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- Hacker News
- Reading other comments, it seems like people don't know that Gloria Steinem was a complicated figure, specifically her involvement with the CIA for at least 4 years is documented [1].
By all accounts, this was in the wake of the Red Scare and she was reporting on Communist activities by European student groups. At the same time she supported unionization efforts and fair pay for women. This is what I mean by complicated.
But more problematic was this statement [2]:
> While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Anyone who knows the history of the CIA knows it was completely off the rails in the 1950s and directly involved in if not responsible for many coups. Regime change by the US is so common there's a whole Wikipedia page about it [3].
Likewise, Steinem was anti-sex work, calling it "commercial rape" [4]. That's not really surprising for the time and you can't necessarily use the same norms from 2026 in the 1950s to 1980s.
You can appreciate her contributions to, for example, equal pay and advancement of feminism and what became known as women's liberation while acknowledging her complexities. I don't understand this need people have to rewrite history to be black and white and either deify or villify people when they die.
[1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01315R0003003...
[2]: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
[4]: https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/prosti...
by jmyeet - NYT obit (non-paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/us/politics/gloria-steine...
- RIP.by rvz
- I know it looks bleak right now with wealthy and powerful men tearing down every institution that feminism, progressivism, etc built, but remember that the political pendulum inevitably swings the other way.
We can have justice, and we will.
Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can never have enough, and puts their energy towards organizing for a brighter future for people and planet.
by zackmorris - You may be right about that but they’re tearing things down overnight that took decades to build. And it will take more decades again to rebuild and repair. We’ll be spending most of our lives doing it.by dabinat
- ah, if only that were true. there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability, that's just confirmation bias from the times we live in. if you were to ask a normal person living through one of the warlord eras of Chinese history, they might have preferred greatly the times they considered ancient when the rule-of-law was more stable. similarly, I'm sure your average medieval peasant living through an Inquisition may prefer the centuries where they weren't scrutinized by their neighbors for any sign of heresy
justice is defined and propagated by the people in their time who show up and do the work. the overturn of Roe v Wade was a 40-year-old project and one of the driving forces that created the Federalist Society, a society which now dominates the Supreme Court and many other courts of law [0]. they are also responsible for things like Citizen's United, the rise in 'tort reform' (ie corporate escape holes from liability), and a lot of other anti-populist case law
they out-organized the progressive legal types (with the help, of course, of the ultra-wealthy who saw a lot to be gained from defanged tax and labor law)
there's no taking things for granted at anytime. you either grit your teeth fighting for your rights, out-organize your opponents, and stay fighting or you get trod on and lose it all. the parable of the tortoise and the hare does a lot of work here
[0] https://theintercept.com/2022/05/10/roe-v-wade-federalist-so...
by paimapi - There is a great series about the womens movement called Mrs America.by scns