How she tapped into a “precious” resource we all have.
Gloria Steinem has become the U.S.’s most-renowned activist in the fight for gender equality. The author, activist, and organizer — born 1934 in Toledo, OH — is known for her powerful speeches and self-possession. Her journey to prominence in the women’s movement of the 60s and 70s was a long process, and not without plenty of bumps. In her thirties, Steinem experienced an incident of sexual harassment that clarified something for her — and taught her to always obey her instincts. Here, she recounts the moment that she realized how vital it is for women to “reclaim our own bodies,” and their power.
It was sometime in the 1960s. I was in my early thirties, and I was sitting in the office of an executive whose name I can’t remember, waiting for him to return. Next to me on the leather office couch was Terry Southern, a man I knew slightly as an author and a screenwriter. We were talking about nothing much, waiting for this mutual friend.
Suddenly, Terry reached over, held down my hands that were clasped in my lap, and tried to kiss me. In a millisecond and without thinking, I bit him on the cheek. I only realized this because as he pulled away, I could see a tiny drop of blood, but the moment was over as abruptly as it began.
Ever after that, if I happened to see him in the Russian Tea Room, which was where writers hung out in those days, Terry would point to his cheek and insist there was a scar there. I wasn’t angry and neither was he, but it was a shared recognition.
A few years later, as women’s truth-telling created feminism—and vice versa—I realized that I was just about the only woman I knew who had never been sexually harassed, raped, or even pressured into having sex I didn’t want. As a child, I had never been hit or abused. By the accident of having kind parents, not going to school very much, freelancing instead of having a job I could be fired from, and just dumb luck, I had retained the catlike instincts that we are all born with. I realized just how precious those natural reflexes are.
I bet that if we are not scared, pressured, or punished—by child abuse, religious training, the tyranny of gender roles, survival sex, or sexual assault—we all have the responses of a cat. But the more we respect children’s bodies, ask before we hug and kiss a child who may not welcome it, refuse to normalize forced submission in behavior around us, or to sexualize violence in our homes or in our movies, I bet the more we will discover that we all have the instincts of a cat.
Yes, there will still be some men who think they have a right to women’s bodies for sex and reproduction, and racism will double that. But with natural instincts restored, we will be able to stand up for ourselves, fight back, protect each other and our children, and reclaim our own bodies.
I bet that’s where democracy begins.
Excerpted from My Moment: 106 Women on Fighting for Themselves. Copyright © 2022 by Chely Wright, Lauren Blitzer, Kristin Chenoweth, Kathy Najimy, and Linda Perry. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
