Gloria Steinem, feminist trailblazer who championed LGBTQ+ equality, dies at 92

Gloria Steinem, the journalist and organizer who became one of the most recognizable figures in American feminism and a longtime supporter of LGBTQ+ equality, has died. She was 92.Steinem died Wednesday at her home in New York City, according to social media pages for Steinem and her foundation. An announcement posted Thursday said she died peacefully, surrounded by people who loved her. No cause of death had been announced Thursday. Those wishing to honor her were asked to donate to Gloria’s Foundation instead of flowers. See on Instagram Born March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem graduated from Smith College in 1956 and became a freelance journalist. In 1963, she spent 11 days undercover working as a Playboy Bunny for Show magazine. Her two-part exposé, “A Bunny’s Tale,” documented poor pay and sexist treatment. She helped found New York magazine in 1968 and later co-founded Ms., which debuted as an insert in New York in 1971 before becoming a regular stand-alone magazine in 1972.Related: The Advocate covers over the decades, from 1967 to 2020Steinem’s support for gay and lesbian people was visible early in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Time reported in 1977 that gay activists persuaded her to travel to Miami as they fought Anita Bryant’s campaign to repeal Dade County’s ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gay people. Speaking later that year at an American Association of University Women convention, Steinem said lesbians were “the most vulnerable group of women” and argued that the word lesbian had to become “as honorable as any other.”Steinem was among the prominent supporters of the Human Rights Campaign Fund in its early years.Her history with The Advocate stretches back decades. A retrospective of the magazine’s covers notes that in 1992, Steinem rebuked columnist Sally Quinn for arguing that feminism had alienated women by including lesbians. Steinem said Quinn had “disqualified herself” from serious consideratio