Gloria Steinem Addresses the 2015 Graduating Class

I have the very great pleasure of introducing this year's commencement speaker where to begin activists and best-selling author courageous truth-teller trailblazer teacher editor organizer icon phenomenal human being and friend Gloria Steinem Thank You Gloria for being here for weathering jet lag and dictators coming almost directly from walking with a brave and determined group of women across the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea not every commencement speaker can say that that's where they just came from for over five decades Gloria has been at the forefront of the most important social and cultural debates of our time she has dedicated her life continues to dedicate her life to exposing the intertwined nature of sexism racism and economics Gloria is relentlessly resolute and revolutionary Gloria Steinem is perhaps best known for founding MS magazine the first US magazine to put issues like domestic violence and sexual harassment on the cover thereby bringing them into the light and into the national conversation her deep roots in journalism enable her to reflect society even as she shapes it Gloria understands that if journalism is the first draft of history women must have a hand in the former to shake the ladder a lot of her work including MS and the Women's Media Center has focused on equal representation of women and the full breadth of women's issues in the national media and while we could say these are women's issues they are more properly human issues on a personal note I have learned an enormous amount from Gloria from what she has written and said surely her work reveals both the big and small and justices and measures progress in our long slow arc toward equality but I have also learned so much just by being in her presence at the simplest of moments having a cup of tea lucky me but glorious greatness is not grandiose her greatness is in being so fully and completely human in all of her interactions because of her deeply held belief that the humanity of others is fundamental and undeniable in every moment at every turn her belief that to deny another's humanity be it in law or in a small seeming interpersonal interaction anyone is in itself deeply inhumane as a writer Gloria has received the list the penny kuzuri journalism award the front page in Clarion Awards National Magazine Awards an Emmy citation for excellence in television writing the lifetime achievement in journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of writers award from the United Nations she is a recipient of the National gay rights advocates award the Liberty award of the Lambda Legal Defense and education fund the series medal from the United Nations and she is a member of the National Women's Hall of Fame parenting magazine conferred on her its Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in promoting girls self-esteem and biography magazine listed her as one of the 25 most influential women in America for her role in changing the way the country saw women and even how women saw themselves perhaps most perhaps most importantly how women saw themselves she awarded she was awarded the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom she also founded the women's Action Alliance the National Women's Political caucus the voters for choice choice USA and take our daughters to work day I know that she's immediately gonna correct me and say co-founded so I'll just say as a professional I am deeply grateful to come of age in the wake of her influence her work articulates expects demands that all people have sovereignty over their own lives and isn't it has helped give shape to all of ours she pushes women to become leaders to be the leaders they are and she showed us how to do it she still shows us how to do her the fruits of her labor are evident not only in her list of accomplishments of which I only took a little portion but in the ways that we think and talk about equality rights and possibility how we engage in the processes of change they are embedded in our aspirations when asked to whom she is passing her torch she has responded that she is keeping her torch thank you very much and she is using it to light the torches of others now there's a one sentence lesson in leadership remember it I would say that I am proud to stand on the shoulders of trailblazers including Gloria but I think she would say that we're all working side by side in the march toward equality and justice for all so thank you for coming to our side tonight in tribute to the real let me just say that there is no way that I can live up to your name seeing Marco listening seeing all of you is so such a gift to me you have no idea how you you braced for my favorite word fan-fucking-tastic but in in real life everybody including what Conn is I like you know those nest of Russian dolls in which there's the littlest person in the center and then they go like that and so I think we're all like that so I just want to say to you that I have never escaped the moment like now at which I lose all of my saliva each tooth acquires a little angora sweater and I think how did a writer like me ever get to you know be speaking in public like this and the truth is that I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the fact that I couldn't get published what I wanted to get published especially at the beginning of the women's movement and so I began to go out with another brave co-speaker and I discovered something magic courtesy of that which is that when we are in a room with all five senses we can understand each other and empathize with each other in a way that is beyond what we do on the printed page or on the screen it turns out according to my friend Lee brilliant neurologists that we do not produce the same hormone that allows us to empathize the oxytocin it's called that floods us for instance men and women when we hold a child when we are in each other's presence it doesn't happen unless we are here that is one of the many ways I think in which restriction leads to liberation if I had been able to publish what it was that I wish to publish I never would have discovered the magic of being in a room like this together so I I hope that you will forgive me if I tell you that graduations are my most favorite event okay I love commencements I love the moment there's the ceremony it's all of you it's the graduates it's everybody who all the family the friends the lovers the old lovers you know who you are everybody who helped pay the bill it is all of us coming together in this extraordinary moment that I am such a sucker for and I just it's that these events are are more permanent than weddings right are more than diverse more diverse than most religious ceremonies more freely chosen than almost any other kind of group ritual and I'm so grateful to you that you've invited me an outlander to come and share this great great occasion now of course I've been worrying about what I could possibly say that might be helpful at a time like this of both ending in the beginning and my only comfort has been remembering that in my case of college education what was helpful was always completely unpredictable and often something I only realized was helpful many many years later for instance here's one example I took a course in geology feeling that it was the easiest way to fulfill my science requirement and our professor took us out on a field trip to see the cut off meander curves of an old age River the Connecticut River I of course was paying no attention to his lecture because I had seen on the dirt road leading to the river a gigantic mud turtle like this big who had crawled up the dirt road and was in the muddy embankment leading to an asphalt road and it was clear to me that this turtle was about to continue onto that road and be crushed by a car so I picked up the enormous snapping angry turtle and with great difficulty I carried it down the path to the river I had just slipped it into the water and was watching it swim away when the professor came up behind me and said you know that turtle has probably spent a month crawling up that path to lay its eggs in the muddy embankment and you have just put it back in the room I felt terrible but it was too late the turtle was already swimming away and only in later years when I become a traveling organizer only then did I realize a huge lesson I had learned always ask the Turner and you know there are lots of correlates the corollaries of that right anybody who's experienced something is probably more expert in it than the experts even well-meaning programs whether they are from governments or foundations often make the mistake of making decisions up here and thinking that they have the solution that they can just drop down so even if it's the right solution it prevents the turtle from flexing the muscles that allow us to discover who we are and be be self-determining and now whenever I hear someone in a foundation or a government position offer to say things like is it replicable can you scale it up I know we're in deep so I just give that as an example that many of the things you have learned here and hopefully even some one thing maybe I will say I don't know with luck may or may not be helpful or may or may not be something that we only recognize in many years to come but only that only the turtle has given me the courage to come to you today and hope hope that it might be useful I think that graduation is a time when we think about changes that we want to move us toward kindness perhaps the most single human important human quality ever and to seek justice and to make the change we want to make we tend to feel that it has to be started from above and actually that is probably the opposite of the case - it depends on what we do every day it is those small increments that make the difference and I think if I were to put any difference on the era into which you are graduating than the ones before you I would say that it is now the time to focus on connections it is often said that God is in the details right I think the goddess is in the connections so and this is not to say that all the previous stages were not necessary they were necessary everyone who is emerging needs to have a time in which the problem or the person or the whatever it is that's unique or invisible comes forward and is identified and begins to tell their story nothing is more important than narrative than stories we haven't been sitting around campfires for a hundred thousand years telling our stories for nothing our brains are organized on narrative if you tell me a fact I will invent a story as to why that fact is true so when we have been invisible unfairly in this world for any reason whatever that reason is it's terribly terribly important that we first are able to name ourselves to come forward to tell our story and usually what happens is that we tell what we think is an unassailable story even a shameful story and certainly ours alone and then we hear six other people or a hundred other people or many other groups say that happened to you that happened to me too and we begin to realize that if it has happened to unique human beings and we each are unique then it must be political it must be about power and if we come together in any way we can begin to change it so that is step that is an irreplaceable step and coming together in groups is an irreplaceable step and so for good and constructive good great and constructive reasons of course this means that there has been a civil rights movement based on shared experiences of lethal discrimination from voting to education and now to the unequal law enforcement that has given us a movement called black lives matter of course we have to have that named movement and my hope is that this contagious the fact is that this contagious emotion because you know justice is a very contagious idea gave birth to a huge movement still going in Indian country where people had not been allowed to control even their own schools were put into boarding schools with the sole purpose of killing the Indians saving the man as the inventor of those boarding school said so that they could not control their they could not teach their own language their own spiritual ceremonies there was the great amount of abuse and even murders in those schools and because of the civil rights movement and the contagion of the civil rights movement the American Indian Movement was born and because within the american indian movement and the civil rights movement and the anti-vietnam movement movements we love still the women in those movements were not playing an equal role really because nobody really knew what an equal role looked like right and had the idea of equality and justice and shared humanity was so strong that it gave birth to a big and diverse and spread out women's movement again by contain so all of those are important important steps and becoming visible and organized at different times as we have seen is crucial but I fear that now we are seen in silos you know there is the women's movement there is the gay and lesbian a transgender movement there is the peace movement there is them and the truth of the matter is as we know that every single one of these movements is inextricably connected to the next I fear sometimes that our adversaries know this better than we do because you may have noticed we pretty much have the same adversaries and I was saying earlier today that on campuses one of the questions asked me is why is it that the same groups are against lesbians and birth control it seems irrational and the surface budget is because in fact the opposite view of ours is that reproduction must be controlled and that means women's bodies if we didn't have wombs we might be fine no but reproduction must be controlled I live for the day when every economic course starts not with production but reproduction and they understand that from their point of view all sexuality is wrong immoral should be outlawed unless it can end in reproduction so of course they are against family planning and safe and legal abortion and any expression of love between two women between two men because this all stands for non reproductive sexuality and in fact they have been telling us for years and years a lie about human sexuality it has always been a way we communicate with each other we bond with each other as well as a way we procreate if we choose to I think that human beings although at this point I always worry that I'm maligning animals in some ways I think I think that the human beings are kind of more or less the only species who experience equal sexual pleasure whether we can conceive or not and so that tells us that the purpose of human sexuality has always been about communication but with patriarchy with racism with class with everything that we know with the ownership of children we have reached a point at which we have been told and I bet in this room that sounds familiar that sexuality is only moral and okay when it can end in reproduction and had takes place inside patriarchal marriage so the children are properly owned so I think we began to see that sometimes our adversaries know better what our connections are and we have to begin to understand them we have to begin to understand that there is no way that racism can be perpetuated without controlling reproduction and so wherever there is racism it is bad for females of that race and every race it may affect females differently the females of the supposedly ruling group may be restricted sexually and physically and put on a pedestal as a black suffragists said to her white suffragists sister's a pedestal is as much a prison as any other small space and it may affect women of color differently because they become sexual possessions of everyone and the producers of cheap labor it isn't that it affects us all the same but it affects us and there is no such thing as a successful feminist movement that is not anti-racist and there is no such thing as an anti-racist movement that can be successful without also being feminist and so we I think we begin to see what our connections are now some of our connections were just beginning to be able to prove we've always known for instance in tribal societies that the more polarized the gender roles the more violence in the society the more porous and chosen roles the less violence in society but now thanks to a book called sex and world peace which I commend to you it's a greatly research book and it is readable how rare is that it it has looked at scholars have looked at pretty much every modern country and determined that the single greatest determinant of whether there is violence inside the country or whether there will that country will be willing to use military violence against another country is not actually poverty it is not lack of Natural Resources it is not religion it is not even degree of democracy its violence against females not because females are any more valuable than the male's no but because patriarchy demands control of reproduction and that becomes the model we see first we see the controller and the controlled we see the dominant in the passive it normalizes that for everything else for race for class for hierarchy in general so I hope that we as women and seeing the connection because sometimes you know we can't we've been so trained not to fight for ourselves it's tough for us to fight for ourselves if we see it as the root cause of hierarchy and domination and violence I hope we are more likely to understand that we are not only fighting for ourselves but fighting for a greater purpose and we are also helping to point out that masculinity is a prison - it may be better prison with wall-to-wall carpeting people who serve you coffee but we wants it miss magazine tried to figure out if you backed out of the statistics on my men died if you backed out those things that could be reasonably attributed to the masculine role of what would happen you know accidents and gun-related violence attention disease you know and it turned out that men live four or five years longer without the masculine role okay so what other movement has can offer unit so I hope I hope I hope we began to see the connections so it with this in mind I have followed the advice of David Letterman who was still doing it when I was and and I I have tried to do ten top pieces of advice that I give to myself just in case they might be useful to you as graduates right see if any of these help you and don't feel you have to take any of them all or take all of them because some of them are quite controversial okay this number 10 if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but you think it's a pig it's a pig trust your instinct your instinct is like a computer and the facts are like long division on a piece of old papers trust your instinct 9 Marx and Engels were smart about a lot of things mainly because they were inspired by the Iroquois Confederacy incidentally inspired by what was on this ground ok but not about the end justifying the means actually the means dictate the ends we won't have laughter and kindness and poetry and pleasure at the end of any revolution unless we have laughter and kindness and poetry and pleasure along the way eight laughter is the most revolutionary emotion because it is free it is the only emotion that is free fear can be compelled as we know even love can be compelled if we're kept isolated and dependent for long enough in order to survive we in mesh with our captor and believe we are in love the Stockholm Syndrome happens to men too right but laughter is an aha of understanding becomes when known things coincide and make something brand new it's an orgasm of the mind I think Einstein had said he had - I could not possibly have said everything Einstein had to be careful while saving a shaving because when he suddenly had on a high thought of something new he laughed and he cut himself do not go anyplace they want what you left big important rule including religious places it's the difference actually between spirituality and religion religion doesn't laugh and let you laugh spirituality does seven there's more variation among groups than between groups as we can see that we know that masculine and feminine our creations very powerful cultural creations but still creations just as the ideas of race and class our creations so when making any generalized statement about women and men substitutes a Gentiles and Jews whites and blacks rich and poor if it's still acceptable okay but if it's not it's not acceptable all right six for 95% of human history spirituality saw God in all living things then God was gradually withdrawn over millennia from women in nature if any of you taken the trip down or up the Nile you know from because you can see it in the carvings along the Nile you can see that in the oldest African part God is present in papyrus and men and women and flowers and everything then it's a little you get back in the boat it's a thousand years later the goddess has a son and no daughter then there's less nature you get back in the boat it's another thousand years finally the son grows up to be a consort then the Pharaoh sits on a throne a male Pharaoh sits on a throne that is the goddess and then you get two mosques which like Christian churches and others are built on top of the ancient ruins and in Maas no representation of women or nature is allowed as Henry breasted a very smart Egyptologist said monotheism is but imperialism and religion five this follows four I mean six you'll see religion is often politics in the sky and we have to say so it's the only politics that has managed to put itself off-limits and continue to be powerful when God looks like the ruling class it's a problem when all the priesthood is guys it's an even deeper problem when we're told to obey in order to get a reward after death I mean even corporations only do it for after retirement and incidentally heaven didn't exist in a very specific form you know in that way that it does now in various monotheism's in a great detail in in egalitarian the cultures it was you know you went to join your ancestors but there wasn't this elaborate system of punishment and and reward I'm feeling really tempted to do something I okay well one day I was reading a rket a historian of religious architecture and he said like everybody knows it that patriarchal relate the structures of patriarchal religions are built to resemble the body of a woman because the central ceremony they house is one of men giving birth yes they've taken over reproduction and controlled reproduction but it's still a big missing for the mythic thing right giving birth okay so as he explains and you can find it now thanks to Google I believe there is always an outer entrance and inner entrance labia majora labia minora and a vestibule a-- in between sex is the same word physically as a vaginal aisle of the center two curved ovarian structures on either side and the womb in this i knew i shouldn't do this and the room that with the the altar in the center which is the womb where the miracle takes place where men say yes you were born of woman inferior creature sex dirty stuff nasty break but if you obey the rules of the patriarchy we will sprinkle imitation birth fluid over your head give you a new name and you will be reborn through the patriarchy in skirts they have the nerve I'm not I mean I'm actually serious that when you were a kid didn't you wonder why Jesus was blond and blue-eyed a Jewish guy in the middle of the Middle East it's it's it's about it's about sex and race and class and you know if God looks like the ruling class the ruling class is God all right and we have to do something about this and I had to go for a very minor test in the hospital and they gave me one of those forms to fill out where it says religion because the case you drop did they want to know to call and at first I put none and then I was a little negative so so I put pagan and the nurse said to me what does that mean I said it just means you believe that there is an essence of godliness in all living things all living things I converted around the spot well okay here's a more practical the golden rule was written by smart folks for those who were kind of superior or controlling their own lives and it's very important treat others as you would want to be treated very important but women and men who've been treated as inferior need to reverse it you need to treat yourself as well as you treat other people 3 labeling as I was saying makes the invisible visible so naming ourselves it's all very important but it's limiting we've had a declaration of independence I think now we need a declaration of interdependence about the connections so categories are the enemy of connecting and here's what I think we can think in so we can use as an image instead we are linked we are not ranked we are linked with each other we are linked with nature and the paradigm becomes a circle not a pyramid and this paradigm of the old culture original cultures was as we know a circle not a paradigm whether they were not a pyramid whether they were in Africa or here they shared the idea of the circle because we had only have all of our five senses in the present we can't live in the past our future this one I'm really talking to myself because I live in the future and you can't as it happens you can only be alive in the present right now is all there is one this is the last one if even this is to say there you know not only did it exist before not only might you say that everything we want once was here in some form it's not human nature to be hierarchical and divided so this is my last and hopeful one if even one generation were born without ranking and without violence without shaming and raised without shaming or violence or ranking we have no idea what might be possible on this fragile spaceship earth that we love so much and you the graduates of 2015 our part of that future so part of that future and I and so many of us here well I'm gonna live to a hundred so I'll be with you for a while that eventually and the parents and everybody here we won't be with you and yet we will will always be with you thank you so much for letting you

Channel: Bennington College

Views: 7,122

Rating: 4.4352942 out of 5

Keywords: Gloria Steinem (Politician), Bennington College (College/University), Vermont, Commencement Speech, Graduation Speech, Feminism, Activism, Speech

Id: zAQDcl6Rs6Y

Length: 41min 0sec (2460 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 07 2015