If we were going to address what involves the biggest number of women, reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right - like freedom of speech, the most basic right. Freedom from violence, since women worldwide are still like 70% at least of all victims of violence. Equality in the family, democracy in the family, since the family is the microcosm of everything else, so if you have inequality and violence in the family, it normalizes it in the street, for foreign policy, for every place else.
Gloria SteinemNo, I'll take responsibility for my own life, I am going to make a decision. And you know, to this day, I would raise flags on all public buildings to celebrate the chance I had to make that decision.
Gloria SteinemSadomasochiasm - which we know very well doesn't exist in societies that don't have child abuse - is regarded some sort of natural sexual expression.
Gloria SteinemI have always employed humor, and I think itโs absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent โ itโs like the Stockholm syndrome. But you canโt compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too.
Gloria SteinemI want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion. The truth of the mater is that hierarchy and violence can't be remedied by more hierarchy and violence. The end doesn't justify the means, the means we choose decide the end we get. The means are the end.
Gloria Steinem