How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S8, BONUS EPISODE! How to Fail: Gloria Steinem

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

GLORIA STEINEM. Gloria ACTUAL Steinem. For this very special bonus episode, I had the absolute honour of interviewing one of my all-time heroes, the feminist activist, writer and icon, Gloria Steinem. And yes, I'm still pinching myself. We talk about her failure to understand her mother, her failure to be at her father's deathbed and her failure to learn lessons quickly enough - yes, we go deep... She also talks to me about how, at the age of 86, she is joyfully outliving society's expectations of her; of how fear can often be a sign of growth (let that sink in), about how 'anger is an energy cell', about how we are 'linked not ranked', about not having children, about spending a lifetime combatting misogyny and racism and sexism and injustice, and about the counteracting forces of love and compassion and friendship which keep her going. If you've been watching the Mrs America miniseries about the battle for equality, then this is a MUST-LISTEN, even if I do say so myself. I love Steinem's work so much that I often quote her in my own - the book of How To Fail is a classic example (she's in the 'Anger' chapter) - and so to be given a chance to meet her, albeit remotely, was honestly a life highlight. She did not let me down. In fact, she exceeded my wildest expectations. Whoever said never meet your heroes clearly never met Gloria Steinem.*If you've enjoyed this season of How To Fail, you might like to join me for a livestream event I'm doing on 2nd October to mark the launch of my new book Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong You can book here*The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off, an illustrated collection of Steinem's best quotes, is out now and available to buy here.*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayGloria Steinem @gloriasteinemHow To Fail @howtofailpod         Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Just a note before we start, this season of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day was recorded remotely under lockdown. I am so excited about today's sponsor. Am I allowed to say that? I'm so excited about today's sponsor. Am I allowed to say that? Strange times call for a little distraction.

And what better way to do that than to eavesdrop on Robbie Williams, wife Ida and the family as they experience lockdown on their podcast, Staying at Home with the Williamses. This season, Robbie and Ida have been sharing tips on navigating self-quarantine, what they've been doing to entertain themselves and the kids and sharing their thoughts on what it's like being in each other's company 24-7. For a lot of us, that's pretty relatable, but throw in an LA mansion

and a swimming pool for good measure. Their podcast gives you insight into the madness of the Williamses household and has been some welcome light relief to me and many others, so I encourage all of you to do the same. Search for Staying at Home with the Williamses wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much to Robbie and Ida. Before we get started with today's special bonus episode, I just wanted to thank you all for your incredible messages and comments and reviews over the last season, which has taken place under exceptional circumstances during the COVID-19 lockdown. And I also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that I have a new book coming out called Philosophy, which launches on the 1st of October. There will be no glamorous launch party because these are the times that we live in,

but there will be a live stream event where I am going to talk about everything I've learned on failure over the last two and a bit years of doing the podcast with contributions from some very, very special guests. If you'd like to be part of that, please visit FANE.co.uk.

That's F-A-N-e.co.uk and book your tickets now it is live at 6 30 p.m on the 2nd of October and I will put all the details in the show notes but now on with a very very very special guest Hello, and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger, because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. It is one of the immense privileges of what I do that very occasionally I get the chance to meet one of my heroes. Today is one such day because

my guest is none other than the feminist icon, organiser, activist and journalist Gloria Steinem, a woman I have quoted so much in my own life and work that it feels almost creepy to be introducing her. But introduce her, I will, because there is so much to say. National Geographic has referred to her as the world's most famous feminist, a woman who has been actively fighting for gender equality and reproductive justice since the early 1960s. She was born in Ohio in 1934 and had an itinerant childhood with her mother Ruth and father Leo, a roaming antiques dealer. Although her youthful ambitions were to be either a horse rancher or a dancer, she became a journalist after graduating from Smith College. One of her first articles was about contraception

and how women were forced to choose between a career and marriage. It appeared in Esquire in 1962, a whole year before Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. Steinem went on to report on politics and social issues for New York, before co-founding the feminist publication Ms. in 1972. Since then, she has travelled the world, speaking at rallies, protesting everything from the Vietnam War to female genital mutilation, and organising activist pressure to change the world we live in for the better. Women my age are quite simply indebted to what Steinem and her peers did and continue so tirelessly to do. An award-winning and prolific writer Steinem has authored several books including a biography of Marilyn Monroe and the best-selling My Life on the Road. In 2013 Barack Obama presented

her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in America. Her latest book, The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off, is an inspiring collection of her greatest quotes, introduced with a selection of new essays from Steinem herself. In fact, Steinem has coined so many legendary phrases that it's quite hard to pick just one. But for the purposes of this podcast, I suppose the most apt is Steinem's famous declaration that brave is not being unafraid, but feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Gloria Steinem, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you for that very, very generous introduction. I'm going to try to live up to it.

Oh, I meant every single word. And I have quoted you just so much in my life. And it was really interesting reading your latest book, because I just realized how many of the things that you've said have become part of common parlance. But what do you think is the secret to a good quote? And do you know when you've made one that's going to stand the test of time? I think quotes are the poetry of everyday life, which means condensed meaning. And movements give rise to a lot of great quotes quotes because we're constantly trying to think of something short enough to put on a banner or a protest poster. So to say things simply, very difficult to choose one. I've always loved quotes.

I have great lists of other people's quotes. But I think the shortest way I've ever been able to say what we want is to say we are linked, we are not ranked. I love that. And that is short enough. And I think universal enough, because we're talking about race, gender, nationality, all kinds of false and artificial divisions, that I hope that it has a meaning for different reasons. And women historically have been so pitted against each other by the patriarchy that

sometimes I think it feels so difficult for us to celebrate the success of others, even though that's exactly what we should be doing. Well, I hope that in both of our countries that the concept of the women's movement that we advance when we all advance has meant we compete or feel we are in competition less. But it's true that it happens to all less powerful groups that you are supposed to compete with each other for the favor of the more powerful group. It's one of the most tragic results because it causes us to weaken each other. And it's the job of movements to put an end to that and to allow us to take joy in each other's accomplishments because we know it's an advance for us too. That quote about bravery, not being about being unafraid, but feeling the fear and doing it anyway. You're 86 now. And I wonder if there is anything that still scares you?

Oh, yes. A blank page. That never goes away. That never goes away. But I think what helped me and what I learned from other women in the movement is that fear is actually a sign of growth. Oh, I love that. It means you're approaching something that you're unsure of, you're growing. So I think follow the fear and do it anyway, is an acknowledgement of fear as a sign of growth. is an acknowledgement of fear as a sign of growth. And if we were to flip that on its head and flip the concept of this podcast on its head, and instead of talking about failure and fear,

and if I were to ask you how you would define success, what would you say? Well, when you say that to me, what I think of is doing something you love so much that you forget what time it is when you're doing it and being able to do that and sustain yourself by doing that. So even though if you love what you do, it's a source of fear too because you want to do it well. Nonetheless, when I sit down to write or try to write,

it's the only time when I think that I shouldn't be doing something else. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, otherwise, I think, yes, I'm doing this, but it's temporary. When I'm writing, I think, OK, this is it. Now, I became a journalist in the early 2000s, and it was still a very sexist industry. I'm trying to imagine how sexist it was in the early 1960s when you started being a journalist. How sexist was it? Well, how long do we have? I remember I had a literary agent, which was itself a triumph,

and the agent sent me to an editor at Life Magazine about a particular assignment. When I walked in the door, he looked up from his desk, saw me and said, I don't want a pretty girl, I want a writer. And that was it. When I was doing an assignment for the Sunday New York Times Magazine, my editor there, assignment for the Sunday New York Times magazine. My editor there, when I went to hand in my manuscript, would at least once or twice give me a choice. Either I could mail his letters on the way out, or I could go to a hotel room with him in the afternoon. Needless to say, I mailed his letters. But of course, it was the nature of the assignments too. I remember asking to do the profile of Mayor

Lindsay who was then the mayor of New York City and they said no but you can profile his wife. There were lots of examples like that. I as a junior reporter was once asked to try out an orgasm machine and these were not... Wait asked to try out an orgasm machine. And these were not... Wait a minute, there's an orgasm machine? Yeah, it didn't work, Gloria. Sorry, spoiler alert. Well, was it at least universal or was it gender specific? It was gender specific.

It was for women because we were being told that it was very hard for a woman to come to orgasm and pour her without obviously the deeper question being asked, which is like, why isn't she being sexually satisfied? But it's just so funny. Yes, right. I mean, that leads to a much longer discussion. Yeah. But similarly, the commissions that I was given were very gendered. But that has changed happily and largely because of the work that you

have done. We will go on to your failures now because they are really profound ones and they start early in your life. And your first failure, you wrote to me that you think the most unfixable failures are the ones linked to the mortality of the person that we failed. And for you, that means something very specific. So can you explain to us what that means for you? Well, I do think the inability to go back and rectify or make up or apologize or make right is haunting. So in my case, that has to do with the deaths of my parents. First, my father, who lived in California all the way across the country. My parents had been separated since I was, I don't know, 10 or so.

He lived a very vagabond life. He was living the life he wanted. I knew that he was ill. My sister and I, and my sister has six children, so I was the one who could more easily have gone. But we talked to the doctor and decided that I could wait a while before I went. And I fear that what was in my head was that if I went, I would end up staying there forever caring for him as I had taken care of my mother. So I listened and didn't go. And when I finally did go, when I was in Chicago, changing planes, I learned that he had died.

And I will regret all of my life that I wasn't there sooner. of my life that I wasn't there sooner. But one of the rewards of writing is that when I wrote about this feeling, I got a letter from two friends of his, a doctor and the doctor's grown-up son, who actually had seen him just before he died, because they read what I wrote. It was the first time that I knew that he had at least seen two familiar, friendly faces before he died. That's very beautiful. Was part of your haunting regret, as you express it so eloquently, that there were still things that you wanted to say to your father? It's interesting you ask that. Of course, I would have said I love you. But it wasn't so much about words as it was just about being present, because he had chosen to live a

vagabond life by himself. But at the end, he was in a car accident. He was in a strange hospital by the roadside all by himself. And I so regret that I wasn't there. I'm so sorry. That's such a shocking way to lose someone. You've spoken very warmly in the past about your father. And there's a particular quote that I love, which is that your father had two points of pride. He never wore a hat, which in his generation he was supposed to, and he always worked for himself, which I think gives such a sense of who he was. He sounds like someone who was very clear about what he wanted from life. Yes, I mean, that he never wore a hat and never had a job,

he often said, you know, marked him apart with pride from everyone else. And I'm grateful for that because it enabled me also never to have a job, which writers have to do, you know, frequently. That is, we're freelancing, we don't have a continuous paycheck. But on the other hand, it's a more free life because there's something great about the fact that you can't be fired. No one can actually fire you. And that's probably helpful in a movement to have a certain small percentage of people who can't be fired, because then you're not punished for saying what needs to be said. I mean, he sounds an unconventional person. And I wonder if you think you've inherited his unconventional spirit,

but also whether you think it's possible to be the kind of activist you have been without being unconventional. You know, hard to know, isn't it? It's hard to think out of one's own consciousness and circumstance. But I am grateful to him because I think we need, in a social justice movement, you need people inside the system who are actually making the physical changes that need to be made. that need to be made. And you need people outside the system who make the ones inside look reasonable because you're out there in the street stating what the longer term goal is. So I recognize that it was really because of my father, my mother too, but in this sense, perhaps my father more, that enabled me to think that this was okay. I mean, for

instance, once I worked for a magazine here, McCall's, which is a large, successful magazine for women. And they asked me to do a small regional magazine that they had at the end of each issue, which was really about selling advertising that was regional. But anyway, and so I was happily sitting at home assigning writers to fill these few pages at the end of each issue. Then a new editor came in, and he had the nerve to ask me to be in the office two days a week rather than doing this from home. I quit. I mean, I didn't think about it all that much. I quit. How dare he expect me to be in the office two days a week. And I went out in the street, I bought an ice cream cone. I walked around in the sun eating my ice cream cone. I felt great.

So it's not rational. It just becomes part of who you are. And I'm guessing you've never regretted quitting that job. No, I mean, it wasn't a job that I was terribly fond of, because, you know, it really was about income, though it was fun to be able to supply jobs for other writers. But it wasn't rational, it was just instinctive. You mentioned your mother there. And when you wrote your failures to me, you said that part of the reason you delayed going to your father's bedside was that fear of being forever his caretaker, as you had been for your mother. So can you explain a bit about that particular dynamic with your mother? After my parents were separated, my sister, who was nine years older, was already in college

working. She was away from home. So it meant that my mother and I were living on our own in Toledo. And my mother was not very well for a series of reasons. And so I was looking after her much of the time, you know, and talking to other people since then, I realized that a lot of my experiences were shared by children whose parents were alcoholic or ill. I mean, you know, this is not an uncommon experience. But it did mean premature responsibility, cooking and looking after and also not quite knowing what you will find when you come home. There was that constant kind of tension, which, you know, I'm certainly

not alone in experiencing. But having been the parent of a big person when you're a small person is quite different from being a competent adult with a child you know it's a reversal of the of the power relationship and it's difficult. You've written in the past about how you would see male doctors dismissing your mother's mental health issues. And that long before you realize you're a feminist, you recognize this anti-female bias in medicine. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Because I think it's a bias that exists still in treatment of women in so many areas. out what the problem was just to, I mean, kind of the idea was, well, you know, women can be tranquilized into feeling okay about their subordinate role or doing the kind of work they're doing, much less worry about competency or being able to use their talents completely.

Phyllis Chesler wrote a wonderful book about this that was a pioneering feminist book, Women and Madness, about the different standards for women and men of what constitutes mental health. Did you ever ask your mother why she didn't break free of her situation? I know that that's a loaded question because we're talking about a very different era, but did you ask her? Yes, I did. I mean, because first of all, it took me a while. I think I was a teenager before I realized that a decade before I was born, she had been a journalist, a newspaper editor at a time when that must have been quite revolutionary for women to have that kind of position. And once I realized

that she had given that all up after my sister was born and was about six or so, and my mother had what was then called a nervous breakdown and was in a sanatorium for a year or two. And after that, she just gave it up and became a wife in a much more traditional sense and also became addicted to tranquilizers and so on. Now, I didn't realize that until I was a teenager. But once I did, I was said to her, but why didn't you leave my father, take my sister, you know, go to New York? She had a friend who was a journalist too, and they dreamed of coming to New York and working. And also she had fallen in love with a man who was in the office. Why didn't you marry the other man, go to New York, become a journalist, whatever it was you

dreamed of doing? And she would always just say to me, but if I had done that, you would not have been born. And I never, ever had the courage to say to her, but you would have been born. And I realize that in many ways, like many women and some men too, I'm living out the unlived life of my mother. I find it so impressive that she was a newspaper editor. Yes, absolutely. In the 1920s, I guess. In the late 20s, and yes, of the Toledo Blade, which was a big city newspaper.

She had started working there as a columnist writing under a man's name. She had other jobs and became Sunday editor, which must have been incredible. Your second failure is related to this, which is that you say you failed to do as much as you could for your mother. What more do you think you could have done? I could have offered her a lot more companionship. I was kind of subterraneanly saying, I don't want to be like my mother. I don't want to live the life my mother is living. So sometimes that translated into not sharing her interests. And now I see her books. She left me all of her books. And I read, you know, and the St. Vincent Millay and Dorothy Parker and books

about theosophy, all of her books. And I realized how many interests we shared, that if I hadn't been so trying not to become her, I could have shared more. And how old were you when your mother died? Oh, gosh, I have to think. I was in my 30s, I guess. And your dad was the similar sort of age. You were also in your 30s. He died before my mother did. Yeah, right.

Okay. And so they had time to see you make your life in New York, become this acclaimed journalist. What did they make of your career? That's interesting. I think, here's an example of my father. When I came home from India, where I lived for a couple of years after I got out of college, he met me at the boat and he said, you know, he clearly was trying to figure out what an overeducated 24-year-old then, you know, was going to do with herself. And he said he was going to introduce me to a man who sold aerosol cans because then I could travel, which of course he loved to do and was sure I did, and I could sell aerosol cans. So, you know, obviously that was not something that was going to be very satisfying. My mother, buying. My mother, on the other hand, understood, I think, clearly the aspiration to be a writer. And when I was a senior in college and I was engaged, because I had met a wonderful man and I didn't quite know what to do except get engaged, she said to me with a great double message, she

said, well, good that you get married right away, because once you get out into the world and see how interesting it is, you'll never get married. Oh, my goodness. What an extraordinarily ambiguous thing to say. Right. So how did you respond to that? Because the engagement didn't last. Well, I fled to India in order to break the engagement. And of course, you know, because I had an opportunity of a fellowship. And so I did what probably she might have predicted that I was going to do, but I didn't know that at the moment. She sounds like such a phenomenally bright and humorous woman. And it just breaks my heart that she was born into an era that straightjacketed her. Yes, I so agree. And every once in a while, she would tell me a story that

made me see how true it was. For instance, when she was a teenager, I think, the first cars were on the road. And her family was not well to do. Her father worked on the railroad, and her mother made money by writing sermons for ministers, which I love, because it was so clear that she was not sort of going along with the religion, but she understood how to fake it, so to speak. Anyway, someone in the block had a Stanley Steamer, which was an early car. And my mother was the only person on the block who drove it. So I think she, you know, she was always adventurous. And I hope you don't mind my saying this, but it strikes me that you were in a position at a very young age where you were the responsible one in that family unit, where you were doing a lot of your own parenting. And you don't sound at all bitter about that.

You talk very lovingly about your parents. Has that always been the case? Well, you know, I think that children in general are very perceptive about what's going on in the household. So if the parents are withholding something from the children that they could give them, the children understand that. I also understood that my parents were absolutely doing the best they could. were absolutely doing the best they could. It wasn't as if they were consciously withholding something from me that they could otherwise have given me. I knew they loved me and they were doing the best they could.

And that is pretty much what children need. You mentioned in passing that your older sister has six children and you don't have children and I am always wary about asking women about the subject but the reason I want to ask you is actually is a personal thing for me because I have tried and failed to have children on several occasions and it's been very painful. And therefore I really admire and need women like you to be in the public eye saying that they don't have children, they're okay with it. And I just wonder if I could ask you about that, about whether not having children was an active decision or whether it was something that just didn't happen. It wasn't a decision in the beginning, because remember that I was growing up in the 1950s, not even the 60s. So I assumed that women had to marry and have children, that there wasn't an option.

the future. Oh, yes, I'm going to do that. Just not at this moment. But fortunately, the women's movement came along and said, wait a minute, not all women have to live the same way. You have a choice. And I just kind of discovered that I was happy as I am. So I think I was in a more privileged position in a way, definitely, than you were, because I didn't have an unfulfilled wish. I just discovered that I was okay with the way I was living. And have you ever regretted not having children? Not for a millisecond, no. You know, this is so deep and individual. So I so respect what you were saying. We all have different kinds of regrets, but that is not a regret I have.

Thank you for saying that. And I absolutely hear the respect that you have for it. So, and I really appreciate it. One of the reasons I bring it up is because of what we were talking about there about insidious sexism in medicine, because my experience of fertility medicine was absolutely that, that I as well, the insidiousness of that language of the other that is so embedded in societal norms. Yes, I think so. You and I together should come up with a list of terms that are bizarre. I wonder what men are told when their sperm are not impregnating someone. Do you think they are told their sperm are incompetent? No, and I would love to say they should be, but no, they shouldn't be.

We should just lift the language up for both of us. Yeah, no, I mean, it's not, how can you assign blame? It just means that the sperm are not twirling at the right speed or the walls of the womb are not... I mean, surely we could put it in a less judgmental way. Do you think you've ever been judged for not being a biological mother? Yes, I think so, in a way that people assume I must be unhappy or unfulfilled or not everyone but some people I think assume that just because they where I think they perhaps would not assume it about a

man I think the other assumption that people make about feminists and activists generally is that they are angry and the language of female anger is very different from the language around male anger and this is something that I quote you saying all of the time and that you're actually in my latest book where there's a whole chapter that I talk about female anger and I quote you saying there was a whole chapter that I talk about female anger. And I quote you saying, there was a whole movie named 12 Angry Men, and that was a good thing. When men are angry, it's usually assumed to be for a reason. When women are angry, it's been considered unfeminine or a character defect. Where do you think we are now in handling female and male anger? Have you seen progress in your lifetime? Yes, certainly I've seen a lot of progress. And there is an understanding that women have a right to be angry. But I noticed it, especially in the difference of treatment, including in the press,

of political candidates. There was such an emphasis, say, on Hillary Clinton's demeanor. If she was righteously angry in the cause of social justice, suddenly she was an angry woman in a way that a man would not have been. It's seen as a character flaw or trait instead of a realistic reaction to events in the world. Exactly. And male anger is seen as sort of righteous and powerful rather than shrewish. And it's true racially too. That is certainly with racism in my country, clearly people of color have a right to be angry, but the caricature of an angry black man, as well as a woman, is of a dangerous person rather as somebody who's reacting to reality. Are you angry?

Yes, and I do think anger is an important source of energy because when you see something or experience something that is just not right, anger gives you the energy to do something about it. So anger is an energy cell. And when was the last time you were really angry? The last time I looked at the White House, which was like an hour ago. It's inescapable. at the White House, which was like an hour ago. It's inescapable. Because we have a virus in this country who happens to be president. There's another Steinem quote. It's a classic. And I would like to say in defense of my country that he lost by six million votes. He did not win the popular vote. He's only there because we have something called the Electoral College, which was a creation of the slaveholding states in the first

place, and we should get rid of it. So in defense of this country, we did not vote for him in the majority, and hopefully we will get rid of him soon. I apologize for imposing him on the world. He does not represent, well, I guess he represents peak 30% of the country, which is in kind of racist backlash against change and sexist backlash and only interested in money or something. But he doesn't represent the vast majority of this country. Does that backlash that you describe feel dispiriting to you? Or does it feel more like, I heard someone express it recently as the death

rattle of the kind of old order. It's just like flailing around madly trying to impose itself again, but ultimately we'll rid ourselves of it. Well, I do understand, I mean, on the upside, it is not the majority. As I was just explaining, you know, he was not elected by the majority. And it is a sign of change in the sense that the folks who still feel as if they've been deprived of a hierarchy they were born into and now they see slipping away, are here, you know, let's say it's something like a third. And it is a sign of enormous change that it is not the majority. They can see the change. For instance, the first generation of babies in this country who are majority babies of color have already been born. So soon this will not be a majority quote white unquote country. And they can see that and they feel displaced by that.

So it is a backlash against change that is inevitable. And that is cheerful in a sense, but it's also dangerous. I mean, the best analogy I can think of is when a woman who is experiencing domestic violence, we know that the most dangerous time, that is the time she's most likely to be beaten or even killed, is when she is about to escape or has just escaped because she is escaping control. So in a sense, I think this country is in the position of a woman who is escaping. The good news is she is about to be free. The bad news is it's a moment of maximum danger. So we need to be conscious of both things and look after each other.

But of course, we're not turning back. That is such a powerful metaphor. Your third failure is actually to do with a different country. You mentioned earlier that after graduating from Smith, you spent two years living in India. And your failure is related to when you came back. So tell us about that one. I'm so grateful that I had the chance to live in India for two years. I learned so much, including from the huge women's movement there that was very much part of the independence movement. And as one of its great leaders, Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay said when I was asking her about Gandhi, because she knew him, of course. She listened to me very patiently. And then she said, well, of course, my dear, we taught him everything he knew.

But when I came home, I thought, all right, what I've learned there in terms of the women's movement and its power and importance, the method of nonviolence, so much organizing from the bottom up, from the village level up, everything that I'd learned there, I continued to think was peculiar to India. It wasn't really until I was awakened by the civil rights movement and then the women's movement that I realized that those were universal. So I did waste a couple of years or parts of a couple of years compartmentalizing, thinking geographically instead of thinking humanly. And is that experience, that salutary experience in India when you were in your early 20s,

does it affect you still? Do you think about it a lot? Oh, yes, I do. Yes. First of all, my oldest friends are there. My oldest continuous friends are in India. Secondly, they are going through some of the same heartache that we are here because they also have an outrageously undemocratic leader, Modi, the prime minister, is divisive and punitive towards Muslims. In a way, he's more dangerous than Trump because he's smarter. He's rational. So I'm in touch frequently with my friends who live there and with some friends who go back and forth, who were born there and, you know, go back and forth from this country to there. So I feel very connected to what's going on there. And is there a sense in India that, religiously speaking, which I guess then infuses the broader culture, that things

are circular rather than hierarchical? I mean, that's a massive generalization because I understand there's the kind of caste system. But is there something in that, that thing that you were talking about at the very beginning about being linked rather than ranked? Did you bring that back from India? That's interesting. I hadn't thought about making that connection. There is a caste system. There are all the divisions that people are struggling with there. But on the other hand, there is a strong sense of reincarnation. So the continuity of life is perhaps more part of the culture there than it is here. And I know that you've done a lot of study into sort of Cherokee outlooks and the idea that many other original language don't have gendered pronouns for he and she. And I just sort of found that really beautiful. And I just wondered if you could tell us a bit think about it because of friends here in what we call Indian country, that is all the many different nations, tribes, cultures that were here before Europeans showed up. And I'm not sure

about all their languages, but in many of them, there is no he and she. A person is a person. And so I began to think about the oldest languages in other parts of the world in Africa and Asia and realized too that pronouns are not gendered and to think about the whole concept of gender as political as an invention that obviously what joins us as human beings male or female, regardless of caste or race, is hugely more than the very minor related to reproductive or, I mean, perhaps in the case of race, so-called race, maybe it has something to do with vulnerability to diseases. I mean, but all that is really situational. The truth is we are each uniquely individual. You know, we could never have happened before or again. We're a unique combination of heredity and environment, and we share our humanity, especially in the last 20 years or so has become so clear to me that we invented gender,

we invented race, we invented class, we invented caste, and we can disinvent them. And have you felt restricted by the invention of your own gender in intimate relationships ever? Yes, I'm sure. We're raised with a whole set of expectations. Sure. We're raised with a whole set of expectations. When you say that, I think, you know, something as simple as the man you're with will say, well, what movie do you want to see? And a woman will say, well, what do you want to see? Instead of saying, oh, here's what I'd like to see. So I think generationally, that's getting much, much better. I think younger women are much more likely to actually say what they think and feel. You got married when you were 66. And I wonder why you chose to get married then at that particular age. age? Well, I mean, the most important reason was that we were in love and we wanted to be together.

However, we would not have thought about getting legally married at that age, except that he had been born in South Africa. He was continuously worried about his legal status here. And clearly, the easiest way to affirm his legal status, and so he could stop worrying about being deported, was to get married. So that was one reason. And then another, even more immediate reason was that we were on our way to see my friend Wilma Mankiller and her husband and family in Oklahoma. family in Oklahoma, and she offered us a Cherokee ceremony. So, you know, who could resist that? So we had a wonderful wedding in which Wilma's husband, I have no idea what was said because it was in Cherokee, but the two of us walked around a fire and Wilma got a local woman judge to come and sign the certificate. This was before breakfast, and then we all had breakfast, and that was it. I mean, it was kind of irresistible.

I was so sad to read that your husband, David Bale, died four years after you got married in this beautiful ceremony. And I just wanted to say I'm so sorry for your loss. We're living during a time, as we've mentioned, of a global pandemic, and we're recording this remotely. And I know that a lot of people listening will also be suffering some form of loss. And as someone who has really weathered those kind of storms, I wonder whether you had any advice or something that you wish you had known when you were experiencing your own grief that you could share with us. It's such a individual experience.

I'm not sure that I can give advice, but I guess it's to just treasure the time that you had together and try to understand that as long as you remember and other people remember, that person is still with us. I remember sitting in my living room after he died with a yellow pad writing him a letter. It's not rational, but somehow it meant to me, you know, that he was still here. I related to his grown-up children, who are wonderful. I think it's helpful to understand that as long as we remember the person, they are still with us. Hmm. You wrote to me that the reason that you chose that failure when you came back from India to interpret and integrate what you'd learned there into the feminist movement is because you felt you had wasted a lot of time. And then you wrote this gorgeous phrase, and time is all there is. And I wonder how you feel now at the age of 86.

What age do you feel inside? Well, it's interesting, isn't it? I don't know what your experience is. But I now, for instance, over 75, 80 or whatever. And I think, oh, that's too bad. It takes me a full minute to understand that I'm part of that group. Yeah. So I'm not sure that I'm very good at so far at understanding the reality of age or how precious the remaining time is, because we have this both blessed and unfortunate notion that we're immortal somehow. But I'm trying. I'm sort of making more lists of what I want to do, hoping that I can understand that I'm not immortal. Well, except by your rationale, you actually are immortal because so many people will remember you and have been formatively influenced by you that you leave such an

incredible legacy that you will still be around. So you actually are immortal, Gloria Steinem. that you will still be around. So you actually are immortal, Gloria Steinem. Well, no, that's very comforting. But don't you feel that there's so much you haven't written or done or said? And certainly my publisher thinks so. So I feel exactly the same. And I'm 41.

And I had a similar thing recently when they were talking about age groups affected by the pandemic, and how they were going to potentially let out young people in their 20s and 30s. I was like, well, I'll be fine then. And I was like, no, actually, I don't fit into that category. Do you think that each person has a kind of psychic age? You know, we feel different people feel different you know somebody feels perpetually 30 and somebody else perpetually 40. I can only speak from my own experience but I do believe that and I feel perpetually 32 and I felt 32 when I was 10. And why do you think you picked 32?

Such a good question I think I always felt like an older person trapped in a child's body. And it always really frustrated me because I couldn't wait to have control over my own life and to have independence. And similarly, I think in my head, I thought 20s were the decade for kind of going out to parties and having fun. And I'm quite introverted. So that didn't appeal to me. Whereas 32 felt like just the right balance of everything. And I thought by then I would have two children. And you know, I imagined my life in a very conventional way. And obviously, it didn't turn out like that. But when I was 32, I really did feel in sync with myself. Well, that's interesting. And I think you should continue to ask people this question,

because I bet each person has a different psychic age. While you were saying that, I was trying to think what mine is. And I think it's early 40s. Because that was the time in which I feel like I finally came into the life that I was meant to live and stopped trying to live a life that I was expected to have. Oh my gosh, it's like you are in my head. That's exactly how I feel about my 40s. It's exactly how I feel about my 40s. All right, well now you have a whole series of programs, Ask People Their Psychic Age. It's a new podcast. Before I let you go, Gloria, I'm very interested in this notion that you've spoken about in the past about how women become more radical with age. And that's definitely been my experience. So how radical do you feel now? Well, I think the reason that that is the case is that we outlive society's expectations and actually

society doesn't have for both good and bad reasons expectations of women beyond childbearing and childrearing age. I think older men are discriminated against too, but less so because there's a connotation of wisdom or power that comes with older men and not necessarily with older women. So just to be beyond society's expectations is a kind of freedom. And, you know, I always thought that the most revolutionary thing to happen would be for an army of gray-haired women, or concealing their gray hair, but anyway, gray-haired women, to take over the earth, because they will be less likely, it's not that all women are virtuous, but they're less likely to be afflicted with the gender need to be in control, more likely to have a familial model of leadership, which depends on cooperation.

And even now, did you see this survey that shows that female-headed nations have responded to this COVID crisis much better than any other nations? Yes, it's extraordinary, particularly nations like New Zealand are just leading the way. Yes, it's not inevitable. It has to do with culture. It's not that women are in any way

inherently more virtuous, but given the cultural differences and the differences in women's lives, that older women in league acting together could be a very positive force in this world. I'm very intrigued to know what is on those lists that you are writing of things that you want to do. Well, first is to meet my book contract that I'm working on with two friends. The image of the women's movement here, perhaps you see online every once in a while the word white feminism. Well, if it's white, it's not feminism, obviously, because either it includes everybody or it doesn't. But people think about the women's movement and the civil rights movement, and they divide it racially. And so they don't understand

that in my country, black women have always outnumbered or been disproportionately more likely to be creating and part of the women's movement. So we're writing a book about that. Interesting. And who are you writing it with? Well, Beverly Guy-Sheftel. Do you know who that is? She's a great scholar of women's history at Spelman College.

She's been head of the Women's Studies Association. A great woman. And Paula Giddings, who also is an author, a journalist, a professor. And they are African-American women. And so the three of us are bringing our experiences together in this book. I can't wait to read it. But first, you have to write it. My final question, Gloria Steinem, is that for me, you are one of the most impressive people

I have ever had the privilege to interview. But I wonder for you, who is the most impressive person you've ever met? Oh, that's so hard. you've ever met? Oh, that's so hard. That's your hardest question. I'm sorry. It's a horrible question. Feel free to ignore it and say you can't answer. No, I'm trying to think. I mean, in a way, the person who changed me the most is someone who's a friend and I have only written about briefly, and that's Wilma Mankiller, because she was a pathway into my belated discovery, because our school system doesn't explain to us, you know, our books still start when the first Europeans showed up, not with all the millennia of people who were here before, that there was and still is on my own subcontinent here,

cultures that were and are matrilineal, that don't honor gender in the same way that the paradigm of social organization was the circle, not the hierarchy. She was, I think, among and maybe the most influential person I ever interviewed. That is, she changed me in the process of talking to her. I mean, in a way, I've had the luck to interview a lot of people who, from whom I learned a lot, you know, I mean, in a way, being a journalist is like having a license to learn, to ask questions. I actually, I read somewhere that you interviewed John Lennon, and I just wondered what that experience was like. They were just coming here.

The Beatles had just dawned on the world. And I was assigned by a magazine here to follow them around New York during their first visit, which literally meant I was just following along and writing about them. So it wasn't as if I was able to spend a lot of time with him. I wasn't. But it was clear even then that he was a gifted and imaginative and a wonderful writer. He had written his little book of doggerel prose, wonderful,

with that great sense of sound and alliteration that comes with England's sense of sound and alliteration that comes with England's understanding of English and speech and all of its different forms of class and so on. So though I didn't really get to know him, it just was always clear how imaginative and gifted he was even then. Gloria Steinem, I cannot thank you enough, not only for finding the time to come on my podcast, but for spending a life shaping my ideas

and challenging me to think and writing the most brilliant things. And you are one of my heroes. And it's just been such a privilege for me to talk to you. So you have lived up to every single expectation, privilege for me to talk to you so you have lived up to every single expectation if not exceeded them thank you so so much well and I just want to say that I feel about you that I just had to wait for some of my friends to be born so oh oh my god that's the most beautiful thing you could say so I'm so grateful for your work for your

words for writing, interviewing. Thank you so much. Thank you. I am so excited about today's sponsor. Am I allowed to say that? Strange times call for a little distraction. And what better way to do that than to eavesdrop on Robbie Williams, wife Ida and the family as they experience lockdown on their podcast, Staying at Home with the Williamses. This season, Robbie and Ida have been sharing tips on navigating self-quarantine, what they've been doing to entertain themselves and the kids, and sharing their thoughts on what it's like being in each other's company 24-7. For a lot of us, that's pretty relatable,

but throw in an LA mansion and a swimming pool for good measure. Their podcast gives you insight into the madness of the Williamses household and has been some welcome light relief to me and many others, so I encourage all of you to do the same. Search for Staying at Home with the Williamses wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much to Robbie and Ida. If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently it helps other people know that we exist.