Why Being a Feminist Does Not Mean Backing All Women

By Gloria Steinem, Women's Media Center. Posted January 16, 2007.

There is still a false idea out there that feminists back every woman, regardless of how she behaves. Let's leave that behind right along with 2006.

In fact, feminism is just the belief that all people have the full circle of human qualities combined in a unique way in each of us. The simplistic labels of "feminine" and "masculine" are mostly about what society wants us to do: submerge our unique humanity in care giving and reproducing if we're women, and trade our unique humanity for power if we're men.

So yes, I believe that women have the right to be wrong, with no double standard of criticism. But when we have the power to make a choice, we also have responsibility. Biology isn't destiny, and it isn't a free pass either.

Take the example of Condoleezza Rice. As George W. Bush's hired gun for foreign policy, she's been working for a guy who is opposed overwhelmingly by African American women and men voters, and by a majority of all women voters, too. Many white men are giving up on him too. Still, Rice could be given credit for sincerity in believing that Bush knows better what is good for the country than most people in it -- if she weren't so hypocritical.

When Rice was made provost of Stanford University, for example, she was the product of affirmative action. (I'm not saying she isn't smart; on the contrary, affirmative action often raises standards by enlarging the pool of talent.) The problem was that she pulled up the ladder behind her by opposing affirmative action for everybody else. When she benefited from Bush's support as well as his effort to attract some black voters by appointing a second African American secretary of state, she quickly became Bush's justifier and marketer instead of his advisor. Unlike her predecessor Colin Powell, she doesn't seem to have tried to mitigate disaster or given unwelcome advice about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Instead, she sugarcoated this illegal invasion in pretty public phrases about democracy, and became Bush's "yes" woman in inner circles, too.

So I don't care that she's going down with a sinking ship. She helped to take the United States to a new low in world respect, a new high in world hatred, and a new danger from increased terrorism. I don't care that she got in big trouble on every front, from shopping for designer shoes on Madison Avenue while the poor of New Orleans were drowning to renewing the painful old image of the smart black retainer working for the not-so-smart Southern family. She has gone from a Presidential "mention" to an unmentionable on the coattails of the boss she chose.

Then there is the pop cultural saga of Judith Regan. As an entrepreneurial editor, she turned Howard Stern's juvenile monologues into a book from her basement, then continued publishing him as he created such trademarks as persuading women (but not men) to strip and subject themselves to ridicule on his television show. Her publishing empire kept going up in profits and down in taste until she finally reached the bottom: O. J. Simpson.

By profiteering on a book and TV interview in which Simpson told his story "as if" he had murdered his estranged wife and her friend -- something millions of Americans and at least one jury believe he did -- she finally reached a point that could no longer be deodorized by money. Though she tried to save her ass by insisting she had got Simpson to confess -- something Simpson promptly denied -- there was a rebellion from bookstores to TV stations, from the families of the murdered to talk show hosts. She was fired as an embarrassment.

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Gloria Steinem is the founder and original publisher of Ms. Magazine and serves on the board of the Women’s Media Center.

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