Gloria Steinem challenged women to act as if this country belongs to them. Write letters of praise and criticism, she said. Do something outrageous every day. Also, she said, "We need not tear down our ex-husbands, to weaken people around us in order to make them need us, but to express ourselves positively in the world."
Steinem spoke to a crowd of several thousand at Salt Lake's Foothill Village Sunday afternoon. She came to Utah to promote her best-selling self-esteem book, "Revolution From Within." Steinem, 58, founded Ms. magazine in 1973, giving voice to the U.S. women's movement.Steinem's audience was mostly women over 30. That's to be expected, she said. She believes men are more powerless, and therefore more radical, when they are young. Meanwhile, women lose power and become radical as they age.
Sometimes, she says, she pictures "an army of gray-haired women taking over the world."
The army she envisions wouldn't carry guns - they'd carry signs to protest child abuse.
Though several years ago Steinem's main concern was for older women, she is now more worried about violence in the lives of American children.
"The only true arms control is the way we raise our children," she said. While conservative parents may try to beat the devil out of their youngsters, she said, liberal parents may err in seeing children as an extension of themselves. When children have to hide who they really are to be loved, "it's the beginning of the theft of self-esteem," she said.
Only children who are raised without violence can make a democracy work, she said. She credits Mikhail Gorbachev's gentle upbringing with the peaceful way he ended communism in the Soviet Union.
Steinem talked about all churches, saying religion as politics stifles individual spirituality. "I have the deepest respect for women and men in every major religion who are trying to get the spirituality back."
At one point Steinem invited the audience to use the microphone to organize lobbying efforts. People took turns speaking in support of various bills before the Utah Legislature. Two women from Provo asked for help organizing an alternative women's conference at Brigham Young University, saying they wanted to hear Pulitzer Prize-winning author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Ulrich has been rejected as a speaker by BYU's board of trustees.
When Steinem got the microphone back, she said she credits The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with creating more LDS feminists than she ever had.
While celebrating the new administration in Washington, Steinem cautioned, "All we can reasonably demand is to be listened to." Women have to be strong enough to take action on their own behalf, she said, not just ask for gifts.
Besides, she added, partisan politics has never been the total solution for women. She quoted her friend, movie star Lee Grant, who said, "I've been married to one Marxist and one facist, and neither one took the garbage out."