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Gloria Steinem has died
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/us/politics/gloria-steinem-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/us/politics/gloria-steine..., https://archive.ph/cfC1K https://archive.ph/cfC1K
- rvz 14d agoRIP.
- DrMandalay 14d ago[flagged]
- corps_and_code 14d ago[flagged]
- dang 14d agoIt's in the article.
- Jtsummers 14d agoHer ties to the CIA are mentioned in the article, but nothing about what the GGP is talking about.
- dang 14d agoGP did say "any piece" :)
- megagpt1 14d ago[flagged]
- dang 14d agoWe ban your accounts because you regularly create accounts to break the HN guidelines. That's obviously not ok and it has nothing to do with whom you're replying to.
- DangIsStillABit 14d ago[flagged]
- slater 14d ago> How do you know who is the same person imma guess they see the individual accounts' IP addresses
- Lerc 14d agoOn the topic of the sibling reply to this. There are quite a few new accounts that immediately go on attack on a few topics and individuals. I don't suppose you have any numbers of the ratio of IP addresses to attack accounts?
- dang 14d agoNot really, but occasionally the accounts are so similar that we can tell they're related. Which ones are you thinking of? If you don't want to specify usernames here, emailing hn@ycombinator.com would be appreciated.
- Lerc 14d agoWell it's hard to name them because the names keep changing. There's a few that are just going for random letters, and simonw's stalker seems to pick a new name for the moment, but isn't really dedicated enough to match Simons volume, so they can get a bit lost. I guess it would just be reassuring to think that they number very few.
- dang 14d agoI'm afraid there are multiple simonstalkers. He holds up rather well under it all
- colinb 14d ago[flagged]
- steveBK123 14d agoIndeed. Guys who think women have it too easy speaks to how far things have come in a generation or two. Some don't understand how second class citizen their mothers & grandmothers were in their time. If you think 50% of the country not being kept as second class citizens has negatively impacted your ability to make it in life, please look in the mirror and reflect on your own failings.
- matroxmemories 14d ago[flagged]
- mikestew 14d ago[flagged]
- kaikai 14d agoIf your society can’t survive without a permanent second class of citizens maybe it deserves to be destroyed
- matroxmemories 13d agoYou completely glossed over the other option I gave. Yet people that make obvious errors like this are making actual decisions about these things, and that’s where the trouble stems from.
- RajT88 14d agoNot just that, but being socialized to have women enforce their own status as second class citizens in a variety of ways. In some fashion, this is what the "Tradwife" movement is about. Example: I recall my grandmother opining that women who were assaulted were to blame for their assault, because of how they dressed. That's a hot take even Fox News is staying away from today.
- dang 14d agoCan you please not post in a throwaway/flamewar style to HN? What you bring up is no doubt one relevant aspect of a long career, but on HN we want comments that enhance curious conversation, not kill it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. They include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Eschew flamebait."
- krautburglar 14d agoThis is only half right. The capitalists loved feminism. Biggest expense of many businesses is labor. Double the labor pool, labor cost plummets, & profits skyrocket, so of course the capitalists at the CIA appreciated Steinem, and vice versa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#CIA_ties_and_leader_of_Independent_Research_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#CIA_ties_and_le... Would add that Alan Greenspan made a similar remark about his consulting firm. How he hired as many women as he could, since he could get sharp ones at a considerable discount. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5432331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5432331
- impossiblefork 14d agoYes, and people understood it as it happened. There's a Swedish song, which sees it like this "daghemmets utbygnadstakt regleras av konjunkturen, så tillmäts kvinnan sin plats i den ekonomiska strukturen, en billig arbetskraftsreserv till hands när fabrikerna visslarn, tillbakapressad av daghemsbrist, om lönsamhetens drivhjul plötsligt gnisslar" "The extension of day care is controlled by the economic demand, so woman is given her place in the economic structure, a cheap work-force reserve at hand when the factories want it; pushed back by too few daycares in case demand slows". The interpretation isn't anti-feminist, and they see the game rather as a cynical game having little to do with what is in the interests of the women themselves.
- krautburglar 14d agoI don't have an opinion on pro/anti feminism. I have a big opinion on paid mass manipulators -- especially ones being paid with public funds. It is outrageous --- that they steal our money, then have the gall to propagandize us with it. That they had her operate out of Europe also illustrates how they managed to work around Smith-Mundt at the time.
- impossiblefork 14d agoYes, I'm specifically talking about the song. If propaganda is to be used, it should be to inform the public without deception as to the sender or the purpose, not used to push a political position with public money with deception about the sender or the purpose.
- plastic-enjoyer 14d ago> CIA operative tasked with obfuscating the socialist origins of feminism I've read this sentence multiple times, but it still does not make sense to me
- pstuart 14d agoRight wing talking points. They see feminism as a threat (which it is to them, but for the good overall).
- paimapi 14d agoit really isn't - it's well-documented: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy "While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Less cloak-and-dagger and more a young, energetic, global representative for American values and freedom" was part of the Cold War-era soft power projection for the US since Communist countries were uplifting their women a lot more intentionally and structurally, especially compared to their historic baseline [0]. it looks pretty bad if your primary values are freedom but they don't apply super well to half of your entire population there's also a further-left critique of Steinem [1] as being the public face and visage of pro-American, capitalist feminism, someone who took it from being the more Emma Goldman/Combahee River Collective rooted form - a kind of 'JFK' for the masses to substitute for the more revolutionary ideals of, say, Malcolm X or Dr. King, both of whom were very unpopular in their time and often derided as 'asking for too much' [2] [0]https://kristenghodsee.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum3566/files/kristenghodsee/files/vb96_lagadinova5.pdf https://kristenghodsee.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/om... [1]https://publicseminar.org/2016/06/feminisms-of-the-left-politics-and-strategy/ https://publicseminar.org/2016/06/feminisms-of-the-left-poli... [2]https://news.gallup.com/vault/246167/protests-seen-harming-civil-rights-movement-60s.aspx https://news.gallup.com/vault/246167/protests-seen-harming-c...
- EyeEmOe 14d ago> “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” "was" doing some heavy lifting. Nothing against Steinem specifically but seems pretty clear the elders tend to view their past with rose colored glasses Imo the federal apparatus should be broken up and handed to states with a mandate to collaborate to avoid concentration of power
- pstuart 14d agoWomen's rights are human rights. We all win when that happens (except for those that exploit and abuse them).
- oddIdentities 14d ago[flagged]
- krapp 14d ago>Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms given to and exploited by women. They are decidedly not entitlements or freedoms given to or exploitable by men, and therefore humans in general. >They usually come at a substantial cost to men. The vote is one example. But the right to vote is decidedly an entitlement or freedom given to and exploitable by men, and therefore humans in general. As are other "women's rights" such as the right to own property, the right to equality in the workplace, the right to bodily autonomy (currently deprecated,) and the right to a divorce. Depending on the culture, the right to drive a car. The right to wear pants without being hauled off to an asylum for sexual deviance. I'm not actually aware of any such rights exclusive to women. Even men can get maternity leave in most countries. And for the life of me I can't imagine the "considerable cost" that women being able to vote has had on men, much less why that should be considered a problem.
- oddIdentities 14d ago[dead]
- ButlerianJihad 14d ago[flagged]
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- impossiblefork 14d agoI didn't initially understand your comment, but you mean basically something like that the origin of feminism was in socialism and the CIA saw that it was going to be unavoidable or at least popular and wanting to avoid this leading to socialism becoming popular they decided to make a bastardized version that cuts off any socialist aspect and just turn the whole thing into the modern liberal feminism?
- ChrisArchitect 14d agoNYT obit (non-paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/us/politics/gloria-steinem-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-VA.B1DW.29q10ZIng6CY&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/us/politics/gloria-steine...
- jalapenoj 14d ago[flagged]
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- krautburglar 14d ago[flagged]
- dang 14d agoYou've posted about this three times now. That's excessive.
- krautburglar 14d ago[flagged]
- dang 14d agoUsers have been flagging these. I've unkilled them and also marked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49548341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49548341 so it doesn't get autocollapsed the way it normally would. You've been around this site a long time, more than long enough to know that posts like this are flamebait and against the guidelines.
- krautburglar 14d ago[flagged]
- BoredomIsFun 14d ago[flagged]
- Ohkay 14d agoYes, but Bernie wasn’t credible until he gained allies like AOC and Mamdani and the relationship of the Clintons and Epstein came out later on.
- hirvi74 14d agoWhy do people always have to pinpoint some flaw, issue, or mistake in order to tarnish people that have achieved something great? Steinem was a human, not a paragon of perfection. She least used some of her time and energy on this Earth to try to make the world a better place.
- scns 14d agoThere is a great series about the womens movement called Mrs America.
- delichon 14d ago[flagged]
- scuppernong 14d ago[flagged]
- zackmorris 14d agoI know it looks bleak right now with wealthy and powerful men tearing down every institution that feminism, progressivism, etc built, but remember that the political pendulum inevitably swings the other way. We can have justice, and we will. Disregard for consent is driving the insanity at the highest levels. I hope anyone reading this remembers their own power in resisting the machinations of the greedy who can never have enough, and puts their energy towards organizing for a brighter future for people and planet.
- paimapi 14d agoah, if only that were true. there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability, that's just confirmation bias from the times we live in. if you were to ask a normal person living through one of the warlord eras of Chinese history, they might have preferred greatly the times they considered ancient when the rule-of-law was more stable. similarly, I'm sure your average medieval peasant living through an Inquisition may prefer the centuries where they weren't scrutinized by their neighbors for any sign of heresy justice is defined and propagated by the people in their time who show up and do the work. the overturn of Roe v Wade was a 40-year-old project and one of the driving forces that created the Federalist Society, a society which now dominates the Supreme Court and many other courts of law [0]. they are also responsible for things like Citizen's United, the rise in 'tort reform' (ie corporate escape holes from liability), and a lot of other anti-populist case law they out-organized the progressive legal types (with the help, of course, of the ultra-wealthy who saw a lot to be gained from defanged tax and labor law) there's no taking things for granted at anytime. you either grit your teeth fighting for your rights, out-organize your opponents, and stay fighting or you get trod on and lose it all. the parable of the tortoise and the hare does a lot of work here [0] https://theintercept.com/2022/05/10/roe-v-wade-federalist-society-religious-right/ https://theintercept.com/2022/05/10/roe-v-wade-federalist-so...
- Kamq 14d ago> there's a whole quote about the 'arc of history bending towards justice' but it's not an inevitability I think it probably is inevitable, but it probably happens the reverse of the direction that the quote implies. That is to say, I think our definition of justice bends towards whoever wins historical conflicts.
- expel5631 14d ago[dead]
- sergiotapia 14d ago[flagged]
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- regularization 14d agoThe CIA sent her to Europe to spy on progressive groups. She talked about it long ago. She says the CIA was progressive and liberal (her words. not mine). https://youtube.com/watch?v=4HRUEqyZ7p8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=4HRUEqyZ7p8
- indoorfish 14d ago"identity politics into second wave feminism and gay rights to stop discussion on class." Is progressive and liberal. The original CIA was mostly well educated, wealthy guys from Yale, so of course it was?
- jmyeet 14d agoReading other comments, it seems like people don't know that Gloria Steinem was a complicated figure, specifically her involvement with the CIA for at least 4 years is documented [1]. By all accounts, this was in the wake of the Red Scare and she was reporting on Communist activities by European student groups. At the same time she supported unionization efforts and fair pay for women. This is what I mean by complicated. But more problematic was this statement [2]: > While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Anyone who knows the history of the CIA knows it was completely off the rails in the 1950s and directly involved in if not responsible for many coups. Regime change by the US is so common there's a whole Wikipedia page about it [3]. Likewise, Steinem was anti-sex work, calling it "commercial rape" [4]. That's not really surprising for the time and you can't necessarily use the same norms from 2026 in the 1950s to 1980s. You can appreciate her contributions to, for example, equal pay and advancement of feminism and what became known as women's liberation while acknowledging her complexities. I don't understand this need people have to rewrite history to be black and white and either deify or villify people when they die. [1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01315R000300380009-2.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01315R0003003... [2]: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... [4]: https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/prostitution-is-commercial-rape-says-gloria-steinem-114012901118_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/prosti...
- EyeEmOe 14d ago"We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls" -- Gloria Steinem This is naive. Men's and women's brains do not process information in the same way: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sax-on-sex/202405/ai-finds-astonishing-malefemale-differences-in-human-brain https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sax-on-sex/202405/ai... Long story short; there is no similarity in how each gender's brains store and retrieve information
- Avicebron 14d agoThere was actually a "recent" series on the radio about this: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/04/07/falling-behind-miseducation-americas-boys https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/04/07/falling-behind-mised...
- EyeEmOe 14d agoWhat does statistical analysis of society have to do with empirical neurological evidence of brain activity? Replication crisis details ad nauseam how social psychology studies are only reproducible in 26-30% of cases. Almost all social sciences are worse than a coin toss. Including education. What that says to me is social tropes as a basis for how we raise kids are massively out of alignment with how human biology relates to reality. Women like Steinem argued against women being treated like concepts and objects by men (which I agree with). But there is an irony in women using their biology's unique (relative to a mans) emotional and logical faculties to suggest they know best how men should behave. If her actual point was we need to find the best means to support boys as we have with girls, sure. But "raise them like" does not readily communicate that nuance.
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- lern_too_spel 14d agoThere is nothing in that study that says this is due to nurture instead of nature. They trained a model to distinguish male study participants from female study participants based on resting fMRI data, which does not support your claim that they process information differently. Surprise, surprise, with an expressive enough model, this was possible with 90% accuracy. If they trained a model to distinguish employed people vs. unemployed people, I suspect they would have gotten a similar result because those two groups would be thinking about different things and thus consuming oxygen in different parts of their brains. Heck, the interaction between the gender of the MRI operator and the sexual preferences of the "healthy young" study participants would be enough to produce measurably different brain activity.
- mhashemi 14d ago[flagged]
- dang 14d agoThat is the internet being internet. But adding a putdown on top just gets us further stuck in failure mode. It would be better to contribute something substantive about Steinem. Obviously there is much to discuss there.
- bjornnn 14d ago[flagged]
- regularization 14d agoShe started her activism spying on European progressive groups for the CIA. You take it for granted that she is the representative of the women of the world. Thus any critique of this woman the establishment foisted on us is misogynistic. We do not all take this for granted though.
- bjornnn 14d agowe all know how passionate the hackernews community have always been about the integrity of european progressive activist groups, it's practically all anyone talks about on here
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- dang 14d agoCan you please transmute your frustration into thoughtful, interesting comments, rather than venting it into putdowns of others? Since you're posting here, you're as much "the hackernews community" as the rest of us. The intention of the site is clear: curious, substantive conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We know better than anyone how easy it is to get derailed from this, but really the best thing to do is to practice thoughtful conversation even when others are not.
- bjornnn 14d agoyou got it, boss!
- cindyllm 14d ago[dead]