Gloria: In Her Own Words (2011) - full transcript

It gives me great pleasure to present to you,
Gloria Steinem.

Are we going
to win? Yes!

Gloria Steinem is one of those women who,
once noticed, isn't easily forgotten.

We are made to feel that we are nothing
unless we are standing beside a man.

Some women are becoming more militant.

And their organizations are grouped in a kind of federation

called Women's Liberation.

Go do the dishes!
Go do the dishes! Go do the dishes!

Go do the dishes!

These women are not kidding.
They are deadly serious.

What they are demanding,
is a greater share in the political power of this nation.



Females are supposed to stay home,
have kids and keep the house clean.

I like being treated as a lady.

I like having a man hold my coat,
open the door for me.

All the little things that I think are important to a woman.

Sure, the women's libbers are sincere.
The homosexuals are sincere.

But they want to change the supreme law of our land.

What we are talking about is a revolution and not a reform.

Gloria Steinem.
She is the most visible symbol of the women's movement.

You understand it's not a role exchange.

We're not trying to do to men what men have done to us.

We're trying to humanize both roles.

Every generation has its own names.

More than a third of this march is women under 25 years old.

You know,
people who empower other people.



Watch us vote!
We are willing! Watch us vote!

Susan B. Anthony said,
"Our job is not to make young women grateful.

It's to make
them ungrateful,

so they
keep going.

We're not
going to stop.

A feminist is what the dictionary says,
which is a person,

male or female,
who believes in the full

social, economic, political

equality of of women and men.
And I would say also acts on it.

When I first came to New York and tried to get an apartment,

I discovered that landlords felt single
women were not financially responsible,

and if you could earn enough,
you must be a hooker.

The first year
I freelanced,

I spent a lot of time sleeping on the living room floors of my friends.

I think that
back then

I mean,
you know, I'd had

one sentence in my textbook somewhere in the past

that said women were given the vote.

I thought it was all finished,
it was all won. And that if I was still

that if I was still having a lot of difficulty,
it must be my personal fault.

Honey, when was the last time you baked a cake?
Last week, dear.

When I was growing up,
we thought that the position

of women was biologically dictated.

♪ What a wonderful sight when your wash is done!♪

And so we didn't feel we had the right

to be equal
or to be angry.

It was
the '50's,

and the women in college were still being educated to be mothers,

and the wives of executives,
and so on.

And we were not learning about

anything that had to do with women's own status in society.

As a journalist,

I wanted to write about what I was interested in and that was politics.

But, there weren't so many women who were political reporters then.

Pretty few,
really.

I wrote some
unsigned pieces,

"What to do on dates in New York" and "How
to cook without really cooking for men".

I mean, you know,
all kinds of frivolous, but funny things.

And then I did this bunny assignment.

My name is Hugh Hefner and I'm editor
and publisher of Playboy Magazine.

I worked as a Playboy Bunny in order to write an expose

of what the working
conditions were.

I started with a personal investment of 600 dollars.

In eight years,
I've built an empire worth 20 million.

It was
being presented

as a glamorous place.

It was not the glamorous place that Hugh Hefner was trying to sell it as.

You were a Bunny girl for a while.
An undercover Bunny girl.

Yeah. Yeah. To write a story.
I changed my name and, uh,

went to, I thought I would get through,
you know, a few auditions

and write about the auditions.
But they were so desperate for people

that it kept going on and on.
And I ended up working off and on for about a month.

I read all the ads,
you know,

that you were supposed to get $300 a week and it was this,

you know,
wonderful job.

I was hired but I had to go through the training course,
which is at your own expense.

Reverse! Oh! Here
we go! Fast! Fast!

Okay! Now we're gonna try a real high carry!
Okay? There we go, whoah!

It was horrible.

There was nothing fun about it. It's really hard work.
You know, you're carrying trays,

you have 3 inch
high heels on.

You're paid very little,
the trays are heavy, your feet hurt.

I learned what it's like to be hung on a meat hook.

I mean, that's essentially the emotional
experience of walking around in a costume

that's so tight it would give a man a cleavage.

The response to the article was amazing,
because the club was new then,

and it was kind of blowing the whistle on the glamour of the club.

I regretted for many years having done it because

he had made me
unserious.

But as feminism began to dawn on my brain belatedly in life,

I became
glad I did it.

I didn't exactly,
consciously know that I didn't want to get married.

I just knew I didn't want to get married,
right then.

Have you ever been married?
No. Uh-uh.

That's all. Yeah.
Well, next question. Why not?

Is that your next question?
Yep.

Uh, I don't know.
Do you want to be?

Eventually.
But it keeps receding two years in the comfortable distance.

You think about it
a lot, though?

Uhm, yeah. I think so.
I think you imagine what it would be like

to be married to people you're going out with,
or people you meet.

Even if it's only for a second.
Think about it.

Don't you think about it?
No.

You don't? Well, maybe it's the lady's thing.
I don't know.

People ask me why I'm not married.
I just say, "I can't mate in captivity."

I somehow,
totally related

to the character in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Please darling,
don't sit there looking at me like that.

I love you,
you belong to me. No.

People don't belong to people.
Of course they do.

I'm not going to let anyone put me in a cage.

I really identified with Holly Golightly.

The streaked hair I can directly attribute to Breakfast at Tiffany's.

The aviator glasses were more about hiding.

The bigger they were,
the more I felt I could hide behind them.

I came to New York,
you know, full of idealism,

and wanting to write serious assignments, but

as a freelance writer,
I was assigned, uhm,

things about fashion and food and

makeup and babies.

Or the low point of my life,
writing about textured stockings.

When I delivered a piece to my editor at the Sunday Times Magazine,

he generally gave me a choice, like

either I could go to a hotel room with him in the afternoon,

or mail his letters
on the way out.

There was no word
for sexual harassment.

It was just called life,
so you had to find your own individual way around it.

At a certain
point in my 30's,

I discovered that other women were saying this kind of thing, too.

And the women's movement was just beginning.
And I finally knew that I wasn't alone.

You know, that I wasn't crazy,
the system was crazy.

The idea that I had a glamorous life

came in part, at least,
from the idea that if you were

a pretty girl,
whatever that meant,

that you must be getting assignments for that reason.

Or if you were ever photographed at a party,

that was your whole persona.

You couldn't
also be serious.

So it did drive me crazy, you know,
to be viewed in that way.

On the sidewalks,
out in the street,

Women Unite! On the sidewalks,
out in the street!

Women Unite!

Women make up 51 percent of the nation's population.

Are they, in effect,
an oppressed majority?

Feminist leaders charge widespread discrimination.

Discrimination that keeps a woman
from having an abortion if she wants it.

I went as a journalist to cover a hearing at which women were

standing up and telling their abortion experiences.

Women are not going to sit quietly any longer.
You are murdering us.

I had had an abortion when I first graduated from college.

I was 22, and

there was no women's movement then.
There was no companionship.

So, I never
told anybody.

Uh, alright,
will you please sit down or be removed from the...

No we're not
going to sit down.

Why don't you give us some solid answers to our questions?

And I listened
to these women testify

about all that they had to go through.

As soon as a woman gets pregnant she's treated like a common criminal.

She can't get
an abortion.

The injury, the danger,
the infection, the sexual humiliation,

you know,
to get an illegal abortion and I suddenly realized,

"Why is it a secret?" You know,
if one in three women has needed an abortion

in her lifetime in this country,
why is it a secret and why is it criminal

and why is
it dangerous?

And that
was the big click.

It transformed me,
and I began to seek out

everything I could find, of what was then,
the burgeoning women's movement.

When the women's movement started,
I was the in-between person.

You know? I was neither the mother,
nor the daughter. I was in between.

And, perhaps that was helpful.

What sort of a reaction have you encountered from men or from women,

women, since you've let it be known that
you're active in the women's rights movement?

Well, it's interesting. It's sort of,
it's extreme, I think in both directions.

I mean,
I now

attract, at any kind of gathering,

men who are very hostile to this movement.

But the most,
the most touching response is from women.

Because it's like,
it's poured out all the frustrations and humiliations away.

You know,
it's uh,

I, I don't think I'd ever felt part of a group before.

Today, throughout the land,
there is a growing demand by some women

that society begin to treat them as men,

different from men,
but equal to them.

Most of this restaurant in Chicago is open to women.

But a small part is set aside for men

for men who want to have a quick lunch by themselves.

The bars in the restaurants,
which women have been breaking the barriers in,

are, to us,
what the lunch counters were to the black movement.

That's very serious and important.

We don't want to be intimidated by signs that say "Men's Buffet."

How 'bout would you like a sign up there that said,

"Blacks Only" or "Whites Only"?
It's the same principle, so we are,

women are persons.
Women are people.

I have no intentions of taking the sign down or changing the sign.

If you can get a court order to take it down, fine.

You have no intention of changing your policy No, no.

Of segregated facilities, is that correct, sir?
If you women are that hard up

for a glass of beer,
I'll be glad to serve you at the bar.

Women are organizing themselves,
complaining of oppression.

Demanding the same rights men have.

And even talking of revolution.

It's the blossoming of the feminist movement.

A woman can be a success in the business world,

but it takes an exceptional woman

and she'll be fighting men's prejudices all the way.

Women went to work in this country
shortly before the turn of the century.

Companies found they had no trouble adjusting to the dull,
tedious jobs

that men
didn't want.

Today most women are still at the same tedious jobs

and they earn only half of what men earn.

Women can't handle the responsibility that most men assume.

Most women, I think,
have a problem with concentration.

A woman's place is more in the home.

Theoretically, August the 26th next could
be an awful day for American males.

That is the 50th anniversary of women's suffrage,
and to celebrate it,

the Women's Liberation Movement proposes a nationwide strike.

Today, upon
this strike,

on behalf of the grandmothers who fought for the original right to vote.

It was the first time in my life,
and I think, for many other women too,

that we marched
for ourselves.

...black and white,
march down Fifth Avenue,

curb to curb, legally, legally, peacefully, non-violently.

I have no children,
I'm not here as someone who needs a day care center,

or who understood the need for day care
centers until about three months ago,

when I was writing about the West 80th Street Day Care Center.

It was then that I began to realize...
- I remember when I

got so frustrated with an inability to publish

anything much about the movement

that I actually started to go out and speak.

American children suffer from too much mother,
and too little father.

So, I went with my speaking partner,
Dorothy Pittman Hughes,

an African-American woman.

And wherever we went it was just astounding
that there would be these huge crowds.

And we were quite interested in you,

obviously, women's liberation is a big thing with you.

Yeah. Uh, and uh, something,
you know,

that I would certainly like to incorporate.

Well, but this is,
this is writing an essay

and looking into the camera and reading it, right?

I've started to speak in public regularly.
And I've just begun that.

On the subject of women,
I thought I could explain it,

and make an emotional connection with an audience

that perhaps, you know,
was rare among speakers on the subject.

Women really do have a community of interest

because we are relegated to menial and dehumanized positions

simply because
we are women.

The Atlantic
City boardwalk.

Young women from New York,
and from as far away as Bancroft, Iowa.

All members of the women's liberation movement.

And what are they liberating themselves from?
Braziers and high heels,

Female appurtenances that they think mark them as women

who accept an ideal of femininity dictated by men.

Women use your brains!
Not your bodies!

In the beginning,
of the movement in the late 60s and the early 70s,

it was mostly treated with ridicule.
Bra burners, and so on.

But once it started to really change the mainstream of the culture, uh,

it became
a real threat.

It sounds like a demand for sameness and that is abhorrent.

To me, American cities,
compared to those in Europe,

present a relatively dull scene.

But when American women adopted the
mini skirt displaying much more woman,

it was the biggest advance in urban beautification

since Central Park was created in Manhattan.

People say to me now,
"Are you not upset sometimes when the press is hostile?"

And I always say

to myself, "Well,
hostility's a step forward from the ridicule

that we started
out with."

Gloria Steinem is an extremely attractive woman.

But most of the women that I see

in the women's liberation movement, frankly,

couldn't lure me out of a burning building.

There is a completely false image of feminists as being

super serious and anti sexual and anti humorous,
and you know,

it's crazy,
but that's the way suffragettes came down to me, too,

as these boring,
sexless creatures.

To do that is one way to stop the movement.

So perhaps, because I was obviously,
publicly none of those things,

you know,
I was leading what seemed to me an adventurous sexual life, and all.

And I, you know, doing all these diverse things,
maybe I helped to break

a false stereotype.

I used to tap dance. I did.
I did. But I quit just in time.

That's there's,
there's some kind of political law about tap dancing, right?

Tap dancing joggles the brain and it makes you conservative.

Shirley Temple, George Murphy,
Donald O'Conner. And there are more.

I got out
just in time

Not enough to joggle.
No. I hope not.

Tap dancing was, um,
the extremely impractical way

I was going to get out of Toledo.

I could dance
a little bit. So,

it was going to be my ticket out.

For all little girls, I think,
like for boys in poor neighborhoods

who look at sports,

you know,
show business was the way we were going to get out.

I still dance in elevators with,
when the muzak is on and nobody's watching.

Gloria Steinem.
You should know her.

Maybe you've read her.
She's written for most of the major magazines.

These days she's working for New York magazine.

New York, not
the New Yorker.

And the work she's doing is causing quite a commotion.
She's very good.

Well, everybody's always asking me about how,

you know, "What kind of,
what kind of girl is she?

She seems like a real bitch.

Oh, she must be very aggressive and pushy."

You know,
they have these whole preconceived ideas of

girl who gets to where Gloria is in life,

what one
has to do.

It makes me sad because of the bitch part.
I mean, it, it really gets to me.

I guess, maybe, it's worse than I think.
I mean, I don't hear those comments.

But what I've come to understand lately is it's not always personal.

It is that all women come in for this kind of stuff.

If you don't play your role, you know,
if you dare to aspire to something,

then, then you get it automatically.

In the early 70s,
Esquire printed a piece.

And it was attacking me in the text of the piece,
in a cartoon, too.

This piece just seemed to take everything I'd
ever done and make it seem as if it was all

about ambition
or selfish,

as, as if I'd glommed onto movements insincerely.

That article in Esquire was certainly among the most humiliating.

I'm much too thin-skinned.
I go back and forth all the time on it.

I immediately decide to withdraw and never leave my house again.

Um, then alternately,
decide to fight.

Your original assumption is that Steinem,
indeed all women,

could not succeed on the basis of simple talent,

intelligence, ambition,
and hard work.

Esquire indulged in the cheapest kind of kiss-and-tell journalism.

I remember that press conference of defense against the Esquire piece.

I especially remember Flo Kennedy,

who was a great defender to have,
funny and outrageous.

After you do something to us that we do not like in the media,

you know, we take care of whatever part of
your anatomy seems to need taken care of.

I finally read
the Esquire article.

The issue is very much larger than one small article.

The issue is the whole way in which
non-establishment people are treated in the press.

As a member
of it, I feel

very responsible
for it.

The Esquire article made me cry because it was just so wrong

and, uhm,
cruel, really.

I realized,
as a journalist, that

there really was nothing for women to
read that was controlled by women.

And this caused me, along with a number of other women,
to start Ms. Magazine.

We had many meetings about starting
the magazine here in this apartment.

We were going call it Sojourner,
after Sojourner Truth.

But that was perceived as a travel magazine.

Then we were going to call it Sisters.
But that was seen as a religious magazine.

We settled on, on Ms.,
because it was symbolic and also it was short,

which is good
for a logo.

It's definitely an old term.
As

an abbreviation
for mistress.

We didn't invent it.
But clearly it was the exact parallel of Mr.,

and it had a great,
obvious political use.

All revolutions,
it seems,

start with a typewriter in three crowded rooms over a bar.

And the New York headquarters of the magazine Ms.
Is no different.

It's a magazine designed to serve as
a forum for the women's movement,

something the leaders characterize as not a reform,

but a revolution.

Welcome
to chaos.

Gloria Steinem's the editor.

It's disquieting to her,
but nonetheless, still hard to say

whether she's attracted so much attention because of what she's done,

what she says
or how she looks.

Ms.
Steinem will be 38 on her next birthday.

The idea of a feminist magazine seemed crazy to people.
It was

chaotic and scary.
We were afraid that we would not succeed

and we would disgrace the movement.

Many knowledgeable sources in media circles

have predicted Ms.
Won't last six issues.

But others point out,
it's mostly men making those predictions.

The first edition of Ms.,
described as a new magazine for women, is at hand,

and it's
pretty sad.

Harry Reasoner predicted that Ms.
Magazine could not possibly last.

Because we had said everything there was to say in the first issue.

I can imagine some stark anti-sexist editorial

trying to decide
what to do next.

After you've done marriage contracts,
role exchanging

and the female identity crisis,
what do you do?

As I said, it's sad,
because not even the most Neanderthal of us like predictability.

I suppose to
these ladies,

the most patronizing thing you can say is,
"I'm sorry."

But, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry.

It sold out.

Hugely. In just
about a week.

It was supposed to be on the newsstands for three months,

and it sold out
in a week.

The reason why Ms. Magazine is called Ms.
Is because women's marital status

doesn't matter, uh,
any more than men's does.

Since I'm gigantically uninterested in your marital status,

I don't see any reason to exchange that
information for what you might tell me.

Some have taken to not addressing women

by Miss
or Mrs.,

but they've
gone to the

Ms. M-S.
Why not do that with White House letters?

Uh, I guess,
I'm a little old fashioned,

but I rather prefer the Miss or Mrs.

The less secure the male,
the more he has to prove,

the more dangerous a leader.
Witness Richard Nixon.

There is
some opinion

that Richard Nixon is the most sexually
insecure chief of state since Napoleon.

Somebody once said that,
"The woman a man most fears is the woman inside himself."

Doesn't Henry Kissinger more than compensate
for President Nixon's sexual insecurity?

That's like, "Are you still beating your wife?"
Anything I say is impossible.

We were photographed together and since Kissinger was,

I think,
pretty much the only unmarried

person in the Nixon Administration,

somebody from the New York Times called me up

and asked
me about it.

This week Gloria Steinem,
almost unbelievably to me, is quoted as having said,

that she is not now, and never has been,
a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger.

But, I would like to tell you,

I'm not
discouraged.

People think being pretty or beautiful solves everything.

Which of course it doesn't.
The hard part for me I must say the painful part,

is, I work really hard and then

the result is attributed to looks.

And that's,
it's really painful.

And you would think at 76 that would go away.
But it's still there sometimes.

You know, there's a saying now,
"We are becoming the men we wanted to marry."

Wonderful.
Yeah, and it's very true.

And I would go out with very nice people, writers,
because I wanted to be a writer,

do their research,
see their friends, and

wonder why I became,
I came to resent them later on. It wasn't their fault.

They weren't telling me to do that.
But society and all my

training was telling me to do that.

I have known, personally,
about ten men

who were all the way in love with you or part of the way in love with you.

It's never anything...
Some of them were not telling the truth. I'm counting.

It's never anything you've paid much attention to.
Is it?

I paid great attention and it meant a great deal to me No,
of course I did.

To get men to be in love.
Of course. Of course.

It's, and I did, and I did, too.
It's the way, Did you?

Of course,
women show our power by getting men to fall in love with us.

Probably partly because my father was a nice guy,
I don't think I was ever

really attracted
to, uhm,

cruel or difficult men, which is a big thing.
I mean, I was very lucky.

My father was a charming, kind,
lovely man. And he was

a completely irresponsible guy,
who was always in debt.

My mother, who was a pioneer in journalism,
before I was born.

But she just couldn't make it all work together.
You know, to be the perfect

wife and mother and to have a pioneering career at the same time.

She had, what was then called,
a nervous breakdown,

which made it difficult for her to keep her newspaper job.

She just couldn't function.

And now it's a
cheery goodbye...

And she would always leave the radio on.

This is 1370 the
voice of Toledo.

It was the only sound in the apartment.

She was always lying on the couch with her eyes closed,

kind of talking to people in another realm.

This morning and each morning at this time,
Monday through Saturday...

I couldn't allow myself to feel what she was feeling.

So in many ways,
she became someone to take care of

more than she was my mother.

And I got to be very good at learning how to detach.

It was extremely depressing and scary.
Very scary

To be a child taking care of an adult is very,
very scary.

My father was long divorced from my mother when he had been

in a car accident

in Orange County
in California.

I should've
gone right away.

Uhm, but
I think that

a deep part of me feared that if I went,
I would never come back,

that I would end up caring for him, you know,
as I had for my mother when I was little.

So, he
died alone.

And I regret that so much.

I really
regret that.

In the 70s,
it was heady and exciting

and naive, you know,
because we thought

these injustices are so great,
surely if we just explain them to people,

they will want
to fix them.

The delegates include some of the best
known leaders of the women's movement.

The image of what goes on here as conveyed
to by the press is important to both sides,

as they battle
for public attention.

You have paid no attention to us.

We're in the middle of doing something.
- We are in the middle

of doing something!
We are asking why these women have been treated so...

Shut up for
one minute!

For a hundred years,
how do you dare talk to us like that.

Sometimes the only way you can get attention to the problem,

you know, is to freak out people,
as they say, is to dramatize it that way.

You have to break the form.
You have to stop playing the game

in order to change
the, the content.

We support you with our dollars brother,

so don't get smart or we'll fire you.

Flo Kennedy
was outrageous.

There's such huge punishment in the culture for an angry woman.

What the hell are you taking off your equipment for?

CBS has a... don't touch me.
Honey get out.

Don't touch me,
get your fucking hands off me. God damn it.

Don't touch me...

I think there's sometimes only an obscenity will really say it.

The media,
these are the people

responsible for what has happened to women in this country.

This is where it all begins.
The 36th Democratic National Convention.

Tonight one out of every three delegates down there will be a woman.

Nobody hands you equality.

You know there is this myth in this
country that women were given the vote.

Women went to jail, demonstrated, generally,
made such

total nuisances
of themselves.

So we weren't given it,
we took it.

Make history know that this was a different convention.

Next time around,
they won't even be discussing

should a woman run for president,
can a woman run for vice president?

It won't even be a should or a can,
it will be a very natural thing.

Bella Abzug was such an extraordinarily valuable person,

it's really
hard to describe.

And she was wonderfully comforting in,
in strange ways.

I mean,
I don't know if this makes sense, but

One of the things that happened that actually did get to me

was that a pornographer put a big poster of me

nude, right outside
the Ms. Offices,

and big sign that said,
"Pin the cock on the feminist."

Bella Abzug said,
"What's wrong," and I told her.

And she was not impressed at all.
You know, and I said, "But Bella,

you know, you don't understand that there is you know,
a drawing of me

in full labial detail,
and there are all these, you know,

penises down the side,
and it has my hair, and my glasses."

And she said,
"And my labia."

And somehow,
she made me laugh so hard that it was okay after that.

We've been much too law-abiding and too docile for too long.

But I think that period is about over.

So, I only want to remind you and me tonight

that what we are talking about is a revolution and not a reform.

I think we have to be responsibly aware

that there are more than one voice in this movement.

That there is a difference,
for instance, between me

and Gloria Steinem,
on the other hand.

In the early 70s,
Betty Friedan gave a statement of some kind to the press

saying that Ms.
Was profiteering off the women's movement.

It was following a luncheon of the new Democratic coalition

that we finally were able to ask Betty Friedan about the comment.

You're the one who made the statement in a speech in Hartford,

didn't you?
"She's just working the movement for personal profit?"

Mrs. Friedan would neither confirm nor
deny the statement about Gloria Steinem

I really question very much that Betty said that because it's so inaccurate

and we've had so many discussions about exactly this that I,
I really question it.

So, I'm replying only to the statement as reported,
not to Betty.

Do you plan to have other things say about...?
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Are you sorry you made the statement yesterday?

I have
no comment!

Do you think it'll put a serious chink in the movement?

No, of course not.

What's wrong with
Gloria Steinem?

Well, I don't think anything is wrong with Gloria Steinem as a person.

Or, at least if there is,
it isn't my business to say so.

Really,
anybody who,

threatened her ownership of the movement came in for this.

The movement was hers.
She was the mother of the movement.

But then to turn around and find all of these people trailing along

you know,
these lesbians coming along women on welfare coming.

She didn't really identify down,
she identified up

and since I was part,
in her view of the group that was advocating this

identifying down,
I'm sure that I was not welcome.

Miss Steinem,
may I ask you a question.

You made a speech before the National
Press Club this year and you said, I quote,

"Women are not taken seriously,
we are undervalued, ridiculed or ignored

by a society which consciously and un-consciously assumes

that the white male is the standard and the norm."

What's your explanation for this serious
state of affairs in view of the fact that

men, males are, at least,
virtually controlled and dominated by women

from birth to puberty and often beyond that.

Why haven't you done a better job if
you are as smart as you say you are?

Well that's your statement,
not mine

that men are virtually controlled by women from birth onward.

So, you know,
I wouldn't accept the premise of that statement.

Well, hadn't she had the opportunity to brainwash the male

during those early formative years?
Why doesn't she do it?

Well, the uh, I think it's beginning to change,
not to brainwash but to,

uh, to be objective for a change and to eliminate the

sex and the race stereotypes.

I've just never felt compelled in any way to
have children and I don't have any regrets.

I was obsessed with the magazine.
That was my child, which it still is actually.

When Ms.
Magazine got going in 1972

other magazines new and old were sinking fast.

But Ms. Made it. Only seven months after starting,
it was in the black.

I humbly admit that I was wrong when I predicted that Ms.,

the magazine of women's liberation,
would fold after five or fewer issues.

Ms.
Has every right to feel proud.

Ms.
Has been added to the U.S. government list of acceptable prefixes.

Ms., says the government,
is quote,

"An optional female title without marital designation."

I'm always reminded of a quote

which did not come from me as is sometimes said.

"If men could get pregnant,
abortion would be a sacrament".

Two, four, six, eight,
separate the church and state!

We regard abortion as the method of last resort in birth control,

but we say
with equal fervor

that it is a method which must be freely available to all who need it

for whatever reason.

This wave of the women's movement established reproductive freedom

as a basic right,
like freedom of speech or freedom of assembly.

In a landmark ruling,
the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.

The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia

said that the decision to end a pregnancy

during the first three months belongs to the woman and her doctor,
not the government.

In 1975,
Time's "Man of the Year" is 12 women.

But this cover,
while rated by some feminist leaders like Gloria Steinem

as a net plus for women,
is being criticized by others,

who say Time's implication is that 12 women are equal to one man.

The point is that we go forward.

We're nowhere near where we need to be.

This morning,
Houston turned upside down

for more than 33,000 women and men,

of wildly diverging views,
who came to participate or to protest

the National Women's conference.

A presidentially appointed commission with a Congressional mandate

to examine
women's rights.

A torch held high for feminists who have come to Houston.

It is supposed to be a symbol of progress toward equality

and of the unity they hope to create here.

Three first ladies of the United States,

Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson,
and Rosalynn Carter

stood on stage in agreement with that purpose.

I would say of all the big events I've

experienced, it was the most underestimated.

It was so
important.

Forces opposing the women's movement

hoped wrangling over such controversial proposals,
as lesbian rights,

will seriously wound the movement,

while leaders of the conference are convinced

they can win new friends for the movement.

The lesbian issue was serious.
I mean,

lesbianism was not really agreed upon,

or discrimination against lesbians,
as a feminist issue until 1977.

Would all
those in favor

of the sexual preference resolution please rise.

Then, everybody did vote and say, "Okay,
this is a feminist issue."

Be seated.
Please stay in order.

I was crying.
We were all crying.

I think of it as just so moving.

The delegates adopted an agenda that was pro-ERA,

but also pro-abortion
and pro-lesbian rights.

Equal pay for equal work. Join us now!
Equal pay for equal work. Join us now!

After years of internal squabbling over where the women's movement

should be going.
Leaders say passage of the Equal Rights Amendment

is the single most important piece of unfinished business.

That until the Constitution says women are equal to men,

the women's movement cannot move forward.

ERA! ERA!

If they want us to become

the radicals that they fear we are

just let them stop the ERA and we will become those radicals.

We are the women that our parents warned us about

and we
are proud.

Is your life much different from your mother's life?

I think she likes the idea that I'm a writer,
because in a way,

it's a continuation of what she hoped to do.
Even though we never

talked about it, it seems as if it,
it happened by accident.

Um, I wish very much I could give her

choices over again.

She was living with my sister in Washington all the many years

you know,
before she went into a nursing home.

I mean she was still with no support,
no companionship,

no nothing. And I so regret, you know,
that I wasn't more of a companion to her.

Feminist Gloria Steinem is in Albuquerque,
New Mexico.

She's been invited to Philadelphia to receive the Lucretia Mott award.

I fear that I distanced myself.
Because I was trying so hard

or I was so fearful of becoming her.

My sister called me and it was clear that my mother was,
you know, in her last

few days, I guess.
You know so,

I was sitting with my mother and uhm,

she kept saying that she wanted to go home.

Uh, and so

I...

as I remember so well kind of lied to her one last time and said,

"I'll take
you home."

Uhm, and then she just

gradually stopped breathing.

A new book on the bestseller list is called

Outrageous Acts
and Everyday Rebellions.

The book is written by Gloria Steinem.

Look, this is very messy,
and I don't care if everybody sees the wires,

but would you just get up there and do a little time step or something?

Ah Barbara,
only if you sing. I'll sing.

I didn't think you would agree to sing.

We need
a finale.

We need a great finale.

This is it. If you like her,
send in your dollars!

You do a lot
of this?

No, this is my first.
Really?

Uh-huh.
Aren't you nervous?

Very nervous.

The Today Show asked me to interview George Burns

because they knew I was always imitating him.

Yeah, I heard about that.
You want a cigar? Right?

Yeah, well,
I'II use an imaginary cigar. I see.

I say, you know,
I've got a tie.

Well, you're part of my life whether you like it or not.

I grew up listening to you Well, good,
it's nice to be part of your life.

...Gracie on the radio.
What are you doing tonight?

Well, that may
be up to you?

You got any
advice for me?

Well, when you go out with me tonight you'll learn...

I'm, I'm too old for you. No, you're not.
No you're not. You're a pretty lady.

Tonight at the Waldorf they are celebrating in the ballroom.

Gloria Steinem.
This is the day we wish her a happy 50th birthday.

The revolution is playing the Waldorf.

♪ Here are a couple
of birthday wishes

♪ May Jerry Falwell
wash your dishes

♪ May Nancy Reagan
say "I get it."

♪ And Phyllis Schlafly,
oh forget it.

♪ You know Bella,
I may seem tough

♪ But compared to you
I'm just a cream puff.

♪ You got chutzpah,
You ain't used yet.

♪ Glow, little
Gloria Glow! ♪

50 was hard.
50 was hard because it was the end of something.

The end of the central years of life,
I suppose. And I treated it with defiance.

I'm going to go right on doing everything I did before,
so there.

Aging doesn't
scare me. Death,

is another question.

When I first got a diagnosis of breast cancer,

I said to myself,

"So, this is how it's going to end."

Now, this was just a couple of days before I
was supposed to substitute for Jane Pauley

for a week on The Today Show,
which already made me nervous enough.

I had a tiny
lump excised.

I had radiation and no chemotherapy,
so I was very, very lucky.

But in a way,
it served a real purpose,

of making me a little bit more conscious of time.

Are you able to, to feel as strongly about all,
all these issues today

as you did when you first started out?

When you first... Oh,
much more. Oh god, much more.

Much, much more.

And it's
a world view,

once you start looking at us all as human beings,

you no longer are likely to accept

economic differences and racial differences and ethnic differences.

So, you
have to

uproot racism and sexism at the same time,
otherwise it just doesn't work.

The problem is we are so accustomed,
and sometimes women as well as men,

to hearing as natural,
60/40 or 70/30

as a male-female
relationship.

That when
we hear 50/50

we are threatened by it.
What did you say about this?

Yeah.

I feel this issue
is kinda talked out.

- Yeah, really.
- What issue?

What? What was that?
Not that I don't agree with it, but I just feel

there's been...
it's just talked out. If there were

four men up there talking about how,

"We're going to take over,
and in four years we're gonna run the country."

Would you women sit here and listen to that?

And I think this has all...
But that isn't what we're saying.

But this is the gist
and the feeling...

We are not talking about taking over,
we are talking about 50/50.

Maybe you're not in particular,
but being a man sitting in the audience,

there's this little, you know,
"Let's go, women."

You feel like it's kind of a male bashing.

It's there.
It is there.

Cleveland,
Ohio, hello.

Hi, Gloria.
I'm so excited to finally get to talk to you.

Oh wow.
I have a lot to say and I'll say it real quick.

First of all,
I really believe that your movement was a total failure

and I believe you could
admit that wholeheartedly.

You are one of the primary causes of the downfall

of our beautiful American family in society today.

A couple questions,
I'd like to know if you're married.

No, I'm not married.
If you have children?

No. No, you don't.
Well, let me tell you.

Don't ever have
children, lady.

Your life is worse because Gloria is in existence?

Right.
I have said for the last 15 years

that Gloria Steinem
should rot in Hell.

You, you remember that call?

Oh, how could I forget that call?
Okay, because I wrote it down.

The quote was,
"Gloria Steinem should rot in hell for what she started."

And I was like, "Ooh, Cleveland." Yeah.

That shocked me.
Do you get that a lot? Am I just naive?

I thought women,
I thought you would kinda be like a hero to women,

all women. Well, no,
mostly you get the good part.

But being recognizable means you get the resentment, too.

I got to a place where I couldn't go forward in the old way.

I was so, so, so exhausted.
It was tough. It was tough.

I was traveling all the time.
You know, I began to realize that

if I went into
a hotel room

they often
leave the radio on.

And I would always leap across the room and turn it off

because it was so depressing to me to hear that sound.

Because the radio was the only sound in the apartment with my mother.

And it had taken me all that time to connect it.

I didn't understand the degree to which

my response
was being

magnetized by things that had happened to me before.

So, that was

a huge leap forward.
And I think that

realization came out of being depressed.

There was a period of time in which

the world was kind of black and white instead of in color.

And out of that,
kind of hitting bottom.

There were, at least,
a couple of years there when I began to really

look internally.

Revolution from Within,
as a book, is part of that,

the sort of,
the coming-out-of-it.

Sometimes, when I enter a familiar room or street,

I think I see a past self walking toward me.

In a Manhattan studio,
Steinem is recording excerpts

from her new book,
Revolution From Within,

which strips away any lingering mask of invincibility.

But lately,
I've begun to feel a tenderness

a welling of tears in the back of my throat when I see her.

Having set out to write a book on self-esteem,

Steinem discovered she had very little of it herself.

Cameras have been on Steinem's public romances for years.

Such a leading feminist chooses a leading man,

it's perfect grist
for the gossip mill.

Do you need a man in your life to be happy?

Are you talking about sex or are you...?
A relationship.

What are you talking about?
Sure. Let's talk about sex.

No, not now, actually. Not at the moment.
But that may change in 20 minutes.

Who knows?
I mean...

Keep the cameras
rolling here, please.

Gloria Steinem,
it seems the most extraordinary book

that you have written.
Simply because

you seem somebody who really should have
sorted out this self-esteem stuff long ago.

Well, uhm,
I think it's probably almost impossible, you know,

to sort out the
self-esteem stuff.

I was a neglected child, so

I guess I didn't think I existed,

And if you're treated badly,
you come to feel you're a bad person.

And to some extent,
even a very good thing,

like being a social activist,
can be a drug,

you know,
that keeps you from going back and looking at yourself.

You keep trying to fill up this emptiness,
which of course,

can't be filled up
with anything external.

I kept saying to her, "You know, maybe,
you've gotta find a way to get out of this,

so that it isn't gonna take the toll it's taken.

She said,
"How can I do that?"

Not the church!
Not the state!

One of the country's most

colorful and determined political characters has died.

Bella Abzug was 77 when she died last night

of complications
from heart surgery.

She was a member of Congress in the early 1970s.

She was always ready to stir up an establishment

that she said
needed more women.

Bella Abzug always knew that women could do anything.

She expanded
all of us.

Over the years,
I've introduced...

I've introduced
Bella many times.

I had to introduce her,
because I was always an anticlimax,

if I came
after her.

And I often said,
at the end of the introduction,

"I never want to live in a world without a Bella Abzug in it."

In many ways,
she was the woman

I wished I had had,
as a mother.

Though, to say that, always made her mad,
because she always said,

"I'm not old enough
to be your mother."

Well, from the world's most unlikely bride files,
feminist icon Gloria Steinem

was married
over the weekend.

When I married at 66.
I didn't tell anybody.

I didn't ask anybody. I mean,
you know, it was as much a shock

to me as it was, apparently,
to lots of other folks.

Steinem once said marriage made women "semi non-persons."

She married entrepreneur David Bale

at the Oklahoma home of former Cherokee Chief,
Wilma Mankiller.

We loved each other,
we wanted to be together.

He was kind of
an irresistible force.

It was the first time in my life,
I think, since being a child

that I had been totally,
utterly in the present.

And I think that was a lot of the magnetism for me.

Hello, David.
Nice to see you.

See, is this,
is this great or what?

This is just
what you wanted.

Hi, sweetie.

I know this is the first time the two of
you have done an interview together.

You must be thrilled.
Greater love hath no husband. I know, I know

This is the
ultimate test.

Some people might wonder,
how does David Bale keep from being Mr. Steinem?

Oh, I don't
mind at all.

You really don't?
No, not, not one bit.

Now I, now I know you're secure.
Most men would say, Well, it never

occurs
to me that".

I actually sometimes introduce myself as Mr.
Steinem. Do you really?

Yeah. Which is fine. Why not?
And I get very upset, "No, no,

he's not Mr. Steinem."
So it's reversed.

If we compete about anything,
it's who's going to take care of the other one,

because we both grew up being caretakers.

David and I actually never got to the point of

calling each other
husband and wife.

He became very ill after a couple of years.

His illness was a brain lymphoma,
and that is devastating.

In a way, for me,
it was going back to looking after my mother.

But now I was an adult and I could do it.

So, it was as if life had given me a,
a chance,

you know, to live over,
a kind of experience.

I learned so much from,
from his illness,

which lasted
a whole year.

And from
his dying.

He was in a nursing home and that's where he died.

And it was, you know,
the first year was awful.

I mean,
the first year was full of anniversaries.

You know,
everything was an anniversary.

Cranky feminist
Gloria Steinem...

There has been a lot of effort to demonize the word feminist.

Gloria Steinem,
the 60s are over.

Maybe you made sense when everybody was tripping.
Far out, man! LSD!

Rock on!
But I think we're a little more clear-headed these days.

Thank the
Lord Almighty.

I think that being a feminist means

that you see the world whole instead of half.

It shouldn't need a name and one day it won't.

Feminism starts out being very simple,

starts out being

the instinct of
a little child,

who says,
"It's not fair."

And you are not
the boss of me."

It's something in us who knows that, right?

And it ends up being a,
a world view that, that, that, uhm,

that questions hierarchy altogether.

Is feminism dead?

By the looks of this march in Washington, D.C.,
last April,

More than a million strong,
it's alive and well

and attracting a whole new following.

More than a third of this march is women under 25 years old.

If I had one piece of advice to give to young girls I would say,

"Do not listen to my advice,
listen to the voice inside you and, and follow that.

The primary thing is that they keep going that's what's important,

that kids have their own feminist heroes.

I'm a different
generation.

The primary thing is not that they know who I am,
but that they know who they are.

As I look back at something that happened
thirty years ago and it seems quite recent,

I have to
realize that

I may not be here thirty years from now.

I've so loved
being here.

And I do hope to live to a hundred.

I love it
so much.

I never want
it to end.