Behind every radical feminist is a failed man and/or the fear of one, and I think Gloria Steinem, who died last week, would agree.
Other famous examples include Margaret Sanger, whose father abandoned the Catholic faith of his youth. He sired a large family but didn’t provide well for his wife and children, financially and otherwise, and his wife died at age fifty from tuberculosis.
“You caused this,” Sanger recalled at age nineteen, facing her father in front of her mother’s coffin. “Mother is dead from having too many children.” Planned Parenthood would become—and remains—the leader in providing abortions in the United States, and continues its advocacy internationally.
Kate Millett, author of the bestselling feminist manifesto Sexual Politics, is another example. Her father, another Catholic who stopped practicing his faith, beat her and her sisters, and then abandoned the family when she was only fourteen. She would go on to have a deliberately childless marriage, eventually divorce, and then live with her lesbian partner for thirty-nine years.
In marked contrast, I think of my own faithful Catholic father, Joseph Nash, who provided a loving, nurturing home for his wife and family, including hiring a woman to help Mom with household chores when we had several young children at home, and also sacrificing so that we could attend Catholic schools.
The Life of Gloria Steinem
Then there is the case of Steinem, who died last week at the age of ninety-two.
Steinem was raised in a secular Jewish home, and was only a child when her parents divorced. The breakup had long-term effects on both Gloria and her mother:
In 1944, her parents divorced, and 10-year-old Gloria was left to take care of her mother, a once-promising journalist who struggled to combine her work with running a household and who eventually suffered a nervous breakdown.
While Steinem later recalled her father’s kindness in growing up, including being supportive of her mother who suffered from depression, his abandonment no doubt impacted her views on men and marriage.
She viewed “traditional marriage” that featured stay-at-home mothers as anti-woman. In founding Ms. Magazine in 1972, she made famous a line that originated with an Australian writer and activist: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
Behind her fear and disdain lay another painful personal experience. Steinem graduated from Smith College in 1956, was engaged to be married the following year, and then discovered she was pregnant. She didn’t tell her fiancé about the pregnancy, broke off the engagement, and traveled to the UK for an abortion.
Twelve years later, she became a feminist icon. After covering a meeting of women in New York City who had shared publicly about their illegal abortions, she wrote her essay, “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation.” A few years later, she would finally publicly disclose her own abortion.
Self-Induced Sexism: The Ironic Fruit of Radical Feminism
Steinem and many other women argue that legalized abortion is foundational to their empowerment, and yet they use euphemisms—e.g., “A woman’s right to choose,” and “My body, my choice”—to sidestep the reality that their own children are killed in their quest for personal emancipation.
Feminists have long complained that many men are pigs, yet they ironically subject themselves to such men when they seek personal fulfillment outside of marriage. That is, they are quick to jump into the sexual pigpen in a form of self-induced sexism, and delude themselves that they are “protected” because they are armed with contraception and the legally enshrined backup of abortion. And yet, these “safeguards” impede them from the very intimacy and commitment they desire, and, sadly, there are many unvirtuous men who are willing to accommodate them.
Indeed, a condom—or other form of contraception—cannot protect your soul, and so while economic independence enables a woman to change her man periodically, the type of man she attracts remains; and so a woman’s broken heart becomes increasingly hardened.
The Real War on Women—and the Kids Are Not All Right Either
President Barack Obama awarded Steinem in 2013 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In another irony, Obama—and many other men, including President Joe Biden—have aided and abetted the real war on women through the policies they advocate. As I’ve written elsewhere, when President Obama was reelected in 2012,
Thus, in contrast to a truly caring father, the president’s policies actually harm women and children. Indeed, legions of men also support the president and are more than happy to do so — precisely because he enables them in their irresponsible, no-strings-attached relationships with women. This is what collectively and truly constitutes a “war on women.”
Yes, many men use contraception and abortion to maintain irresponsible relationships with women.
The consequences of the sexual revolution are readily apparent, with no-fault divorce, contraception, and abortion as non-negotiable planks, and the ascendancy of same-sex “marriage” only occurring as authentic marriage and family declined. Sex became increasingly viewed as recreational, not the renewal of lifelong, exclusive love—open to children—between a husband and wife.
Not surprisingly, to redirect a theme from the rock band The Who, it turns out that the kids are not all right as a result of this sexual deviancy, and I don’t just mean the ones killed by abortion. In the United States, there is also an increased rate of “serious social and psychological pathologies” for children whose parents divorce, and unwed birth rates are at 40 percent. And the real answer to child abuse is supporting parents on thelocal level, which includes promoting virtuous living before and during marriage and making available real school-choice options that support children and families accordingly—not simply advancing the status quo with government programs that increasingly function as surrogate fathers in particular and families in general.
Steinem would eventually marry in her sixties, the marriage lasting only three years when her husband died of cancer in 2003. In a 2008 interview, she recounted, “I feel deeply that my decision to have an abortion was an ethical and moral decision, because for me it was the first time in my life I refused to be passive and I took responsibility for my own life” (6:48ff).
Gloria remained openly pro-abortion until the day she died. Let us pray for the repose of Gloria’s soul, given that the Lord has starkly confronted her with her errors and transgressions. May God have mercy on us all.
Image credit: “Gloria Steinem” by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0