Looking Back on Gloria Steinem’s Turn Toward Transgender Rights

Trailblazing feminist icon Gloria Steinem died at her New York City home on Wednesday, per a statement on her social media. As many of her obituaries will attest, Steinem publicly challenged gender stereotypes in the earliest days of her journalism and activism careers, dating back to the 1960s.Though her legacy of feminist activism also included a hefty amount of advocacy on behalf of transgender people, that was not always the case. Steinem’s earliest known writing on trans people, from a February 1977 issue of Ms., the magazine which she co-founded a few years earlier, waded into the debate on transgender athletes — which, yes, was happening half a century ago. The article, “If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit, Change the Foot,” concerns Renée Richards, a tennis player who had transitioned in the 1970s. In the article, Steinem wrote that “we ought to be very, very suspicious of the social reasons for transsexuality as well as its big, star-spangled, commercial exploitation.”Year, Steinem voiced support for some of the core tenets of Janice Raymond’s infamous 1979 book, The Transsexual Empire, which is considered a defining work of trans-exclusionary radical feminism. In a 2012 interview for Vassar College, Steinem referenced the book, saying, “Doctors were really profiting off this surgery and especially hormonal treatments. Hormonal treatments, in general, whether for fertility or for gender purposes, nobody knows whether they’re dangerous or not. And that’s a worry. I just think our choices need to be informed.”But Steinem’s views did evolve as her knowledge of the subject deepened, a testament to the ability to revisit one’s views and alter course. And, of course,, trans people were featured positively in Ms. in other capacities outside of that single essay. Here are a few examples of Steinem’s later-in-life trans advocacy. July 1974: Ms. Magazine carries an excerpt from Conundrum, a memoir by Jan MorrisDuring her leadership in the early day