Gloria Steinem, who for more than three decades has remained one of America’s most recognized and revered feminists, addressed the current loosely defined state of feminism, the struggles within news media and the importance of looking to the past as society embarks on the future in her speech Tuesday at Hendricks Chapel.

‘I’m glad to be at a school of communication, never have we needed it more,’ Steinem said in an interview before her 4 p.m. speech. ‘We are the most powerful country in the world, but the most isolated and least informed.’

Ownership of news organizations is more concentrated, she said. They have become centers of profit rather than public service, while the premise of most media is that only conflict is newsworthy.

‘What you often get is the least common denominator – short sound bites and everything is about ratings,’ she said.

Greenstone Media, which she co-founded with actress and activist Jane Fonda, is the first women-owned radio network, and uses the catchphrase, ‘As edgy as you can get with the kids in the car.’

‘AM talk radio has been used to create a hostile universe where there is more heat than light,’ said Steinem, in her speech. ‘We try to be funny, informative and mainstream. We don’t lean toward Washington as much as Air America, we’re not as produced as NPR. We’re not competing; we’re trying to add to the universe.’

During the last several years, Steinem said her examination of the ‘first cultures’ that made up 95 percent of human history has been crucial, because they contain much of the wisdom we are now searching for.

‘I think we should just call the last 5,000 years an experiment in racism, sexism and patriarchy – that failed.’

Among the Bushpeople tribes in the African Kalahari Desert, women had two or three children, each two or three years apart, Steinem said. Women understood how to restrict birth through timing of sexual intercourse and abortifacients.

Lauren Pauer, president of Women in Communications, a student organization at SU dedicated to empowering female communications majors, said the organization has been trying to bring Steinem to campus for three years.

‘From the beginning, she combined journalism with forward feminist thinking,’ said Pauer, a former DO staff writer. ‘She’s lesser known among our generation, which is incredible considering her accomplishments and impact on women of all generations. We’re thrilled to bring her to campus.’

In her speech, Steinem paid homage to the Iroquois Confederacy, which she credits with being at the heart of the Underground Railroad and an inspiration for early suffragists.

‘I can just imagine the suffragists somewhere in upstate New York having dinner with Seneca women in nice trousers and tunics,’ she said. ‘I can just picture these European American women in corsets and 180 pounds of skirts seeing cultures where men and women lived in balance, where life was about cooperation and not competition.’

Steinem said we must learn to think less about horizontal history and more about vertical history, echoing her oft-repeated quote that the first problem for all humans, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.

‘Right here on this land were the roots of feminism and socialism,’ she said.

The oral history of these first cultures turned out to be more accurate because of its populist, bottom-up nature based in experience, rather than history ‘written by the few for the many,’ Steinem said.

With open-source journalism and satellite radio, we have populist potential, but we must work to construct the current camp fire, Steinem said.

‘Each one of our individual stories and narratives is absolutely crucial,’ she said. ‘People are so starved for narrative by serious journalists who just write about numbers and generalities, they go by default to celebrity journalism just to have a story about a human being.’

Feminism has been an evolutionary journey, Steinem said in an interview.

‘The meaning of the word still means what it says in the dictionary, which is the belief in the social, economic and political equality of males and females, but the meaning has become deeper and wider for me,’ she said.

Throughout the years, Steinem said she has come to see gender roles as much more the root of things like violence.

‘The cult of masculinity justifies violence, while the cult of femininity is supposed to support violence,’ she said.

Women in the military, Steinem said, are at war within the military as well, fighting against rape and humiliation, while Iraqi women are doubly punished.

‘Armed conflict now punishes women and children more than the classical definition of war,’ she said. ‘We have wars that decimate entire parts of the globe and it’s women and children who suffer the most because wars are often fought on the bodies of women.’

It’s a ‘media myth’ that young women today aren’t activists, Steinem said.

‘Thirty percent of women identify as feminists without any definition. If you give them the accurate definition it’s over 60 percent – that’s more than identify as Republicans,’ she said. ‘Feminists are respected more than lawyers and politicians.’

Sharon Clott, president of the SU chapter of Ed2010, a magazine networking organization bringing together aspiring magazine editors, said while Steinem is not among the most famous people in our generation, she will be reflected in everyday life.

In her speech Steinem said society must bring reality and the media together.

‘The truth will set you free,’ said Steinem, noting the gilded words painted across the interior of Hendricks Chapel. ‘But first, it will piss you off.’

Published on March 20, 2007 at 12:00 pm