Gloria and Me

You might have heard about this Greenstone Media thing. It's this project that Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda are pimping: talk radio by women, for women. Or for women, by women.I can't remember. Anyway, Gloria and Jane are pimping it as this great thing for women.

Sure, it's being fronted by aging feminists. Aging white privileged feminists, but still. It's one less corner of the airwaves being occupied by Rush Limbaugh types and that, to me, is all good.

Once upon a time I would have said that the whole project sucked. I would have said that Gloria Steinem was irrelevant and that any woman who supported a radio network that used advertising was a sell-out. I would have flicked cigarette ash at my Doc Marten-shod feet and snorted in disdain. The revolution can't be advertised! Privileged old white women can't be its spokespeople! Then I would have tucked the notes from my womyn's studies class into my tattered bookbag beside tattered copies of The Second Sex and the Vagina Monologues and wandered off muttering something about Emma Goldman and dancing.

But that was then, this is now. I'm a grown-up now.

I'm a mother, with a daughter, and a mortgage, and a job corrupting the minds of the young at a major university. I've got more at stake in the quote-unquote system. So I'm a little less strident. My standards for what counts as a revolutionary movement? Not so high anymore. Anything that improves the world even marginally for my daughter is, in my mind, a good thing.

So I support the whole Greenstone project. Literally. They asked me, as a blogger, to participate in some interviews and to come to their launch and to generally help them figure out how they might involve women who make themselves heard through the Internet. Sounded good to me. I said yes.

I said yes, and then I got to speak on the telephone with Gloria Steinem. Then I got to go to the Greenstone launch in New York, and meet Gloria face-to-face. Oh, and Mo Gaffney, and Dee Snider.

(Twisted Sister, people! Twisted Sister!)

I was pretty excited about it. I wrote about it on my blog. I said a whole bunch of stuff about feminism and friendship and activism and felt pretty inspired by the whole thing.

But then I started hearing whispers from some corners of the blogosphere. Sell-out. No better than shilling advertising. And: what kind of feminist still listens to Gloria Steinem?

I wasn't bothered by the accusations of selling out. Better people than me have sold out. And there are worse things to sell out for (chat time with Mo Gaffney? Are you fucking kidding me? Where do I sign up?) I am, however, bothered about being called out on my feminist bona fides for singing the praises of Gloria Steinem. Really bothered. Head-poundingly-angry bothered.

Yes, she's white. Yes, she's rich. Yes, she's attractive and wears make-up and is heterosexual and able-bodied and has no prior convictions. But she founded Ms. Magazine, for fuck's sake, and was instrumental in bringing the contemporary feminist movement into the mainstream. She gave it legs, y'all. Sexy legs, white legs, legs not in a wheelchair, legs that only (so far as I know) curl up next to men, but still. It's safe to say that were it not for the efforts of Gloria Steinem the feminist movement would not be entirely what it is today.

I'm totally sympathetic to arguments that assert the need for more diversity in the feminist movement. The feminist movement needs different faces. It certainly needs younger faces. My generation does not have a Gloria Steinem. It has no feminist role-models. It has no role-models, period. That sucks.

But the fact that it sucks is not a reason to piss on the women that keep stepping up to fill the void, or to piss on those of us who derive inspiration from those women. That I admire an aging white feminist in no way diminishes my desire to see the face of feminism change with the times. It in no way diminishes my desire for a real transformative movement, one that brings all variety of women to its forefront.

The pissiness and the in-fighting, however, does diminish us, as women and as feminists. We want real change for women? It's gonna take an army. Not only can we not afford to disqualify some women because of their race, sexuality or ability, to do so would fly in the face of everything that (I think) feminists stand for: real, meaningful inclusivity. Such inclusivity has to embrace everybody, including old white women who can afford to underwrite projects like the Women's Media Center.

Nor can we afford to pooh-pooh efforts to get more women's voices out there. So what if there's some advertising? So what if the spokespeople are old and white? So fucking what? If it gets us heard, in my books, it's good.

We doom ourselves, as a movement, by picking on each other. Want to see change in the feminist movement? Do something about it. Get off of your ass. Find some underprivileged girls and mentor them. Support women in local politics. Pony up some money so that less economically advantaged women can get involved in politics. Kiss the feet of women who are contributing their time and their money to the cause of gender equality. I don't care what it is. Do something.

And in the meantime, back the fuck off of Gloria.

Catherine Connors, when she's not blogging as Her Bad Mother and struggling to stay one step ahead of the child usually known as WonderBaby, teaches political science at the University of Toronto. You can read her blog at Her Bad Mother, and link to her other projects at HerBadMother.com.