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Gloria Steinem has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#41

Post by paimapi »

zackmorris wrote: post #36

I know it looks bleak right now with wealthy and powerful men tearing down every institution that feminism, progressivism, etc built, but remember that the political pendulum inevitably swings the other way. We can have justice, and we will. Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can neve…

ah, if only that were true. there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability, that's just confirmation bias from the times we live in. if you were to ask a normal person living through one of the warlord eras of Chinese history, they might have preferred greatly the times they considered ancient when the rule-of-law was more stable. similarly, I'm sure your average medieval peasant living through an Inquisition may prefer the centuries where they weren't scrutinized by their neighbors for any sign of heresy

justice is defined and propagated by the people in their time who show up and do the work. the overturn of Roe v Wade was a 40-year-old project and one of the driving forces that created the Federalist Society, a society which now dominates the Supreme Court and many other courts of law [0]. they are also responsible for things like Citizen's United, the rise in 'tort reform' (ie corporate escape holes from liability), and a lot of other anti-populist case law

they out-organized the progressive legal types (with the help, of course, of the ultra-wealthy who saw a lot to be gained from defanged tax and labor law)

there's no taking things for granted at anytime. you either grit your teeth fighting for your rights, out-organize your opponents, and stay fighting or you get trod on and lose it all. the parable of the tortoise and the hare does a lot of work here

[0] https://theintercept.com/2022/05/10/roe-v-wade-federalist-so...

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#43

Post by Lerc »

dang wrote: post #16
Jtsummers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her ties to the CIA are mentioned in the article, but nothing about what the GGP is talking about.

GP did say "any piece" :)

On the topic of the sibling reply to this.

There are quite a few new accounts that immediately go on attack on a few topics and individuals.

I don't suppose you have any numbers of the ratio of IP addresses to attack accounts?

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#44

Post by autoexec »

nstents wrote: post #35
RajT88 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that, but being socialized to have women enforce their own status as second class citizens in a variety of ways. In some fashion, this is what the "Tradwife" movement is about. Example: I recall my grandmother opining that women who were assaulted were to blame for their assault, because of how they dressed. That's a hot take even Fox News is staying away from today.

From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give. Yet at the same time a woman most certainly has a responsibility to herself, her future self who would have to live with the trauma...the many types of trauma...for knowingly going to an environment expected to harbor severe threats from other people. As a counter to your position, im…

> As a counter to your position, imagine a well-dressed man with diamond and gold jewelry, a very expensive watch, and money spilling from his pockets, casually strolling into a slum known for its violence, and all the while thinking quite airily "It's not my fault if anything bad happens to me. No, not my fault at all."

There's a massive difference between taking special precautions while "casually strolling into a slum known for its violence" and being expected to take special precautions everywhere you go all of the time.

Even in the case where someone's freedom to wear a nice watch out in public is threatened by lawlessness steps should be taken to secure the ability for men to walk those streets without fear of being assaulted and robbed. Similarly, a woman's ability to dress herself how she likes should also be protected. If a place exists where someone should reasonably expect watches to be stolen or women to be assaulted that shows a failure of law enforcement. If you want to apportion blame the order is: criminals > law enforcement > victim

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#45

Post by Kamq »

paimapi wrote: post #41
zackmorris wrote: post #36

I know it looks bleak right now with wealthy and powerful men tearing down every institution that feminism, progressivism, etc built, but remember that the political pendulum inevitably swings the other way. We can have justice, and we will. Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can neve…

ah, if only that were true. there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability, that's just confirmation bias from the times we live in. if you were to ask a normal person living through one of the warlord eras of Chinese history, they might have preferred greatly the times they considered ancient when the rule-of-law was more stable. similarly, I'm sure your averag…

> there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability

I think it probably is inevitable, but it probably happens the reverse of the direction that the quote implies.

That is to say, I think our definition of justice bends towards whoever wins historical conflicts.

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#46

Post by impossiblefork »

DrMandalay wrote: post #3

[flagged]

I didn't initially understand your comment, but you mean basically something like that the origin of feminism was in socialism and the CIA saw that it was going to be unavoidable or at least popular and wanting to avoid this leading to socialism becoming popular they decided to make a bastardized version that cuts off any socialist aspect and just turn the whole thing into the modern liberal feminism?

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#47

Post by dabinat »

zackmorris wrote: post #36

I know it looks bleak right now with wealthy and powerful men tearing down every institution that feminism, progressivism, etc built, but remember that the political pendulum inevitably swings the other way. We can have justice, and we will. Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can neve…

You may be right about that but they’re tearing things down overnight that took decades to build. And it will take more decades again to rebuild and repair. We’ll be spending most of our lives doing it.

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#48

Post by RajT88 »

nstents wrote: post #35
RajT88 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that, but being socialized to have women enforce their own status as second class citizens in a variety of ways. In some fashion, this is what the "Tradwife" movement is about. Example: I recall my grandmother opining that women who were assaulted were to blame for their assault, because of how they dressed. That's a hot take even Fox News is staying away from today.

From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give. Yet at the same time a woman most certainly has a responsibility to herself, her future self who would have to live with the trauma...the many types of trauma...for knowingly going to an environment expected to harbor severe threats from other people. As a counter to your position, im…

> From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give

Trying to put the focus on the victim's actions and not the criminal's actions is called, "blaming the victim" and it's not an appropriate attitude for people in law enforcement especially to have. And yet - these sorts of stories where reports are dismissed for various reasons (including how someone was dressed) are still pretty pervasive, and the conviction rate still quite low for SA.

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#49

Post by aaron695 »

zackmorris wrote: post #36

I know it looks bleak right now with wealthy and powerful men tearing down every institution that feminism, progressivism, etc built, but remember that the political pendulum inevitably swings the other way. We can have justice, and we will. Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can neve…

[dead]

Re: Gloria Steinem has died

#50

Post by jmyeet »

Reading other comments, it seems like people don't know that Gloria Steinem was a complicated figure, specifically her involvement with the CIA for at least 4 years is documented [1].

By all accounts, this was in the wake of the Red Scare and she was reporting on Communist activities by European student groups. At the same time she supported unionization efforts and fair pay for women. This is what I mean by complicated.

But more problematic was this statement [2]:

> While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”

Anyone who knows the history of the CIA knows it was completely off the rails in the 1950s and directly involved in if not responsible for many coups. Regime change by the US is so common there's a whole Wikipedia page about it [3].

Likewise, Steinem was anti-sex work, calling it "commercial rape" [4]. That's not really surprising for the time and you can't necessarily use the same norms from 2026 in the 1950s to 1980s.

You can appreciate her contributions to, for example, equal pay and advancement of feminism and what became known as women's liberation while acknowledging her complexities. I don't understand this need people have to rewrite history to be black and white and either deify or villify people when they die.

[1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01315R0003003...

[2]: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

[4]: https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/prosti...

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