Gloria Steinem was in DC to speak on behalf of the immigration reform group We Belong Together, and incidentally to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Ruth Tam interviewed her for the Washington Post:
You first spoke at the National Press Club in 1972. How has your public persona changed since then?
Well, I was the first woman to speak ever at the National Press Club and they gave me a necktie. Now the National Press Club has had eleven women presidents. So obviously you can see some distance even though the membership is not as equal. You’d have to ask the people in the audience in 1972 but I think I was an oddity.
Why have you started campaigning for immigration reform as a women’s issue?
I want to help correct the inaccurate image of immigration in the media. There is an idea that women’s issues are over here and immigration is over there. Three quarters of undocumented workers are women and children. When the image in the media is a potential terrorist or drug dealer and at best, a male farm worker, it is an unrealistic portrayal of who immigrants really are. We need to make sure that our news, blogs and sources are more accurate about this imagery and what this nation needs as a work force… In the interest of accuracy and in supplying the expertise that this society really needs, I hope we can reflect reality in what we write into law….What do you have to say to women of color and non-cisgender women who feel like the feminist movement lacks intersectionality?
I don’t have to say anything; I have to listen. But what worries me about saying that the women’s movement doesn’t or hasn’t always included women of color is that it renders invisible all the women of color who were there. Because women of color were more likely to be in the paid labor force, they were more likely to recognize discrimination so they were always leading the women’s movement. I’ve learned feminism from the National Welfare Rights Organization and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, who was my first speaking partner in the seventies. It’s not that there isn’t racism in the women’s movement, there’s racism in this country and we have to be constantly vigilant. We can’t render those women invisible….
Read the whole thing, where she talks about the neverending fight for abortion rights, the rise of ‘nontraditional’ media, and why Steinem “can think of no president in history from whose hand I would be more honored to receive this medal”…
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Apart from paying due respect, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Open Thread: Forty Years of Acting UppityPost + Comments (98)