Gloria Steinem dismantles the patriarchy at Penn State
‘This country is about to be free’
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem spoke at Penn State Wednesday night in honor of domestic violence awareness month as a part of SPA’s Distinguished Speaker Series. Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, helped found New York magazine, for which she was a political columnist, and has also authored bestsellers My Life on the Road, As if Women Matter, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem and many more. Beyond feminism, she also tackles issues such as child abuse origins of race caste systems, nonviolent conflict resolution, and more.
Immediately, Steinem showed herself to be warm, welcoming and personable. She emphasized learning from each other, calling the very nature of our set-up hierarchical and even patriarchal, as we were sitting in rows. She hoped we could have the “spirit of a circle.”
To Steinem, acts of violence against women are a microcosm of larger world issues. She emphasized how different social movements are connected, saying that violence against women is connected to police brutality. She called such crimes “supremacy crimes,” or crimes that bring no profit and serve only to maintain hierarchy. In the case of domestic violence, that hierarchy is patriarchy, a system in which “women are the means of production and [men] own them.”
Steinem specifically mentioned the case of Trayvon Martin, whose murderer had a history of violence toward women. If the murderer had been stopped as soon as such violence was discovered, she stated, maybe Trayvon would still be here. For Steinem, making these connections is a key step to changing our society and preventing such violence.
Such connections even exist at a global level. Steinem brought to light a stunning fact: violence against women is the best predictor of a country’s likelihood of going to war. Violence against women in a country naturalizes violence in general and establishes dominance and hierarchy over another group. This then translates to violence at a countrywide level.
Steinem didn’t focus on only the negatives, though. She gave us hope for the future, saying that “It wasn’t always this way, it doesn’t have to always be this way.”
The election is an example of this. Nowadays, supporters of social movements are no longer formed by the minority; supporters form the majority. Now, Steinem believes that those who benefit from the hierarchies formed by sexism, racism, etc. are lashing out as they see them crumbling – they form the minority.
In spite of this, Steinem is optimistic about the future. She closed with eloquent lines bursting with hope: “This country is about to be free. We’re not going to turn back. … We are about to be free.” At this point, the auditorium erupted into applause, meeting her words with equal hope and optimism.