Latest / FROM THE INSIDE OUT by BETH ARNOLD / #59 GLORIA STEINEM

Transcript

#59 GLORIA STEINEM · FROM THE INSIDE OUT by BETH ARNOLD

• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hey y'all, pull up a chair.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Beth Arnold, and this is from The Inside Out, where American life, politics, and memory meet as we tiny specks in the cosmos try to make sense of it all.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's September 10th, 2026, and I'm happy to be reading Gloria Steinem.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now our minds are one.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: In Netflix's famous last words, Gloria Steinem, she left a message for all of us.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, all you unique individuals out there.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad to be meeting you through the magic of the media.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could meet each one of you in person, but in a way, this is what allows us now to see each other's lives, to influence each other's lives, to respect each other, and to therefore perpetuate what we hope is a global democracy.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Please feel free to respond in any way you can, and please tell your own story.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is the most important thing we can do for each other is to know each other through stories.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope so much that whoever you are listening right now, you are able to do what you love, to be also the unique person you are.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of my stories.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I met Gloria Steinem in Abbecue, New Mexico at Georgia O'Keefe's beloved ghost ranch, a 21,000-acre historic property in northern New Mexico.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: There, nomadic Native Americans and ancestral Puebloans had lived off the land's resources for thousands of years.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: In 1940, O'Keeffe bought a house there, and for decades she painted over and over her view of the Peternal Mountain.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Later she bought a nearby Spanish colonial hacienda built in the 1730s and took three years to renovate it using local craftsmen who worked in traditional Pueblo-style mud adobe architecture.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: O'Keefe went from New York City to rural rustic New Mexico, where the Native American vibe is palpable.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It captures you in the high desert and flies into your heart.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Stinem had made something of what I would call a similar journey into the Native American consciousness, and these ancient rhythms had inhabited her psyche.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: There is a story that Steinem went to Abakuew in the 1970s with a bouquet for O'Keefe, who refused to see her.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: O'Keefe lived life the way she wanted to, without conformity or need for social affirmation.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was obvious where she stood in matters of independence and self-creation.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine the conversation these two women of such like-minded stature might have had.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I learned that week was that Steinem was a deep container of spirit and wisdom.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: She was open, warm, and present with only the best intentions.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: While she led a sophisticated worldly life, she remained connected to the wisdom of the earth.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Most importantly, she truly wanted to listen to each of us and made time to hear us.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: In her famous line, Hope is a form of planning, she gave us hope itself.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Gloria Steinem first entered our consciousness in the 1960s.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: When Clay Felker started New York magazine in 1968, he recruited Steinem to join the foundational editorial team.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: She earned her co-founder status through powerful political reporting and a sharp editorial vision that helped define the publication's early voice.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: A few years later, Ms.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Magazine first came to life as a 32-page insert in New York magazine's December 1971 edition.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mr.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Felker helped fund it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: A preview issue the next month sold out in eight days, selling 300,000 copies.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's from the New York Times.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Writing the momentum of this massive success, Ms.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: co-founders Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pittman Hughes secured the necessary funding to transition the magazine into a regular monthly periodical.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: The official debut issue hit shelves in July 1972, famously featuring Wonder Woman on its cover.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Steinem was always on the crest of the wave.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: She was Wonder Woman.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that summer I was in Washington, D.C.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: working for Senator John McClellan as Watergate was unfolding, learning the backroom ways of Washington political power.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget the Equal Rights Amendment.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: In May 1970, Steinem appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and took apart the myths used to keep us dependent because women were not equal in America.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: We were paid less, denied advancement, discouraged from education, and treated by law and custom as reliant on men.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the late 1970s, I lived in Nashville, Arkansas, where we were still fighting for the ERA.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The ERA regional director told me that the preacher at one of the most popular local churches of Christ had delivered a sermon that she, the director, was a devil.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was shocking.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Although the same kind of thing is happening now.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: But this is just a taste of what women were up against, and Steinem kept pressing forward.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: She knew how to frame the issue so that people understood them.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And even if she started out on this path for women's liberation fearing public speaking, she soon instinctually understood how to keep cool and speak eloquently and with force.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Julie Tamore's movie, The Glorious, shows Steinem's activist life story through four actresses of various ages, including Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I loved Tamor's execution of this film, and Gloria herself appeared in the last scene on a bus with all the younger versions of herself.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: But isn't it true that as we go through life, we learn, experience, and grow into different, hopefully better and wiser versions of our own selves.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I believe in fate, but I believe the universe presented Steinem a perfect storm of circumstances that meant she was fulfilling her destiny and leading us to ours.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: At Ghost Ranch, every afternoon, we participated in small wisdom circles that Native women led.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Native women and native forms of gathering were built into the structure of the retreat.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the week, they guided us through their own native thought craft and our relationships to the spirits and to one another.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Steinem's best friend for 25 years was chief of the Cherokee Nation Wilma Mankiller.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: From Mankiller, Steinem learned the indigenous understanding that no life is formed alone.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: We become ourselves in relationships with other people, our ancestors, our communities, and the natural world.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Stinem's destiny then would not belong only to herself.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: It would be created through everyone she encountered and would help change the paths available to others.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what that means as our responsibility to one another.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And for a moment, think how the GOP keeps dividing us and shaming and punishing our poor, and how Trump has made it government sport to take away what people need and what their lack of good food and health care will do to them and to us all.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't live alone in this world, we live together.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: One of our main principal hurdles to our own individualism as well as to our democracy is a woman's right to choose what happens to her own body or legalizing abortion.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: It seems insane that this is even a question.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you think men would vote for any law, which meant they couldn't have the say about their own bodies, well, I've got a newly refurbished reflecting pool to sell you.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: But Steinem's involvement with this issue began long before Roe v.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wade.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: At 22, while on her way to India in 1957, Gloria was pregnant and had an illegal abortion in London.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Also, on the road to Roe v.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wade, the first issue of Ms.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: published, we have had abortions signed by 53 prominent American women, including Gloria Steinem.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: They risk shame and depending on where their abortions occurred, possible legal consequences by saying it publicly.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what did they have to do to get them?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are women forced to do now that this corrupt Supreme Court has struck road down?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Since I spent three and one half months in India by myself, much later in life, I understand how formative Steinem's two years in India were for her.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: India is a place whose ancient cultures and mysteries draw seekers, people searching for the essence of God, themselves, and their place in the world.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Stinem's time there was long before the hippies trek to India and returned with meditation and yoga.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: She had what I might call a political awakening.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And no matter what the situation or who needed help, Gloria Steinem led us, inspired us, stuck with us, lifted us up.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: She got us through the door of women's rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, labor and workers' rights, disability rights, indigenous and native rights.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: They all go together as human rights, social justice, and equal protection under the law.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that is Gloria Steinem.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Part of what I loved about spending this time at Ghost Ranch with Steinem was seeing her move through the world with such ease and grace, underscored by the power of her intelligence and her very perspective and I believe intuitive knowledge of human behavior.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: What happens to us and what those things mean on a deeper level.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was wandering through the world feeling lost in my own country while she was still paving the way for me.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: The native rituals and grounding at this retreat were both expanding and comforting.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to Steinem about my political background and she encouraged me to write about it.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing that now.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so proud to say that Gloria Steinem and her foundation have supported my work.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: In one of the last scenes in the movie, The Glorious, Steinem is with her dear friend Wilma Mankiller, who was her sister in the movement.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Stinem credited Mankiller in changing her worldview, noting that Mankiller's leadership gave her a real-world glimpse of what a truly equal, ungendered society looked like.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Working together as a community for the good of all.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: A Cherokee worldview.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Mankiller had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer and was on her deathbed.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Stinem flew to Oklahoma and spent the last two weeks of Mankiller's life with her.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: In the scene after their conversation, Mankiller says, I will see you on the other side of the mountain.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: See you on the other side of the mountain, Steinem says in return and cries.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: For me, some of the most meaningful parts of the days at Ghost Ranch were when we gathered in a big circle first thing in the morning and last thing in the afternoon, and a native woman called the Thanksgiving address, greetings to the natural world to us, and we answered.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is an ancient and central cultural address of the Hodenoshone, which are made up of the Iroquois Confederacy comprising the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Kayayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a prayer or a document of worship, but a spiritual communication of gratitude, mutual respect, and appreciation for all elements of the natural world.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: The address is used by six nations to open and close major ceremonial, governmental, and social gatherings.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we did the same.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Here is just a portion of it.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: The people.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So now we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now our minds are one.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: The Earth Mother, we are thankful to our mother, the earth, for she gives us all that we need for life.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: She supports our feet as we walk about upon her.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: To our mother, we send greetings and thanks.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now our minds are one.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: The waters.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: We give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Water is life.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: We know its power in many forms.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of water.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now our minds are one.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was a really meaningful and important piece for me because of my deep love and respect for Gloria Steinem.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for pulling up a chair and listening.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: If this piece stayed with you, I hope you'll share it.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if these essays have been meaningful to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: From the Inside Out is an entirely reader supported publication, and your subscription helps sustain this work week after week.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, from one tiny speck in the cosmos to another.