In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (28 page)

Steinem’s cheering section among the male journalists turned into a veritable drumroll in 1970. I believe the men knew that something cataclysmic was happening and desired to shape the new movement to her image before the hot lava ran over. Writing in the
New York Post
on the occasion of the August 26 Women’s March for Equality, when Gloria introduced the speakers at Bryant Park, Pete Hamill, who seldom missed a chance in those days to disparage the female anatomy from fat ankles to big nose, allowed that “most of the men I know are in love with Gloria Steinem, and it isn’t difficult to understand why.” In
The Prisoner of Sex
, Mailer juxtaposed the legions of
his heated imagination—“thin college ladies with eyeglasses, no-nonsense features, mouths thin as bologna slicers”—with a chummy lunch at the Algonquin he had shared with “Miss Steinem,” who broached the idea of his running for mayor and teased about needing “to explain you to my friends at Women’s Lib.” Noting that Steinem was missing from
Sisterhood Is Powerful
and another feminist anthology published that season, John Leonard complained in the
Times
, “That’s sad.”

A year later, in August 1971, when
Newsweek
ran its cover story on Gloria, the magazine did more than present her as the personification of the women’s movement; it declared in so many emphatic words that she was its leader, or in Newsweek-ese its “unlikely guru,” and painted an apocryphal picture of humble acolytes sitting at her feet. At the time I was furious. From my vantage point among the radicals, the characterization was typical newsmagazine hype, short on facts and long on burble, and an insult to the thousands of women across the country who were making the revolution. Gloria herself was uneasy with
Newsweek
’s claims, and
thought it best not to sit for a cover photo.

Yet in an incredibly short space of time,
Newsweek
’s proclamation of Gloria’s ascendancy became fact. The transformation of Gloria Steinem from media darling and invented leader to the tireless, preeminent, unifying spokesperson for feminism was a remarkable personal journey that helped to shape the extraordinary times. Looking back, I can see that while the radicals were insisting, “We don’t need leaders,” mainstream women needed to have Gloria up there—a golden achiever who wore the armament of perfect beauty, was wildly attractive to men, and spoke uncompromising truths in calm, measured tones that seldom betrayed her inner anger. And Gloria, for all the complex reasons a person seeks heroism and stardom, needed to become what people wished her to be. During the seventies I often grew cross as I saw hard-won, original insights developed by others in near total anonymity be turned by the media into Gloria Steinem pronouncements, Gloria Steinem ideas, and Gloria Steinem visions, but recognition and credit have a way of evaporating in the heat of political movements, and Gloria, with her inner
toughness, external composure, and shrewd diplomatic skills, filled a public space no one else in our fractious movement could possibly hold. Her yearning to approach the sainthood of Joan of Arc, short of consummation by fire, was to mesh brilliantly with her chosen role.

FULL MOON RISING

Women’s Liberation became a cultural phenomenon as well as a political movement as the explosive vitality of women interacting with women blossomed into new forms of community and creative expression. From the radical left to the Democratic Party, men had begun to concede with grudging respect that women, of all people, had become so articulate and interesting. Even the “Women’s Lib look”—the brazen disregard for makeup and bras and a preference for jeans and long, unkempt hair that affronted Middle America—was taken up by fashion trendies as a sexy statement.

The restless energy spilled into women’s bookstores, to accommodate a volcanic eruption of publications, women’s newspapers, theater groups, art collectives, and coffeehouses. In May 1972, Dolores Alexander, NOW’s first executive director, and Jill Ward, an organizer of the 1970 March for Equality, opened Mother Courage, a restaurant for movement women and their friends, in Greenwich Village. Neither of the novice restaurateurs had thought much about the menu beyond spaghetti and meatballs.

By then I was spending my days and a good part of the evening writing my book on rape, so I often dropped in for a late meal at Mother Courage, usually with Florence Rush, who at my urging was writing a history of the sexual abuse of children. Dolores, bubbling with good cheer, was the official meeter and greeter. Joyce Vinson would stop
washing dishes to give us a soaking wet hug. On a typical night Kate Millett might be deep in conversation with Diane Cleaver, who was waving to Susan Rennie and Kirsten Grimstad, while Phyllis Chesler, nibbling bread sticks, urgently addressed Jill Johnston. At another table Kate Stimpson, dean of women at Barnard, shared a bottle of wine with Marcia Storch, the feminist gynecologist. Across the room Gloria Steinem picked at a green salad with the lawyer Brenda Feigen Fasteau. The mise-en-scène at the little restaurant on West Eleventh Street was unselfconsciously authentic. The whole place erupted in a spontaneous party on the night in January 1973 when the
Roe v. Wade
decision came down.

I don’t remember Betty Friedan ever dining at Mother Courage, but around that time she exercised her visionary powers yet again, initiating the Manhattan Women’s Political Caucus with an eye toward securing a feminist presence within the Democratic Party. In the first phone call I ever received from the author of
The Feminine Mystique
, she asked if the Radical Feminists could help her put out the Caucus’s first mailing, which we did in exchange for folding in a flyer about our prostitution conference. (We had the woman power that season; Betty had the lists.)

The Manhattan Women’s Political Caucus eased the way for the National Women’s Political Caucus, with Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug as its founders. Its presence at the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami was a milestone in electoral politics, but the tactical alliance among the four founders failed to hold. Friedan by then was feeling usurped by Steinem, and in her usual manner Betty had struck back intemperately, complaining to a college audience that Gloria’s enlistment in the feminist cause had been tardy.
“The media tries to make her a celebrity,” Friedan said in the presence of a UPI reporter “but no one should mistake her for a leader.” The nasty assessment was one of several wild misfires aimed at Steinem that Friedan would make in the years to come. Gloria, a very deft infighter, always took the high road in her public responses. Friedan would get her excruciating comeuppance in
Ms
. magazine, where she would be treated as something akin to a non-person. (NOW, in a case of guilt by association, would also be slighted in
Ms
. as a distant, cooperating entity somewhere off to the side.)

Ms
. started publishing in July 1972, about a month before the Democratic Convention. Its fait accompli was my moment to feel bested by the larger, more powerful, and more effective personality of Gloria Steinem.

After the 1970
Ladies’ Home Journal
sit-in, Sally Kempton and I had tried unsuccessfully to start a mass-circulation feminist magazine. The idea part was easy. We planned to run book excerpts, movie reviews, theoretical pieces, profiles, investigative reports, and resurrect the old Wonder Woman comics. I roped in Nora Ephron and my friend Doris O’Donnell, who believed she could raise some money. Doris and I visited some professional consultants and drew up a prospectus. We called our putative magazine
Jane
, imagining monthly columns titled Plain Jane and Crazy Jane and Jane Goes to the Movies. There was only one problem: we couldn’t raise any money. A year later I heard that a California woman named Elizabeth Forsling Harris had come east to launch a mass-circulation feminist magazine with Gloria Steinem as her editor. I met with Harris with the idea of joining forces and got a curt rebuff. “Gloria is my horse and I’m riding her,” said the lady, “and I have access to money.”

As it turned out, Harris was a flop in the money department. Gloria, with extraordinary skill and determination, pieced together the financial package with an assist from Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who knew somebody at Warner Communications. Pat Carbine came over from
McCall’s
, where she had been editor in chief, to handle the business side. Clay Felker, who had created
New York
and made it a huge success, ran the first trial-run issue of
Ms
. as a special supplement folded into his magazine. Scores of young journalist hopefuls were eager to work with Steinem, a captivating role model, at whatever pittance she could offer. My team never got off the starting blocks. Elizabeth Forsling Harris, cranky and out of touch, was removed from her post as publisher and given a money settlement six months down the line. She had played her historic role and would grumble about its denouement ever after.

Depending on your perspective,
Ms
. was dangerously subversive, a crucial lifeline, or predictable and boring. I fell into the last category, although I never doubted the magazine’s importance, at least in the seventies, when every articulation of feminism was fresh to somebody out there. Its increasing lack of relevance in the eighties was inevitable as the movement ran out of steam and lost the public’s attention.

Gloria’s charisma kept
Ms
. afloat. In return,
Ms
. gave her a solid base as a feminist leader. Knowing her strengths, she chose from the outset not to get bogged down in the daily chores and executive decisions of an editor in chief. She was more effective writing her monthly pieces, intervening to settle internal squabbles, and speaking for the magazine in public. Everyone in the office seemed a little in love with her and eagerly awaited her return from her hop-skips on the road. In that respect
Ms
. was like the chaotic headquarters of an election campaign where loyal, devoted workers and “issue people” vie with one another and jockey for access while the popular candidate tries to appease all factions and remain above the fray. The clubhouse atmosphere grew more pronounced as Gloria’s fame and effectiveness spread. Her natural generosity and shrewd understanding of political loyalty encouraged a sort of patronage system, the only one of its kind in the movement. Small, unsolicited perks that flowed steadily into the office—paid speaking engagements, television appearances, free trips abroad to represent American feminism—that could not be fit into Gloria’s schedule were apportioned to staffers, who were grateful for opportunities that otherwise would not have come their way. Not everyone who passed through Ms., of course, was constitutionally cut out to be a lesser moon in Gloria’s orbit. Some of the most talented writers, typically possessed of the most stubborn egos and prickly personalities, made angry departures. Ellen Willis and Alice Walker both quit their posts, irritated by the magazine’s mainstream posture, although Walker and Steinem continued to be friends. To my surprise, Robin Morgan, shedding her
Rat
persona, found a comfortable home there for many years.

I liked Harriet Lyons, Joanne Edgar, and Mary Thom, three behind-the-scenes people who were selfless in their devotion to Gloria and the magazine, and I enjoyed the writing of Jane O’Reilly, Susan
Braudy, Letty Pogrebin, Mary Kay Blakely, and a few others, but I have to say that only one piece in
Ms
. ever knocked me back in my chair, an edgy personal essay on bisexuality written under the pseudonym “Orlando” by Lindsy Van Gelder. As a rule, the individual writer’s voice was not treasured by the inexperienced editors, while some major cover stories that sent potential advertisers scurrying for the hills seemed unnecessarily bland to me.
Ms
. picked up trends originated elsewhere and tried to cover all bases. Too often the end result was porridge.

Today I think some of the former editors would concur that too much energy was spent in trying to make feminism palatable to the broadest number of women while straining all the while to be politically correct. Gloria was brilliant at embodying these two goals in her person—it was her genius—but her seductive complexity and wry humor were never apparent in the magazine’s pages, where the pedagogical side of her personality was what came through. The cumbersome group-editing process, in keeping with movement values, alienated many writers, professionals and beginners alike. Five or six people scrutinized every manuscript, each convinced that her cuts, adds, and queries vastly improved the beleaguered author’s perspective. Often the suggestions were contradictory. One magazine simply couldn’t be all things to all people, let alone to a bunch of disagreeing editors, some pulling toward the mainstream and some tugging hard in the opposite direction. So glowing accounts of five successful career women would wind up next to a report on clitoridectomy in Africa, and black, lesbian, and working-class concerns, anathema to the corporate advertisers, vied for attention with Alan Alda. Still, I’m glad
Ms
. was there; its longevity was a miracle. The magazine promoted the early work of Alice Walker and Mary Gordon, offered a chance to hundreds of previously unpublished writers, and gave its loyal subscribers a critical link to the larger movement. For many, the sheer act of reading the magazine at work or at home was an open display of courage.