Gloria Steinem died Wednesday at her home in New York City. She was 92. The Gloria Steinem Foundation shared the news Thursday morning on her Instagram account: she "passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her." No cause was given. At 92, none was needed. The news reached the country 61 days before the midterm elections — she would have done that math herself.
Anyone who ever walked into a Sociology 101 course knows her name. For fifty years Steinem defined what American liberalism means — what a minority is, how it operates, how minorities bond together, and how they get worked against each other. Women's rights, gay rights, civil rights: one principle ran under all of it, and it was hers. People who are outnumbered on their own stop being outnumbered together.
She built the idea from inside, always. In 1963 she took a job as a Playboy Bunny and wrote the club up in a two-part exposé for SHOW magazine — no lecture, just the costume, the tray, and what readers could now see for themselves. She co-founded New York magazine in 1968 and wrote its political column. In 1971 she co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus and started Ms. the same year, tucked inside New York magazine until it stood alone in 1972 — the caucus put women into office, the magazine told the country why. Barack Obama hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom on her on November 20, 2013.
