Those in my closest circle know what brings me joy. A woman who has lived her life unapologetically, plans out her joy, colors outside the lines of what society wants her to become and who devotes her life to ensure that her ceiling be the floor to those coming behind her.
On October 26th, 8 days before our historic election; and the very evening Amy Coney Barrett was getting confirmed to the Supreme Court; I had the honor to represent my Baes and the members of Chief to host a conversation with the one and only Gloria Steinem at a time we needed it the MOST.
While my soul left my body several times during our conversation, Gloria shared an abundance of wisdom with the audience, and below I wanted to share some of her powerful insights:
On her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg — “Ruth was a movement before there was a movement. At the very beginning of her career, when she was at the ACLU in New York, she was already taking a case of two young women who were threatened with sterilization in order to get welfare. And she had sent me to interview a woman to whom that had happened in order to have evidence. That was 1970, so I say this to indicate how far ahead she was. She always knew where we should go — because she was already there.”
On voting — “If we don’t vote, we’re not alive. We just don’t count. And when we think of the suffering that took place in order to get the vote, it helps us to value it.”
On civil disobedience — “For most of my life, the Supreme Court has not been anything I wanted to obey. It ruled separate but equal in the schools, when it shouldn’t have. So fundamentally I would say, we’re going to do what we’re going to do anyway. Fuck the Supreme Court. I know that I’m not underplaying the amount of power there is in a Supreme Court ruling. I’m not being foolish about that. But Martin Luther King always said that when the laws are unjust, it’s our duty to disobey them.”
On the overarching importance of community for women — “Even though we can’t connect in person, we’re connecting online. And that has a special sanity saving function. In India, I learned the magic of a group of women sitting together in a circle with everybody given the chance to speak and listen. There’s something magic about circles. They’re the strongest design in nature, and the most impregnable. A pyramid is actually very vulnerable. So it’s important to understand the value of a circle over a hierarchy.”
On using one’s power to lift others up — “When one of us has an opportunity to speak because of our position, we can bring a younger or less powerful person with us. It’s just a process of taking what is presently a hierarchy and doing our best to nudge it into a circle.”
On the impact of humor — “In many native American cultures, there’s a spirit of laughter that’s neither male, nor female. And that spirit is very important because laughter breaks into the unknown. If you can’t laugh, you can’t pray. Laughter is a form, it is a mark of learning. It’s what happens when two things come together and suddenly make a third. So what I’m saying is that we should take laughter seriously. And I would say that we should not go anywhere we can’t laugh. We should be able to laugh everywhere.”
On being called an icon — “I don’t feel like one at all. I kind of feel like I’m here among friends.”
BAEs – as we continue to move through the end of what has been a year full of lows and highs, I hope that sharing this amazing experience with you brings you as much inspiration as it did for me.
In gratitude and love,
Brenda