Play It Again: Gloria Steinem

**Gloria Steinem** (0:07)
In that period of time and especially in places where there was not access to information about what the women's movement was, for me and Flo Kennedy or me and Dorothy Pitman Hughes to go out on the hustings and talk, something happens when you're in a room physically with other people that can't happen on the printed page. And I don't think I ever would have learned that if it hadn't been for the movement and being forced out to speak.

**Sam Fragoso** (0:37)
That was Gloria Steinem. I'm Sam Fragoso and this is Talk Easy. Welcome to the show.
There are a few people who have led a life as interesting, varied and courageous as Gloria Steinem. For more than half a century, she was one of the defining voices of the feminist movement, helping millions of women gain equality at home, in the workplace and society at large. She marched and organized, wrote essays and delivered speeches, formed shelters and crisis centers, and in 1971, co-founded Ms. Magazine, all in service of a simple, if often contested, truth, that women should be able to live whatever life they chose. For Gloria, the work was never finished, but unfortunately the work was never finished with her either. Like the rest of us, she lived to see Roe v. Wade overturned in 2022 in the landmark Dobbs decision. The Equal Rights Amendment, which she began fighting for in the early 70s, has yet to be added to the Constitution, with of course, many of those rights, values and mores coming under renewed attack in the era of Donald Trump. I feel proud and I feel mad as hell, she told the New York Times in 2022 We are still dealing with the same issues. But because of Steinem, the country she left behind is profoundly different from the one she entered in 1934, in Toledo, Ohio. She passed away this week at the age of 92, at her home in Manhattan. And so today, in honor of the late activist and writer, we wanted to replay our conversation from 2019, around her book, The Truth Will Set You Free, but first it will piss you off. That title comes from a quote she popularized long ago, but then again, Steinem was always, throughout her career, one step ahead, trying to carry us into a better and more just, if imperfect future. May she rest in peace.
This is Gloria Steinem.
Gloria, how are you doing right now?

**Gloria Steinem** (3:12)
You know, I'm doing okay because once I actually leave home, which of course takes some doing, you know, we all have the kind of inertia about leaving home, and get out on the road. It's interesting because you've talked to people and learned things that you didn't know. So it's interesting.

**Sam Fragoso** (3:32)
I have, I think, many things I don't know about you that I'd like to know. I want to start, if you don't mind, at the opening of this book. It's called My Life on the Road, and in it, you wrote the following. This book is dedicated to Dr. John Sharp of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion, a 22-year-old American on her way to India.
Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, you must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want with your life. Can we go back to you being 22, afraid to get a procedure that was outlawed in many places?
Where are you at in that moment?

**Gloria Steinem** (4:39)
You know, I was really quite desperate. I was also delusional because I thought if I went riding in Central Park or threw myself down the stairs, somehow that this would accomplish an abortion. I mean, you know... Didn't you do that? No, I didn't. But the mythology was very much part of our lives. Remember that I am a product, not even of the 60s, but of the 50s. I had left home and right after college graduation, I was engaged to a very nice man who remained my friend the rest of his life. But I knew that it was really not the right thing for either one of us. And also, marriage was made to seem the end of life then, because you assumed your husband identity, and it was as if that was the only decision you could make.
So because I had a fellowship in India, I left early and worked as a waitress in London, waiting to get my visa. And it was there that I realized that I was pregnant, and I didn't know what to do. I had this whole notion that if I went to Paris, somehow surely the French who were more liberal, forgetting entirely that it was a Catholic country.