Day 59 - Lessons from Gloria Steinem

Image by Queen of Planning, via Flickr

Yesterday I heard part of an interview with Gloria Steinem.  Her interviewer seemed surprised by her answers and kept rephrasing them, hoping for the answer he expected. He didn't get it. What the interviewer assumed, and he kept trying to get Ms. Steinem to say, is that the issues facing women in western countries these days are much less serious than they were in the days when she and other feminists were coming into their stride. But Ms. Steinem consistently countered that the issues for women in western countries are in fact more serious today than in the 60's and 70's.

Her main point is that the issues facing women now are more elemental than issues of equal pay for equal work. Now we know that how a culture treats the women in the home illustrates how a culture treats everyone else. When violence against women is tolerated in the home, it normalizes violence against enemies, strangers, and the person down the street someone doesn't like. But when violence against women is no longer tolerated, then violence anywhere is less likely to be accepted.

Tonight I am watching a movie from 1951, The Man in the White Suit, starring Alec Guinness, that illustrates Ms. Steinem's point, but from a slightly different viewpoint. Not surprisingly, there are very few women in this film about an inventor of an indestructible fabric that the industrialists in the mills around him are desperate to suppress. One of the two women with any lines beyond "Yes, Mr. Birnley," is the daughter of one of those industrialists who recognizes the value of the invention for the world at large. Everyone else, capitalists and workers alike, except for a seven-year-old child, views the situation from their selfish, personal viewpoints and tries to stop the inventor from publicizing his accomplishment.

The crisis is averted when the crowd discovers the fiber isn't stable so the suit the inventor is wearing made from the fabric for the press conference that never happened comes apart in the hands of his pursuers. The only three who weren't laughing at him then were the industrialist's daughter, the seven-year-old girl, and the woman who worked with him in the shipping area who also lived in the same rooming house as the inventor. The latter opposed the manufacture of the fabric and joined in the pursuit, but she also saw the defeat in the inventor's eyes and showed compassion.

There was no violence in the movie, but there was a threat of it as well as ridicule. Back in the 1950's, ridicule, like bullying, was expected and the objects of both were encouraged to suck it up, get over it, grow up. Even worse, the victims often adopted the same tactics against others. Ms. Steinem is right. And we still have some work to do.