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In one of the anti-Gloria Steinem articles that is floating around today there is the quote, “Socialist feminists and radical feminists…like Barbara Ehrenreich…argued consistently that gender liberation without economic liberation was a half-measure…”

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote for Ms. Magazine. She credits her breakthrough as a journalist to a cover story in Ms Magazine, and wrote for them through the late seventies and eighties. She had a column in Ms Magazine where she did write about economic issues, among other things.

Stuff like this is sort of what I’m responding to. You can’t go on and on about the inadequacy of Gloria Steinem and then in your listing of “better” feminists you cite a woman who credits Ms Magazine with her success and notoriety. And not even in a small one off way, she was associated with the magazine pretty closely at both her and the magazine’s height.

And then I’m also responding to the double standard we give certain cultural figures who, despite their extremely egregious mistakes, we essentially elevate to the position of class hero, while others, who are in the end much closer to our positions, we relentlessly attack. Which is maybe deserved, but when seen in the light of our treatment of those much more deserving of such criticism, comes off as insincere.

As I say above and in my original comment, there was a lot to Gloria Steinem and Ms Magazine we’d agree with. While she’s probably been forever tainted by the legacy of liberal feminism, there are economic writings in Ms Magazine. There is anti-imperialism. Steinem was not goose stepping to war in 2003 nor was she in 1991. Ms Magazine articles were making the same points in 2002 regarding the cynical use of women’s treatment by the Taliban as motive for war that we were making on this site in 2021. It’s not all we need more female drone operators. Further, liberal feminism leaves a bad taste in our mouth because we’ve been subject to years and years of epic girlboss feminism, but back in the 70s a huge part of the liberal feminist project was having women not live as essentially wards of their husbands and hey maybe women could get a credit card and own property without their husband’s signature. Those are goals not completely out of step with our own and not the complete den of reaction most of us imagine when we hear “liberal feminism,” even if we wish it could’ve been gone about another way. I mean most of the substantive critiques of Steinem are merely critiques of white feminism and of second wave feminism. The same could be said of Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Frieidan, are we to throw every second wave feminist away because the movement was insufficient? They added something important to the conversation, even if that it enough. The CIA and Gloria Steinem did not create second wave feminism and the cia and Gloria Steinem were not the sole forces pushing it.

So that’s a lot of writing but I hope my point comes across. You write that she was instrumental in neutering radicalism but I disagree with this framing. She wasn’t cynically working against the feminist movement, she was a liberal feminist and far from the only one and there was plenty in her career that was useful and we can single out for praise, and most of what we can criticize is a consequence of liberalism rather than any cynical anti-feminism. Including I’d argue the cia stuff.