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jmyeet 13 minutes ago [-]
Reading other comments, it seems like people don't know that Gloria Steinem was a complicated figure, specifically her involvement with the CIA for at least 4 years is documented for at least 4 years [1].
By all accounts, this was in the wake of the Red Scare and she was reporting on Communist activities by European student groups. At the same time she supported unionization efforts and fair pay for women. This is what I mean by complicated.
But more problematic was this statement [2]:
> While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Anyone who knows the history of the CIA knows it was completely off the rails in the 1950s and directly involved in if not responsible for many coups. Regime change by the US is so common there's a whole Wikipedia page about it [3].
Likewise, Steinem was anti-sex work, calling it "commercial rape" [4]. That's not really surprising for the time and you can't necessarily use the same norms from 2026 in the 1950s to 1980s.
You can appreciate her contributions to, for example, equal pay and advancement of feminism and what became known as women's liberation while acknowledging her complexities. I don't understand this need people have to rewrite history to be black and white and either deify or villify people when they die.
I know it looks bleak right now with wealthy and powerful men tearing down every institution that feminism, progressivism, etc built, but remember that the political pendulum inevitably swings the other way.
We can have justice, and we will.
Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can never have enough, and puts their energy towards organizing for a brighter future for people and planet.
paimapi 1 hours ago [-]
ah, if only that were true. there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability, that's just confirmation bias from the times we live in. if you were to ask a normal person living through one of the warlord eras of Chinese history, they might have preferred greatly the times they considered ancient when the rule-of-law was more stable. similarly, I'm sure your average medieval peasant living through an Inquisition may prefer the centuries where they weren't scrutinized by their neighbors for any sign of heresy
justice is defined and propagated by the people in their time who show up and do the work. the overturn of Roe v Wade was a 40-year-old project and one of the driving forces that created the Federalist Society, a society which now dominates the Supreme Court and many other courts of law [0]. they are also responsible for things like Citizen's United, the rise in 'tort reform' (ie corporate escape holes from liability), and a lot of other anti-populist case law
they out-organized the progressive legal types (with the help, of course, of the ultra-wealthy who saw a lot to be gained from defanged tax and labor law)
there's no taking things for granted at anytime. you either grit your teeth fighting for your rights, out-organize your opponents, and stay fighting or you get trod on and lose it all. the parable of the tortoise and the hare does a lot of work here
> there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability
I think it probably is inevitable, but it probably happens the reverse of the direction that the quote implies.
That is to say, I think our definition of justice bends towards whoever wins historical conflicts.
dabinat 56 minutes ago [-]
You may be right about that but they’re tearing things down overnight that took decades to build. And it will take more decades again to rebuild and repair. We’ll be spending most of our lives doing it.
aaron695 32 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
scns 2 hours ago [-]
There is a great series about the womens movement called Mrs America.
You've been around this site a long time, more than long enough to know that posts like this are flamebait and against the guidelines.
krautburglar 3 hours ago [-]
Well if the people have spoken, sorry. Deleted the other one.
BoredomIsFun 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hirvi74 2 hours ago [-]
Why do people always have to pinpoint some flaw, issue, or mistake in order to tarnish people that have achieved something great?
Steinem was a human, not a paragon of perfection. She least used some of her time and energy on this Earth to try to make the world a better place.
Ohkay 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, but Bernie wasn’t credible until he gained allies like AOC and Mamdani and the relationship of the Clintons and Epstein came out later on.
delichon 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
scuppernong 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
DrMandalay 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 4 hours ago [-]
Can you please not post in a throwaway/flamewar style to HN? We're trying for something else here. What you bring up is no doubt one relevant aspect of a long career, but on HN we want comments that enhance curious conversation, not kill it.
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Eschew flamebait."
impossiblefork 60 minutes ago [-]
I didn't initially understand your comment, but you mean basically something like that the origin of feminism was in socialism and the CIA saw that it was going to be unavoidable or at least popular and wanting to avoid this leading to socialism becoming popular they decided to make a bastardized version that cuts off any socialist aspect and just turn the whole thing into the modern liberal feminism?
pstuart 3 hours ago [-]
Women's rights are human rights. We all win when that happens (except for those that exploit and abuse them).
colinb 12 hours ago [-]
Assuming your summary is true, does that have anything to do with the virtues or failing of feminism? After all socialism also (indirectly) gave us weekends, paid holidays, sick leave, social security, state pensions, and decent healthcare. (Shame about the authoritarian psychopathic leaders etc. but that’s clearly not linked to any specific political leaning).
I mean, if you’re against feminism, then I think you’re definitionally against the freedom of choices in life for fifty percent of humanity. It’s an unconditionally evil stance. The fact that most of the people who noisily complain about it are so clearly inadequate in their personality ( no one with actual confidence in their worth needs to spend their time crowing about it) doesn’t help.
steveBK123 11 hours ago [-]
Indeed.
Guys who think women have it too easy speaks to how far things have come in a generation or two. Some don't understand how second class citizen their mothers & grandmothers were in their time.
If you think 50% of the country not being kept as second class citizens has negatively impacted your ability to make it in life, please look in the mirror and reflect on your own failings.
RajT88 3 hours ago [-]
Not just that, but being socialized to have women enforce their own status as second class citizens in a variety of ways. In some fashion, this is what the "Tradwife" movement is about.
Example: I recall my grandmother opining that women who were assaulted were to blame for their assault, because of how they dressed. That's a hot take even Fox News is staying away from today.
nstents 2 hours ago [-]
From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give. Yet at the same time a woman most certainly has a responsibility to herself, her future self who would have to live with the trauma...the many types of trauma...for knowingly going to an environment expected to harbor severe threats from other people.
As a counter to your position, imagine a well-dressed man with diamond and gold jewelry, a very expensive watch, and money spilling from his pockets, casually strolling into a slum known for its violence, and all the while thinking quite airily "It's not my fault if anything bad happens to me. No, not my fault at all."
I drive with my seatbelt on not because it's the law, and not because I'm afraid of my causing an accident. I drive with a seatbelt on because I have a duty to myself to take precautionary action against the inevitable irresponsible and potentially life threatening actions of others. Regardless of who's at fault, ignoring consequences does not diminish personal blame for suffering the outcome.
autoexec 1 hours ago [-]
> As a counter to your position, imagine a well-dressed man with diamond and gold jewelry, a very expensive watch, and money spilling from his pockets, casually strolling into a slum known for its violence, and all the while thinking quite airily "It's not my fault if anything bad happens to me. No, not my fault at all."
There's a massive difference between taking special precautions while "casually strolling into a slum known for its violence" and being expected to take special precautions everywhere you go all of the time.
Even in the case where someone's freedom to wear a nice watch out in public is threatened by lawlessness steps should be taken to secure the ability for men to walk those streets without fear of being assaulted and robbed. Similarly, a woman's ability to dress herself how she likes should also be protected. If a place exists where someone should reasonably expect watches to be stolen or women to be assaulted that shows a failure of law enforcement. If you want to apportion blame the order is: criminals > law enforcement > victim
nstents 40 seconds ago [-]
I have to take issue with your excising the context of my post, especially where the need for seatbelts is concerned: they're needed everywhere you drive. And even though steps are taken to assure we can drive the streets and roads without fear, yet I am personally to blame for not being cautious in protecting myself. Not because of the law, not because of a lack of societal effort to protect me, but because I ignored the need for personally limiting the consequences of bad actors acting badly. Please don't take this to a reductio ad absurdum argument.
Please also don't straw man me again by taking my point to a "massively different" scenario.
And lastly, thank you for silently accepting my point that there are cases, such as the man irresponsibly going into a violent slum, where a person should take special precautions. Perhaps if you can see the need for men to take special precautions then you can take sexism out of the equation and see the need for women doing the same.
RajT88 46 minutes ago [-]
> From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give
Trying to put the focus on the victim's actions and not the criminal's actions is called, "blaming the victim" and it's not an appropriate attitude for people in law enforcement especially to have. And yet - these sorts of stories where reports are dismissed for various reasons (including how someone was dressed) are still pretty pervasive, and the conviction rate still quite low for SA.
matroxmemories 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kaikai 2 hours ago [-]
If your society can’t survive without a permanent second class of citizens maybe it deserves to be destroyed
mikestew 2 hours ago [-]
My parser keeps returning "tradwife dog whistle", but I'd like to give the benefit of doubt. Could you clarify?
AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago [-]
> After all socialism also (indirectly) gave us weekends, paid holidays, sick leave, social security, state pensions, and decent healthcare.
The history of these things is that something changes to allow them or everyone discovers that they're advantageous, e.g. the industrial revolution happens and for a few years employers try having workers put in 80 hour weeks but then discover that burn out increases errors and turnover and it's better to hire more people for fewer hours. Then politicians rush to take credit for the thing everyone was by then starting to do anyway by passing a law mandating it.
Also notice that the way these things are implemented in the law are asinine, e.g. if you work for more than 40 hours for one employer then you have to be paid overtime, but if you work 40 hours each for two employers then neither of them does. So then employers cap your hours even if you're willing or otherwise have a need to work more to make more money and those people still end up working 80 hours with no overtime, but now they have two jobs with two commutes and two bosses they have to convince to take vacation at the same time etc.
But the alternative mandates (e.g. individuals are effectively or entirely banned from working over 40 hours) are pretty obviously unreasonable to people who are trying to save up for something or start a side business or get out of debt. So instead you have a law which is essentially useless when it isn't actively counterproductive, but that sounds good and therefore allows politicians to pretend they're helping you.
See also employer-provided healthcare incentives, social security forcing everyone to de facto invest their retirement savings in low-yielding government bonds rather than diversified investments, healthcare corporations capturing regulators to limit competition through the law, etc.
megagpt1 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
krautburglar 3 hours ago [-]
This is only half right. The capitalists loved feminism. Biggest expense of many businesses is labor. Double the labor pool, labor cost plummets, & profits skyrocket, so of course the capitalists at the CIA appreciated Steinem, and vice versa.
Would add that Alan Greenspan made a similar remark about his consulting firm. How he hired as many women as he could, since he could get sharp ones at a considerable discount.
There's a Swedish song, which sees it like this "daghemmets utbygnadstakt regleras av konjunkturen, så tillmäts kvinnan sin plats i den ekonomiska strukturen, en billig arbetskraftsreserv till hands när fabrikerna visslarn, tillbakapressad av daghemsbrist, om lönsamhetens drivhjul plötsligt gnisslar" "The extension of day care is controlled by the economic demand, so woman is given her place in the economic structure, a cheap work-force reserve at hand when the factories want it; pushed back by too few daycares in case demand slows".
The interpretation isn't anti-feminist, and they see the game rather as a cynical game having little to do with what is in the interests of the women themselves.
plastic-enjoyer 3 hours ago [-]
> CIA operative tasked with obfuscating the socialist origins of feminism
I've read this sentence multiple times, but it still does not make sense to me
pstuart 3 hours ago [-]
Right wing talking points. They see feminism as a threat (which it is to them, but for the good overall).
"While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Less cloak-and-dagger and more a young, energetic, global representative for American values and freedom"
was part of the Cold War-era soft power projection for the US since Communist countries were uplifting their women a lot more intentionally and structurally, especially compared to their historic baseline [0]. it looks pretty bad if your primary values are freedom but they don't apply super well to half of your entire population
there's also a further-left critique of Steinem [1] as being the public face and visage of pro-American, capitalist feminism, someone who took it from being the more Emma Goldman/Combahee River Collective rooted form - a kind of 'JFK' for the masses to substitute for the more revolutionary ideals of, say, Malcolm X or Dr. King, both of whom were very unpopular in their time and often derided as 'asking for too much' [2]
By all accounts, this was in the wake of the Red Scare and she was reporting on Communist activities by European student groups. At the same time she supported unionization efforts and fair pay for women. This is what I mean by complicated.
But more problematic was this statement [2]:
> While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Anyone who knows the history of the CIA knows it was completely off the rails in the 1950s and directly involved in if not responsible for many coups. Regime change by the US is so common there's a whole Wikipedia page about it [3].
Likewise, Steinem was anti-sex work, calling it "commercial rape" [4]. That's not really surprising for the time and you can't necessarily use the same norms from 2026 in the 1950s to 1980s.
You can appreciate her contributions to, for example, equal pay and advancement of feminism and what became known as women's liberation while acknowledging her complexities. I don't understand this need people have to rewrite history to be black and white and either deify or villify people when they die.
[1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01315R0003003...
[2]: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
[4]: https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/prosti...
We can have justice, and we will.
Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can never have enough, and puts their energy towards organizing for a brighter future for people and planet.
justice is defined and propagated by the people in their time who show up and do the work. the overturn of Roe v Wade was a 40-year-old project and one of the driving forces that created the Federalist Society, a society which now dominates the Supreme Court and many other courts of law [0]. they are also responsible for things like Citizen's United, the rise in 'tort reform' (ie corporate escape holes from liability), and a lot of other anti-populist case law
they out-organized the progressive legal types (with the help, of course, of the ultra-wealthy who saw a lot to be gained from defanged tax and labor law)
there's no taking things for granted at anytime. you either grit your teeth fighting for your rights, out-organize your opponents, and stay fighting or you get trod on and lose it all. the parable of the tortoise and the hare does a lot of work here
[0] https://theintercept.com/2022/05/10/roe-v-wade-federalist-so...
I think it probably is inevitable, but it probably happens the reverse of the direction that the quote implies.
That is to say, I think our definition of justice bends towards whoever wins historical conflicts.
You've been around this site a long time, more than long enough to know that posts like this are flamebait and against the guidelines.
Steinem was a human, not a paragon of perfection. She least used some of her time and energy on this Earth to try to make the world a better place.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. They include:
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Eschew flamebait."
I mean, if you’re against feminism, then I think you’re definitionally against the freedom of choices in life for fifty percent of humanity. It’s an unconditionally evil stance. The fact that most of the people who noisily complain about it are so clearly inadequate in their personality ( no one with actual confidence in their worth needs to spend their time crowing about it) doesn’t help.
Guys who think women have it too easy speaks to how far things have come in a generation or two. Some don't understand how second class citizen their mothers & grandmothers were in their time.
If you think 50% of the country not being kept as second class citizens has negatively impacted your ability to make it in life, please look in the mirror and reflect on your own failings.
Example: I recall my grandmother opining that women who were assaulted were to blame for their assault, because of how they dressed. That's a hot take even Fox News is staying away from today.
As a counter to your position, imagine a well-dressed man with diamond and gold jewelry, a very expensive watch, and money spilling from his pockets, casually strolling into a slum known for its violence, and all the while thinking quite airily "It's not my fault if anything bad happens to me. No, not my fault at all."
I drive with my seatbelt on not because it's the law, and not because I'm afraid of my causing an accident. I drive with a seatbelt on because I have a duty to myself to take precautionary action against the inevitable irresponsible and potentially life threatening actions of others. Regardless of who's at fault, ignoring consequences does not diminish personal blame for suffering the outcome.
There's a massive difference between taking special precautions while "casually strolling into a slum known for its violence" and being expected to take special precautions everywhere you go all of the time.
Even in the case where someone's freedom to wear a nice watch out in public is threatened by lawlessness steps should be taken to secure the ability for men to walk those streets without fear of being assaulted and robbed. Similarly, a woman's ability to dress herself how she likes should also be protected. If a place exists where someone should reasonably expect watches to be stolen or women to be assaulted that shows a failure of law enforcement. If you want to apportion blame the order is: criminals > law enforcement > victim
Please also don't straw man me again by taking my point to a "massively different" scenario.
And lastly, thank you for silently accepting my point that there are cases, such as the man irresponsibly going into a violent slum, where a person should take special precautions. Perhaps if you can see the need for men to take special precautions then you can take sexism out of the equation and see the need for women doing the same.
Trying to put the focus on the victim's actions and not the criminal's actions is called, "blaming the victim" and it's not an appropriate attitude for people in law enforcement especially to have. And yet - these sorts of stories where reports are dismissed for various reasons (including how someone was dressed) are still pretty pervasive, and the conviction rate still quite low for SA.
The history of these things is that something changes to allow them or everyone discovers that they're advantageous, e.g. the industrial revolution happens and for a few years employers try having workers put in 80 hour weeks but then discover that burn out increases errors and turnover and it's better to hire more people for fewer hours. Then politicians rush to take credit for the thing everyone was by then starting to do anyway by passing a law mandating it.
Also notice that the way these things are implemented in the law are asinine, e.g. if you work for more than 40 hours for one employer then you have to be paid overtime, but if you work 40 hours each for two employers then neither of them does. So then employers cap your hours even if you're willing or otherwise have a need to work more to make more money and those people still end up working 80 hours with no overtime, but now they have two jobs with two commutes and two bosses they have to convince to take vacation at the same time etc.
But the alternative mandates (e.g. individuals are effectively or entirely banned from working over 40 hours) are pretty obviously unreasonable to people who are trying to save up for something or start a side business or get out of debt. So instead you have a law which is essentially useless when it isn't actively counterproductive, but that sounds good and therefore allows politicians to pretend they're helping you.
See also employer-provided healthcare incentives, social security forcing everyone to de facto invest their retirement savings in low-yielding government bonds rather than diversified investments, healthcare corporations capturing regulators to limit competition through the law, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#CIA_ties_and_le...
Would add that Alan Greenspan made a similar remark about his consulting firm. How he hired as many women as he could, since he could get sharp ones at a considerable discount.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5432331
There's a Swedish song, which sees it like this "daghemmets utbygnadstakt regleras av konjunkturen, så tillmäts kvinnan sin plats i den ekonomiska strukturen, en billig arbetskraftsreserv till hands när fabrikerna visslarn, tillbakapressad av daghemsbrist, om lönsamhetens drivhjul plötsligt gnisslar" "The extension of day care is controlled by the economic demand, so woman is given her place in the economic structure, a cheap work-force reserve at hand when the factories want it; pushed back by too few daycares in case demand slows".
The interpretation isn't anti-feminist, and they see the game rather as a cynical game having little to do with what is in the interests of the women themselves.
I've read this sentence multiple times, but it still does not make sense to me
"While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Less cloak-and-dagger and more a young, energetic, global representative for American values and freedom"
was part of the Cold War-era soft power projection for the US since Communist countries were uplifting their women a lot more intentionally and structurally, especially compared to their historic baseline [0]. it looks pretty bad if your primary values are freedom but they don't apply super well to half of your entire population
there's also a further-left critique of Steinem [1] as being the public face and visage of pro-American, capitalist feminism, someone who took it from being the more Emma Goldman/Combahee River Collective rooted form - a kind of 'JFK' for the masses to substitute for the more revolutionary ideals of, say, Malcolm X or Dr. King, both of whom were very unpopular in their time and often derided as 'asking for too much' [2]
[0]https://kristenghodsee.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/om...
[1]https://publicseminar.org/2016/06/feminisms-of-the-left-poli...
[2]https://news.gallup.com/vault/246167/protests-seen-harming-c...
There are quite a few new accounts that immediately go on attack on a few topics and individuals.
I don't suppose you have any numbers of the ratio of IP addresses to attack accounts?