Book - My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem

Hate generalises, love specifies

The title of the book reflects the author’s learning from travelling around the world and talking with people. Properly talking to people. This is what seemed to spark Gloria Steinem into being a feminist activist and writer. I especially loved the stories from India, my motherland. From that opening quote from the introduction by Robin Morgan sets up the tone of the book, all the way to the closing one from Paula Ann Allen, ‘the root of oppression is the loss of Memory. Meaning people forgot feminism isn't new, other societies are equal. Ours isn't’. 

There was no patriarchy in Native Indian culture, no chief and women were/are equal. This author asserts that the ‘chief’ label, the subject of many US films including my favourite Calamity Jane, was invented by the Americans. It makes sense. It’s just another way to justify the rhetoric to make groups of people sound less civilised when actually, they were/are more. This was their land.

When this book came out, the US had 25% of the world's prison population  (1 in 31 of the population). I wondered what it is now.  Research tells me it may have dipped a little, but it is still shocking when the US only has 5% of the world’s population. Another form of suppression that makes a lot of people, a lot of money. The prison population can’t vote and there are so many ways to stop people from voting. The Florida recount was stopped when they realised Bush may lose. Subsequently, all the things that happened because Bush became president instead of Al Gore are listed across two pages in the book. It’s worth reading the book just because of those two pages. It’s stunning to have these brains with us who have done all this work on working out how the world works and yet (western) society still seems to be going backwards in 2022.

We learn more where we know the least

Talking of money, alcoholism is treated as a disease, particularly in western society, as is an addiction to prescribed painkillers as sales of both make profits. Recreation drugs are criminalised although I believe this is until someone works out how to profit from them too.

Just like we only seem to learn about Henry VIII, American education seems to limit to the wars they have won (there are no winners in wars) rather than real history. Every time I hear a historical story about a man doing something great, I hear my inner voice shouting, but what about the woman behind him? Or did he just steal his wife’s idea because she never would have been taken seriously?

Steinem tells me Joan of Arc wasn’t murdered because they thought she was a witch, but because she was a heretic (I had to check heretic). And she tell of the times women like her give suggestions to the man set next to them to have them taken seriously.

I did not know that MLK was cajoled by a woman to give the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. I have looked it up - it’s true.

Learning that Steinem wrote Shirley Chisolm’s, the first black woman elected to Congress, (last-minute) televised speech, I think of all those well-remembered political speeches that no one ever knows the speechwriter behind them. Unless you are an aspiring speechwriter.

What peaked my interest in reading this book that I should have read long ago (it was first published 2015, updated in 2020 ) was the recent TV series, Mrs America that featured the author and the person who was portrayed as her nemesis, Phyllis Schlafly.

It never ceases to amaze me how big politics is in the US. Occasionally I was asked which side I was on when in New York. It turns out I only knew Democrats but I would have had little idea then which President was red or blue. I know a lot more than I ever wanted to and I loathe how we have become this way in the UK. I dislike how divisive it is as if religion wasn’t disharmonious enough. The idea that you can agree with everyone a religion or political party says is alien to me.

In any case, how ‘pro-life’ it is to shoot dead a doctor who performs abortions as he attends church? I am still baffled that any woman in the world doesn’t want her right to choose. And then read about women who themselves pop in for a secret abortion even while on another day they themselves will be picketing those healthcare clinics. Women who have been denied contraception.

On that note ‘if a man’s violence causes a pregnant woman to miscarry, that's not murder. But abortion is?’.

Mrs America depicted an event where two opposing women’s groups clashed. Republican the women ‘s group against rights to abortion and did everything they could to prevent Steinem’s side - those who wanted women’s rights over their own bodies, to get to the event. I read in the book that they got business guests at hotels to check out as late as possible so women had to wait for hours to check-in. I recall from the drama them sitting on the floor waiting, and cramming into hotel rooms that were available but I do now think, why didn't they just threaten to cancel their bookings?

Bringing it up to date, I was most puzzled why American women voted for someone with so little respect for women (and humans, it seems) rather than Hillary Clinton who has spent her life championing their interests. It seems because of her lifelong work, we hold her to a higher standard (than ourselves) and we dislike that she stayed with her unfaithful husband.

Steinem continually returns to her somewhat shambolic upbringing with her father always away travelling, trying to support the family while her mother never lived out her own dream. And because she took after her father and travelled, I have learnt so much and the world is a better place because of her.