Name: Gloria Steinem Talks About The ERA And Women's Rights | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-02-01T16:01:50.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gloria Steinem Talks About The ERA And Women's Rights | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gloria Steinem Talks About The ERA And Women's Rights | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

For many years, Gloria Steinem has been one of the foremost leaders in the
fight for women's rights.
She is also the founder and editor of Ms. Magazine, which this month, I'm sorry,
this year, celebrates its 10th anniversary.
It's a pleasure to welcome Gloria Steinem.
Ten years the magazine has been in publication, huh?
Right.
Is that a surprise to you?
Yes, it's a big surprise because when we started, everybody said, oh, we'll
give it six months.
Yeah, because not only a magazine dealing solely with women probably was risky
in those days.
New magazines, period, come and go, don't they?
No, that's right.
The mortality rate on new magazines is pretty high.
And the idea of a feminist magazine was really unheard of.
People kept saying, well, maybe there are 10 crazy folks on the West Coast and
12 more on the East Coast.
Well, congratulations.
That's very nice.
Yeah, well, and congratulations to our two million readers because that's who
makes it.
Now, tell me about yourself prior to the project of the magazine.
How did you, what did you do for a living?
What was going on for you?
Well, I was a freelance writer and I was working for New York magazine.
I was frequently the girl journalist among groups of men and people would say
to me, you write like a man.
And I would say, oh, thank you.
That's terrific.
And I also used to write comedy once in a while.
I used to work for That Was the Week That Was.
Yeah.
Some folks here are old enough to remember this show.
Sure, it was a fine show.
And it was the predecessor of a lot of other comedy shows, I think.
What kind of comedy did you enjoy writing or you still occasionally write humorous
essays and so forth?
Well, a lot of what I did was a department called Surrealism in Everyday Life.
I think you'll find a lot of this familiar.
It was essentially found humor.
That is, I would go through all of the newspapers and magazines and find crazy
items.
You know, they're building high-rise bordellos in Sweden and give them a free
enterprise award or something.
They are.
They actually are.
More than, right?
Yeah.
But they were all real items.
And the interesting thing is that this is inadvertently continued in the
magazine because people send us crazy examples.
I mean, we have a whole section called No Comment with advertisements that
either make you laugh or cry, so we choose to laugh.
And they send us statements of President Reagan, which are high on the list of
people's selection of found humor.
Would you have examples of those?
Well, he said, for instance, that the nuclear bomb was a moral equivalent in
modern warfare because it only destroyed the tank driver and not the tank.
Or he said that we should really stick with nuclear energy because we knew
about it and we were experienced with it and we shouldn't get involved with
this new stuff like the sun.
Yeah, it's just a passing thing.
There's a lot of those, right?
Yeah.
He also said that we couldn't, it was impossible to work with the Soviets
because they didn't believe in a Christian afterlife.
Yeah, that makes it difficult to deal with.
I think that just sort of wiped out a lot of people you could work with.
Let me ask you, maybe you get tired of talking about this, maybe you don't, I
guess we'll find out.
The topic of the ERA, now, is it close to being passed, close to being defeated,
or do people care anymore?
Both.
Yeah, that's what it seems like.
Yeah, there are three more states.
We have 35, there must be 38 before the June 30th deadline.
And in many states, we are only one or two votes away and have been for some
time.
So it is very agonizing because the vast majority of Americans support it, way
over 60%.
The states in which most Americans live have ratified it, but none of us will
have it unless we get those three more states.
And given the schedule of legislatures and their meetings, it seems unlikely.
Now, is it possible, possible.
Explain to me, some states pass it and then later rescind it.
Is this correct?
Yeah, it's correct, but it's not constitutional.
That is, it has been the case in all other constitutional amendments that you
cannot rescind it.
Once you ratify it, that's it, otherwise we would end up going back and forth
for 75 years.
So the rescissions have been psychological warfare more than anything else, and
it's fairly clear that they're not constitutional.
Yeah, and what is the strongest argument against it?
What do people fear most from it?
Money, money, money, money, no, I think that there are many, many arguments
used against it, you know, that it will force women out of the home, it will
integrate bathrooms, it will, I don't know, bring about homosexual marriage.
I mean, you know, all kinds of issues on which it has absolutely no impact, but
the real cutting edge of the opposition is usually economic.
Equal pay for comparable work costs money.
Men are not going to go downward in their pay, obviously.
Women are going to go upward, and there are an awful lot of people benefiting
from this very cheap labor force now.
There are also some people who are against it for religious reasons.
If God had meant women to be equal, God would have given, not wings, I guess,
but anyway.
But I think the economic motive is the telling one.
We have hardly any time left here, and I'm sorry about that.
Let me ask you briefly the state of the image of the American woman.
Is it better than it was 15 years ago?
Well, I think so.
I think it must be because the self-image is so much better.
I mean, we get all kinds of letters saying how lives have changed and how I
feel like I can at least try to be what I want to be now.
Women are beginning to have an image of ourselves as whole people instead of
people who must play one particular or a few particular roles.
And that's a big change, but we still haven't made it a reality yet.
I mean, the change is a majority change, but institutions haven't yet changed
to make those choices possible.
Would you come back here again some evening and we'll continue this discussion?
We have to pause.
We'll be right back.