Gloria Steinem -> feminism -> female dissatisfaction with role of mother -> reduced family formation -> fertility falls below replacement -> the fall of western civilization -> the rise of non-western non-feminist civilizations
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is a big difference between being a second class citizen, being equal but properly socialized to play an amazing role in life you specialize in, and being socialized in a way that basically destroys society if extrapolated a bit further.
> 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 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.
"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. 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 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'
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.
Gloria Steinem -> feminism -> female dissatisfaction with role of mother -> reduced family formation -> fertility falls below replacement -> the fall of western civilization -> the rise of non-western non-feminist civilizations
The future belongs to those who show up.
sub-midwittery dressed up as causality by ascii arrows
There is a great series about the womens movement called Mrs America.
RIP.
NYT obit (non-paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/us/politics/gloria-steine...
[flagged]
You've posted about this three times now. That's excessive.
You've flagged it three times now. That is also excessive.
Users have been flagging these. I've unkilled them and also marked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49548341 so it doesn't get autocollapsed the way it normally would.
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.
Well if the people have spoken, sorry. Deleted the other one.
[flagged]
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.
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."
Women's rights are human rights. We all win when that happens (except for those that exploit and abuse them).
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is a big difference between being a second class citizen, being equal but properly socialized to play an amazing role in life you specialize in, and being socialized in a way that basically destroys society if extrapolated a bit further.
My parser keeps returning "tradwife dog whistle", but I'd like to give the benefit of doubt. Could you clarify?
If your society can’t survive without a permanent second class of citizens maybe it deserves to be destroyed
> 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 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.
> 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
Right wing talking points. They see feminism as a threat (which it is to them, but for the good overall).
it really isn't - it's well-documented: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy
"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. 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 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'
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.
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
Lmao do you have sources to support any piece of this claim?
It's in the article.
Her ties to the CIA are mentioned in the article, but nothing about what the GGP is talking about.
GP did say "any piece" :)
Steinem supported Clinton over Bernie in 2016. Bad.
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.
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.