Gloria Steinem | Interview
Posted in #Chicago blog by Novid Parsi on Feb 2, 2012 at 11:10pm
http://timeoutchicago.com/things-to-do/15106819/gloria-steinem-interviewJust before hanging up, Gloria Steinem reflected on some of the things she'd just said during our phone interview. "I hope it makes sense," she said. "I can see that some of the questions—not your questions, but I mean, the interpretations of [my] old quotes are not necessarily what I mean, so I hope this makes sense." Some of those old quotes we discussed involved Steinem's views on pornography and transsexualism, but we also touched on more recent concerns: the supposed death of feminism, and Obama's presidency.
[...]
In a '70s essay that's often been quoted, you say feminists are right to feel uncomfortable about the need for transsexualism. There's your famous quote: "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"
No, I don't think we feel uncomfortable. Actually I think quite the contrary. Transsexuals are often gender-role revolutionaries because they show that gender is a fiction. Here's an example of the shoe and the foot that is troublesome: In Iran, apparently the homophobia is so severe that to have a lesbian child or a gay child is a disgrace and so they have sex-change operations because to have a son or a daughter then seems more normal. The point is free will over one's own body.
