"I thought we'd look at what it is we need changing within our own lives," popular feminist leader Gloria Steinem told a packed Page Auditorium Tuesday night. The Ms. Magazine founder spoke out on a variety of issues related to women's rights, stressing the work that remains to be done and the need for liberal causes to band together.
"If it took us about a century to win a legal identity, it's not surprising if it takes us nearly a century to win legal and social equality," Steinem said.
Steinem, who has also begun several national political groups, repeatedly called for the cooperation of equal-rights movements to fight for the same goals and unite against the same sources of opposition.
"It's not possible to have a successful women's movement without it also being an anti-racist movement," she said.
Included in her intertwining of causes was the movement for sexual liberation, which is the goal of detaching sexuality from reproduction, she said. Describing the denial of reproductive freedom as a "pillar of nationalism," Steinem called for the right to abortion to be added to established freedoms like speech and religion.
"It's the power to decide how many soldiers we have, how many children are born... and reproductive control is crucial to maintaining racism. In order to maintain a racist structure, you have to maintain some kind of racial difference," Steinem said. "The way you do that is through the bodies of women."
Steinem framed many problems in terms of socially defined roles that she feels need to be changed. Seeking to revolutionize the concept of a normal family and the place of men and women, she presented the goal of giving "respect and a social and economic value to caregiving" by offering tax deductions for children raised within the home.
She argued that the vast majority of terrorist acts and "senseless killings" are caused by men "addicted" to dominant masculine roles.
However, Steinem asserted that men do not have a natural predilection for violence. "Men can be as loving and nurturing as women; it's a libel against men to not say that," Steinem said.
Steinem, whose speech was sponsored by the Major Speakers Committee of the Duke University Union, also criticized many conservatives, as well as the religious right--which she described as "all the types of people our European ancestors came here to escape"--for opposing feminism and reproductive freedom.
"There has been, at least for the last 10 to 15 years, an enormous backlash that has attempted to demonize the word Ofeminism,'" she said. "Of course, if we didn't have a frontlash, we wouldn't have a backlash, so in a way, it's a good sign."
Calling the traditional question and answer session a hierarchical structure, Steinem encouraged audience members to not only ask questions, but make announcements of local events, which several did.
At the end of the night, Steinem challenged every member of the audience to do something "outrageous in the name of social justice," in hopes of making the world a better place. She left to a standing ovation.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.