Gloria Steinem
(Toledo)
Gloria Steinem is a political and social activist and organizer who was a leader of the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960’s and 70’s.
She has worked as a journalist for New York Magazine and co-founded the feminist magazine Ms.
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) collects many of Steinem’s best-known essays including “If Men Could Menstruate,” “Erotica vs. Pornography,” “I Was a Playboy Bunny,” “If Hitler Were Alive, Whose Side Would He Be On?” and “Ruth’s Song (Because She Could Not Sing It).”
Steinem was born and raised in Toledo, where, she writes, “long before becoming a writer, I had been a semiprofessional dancer dreaming of tap dancing my way out…” In the preface for the 1995 edition of the book, Steinem writes: “Only personal stories, plus parallels with systems already recognized as political…can help us begin to see the world as if everyone mattered. After all, human beings do what we see, not what we’re told.”
If you enjoyed Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, we suggest these Ohio side trips:
- Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble
- Judith Ezekiel’s Feminism in the Heartland
- Eleanor Smeal’s How and Why Women Will Elect the Next President
- Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations