foods over healthy ones? Shall we take away their freedom to choose what, when, and how much food we eat? Let's also consider that to prove 'murder' has been done one has to establish that the ''intention' was to murder. We humans extinguish or interrupt 'life' all the time: for nurturance, to prevent forest fires and prevent disease, etc. We don't consider it murder. Two more points: vasectomies work, can be reversed, and men can choose when they would like to become parents, and act accordingly. I'm waiting for some serious conversation and discussion about this option--facilitated by men. Lastly, women and men 'own' their bodies. To seriously consider taking this ownership away is unintelligent and absurd--wouldn't you say?
The irony lies in calling it 'reproductive rights' when in fact the opposite is being proposed viz. termination of those rights. That said, to believe rights can be severed from responsibilities is a deadly fallacy. Just because you have the right to reproduce does not mean you should specifically when your rights are in conflict with the rights of the child who will be born. A child has the right to safety, love, and nurturing. When these are purposely withheld by fathers who abuse or abandon their children then the reproductive rights of a woman alone cannot be deemed to supercede the rights of the child who depends on others for safety, love, nurturing and survival. Too often, in the Western culture, we see couples (married and unmarried) eager to pop out babies only for the father to the leave on a whim and dump all childcare responsibilities on the single mother. I am a mother and I absolutely love children (all children) and I would not advice any woman to jump into motherhood just to exercise HER reproductive rights. Motherhood is not just about your own rights but the rights of the children you helped bring into this world. Unless we hold fathers in the West fully responsible and accountable for the care of their children, just telling women to exercise their reproductive rights is not going to cut it. In the light of the enormous evidence that has gathered before us this would be unethical and bad advice.
Thank you for this. I came here today with a WTF attitude: WHY is Caitlin coming down so hard on Gloria! Now I fully understand and agree with Caitlin's poem. She probably alienated a lot of older readers, though. Without knowing these details you've shared, and with what little we boomers remember about Gloria, it SEEMED like Caitlin was being a bit unfair to a woman who I'd always thought had moved the needle for all women. I love your last paragraph:
"A feminism capable of producing women senators, corporate executives and millionaires while millions of working women remain without childcare, adequate healthcare or reproductive rights has achieved equality principally for wealthier women. That is not women's liberation."
I got Torched bc I had the audacity to ask (given this Murderous agency’s history) “who did this bitch (GS) betrayed?” “who got throw under the bus”?? The ONLY reason GS “acknowledged” her direct association w/CIA was bc she was about 2b **OUTED**! It wasn’t bc she volunteered the info. GS KNEW it was a really bad look. GS even Threatened to Sue the journalist to drop the story. Additional irony from ppl defending GS (one in particular SSubstacker) is that this person has been known to use the CU NX Tues. word & then complain about misogyny. So. No. I was never a fan of GS. Can you imagine if Chris Hedges or Stokely Carmichael worked for School of the Americas?? Many would feel the betrayal (imho).
Thanks for taking the time to inform on the context, it helps with contextualizing the poem, while learning about this history. I did not know much. Only had first exposure yesterday via news on Democracy Now on YT. I prefer written form for self-pacing, but the stream I think mention the early CIA thing, but not really her defense of it. and was not as informative as the poem condensate and evocation of the covert empire's deeds over decades clashing with the restricted version of feminism, vague brand word allowing it, and it occultation of the rest of reality once attention budget for accessible knowledge taken disproportionately in public political discourse and media landscape echo system making finnaly the public conversation and perception having no more room for the occulted but sublimated stuff that a single voter might not be aware of, but get satisfied from the partial "truth" their walk of life might have noticed needing political work if they have the social justice instinct ringing bells. Let's not let that go to waste, and no need to inform levels of lucks of birth, about others levels of luck of birth across the distant neighborood of regular daily going about ones life.. So thanks. I like the comment section when people are sharing their knowledge to the many. Generous.
Check this out from today's (Sept.5, 2026) Counter Punch piece from Jeffrey St. Clair, his weekly Friday offering "Roaming Charges" (this site is excellent!) -
+ After Gloria Steinem (RIP) was photographed at numerous social outings with Henry Kissinger in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she got so much flak from members of her own nascent feminist movement that she felt compelled to distance herself from speculation that she’d been “dating” the blood-stained diplomat, who once claimed that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” When asked about Steinem’s denial that she was his “girlfriend,” Kissinger replied that he still felt hopeful she’d eventually submit to his, uh, charms: “After all, she did not say that if nominated she would not accept, or if elected she would not serve.”
+ Steinem defended Bill Clinton against every allegation of sexual misconduct, including rape, claiming that all of his “advances” had been “welcome.” She later defended her support for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries over Sanders, who many younger women were enthusiastically backing, by saying condescendingly, “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?” The boys were with Bernie.
Are women sick of all this sh!t yet? And men? When are we going to get out of this sh!t? Politics, CIA, spaceballs, bombs, destruction of our beautiful earth? Are we left to do nothing? No we can do everything. But where are the people who want to? Because that is the fire that fuels the engine. Once the decision is made, we can get out of this or we can get this out of us. Gloria sure did wreck the family and women. Look at women now - pseudo males. We've forgotten how to do everything womanly. We've forgotten how to live by the womb.
Gloria was well paid during her stint as a CIA employee. The question is when did she leave their payroll. Judging by her life’s work I would say it was the other day when she took her dirt nap. She was quite successful in keeping the issue of class struggle completely separate from her version of feminism. An analysis of patriarchy devoid of class analysis is not analysis. It is being a Judas Goat for the ruling class, something Gloria excelled at. Right on cue, the capitalist media is singing her praises for being a trailblazer in the Women’s Liberation Movement. Of course, this version gave us female Generals and CEOs, not more examples of Rosa Luxembourg. Hopefully young women will learn the real story about class collaborating Gloria, not the BS the capitalist media is telling us.
A wicked poem, Caitlin. Please make sure it goes into the magazine...
(And if I may - as a male - I always thought Gloria Steinem was a "feminist" the same way Hakeem Jeffries is a "democrat." Small "d" intentional - he does in fact represent the Democratic Party)
Lars - most people "didn't know any of that." If I may - consider this about growing up in an era that was more truthful (I'm 72)- we in the US have all been propagandized and lied to our entire lives about who we are in the USA and how great we are, better and more deserving than the rest of the world -- it's all a big lie intended to deceive - there was never an era that was the least bit truthful. This is how we ended up with the biggest liar and con-man of all time as POTUS.
Caitlin your powerful intensity will reverberate within me for some time to come.
I would like to add how "third World" middle class young women were duped by the likes of Steinem to copy western 'feminists' and alienate their own women. They thought anything that came out of the USA was to be emulated. Needless to say they were fair game to be recruited for CIA agendas.
Afghan women have come the full circle. Under the communist governments of Babrak Kramal and Najibullah women were emancipated - they were in all the professions and even went around in mini skirts ( not that I think wearing miniskirts denotes emancipation, but it was liberation of a kind ). All this and communism was too much for the US. And as they say the rest is history. And once again Afghan women have become fair game for human rights and feminism of the CIA kind.
In the meantime Afghan men, like men everywhere, did the hard work, the dirty work and the dangerous work. And a few privileged women entered the professions not giving a fuck about the vast majority of the Afghan people.
GLORIA STEINEM AND THE DOMESTICATION OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Gloria Steinem became the most famous establishment face of American feminism. But her political legacy is also one that considerably undermined women's liberation.
Before becoming a feminist celebrity, Steinem directed the Independent Research Service, secretly financed by the CIA to send anti-communists to the 1959 Vienna and 1962 Helsinki World Youth Festivals to carry out pro-imperialist propaganda. When the CIA connection was exposed, Steinem acknowledged and defended it.
This was consistent with the politics she subsequently represented: liberal anti-communism, support for American capitalism, and confidence in the institutions of the existing political order.
The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was potentially far more radical. Millions of working women demanded equal pay, childcare, reproductive freedom and economic independence. Mass demonstrations placed abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment on the national political agenda.
Steinem helped channel much of this insurgent movement toward lobbying, electoral campaigns and loyalty to the Democrat Party. She became a millionaire and embodied a bourgeois feminism increasingly concerned with middle-class and wealthy women's advancement rather than transforming the material conditions confronting working-class women.
The contradiction was enormous. The Democrat Party itself contained powerful forces hostile to abortion rights and the ERA. The 1972 Democratic National Convention rejected an abortion-rights plank. In 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter opposed federal funding for abortion and declared that government should not attempt to make opportunities equal. Carter campaigned for and signed the Hyde Amendment stripping millions of poor women of meaningful access to abortion.
Yet liberal feminism increasingly instructed women to look toward Democrat politicians, courts and professional lobbying organizations rather than building an independent mass movement.
The consequences were disastrous. The ERA passed Congress in 1972 but died three states short of ratification in 1982. Instead of drawing the necessary conclusions from that defeat, the institutional women's movement became still more closely integrated into Democratic electoral politics.
Abortion rights followed the same trajectory. Bill Clinton popularized the formula that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Hillary Clinton repeatedly embraced and restated that formulation, including as a senator and presidential candidate. Instead of unapologetically defending abortion as a woman's right, Democrat leaders accepted the reactionary premise that abortion was something regrettable that should be minimized.
Meanwhile, working-class women did not benefit from female politicians, executives and millionaires. They needed decent wages, strong unions, universal childcare, paid maternity leave, healthcare, housing and unrestricted reproductive freedom.
After half a century of dependence upon Democrat politicians and the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
It would be wrong to hold Steinem personally responsible for every defeat suffered by American women, or to claim that she opposed abortion rights or the ERA. She supported both.
However, Steinem personified a bourgeois feminist strategy that subordinated the independent struggle of women to capitalism and the Democrat Party. Unfortunately that political legacy continues to undercut the fight for women's rights today, as most middle class "feminists" remain loyal to the Democrat Party that will never allow a real fight for women's rights.
A feminism capable of producing women senators, corporate executives and millionaires while millions of working women remain without childcare, adequate healthcare or reproductive rights has achieved equality principally for wealthier women. That is not women's liberation.
Only the working class has a material vested interest in the full emancipation and equality for all women.
___________________
Inside the Second Wave of Feminism
Boston Female Liberation, 1968-1972 An Account by Participants
by Nancy Rosenstock
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1887-inside-the-second-wave-of-feminism
But it gave the Ds a lock on the women-who-long-to-be-CEOs vote.
Feminism was always only concerned with middle-class and wealthy women's advancement. They cared naught about the material conditions confronting working-class women and still don't. Privileged, entitled women who never even notice working-class men who have zero privileges and never have had such.
Feminism is a money racket. Always has been.
Radical anarchist poet-filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, murdered by the state in 1975, felt the same way. He said that feminism was "bourgeois."
You mean that recuperation of it. Or all feminisms or the question of womens rights in general in the public sphere and at home in relation to civilian law, and socio-economic rights, etc..
That "fenimism" that is "bourgeois", from that time in question is just a brand, the values behind being pushed selectively absent all other social justice or just justice concerns is how it is a value being coopted, under the perception threshold.
I think the point here is about the way mental exceptions can be nurtured while pulling on those voters that do seek better social justice where their perception and life trajectory of learning brought them. I am not sure of the meaning of the buzz word "feminism" in your concise statement. And perhaps in that of the quote author. And that is the problem with brands... many of them.. Concision and vagueness traps, that allow by its vagueness all sort of public discourse manipulation of the minds of those with such values, and even perhaps other values to express if only there was not the gating by omission and the gating by recuperation of the flow of knowledge (information, news, education, entertainment, art and culture, science, research, and on the ground reporting) by such language shortcuts strangulating reality, and the little chosen trickle of it: reframing it with buzz word mantras.
Sorry, this is not just commenting on your concise statement, I can't guess what you really meant.. But I am still curious about what you meant by "feminism" as if it was one thing. The "bourgeois" for another conversation, also needing refreshing with more data that might be accessible since it was meaningful or with known meaning. and useful one. It might need some dusting off.. relying on frozen words augments the divergence of meaning (never putting sme flesh on it=frozen) at large population and many years of social structure evolution passed.
I like to humansplain to myself first what I am really thinking behind just written words.. Mixture of reply and journalling.. a mini diquisition. for free.
Thank you for saying this ❤️👏
As a woman with a uterus I agree 💯
She was basically another rich yt nationalist trying to divide women to remove their autonomy, power and agency. 🫶
(I will only block men who try to defend her on this thread, your opinion is not needed nor welcome.)
I have to admit in my younger years, she had me fooled : (
Women have reproductive rights. If you don't want to reproduce, use contraception, or abstain. Reproductive rights do not include murdering preborn children. Calling it "reproductive rights" is just sugar coating the ugly truth: Abortion is murder.
STFU a man’s opinion does matter on this topic, you have a penis. Gtfo our wombs asshole!
Blocked.
There would never be a need for abortion if MEN just kept it in their pants, used condoms and stopped raping women. Instead you fall on the utterly stupid nonsense that women should just 'keep our legs closed' which you also say because you have nurtured the idea that our private parts smell bad.
You've never known about the kinds of forced sex and rape that women do everything to prevent. You've never noticed that birth control of all kinds is fallible and often results in unwanted children. You've never noticed how little men actually WANT children once they've finally managed to reproduce.
It is time for men to STFU and listen to women instead of blaming us for every single problem you create by yourselves.
Try to imagine if men were the ones who carried a 'foreign body' inside their own bodies for almost TEN MONTHS. Abortion would be free and provided on every street corner, safely and just fine.
However I know men have zero imagination when it comes to women's bodies and our issues that result and of course zero empathy as well. So have fun being celibate and watching birth control rates drop all over the world as you continue to hate on women and continue to drop your 'necessary' poisons all over the planet 'because that's business'.
And now you've gone ahead without consulting women and legislated that men can be women on their say so and created a massive industry around this insanity. Have fun impregnating men once they get their uteruses from female corpses (yes this is actually a medical 'business' now.)
Feminism - whatever you mean by it - is a mere gnat compared to the constant and ongoing attack on the entire human race BY MEN.
Not so. Reproduction freedom means women have choices, as do men. Our most accepted contraception does not always work, it can be hard on the body and women are asked to be the only ones responsible for birth control. Also, since 'having sex' is an appetite, similar to eating food, one might not always have 'control' on the mind when having it. Shall we punish humans for over-eating or choosing unhealthy foods over healthy ones? Shall we take away their freedom to choose what, when, and how much food we eat? Let's also consider that to prove 'murder' has been done one has to establish that the ''intention' was to murder. We humans extinguish or interrupt 'life' all the time: for nurturance, to prevent forest fires and prevent disease, etc. We don't consider it murder. Two more points: vasectomies work, can be reversed, and men can choose when they would like to become parents, and act accordingly. I'm waiting for some serious conversation and discussion about this option--facilitated by men. Lastly, women and men 'own' their bodies. To seriously consider taking this ownership away is unintelligent and absurd--wouldn't you say?
Thank you, I agree.
The irony lies in calling it 'reproductive rights' when in fact the opposite is being proposed viz. termination of those rights. That said, to believe rights can be severed from responsibilities is a deadly fallacy. Just because you have the right to reproduce does not mean you should specifically when your rights are in conflict with the rights of the child who will be born. A child has the right to safety, love, and nurturing. When these are purposely withheld by fathers who abuse or abandon their children then the reproductive rights of a woman alone cannot be deemed to supercede the rights of the child who depends on others for safety, love, nurturing and survival. Too often, in the Western culture, we see couples (married and unmarried) eager to pop out babies only for the father to the leave on a whim and dump all childcare responsibilities on the single mother. I am a mother and I absolutely love children (all children) and I would not advice any woman to jump into motherhood just to exercise HER reproductive rights. Motherhood is not just about your own rights but the rights of the children you helped bring into this world. Unless we hold fathers in the West fully responsible and accountable for the care of their children, just telling women to exercise their reproductive rights is not going to cut it. In the light of the enormous evidence that has gathered before us this would be unethical and bad advice.
Thank you for this. I came here today with a WTF attitude: WHY is Caitlin coming down so hard on Gloria! Now I fully understand and agree with Caitlin's poem. She probably alienated a lot of older readers, though. Without knowing these details you've shared, and with what little we boomers remember about Gloria, it SEEMED like Caitlin was being a bit unfair to a woman who I'd always thought had moved the needle for all women. I love your last paragraph:
"A feminism capable of producing women senators, corporate executives and millionaires while millions of working women remain without childcare, adequate healthcare or reproductive rights has achieved equality principally for wealthier women. That is not women's liberation."
I got Torched bc I had the audacity to ask (given this Murderous agency’s history) “who did this bitch (GS) betrayed?” “who got throw under the bus”?? The ONLY reason GS “acknowledged” her direct association w/CIA was bc she was about 2b **OUTED**! It wasn’t bc she volunteered the info. GS KNEW it was a really bad look. GS even Threatened to Sue the journalist to drop the story. Additional irony from ppl defending GS (one in particular SSubstacker) is that this person has been known to use the CU NX Tues. word & then complain about misogyny. So. No. I was never a fan of GS. Can you imagine if Chris Hedges or Stokely Carmichael worked for School of the Americas?? Many would feel the betrayal (imho).
Thanks for taking the time to inform on the context, it helps with contextualizing the poem, while learning about this history. I did not know much. Only had first exposure yesterday via news on Democracy Now on YT. I prefer written form for self-pacing, but the stream I think mention the early CIA thing, but not really her defense of it. and was not as informative as the poem condensate and evocation of the covert empire's deeds over decades clashing with the restricted version of feminism, vague brand word allowing it, and it occultation of the rest of reality once attention budget for accessible knowledge taken disproportionately in public political discourse and media landscape echo system making finnaly the public conversation and perception having no more room for the occulted but sublimated stuff that a single voter might not be aware of, but get satisfied from the partial "truth" their walk of life might have noticed needing political work if they have the social justice instinct ringing bells. Let's not let that go to waste, and no need to inform levels of lucks of birth, about others levels of luck of birth across the distant neighborood of regular daily going about ones life.. So thanks. I like the comment section when people are sharing their knowledge to the many. Generous.
An apt obituary. Thanks.
....and she dated Henry Kissinger
OMG! Good luck doesn't rub off when you shake hands with him.
...and Angela Jolie worked for MI6.
...and the link between Ms Jolie and UK's MI6?
Tio Mitchito
TM
Check this out from today's (Sept.5, 2026) Counter Punch piece from Jeffrey St. Clair, his weekly Friday offering "Roaming Charges" (this site is excellent!) -
+ After Gloria Steinem (RIP) was photographed at numerous social outings with Henry Kissinger in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she got so much flak from members of her own nascent feminist movement that she felt compelled to distance herself from speculation that she’d been “dating” the blood-stained diplomat, who once claimed that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” When asked about Steinem’s denial that she was his “girlfriend,” Kissinger replied that he still felt hopeful she’d eventually submit to his, uh, charms: “After all, she did not say that if nominated she would not accept, or if elected she would not serve.”
+ Steinem defended Bill Clinton against every allegation of sexual misconduct, including rape, claiming that all of his “advances” had been “welcome.” She later defended her support for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries over Sanders, who many younger women were enthusiastically backing, by saying condescendingly, “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?” The boys were with Bernie.
Thank you for sharing juicy details on her legacy of the mendacity and wickedness. 🐾👏
Same tribe
Splendid obituary Caitlin. Nothing but the best.
Are women sick of all this sh!t yet? And men? When are we going to get out of this sh!t? Politics, CIA, spaceballs, bombs, destruction of our beautiful earth? Are we left to do nothing? No we can do everything. But where are the people who want to? Because that is the fire that fuels the engine. Once the decision is made, we can get out of this or we can get this out of us. Gloria sure did wreck the family and women. Look at women now - pseudo males. We've forgotten how to do everything womanly. We've forgotten how to live by the womb.
Humans are easily manipulated herd animals.
Saying that with your cat avatar. :-)
It's a selfie. Actually it isn't, some friends and I found a cameraphone and we were clowning around with it.
Gloria was well paid during her stint as a CIA employee. The question is when did she leave their payroll. Judging by her life’s work I would say it was the other day when she took her dirt nap. She was quite successful in keeping the issue of class struggle completely separate from her version of feminism. An analysis of patriarchy devoid of class analysis is not analysis. It is being a Judas Goat for the ruling class, something Gloria excelled at. Right on cue, the capitalist media is singing her praises for being a trailblazer in the Women’s Liberation Movement. Of course, this version gave us female Generals and CEOs, not more examples of Rosa Luxembourg. Hopefully young women will learn the real story about class collaborating Gloria, not the BS the capitalist media is telling us.
Free the world from AIPAC.
Rest In Power Hind Rajab
A wicked poem, Caitlin. Please make sure it goes into the magazine...
(And if I may - as a male - I always thought Gloria Steinem was a "feminist" the same way Hakeem Jeffries is a "democrat." Small "d" intentional - he does in fact represent the Democratic Party)
Good riddance.
Sorry not sorry. 😁
OMG, Caitlin! I had no idea!
Best title to "commemorate" GS yet.
Another demon, goes BACK to HELL!!
Steinem = The 'FEMINISM' PsyOp
This demon was, in large part, responsible for the break up of the FAMILY.
Just look around........it was a GREAT SUCCESS!!
This is an amazing post. Thank you.
Excellent writing!
I didn’t know any of that. Re Gloria I had
read only the mainstream media. I grew up in an era when it was more truthful.
Lars - most people "didn't know any of that." If I may - consider this about growing up in an era that was more truthful (I'm 72)- we in the US have all been propagandized and lied to our entire lives about who we are in the USA and how great we are, better and more deserving than the rest of the world -- it's all a big lie intended to deceive - there was never an era that was the least bit truthful. This is how we ended up with the biggest liar and con-man of all time as POTUS.
You slobbered a bibful, as my mother would say - great stuff.
"Gloria Steinem was a pick-me girl,
and boy was she ever picked."
Caitlin your powerful intensity will reverberate within me for some time to come.
I would like to add how "third World" middle class young women were duped by the likes of Steinem to copy western 'feminists' and alienate their own women. They thought anything that came out of the USA was to be emulated. Needless to say they were fair game to be recruited for CIA agendas.
Afghan women have come the full circle. Under the communist governments of Babrak Kramal and Najibullah women were emancipated - they were in all the professions and even went around in mini skirts ( not that I think wearing miniskirts denotes emancipation, but it was liberation of a kind ). All this and communism was too much for the US. And as they say the rest is history. And once again Afghan women have become fair game for human rights and feminism of the CIA kind.
In the meantime Afghan men, like men everywhere, did the hard work, the dirty work and the dangerous work. And a few privileged women entered the professions not giving a fuck about the vast majority of the Afghan people.
annebonnypirate.org/2021/08/17/afghanistan-the-end-of-the-occupation/