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Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem Quotes

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Famous Gloria Steinem Quotes

“The premise of most media is that only conflict is newsworthy. And that's just not true. I think for a lot of men, too - certainly for most women - there's enough real conflict without manufacturing it. The media formula is always to have a pro and con, to say there are two sides to any issue, when in fact there may be ten sides.”

ThinkingMenMayTwoRealEnoughFactsSidesIssuesMediaTenConflictFormulasPremisesManufacturingTwo SidesPros And ConsNewsworthy
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“Inside each of us is a unique person resulting from millennia of environment and heredity combined in a way that could never happen again and could never have happened before. We aren't blank slates, but we are also communal creatures who are born before our brains are fully developed, so we're very sensitive to our environment. The question is: How to find the support and the circumstances that allow you to express what's inside you?”

WayPersonsHappensBornBrainSupportEnvironmentHappenedCircumstancesCreaturesUniqueSensitiveBlankOur EnvironmentSlateHeredityBlank Slates
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“... we've allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyondfifty, sixty, or seventy--all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics--many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”

PeopleYearsHumansSelfCultureFearDemocracyViolenceYouthDiseaseProjectsHungerAverageScreensHuman LifeOur FutureProvidingSixtyBlankSeventiesEpidemicsLife SpanFuture Self
Book:Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within
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“... members of a powerful group are raised to believe (however illogically) that whatever affects it will also affect them. On theother hand, members of less powerful groups are raised to believe (however illogically) that each individual can escape the group's fate. Thus, cohesion is encouraged on the one hand, and disunity is fostered on the other.”

BelieveHandsIndividualPowerfulPowerFateGroupsMembersRaisedCohesionDisunity
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“Think about the pressure to "pass" by lying about one's agethat familiar temptation to falsify a condition of one's birth oridentity and pretend to be part of a more favored group. Fair-skinned blacks invented "passing" as a term, Jews escaping anti-Semitism perfected the art, and the sexual closet continues the punishment, but pretending to be a younger age is probably the most encouraged form of "passing," with the least organized support for "coming out" as one's true generational self.”

ThinkingArtSelfAgeFormLyingTermSupportGenerationsGroupsConditionsIdentityBirthFairsPressureJewPunishmentPassingFamiliarPassingsTemptationOrganizedPretendingComing OutClosetsEscapingAnti SemitismAgeism
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“In the U.S. for instance, the value of a homemaker's productive work has been imputed mostly when she was maimed or killed and insurance companies and/or the courts had to calculate the amount to pay her family in damages. Even at that, the rates were mostly pink collar and the big number was attributed to the husband's pain and suffering.”

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Book:Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender
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“As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWritingStoriesUseActionTogetherSocialJusticeMy OwnClearGroupsMovementSittingSocial JusticeInstanceFinding YourselfActivistDiscoveringMaking ChangesMy Own LifeTextbooksLife StorySmall Groups
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“I think my role is as a writer, especially, and then also as a speaker, an organizer, and an entre- preneur of social change. My role isn't to make choices for people-each individual or group needs to do that on their own. But as a writer and a speaker, you can describe possibilities that perhaps haven't been visible before, and aren't in other public dialogues or in the rest of the media. So I suppose I think of myself mainly as an organizer and as someone who describes possibilities.”

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Author:Gloria Steinem
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“I think that part of everybody's success is due to their looks, but it just works in different ways. If you're whatever society calls attractive, then people say that you got ahead because of your looks-especially if you're a woman. If you're whatever society says is not attractive, then they say you got ahead because you're compensating, you couldn't get a man or whatever. So everybody pays the same penalty for the fact that women are assessed for their outsides rather than for what's in our heads and our hearts.”

PeopleIfsThinkingMenWayLooksHeartDifferentFactsPayDuesAttractiveDifferent WaysPenalties
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“I spend a lot of time on college campuses, and I don't quite understand where the idea comes from that young women are not moving forward. In fact, statistically, if you look at the public opinion polls, young women are much more supportive of feminism and feminist issues than older women are.”

IfsLooksIdeasFactsMovingYoungOpinionIssuesFeminismCollegeFeministMoving ForwardYoung WomenSupportivePublic OpinionPollsCampusOlder WomenCollege CampusOpinion Polls
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“We are still in various kinds of patriarchal systems. The very definition of patriarchy is that men control women as the means of reproduction, so the idea that a woman's main role is to have children often means society wants more workers, more soldiers. The idea that how many children we have should be controlled by the family, the church, the nation - by anyone but women themselves - is still very deep and very strong.”

MenWantShouldKindMeanChildrenStillsIdeasStrongNationsChurchRolesWorkersSoldierDefinitionsVariousControlledVery StrongPatriarchyReproductionVery Deep
Author:Gloria Steinem
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