Growing up in the 1950’s through 1970’s in Toledo, Ohio, my peers and I boasted of Danny Thomas, our world renowned Art Museum and Zoo, the Mudhens, Jeep, Tony Packo’s; and, as we entered the era of Woodstock, Gloria Steinem. She was our own internationally known “women’s libber” who proclaimed that women need to break free from the patriarchal shackles of old. We didn’t need men (“a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”); we could raise children without them if we wished. We could have sex whenever we wanted, with whomever we wanted. And if we didn’t want to raise children, it was our right to abort them. Our bodies were our own, and we owed nothing to anyone,
Well, now that Gloria is back in the news again, this Toledoan wants to tell her: You are a big liar, Gloria. It was all a lie, and your lies caused suffering for millions of young, impressionable girls who believed you.
According to Gloria, it was normal and acceptable for a woman to have sex with a man after meeting him just once (just as they did on TV shows and in movies). Girls believed her, and did.
According to Gloria, it was normal and acceptable to have as many sexual partners as you wished. Girls believed her, and did.
According to Gloria, it was normal and acceptable to have an abortion, even more than one. Girls believed her, and did.
According to Gloria, it was normal and acceptable to partner with whomever you wished for as long as you wished whenever you wished without any bonds or vows. Girls believed her, and did.
But now, Gloria, we know that you sold us a big lie.
Women who have sex with a man they hardly know come away with little respect and no love.
Women who have multiple sexual partners come away with sexually transmitted diseases and even less respect and less love.
Women who have abortions come away with regret, depression, physical damage to their reproductive organs, infertility, suicidal thoughts, even less self-respect, and the incurable loss of a loved one whom they killed but always remember.
Women who have children with multiple partners or no partners come away with children who are desperate for fathers, unstable homes, less education, and in greater poverty.
Gloria Steinem did more to objectify and demean women than all of the “patriarchal” men who came before her.
Before Gloria, girls could stand up to those men and say “No, this is not right,” and walk away with heads held high and society behind them.
After Gloria, those good girls were made to feel prudish and suppressed because now it was not only “good” to objectify your body (after all, it’s yours), but it was “liberating.” Now it wasn’t only demeaning men who were telling us to go ahead and just “do it,” it was Gloria and the “cool” Cosmo women, too.
In the end, they not only threw millions of naïve girls under the bus of “liberation,” but the millions of unborn babies who suffered the ultimate punishment. Meanwhile, the men walked away, laughing.
I was reminded of your legacy when I was thinking of an old acquaintance who recently passed away. Many years ago, during the height of your heyday, she decided to abort a baby because she and her husband didn’t want more than two. A few years ago, one of her children died tragically, and the pain in that mother’s eyes was something I will never forget. She realized the lie after it was too late, and I am sure it hastened her own subsequent death. Now all that remains is her husband and the one child, and I wonder if that child ever knew that there was another sibling who could have been there.
I will pray for you Gloria, even though you may not want them, especially when you wear that t-shirt proclaiming that you had an abortion. I pray that someday you too will see the lie that you lived and spread, and learn that it is the truth that sets you free.
God help us all.
32 thoughts on “You Lied to Us, Gloria Steinem”
Thanks for all your remarks. Gloria as well as other “feminists/Communists/criminals” have had a terrible effect on millions of my generation and others. Pray to end abortion. Pray for the truth to win and the spirit of Jezebel to be cast out of our culture. Children should be taught to value life, not death. Isaiah the prophet warned about “calling evil good and good evil.” Don’t be ashamed of your faith. We’re treated as a joke on the late night shows, Christianity and Christians are mocked and treated with contempt. Don’t worry. Lift up your heads. Your redemption comes.
The other tragic side to this historic outcome was the fact that Gloria’s Big Lie was never rebuked at the pulpits across our nation. Her Lie grew legs and ran unopposed.
God bless you for “telling it like it REALLY is”!
Thank you for your kind words.
Most men feel as useful as that bicycle. With suicide as the leading cause of death for men under 50, and the cause of about one out five deaths of boys and young men age 10-25 (source CDC 2013 Final Data PDF), they clearly feel unneeded. They are blamed as the causal source of all ills in the world for the sheer fact that they were born the wrong gender. The blame shoved on them if they do not subjugate themselves before women is staggering. Just trying asking “What can a man bring to this role that a woman can’t?” If you are unable to even ask that without a call from HR, there’s an issue.
Gloria Steinem, Bell Hooks, and others “empowered” women to the detriment of men. No longer are there spaces for men to learn how to be men and be formed as men to the standard of the previous generation. Men can’t have opinions on abortion, birth control, single motherhood, and other moral issues because of genitalia.
We, men, love women. We want to treat women as the crown of creation. We will die to self or in actuality for love of women. We want to help women, to support and overcome struggles together, but for the first time in history, men do not even know how to help themselves.
Gloria, like many other Jewish people involved with her horrible ideas and “improvements” make me ashamed to be a Jew. Not that all Jews agree with her. But I find it deeply troubling that many do. Ahab called Elijah a “troubler of Israel.” Gloria is another one, more like a rebel against the law, a Jezebel. It’s appropriate to pray for people like this and there may be hope but she has made such a large investment into evil that changing may be quite difficult. Perhaps other Jews will learn better than to turn into what she’s become: Lady Macbeth.
I have lived this and everything you say has happened in my life. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. I remember telling a close girlfriend, “Feminism dumped this all in our laps, now what the hell are we supposed to do with it?” We weren’t allowed to want commitment, it was chalked up to weakness. Not wanting to have sex, you were a naive, sheltered, unenlightened prude. I had no idea the theology I was being fed until it was too late and the damage was done. Two abortions, one at 16, one at 39, both of which destroyed my self esteem and self worth. The second of which almost killed me, because I was mature enough not to deny what I had done. Colossal negative effects. This whole things was the greatest ruse. I was touted birth control under the guise of independence and freedom. In the long run, the truth was, it benefitted men way more than me. I couldn’t say it benefitted me at all. And I thought I had a healthy attitude towards my sexuality! Boy was I wrong. Hind sight is 20/20. This whole abomination of lies is still being fed. Women have been duped into actually fighting for it. I hope the future generations don’t take long to reassess! The damage was great, at least in my life.
Even a cursory reading of Ms. Steinem’s writings and listening to her comments would have revealed a troubled and contradictory person who was unable to fully distinguish the relevant and the superfluous. While she never fully explained what informed her early life, it is apparent that she carried its weight openly and enthusiastically but not well. The many young women (and not a few men) who listened approvingly to her dictums were often at a complete loss when someone confronted their positions with fact and reasoned logic. Judging from various remarks she has made recently, it seems that, in her case, wisdom does not grow with age.
After reading this article, I realized we have a whole community of super-feminist Benedictine nuns right here in Erie, PA. Their “superior” writes book after book after book on feminism. It isn’t just Gloria…
Cynthia, Well spoken and from the heart, and like a true sister in Christ…!!!
Feminism and its Gloria Leader won’t be purged from American culture, even from America’s Christian culture, until women repent and renounce the feminist and all her works.
You have made a good first step, Mrs. Millen. Of America’s population of 300 million that means there are 149,999,998 more women to go. (Phyllis Schlafly has already been fighting the good fight against feminist Satan.)
And I’ll say a prayer for all of you for vilifying someone of all the good that she has accomplished –
“ If women could sleep their way to the top there would be a lot more women at the top” GS – and
point out that for all the hurt, pain and scandal she caused, Gloria couldn’t compete with St Augustine
who with his brilliant mind invented the hell of Limbo and for almost 800 years untold Catholic women
have suffered depression, suicide and shame for being told that they would never see their babies if
they made it to heaven and those spiritually aborted souls would never see God.
Limbo isn’t hell, dear James. And if you’re wrong on something as basic as that then you’ve got to reexamine all you think you know and ask what else are you so wrong about.
You wouldn’t know what it’s like to be used as a sexual plaything. The remorse and feelings of worthlessness that sexual promiscuity brings is destructive to one’s self-esteem. The author is correct that we have allowed ourselves to be thrown under the bus in the guise of liberation. Sexual freedom was a crock of crap. Maybe for men it is different, but women I think value a stable lifetime commitment more than casual hookups. The one-night stand only makes one feel cheap and used. Villify? You betcha. She deserves it.
I wonder if any of King Solomon’s 1,000 wives and concubines felt thrown under the chariot ? I think promiscuity has been here a lot longer than old Gloria.
So you would have us follow the advice of a person who bases her ideology on a thousands of years old view of women where they were kept as mere property and conditioned to like and accept that? King Solomon was not sinless as many of the biblical characters were not. They are part of the Old Testament books as lessons on how not to behave.
And Gloria is a new age version of how not to behave when it comes to ideology that goes too far but we do celebrate both sides of their humanity as we laud Solomon’s wisdom in finding the true mother. My point is the pain, guilt and depression the author noted was felt more keenly by ” … millions of young, impressionable girls who believed …” that fate of their unbaptized children.
This went on for 700 + years and it is only fair to calculate, as the author did,
the enormous hurt caused by his ideology..
What in the world does limbo have to do with a discussion about Gloria Steinem? I am not a Steimen fan, I am not in favor of her false brand of feminism, but if I wanted to defend her, I could do a much more credible job of it by not flagrantly throwing logical discourse out the window.
” if I wanted to defend her, I could do a much more credible job of it by not flagrantly throwing logical discourse out the window.”
So go do it already.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for calling this woman out for being exactly what she is, the queen of liars. This woman is a hapless dinosaur from a miserable failure of a bygone era that needs to assume her rightful place in the tar pit of history right now.
Viva Cristo Rey!
I am printing this for my students: seniors in a Catholic girl’s school who have been fed the feminism lie in megadoses.
Thank you Therese. It is for these young women that this article was most intended. They have been hurt so badly by these lies. Keep up the good work!
Dear Therese-You are teaching the hope for our way of life, the hope for many many babies. Often my daughter lets me know that she, born in 1986, is part of the first generation that got out of the womb alive after Roe v Wade. Look around the prolife movement, it is the young, primarily young women, who are out there saving babies, out there changing hearts and minds, out there – despite the dominant culture and the new government religion – speaking the truth, with the absolute hope and faith that they will change the world. And they will. Please have them check out PASS, post abortion stress syndrome, or some call it PAS, post abortion syndrome; it is a form of PTSS, but, as you can imagine, the “world rulers of this present darkness” are trying to squelch publicity about it. see.e.g. AMERICA IS POST ABORTIVE at the catholiclane site. Regarding the celebrations, which for Planned Parenthood are “sellebrations,” the following is relevant. God bless you, Therese, you will meet in heaven the babies you saved, without ever knowing it. Guy McClung
ABORTION CELEBRATIONS
APRIL 20, 2015
Catholic Lane
Guy Mcclung
If you’re happy killing babies, clap your hands.
If you’re happy killing babies, clap your hands.
If you’re happy baby killing and for you its so fulfilling,
If you’re happy killing, babies clap your hands.
The Abortion Industry has been having “Abortion celebrations” around the country whose themes include: “Celebrate the death of your innocent defenseless child,” “Rejoice in your abortion as a life-sustaining act,”and “Smile, I also killed my baby.”
If you’re happy babies die, clap your hands.
If you’re happy babies die, clap your hands.
If you’re happy babies die, and you’ll never hear them cry,
If you’re happy babies die, clap your hands.
Since 1973 over 57,000,000 babies have been killed in abortions in America.
If you’re happy killing human weeds, clap your hands.
If you’re happy killing human weeds, clap your hands.
If you’re happy, kill those weeds to satisfy your needs.
If you’re happy killing weeds, clap your hands.
The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, referred to minority children as “human undergrowth” and “human weeds.” Groups whose aim was to rid us of these “unfit” human beings included eugenics groups and the Ku Klux Klan. Margaret Sanger, a member of The American Eugenics Society, was welcomed by the KKK as a speaker.
If you’re happy black kids die, clap your hands.
If you’re happy black kids die, clap your hands.
If you’re happy black kids die, and black’s the reason why,
If you’re happy black kids die, clap your hands.
Over 20,000,000 black babies have been killed in America, representing about 36% of all abortions. Their mothers make up only about 7% of the population. In a personal letter, Margaret Sanger, whose “Negro Project” was intended to eradicate the African-American population, said her organization could “hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” Historical estimates are that five thousand black Americans were lynched in America. More black children are now killed in one week here than all the men in all the lynchings in all of U.S. history. What the KKK longed for and failed at, Planned Parenthood has done and continues to do with deadly success.
If you’re happy brown kids die, clap your hands.
If you’re happy brown kids die, clap your hands.
If you’re happy brown kids die, and brown’s the reason why,
If you’re happy brown kids die, clap your hands.
Over 14,000,000 Hispanic babies have died in the United States, representing about 25% of all abortions. Their mothers make up only slightly over 8% of the population.
If you’re happy killing girls, clap your hands.
If you’re happy killing girls, clap your hands.
Just because they’re little girls, they’re killed all around the world.
If you’re happy killing girls, clap your hands.
Over 200,000,000 baby girls have been killed by abortion worldwide because they were girls, and for no other reason. Under the principles of the US Supreme Court, in America it is totally legal to kill a child in its mother’s womb for no reason other than that the child is a girl. Pro-Death proponents of the unrestricted absolute right to abortion will not support laws that outlaw killing a child in its mother’s womb based on its sex.
If you’re happy killing defects, clap your hands.
If you’re happy killing defects, clap your hands.
If you’re happy killing defects, because they’re only human rejects,
If you’re happy killing defects, clap your hands.
Hundreds of thousands of babies in America have been killed because they were labeled “defective.”
If there are no consequences, clap your hands.
If there are no consequences, clap your hands.
If there are no consequences, killing children so defenseless,
If there are no consequences, clap your hands.
If killing babies makes you equal, clap your hands.
If killing babies makes you equal, clap your hands.
If killing babies makes you equal, because these children are not people,
If killing babies makes you equal, clap your hands.
If killing your baby makes you free, clap your hands.
If killing your baby makes you free, clap your hands.
If killing your baby makes you free, and all you care about is “me,”
If killing your baby makes you free, clap your hands.
If you’re old and all alone, don’t clap your hands.
If you’re old and all alone, don’t clap your hands.
If you’re old and all alone, and your children aren’t at home,
If you’re old and all alone, don’t clap your hands.
– See more at: http://www.catholiclane.com/abortion-celebrations/#sthash.nmBbFcY4.dpuf
Wonderful. I was before all that “freedom” but my parents never taught me any morals, although I attended mass with my mother until I married and left home and was a virgin, I regret many of my actions and regret finding out what my husband’s beliefs were before I married him. He was a ‘mess” and was the cause of my children acting out and having much marital trouble. Please teach your kids to find out the moral conviction of a person they think they would like to marry. Ask if they had relations, how many , children aborted etc. and find another person if their morals are low. !
“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.”Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Thank you, Cynthia. This makes the point in a way that factual staid nonfiction usually cannot. What is actually being made clear now is that “all we want is safe, legal and rare abortion” was also a lie. All along they knew, these demons, that they were celebrating the bloody grusome horrorific deaths of their children, and perhaps with more devilish joy, rejoicing in the deaths of the children of the girls to whom they lied. Guy McClung, San Antonio Texas USA
Thanks Guy. As always, I continue to enjoy your writing as well.
I think I need to read Dostoyevsky again. Been decades.
Re lying taking over one’s soul, if you do not read Dostoevsky in the original Russian, or don;t want to plod thru a translation, just get an unauthorized biography of Billy Boy or Hillary and it will be crystal clear for you.
The lie continues. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and I bought some of the lies. I never listened nor heard the Church boldly directing me otherwise. Thankfully, the Lord blessed me with four children. Now, I evangelize to others the beauty of motherhood. It’s such a great gift.
One of the best testimonies for the truth of Catholic teaching is when young married couples are open to life. As I witness marriages where children are a welcome gift from God, I am so grateful. I am seeing their living witness to the beauty of the Word of God to be fruitful and multiply.
It is up to all the faithful to spread the Truth to all young men and women. Thank you, Cynthia, for doing your part in spreading the Truth.
Keep up your good work, Suzy. It takes all of us to spread the Truth…and the joy we share when we see our young people following the Truth.
God Bless you Cynthia! I’ll say a prayer for Gloria.
Thank you!