Meeting Gloria Steinem

Meeting Gloria Steinem At Boston University

A few years ago, I had the honor of meeting one of our culture’s most important feminist icons, Gloria Steinem at the Boston University Barnes & Noble Lecture Series where she was promoting the book ENSLAVED, edited by Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten of the American Anti-Slavery Group in which true stories of modern day slavery are told. Sadly, slavery, though officially outlawed in every country in the world, still occurs. Approximately 15 to 30 million people are still enslaved. Here are some photos of me meeting Gloria, an amazing and very moving experience for me.*

When I was about seventeen, I heard Gloria Steinem make a remark I was not ready to hear. It shocked me, but it stayed with me. In response to a question about abortion, she said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

All of recorded history ran out from under me as when the tide on the beach takes the sand out from under your feet and leaves you dizzy. I realized I had been conned. By religion, in particular, which plays on good people's innate sense of responsibility by creating guilt where it might not exist and using this guilt to control people's lives.

I asked myself, what if society had given us a different set of rules? We would think differently about many things, including abortion.

One’s opinion of abortion is not the issue. One should never tell another woman what to do. The issue is power. Power over us. Power over our lives. We need to take that power back. That’s why I wrote Atlantis, poems about the United States being another Atlantis. Not because I think the United States is about to sink into the ocean. But because I think we can stop our country from destroying itself and the rest of the world with us.

I gifted her a copy of Atlantis, which seemed to please her very much. I had to tell her how she had influenced me.

Gloria’s response when I told her that a statement of hers had changed my life was to sit back and listen. As I explained, she answered, “I didn’t say that! It was said by a female Irish cab driver, in Boston!”

We went on to talk about religion, and needless guilt about sex. That's when I made her laugh, which was great!

She made some excellent comments on imperialism, which always results in slavery, the subject of the evening.

It is always sad and terrifying to me, especially on a night when we were speaking with women who had escaped real slavery, that people who should otherwise be free, have actually chosen slavery in so many ways. 

*(You'll notice, behind Gloria's head, ironically, sadly, in keeping with the recent #metoo movement is a poster for one of Harold Bloom's books - Harold Bloom, the Yale professor who sexually assaulted his graduate student, another feminist writer, Naomi Wolf in 1983. Whenever I see this photo, his name rankles.)

©Patricia Goodwin, 2019

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse. Previous poetry books, Atlantis and Marblehead Moon are currently out of print. However, you may read excerpts from these works at patriciagoodwin.com.

Windows: Those Who Help Us See

Princess Diana

I screamed when I heard of her death. It was a hot summer night, August 31, 1997, and all the windows were open. We’d been watching a movie, a VHS tape, and when the movie ended, I saw a crawl across the screen, “Princess Diana dead.” 

      I screamed.

      In 2006, I published Atlantis, a poetry book about the United States possibly being another Atlantis, that is, an advanced civilization busy creating its own demise. In it is a poem called "Windows," about the people who help us see. Whenever I read "Windows" to a group, I always dedicate it to someone. Usually to John Mack, that Harvard psychiatrist who insisted on believing in aliens AND alien abductions, who was run down by a car after getting off a train in London; Michael Hastings, the American journalist who was working on “something big” when his car crashed into a tree in LA; Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist, shot returning home to her apartment, for her work exposing the Putin regime (Michael Hastings and Anna Politkovskaya also represent the many journalists who are killed each year for doing their jobs); Karen Silkwood, a nuclear energy employee, who died in 1974 in a single car accident under mysterious circumstances after revealing the truth about the hazards of plutonium; and John Lennon, for his genius - what would he have had to say about all this, eh? There's more - like the hundreds of scientists and alternative doctors who are mysteriously murdered or disappeared. All silenced, that is the penalty for trying to get us to see something.

     At this posting, I want to dedicate "Windows" to Princess Diana, (the 20th anniversary of her death is just days away), who rocked our world and that of the British Monarchy by her love of and devotion to all people, and later, to her beloved children, who tormented the Crown by her many acts of love from kissing AIDS patients to walking on land mines, because, as she said, “children do.” The Crown had demanded a Virgin and by God, they got one! I even heard that she roller bladed through the Palace corridors. Love her forever.

      By the way, the last line of the poem is the dictionary definition of the word, windows.

Windows

Women die in car accidents

men jump out of windows

or are shot

elephants

once walked

across Atlantis

in 27 days

a woman can direct

an award-winning film

that does not win an award

on her vacation

she can uncover plots

to destroy the world

a man will study aliens

and ask questions

based on the premise

that abductees are telling the truth

it is best

for a woman

to not look too intelligent

and to always follow protocol

she should wear white gloves

and not touch anything!

especially the spindle of a spinning wheel

If a man says what he saw

they will take away his tongue

However,

she will walk

in mine fields

because children do

legless herself

she will bring legs

to the legless

at peril of death

she will read to the illiterate

she will teach them to read

a man will sing of love

he will sing of brothers and of sisters

she will lash herself

to trees, libraries, towers

in order to save them

she will kiss the diseased

Watch,

she will change her headdress

she will wear a sun

she will wrap a river

about her head

Look,

he does not get out of bed for a week

in order to get our attention!

Still,

better she should not smoke

or put her drink down

for too long a time

she should not go to the restroom

without a friend

she should not have sex without plastic

she should not have sex

unless she intends to kill

in that instant of vulnerability

when all men

return to God

if a man knows

better he should not know

it’s sad

when fidelity

is so sexy

when berries are for the picking

fish jump into your lap

air and water bathe us

clean

when robins

hop past the windows

the portals where

the wind blows down the house

©Patricia Goodwin, 2017

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest book is Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author. Her poetry book, Atlantis was published in 2006 and is currently out-of-print. Anyone interested in obtaining a copy, please contact the author via email.