Gloria steinem — pioneer for men’s liberation too

Champion for women’s rights, Gloria Steinem opposed the shackles of toxic masculinity as well.

Ms. Gloria Steinem spearheaded the modern women’s movement with extraordinary grace, candor, and intelligence. It was not a mission for the faint of heart—or spirit. Ms. Steinem’s challenge was not simply to update and expand the roles assigned to women, but to call into question the idea that our humanity should be limited by the societally prescribed roles we are born into based on our biology.

Decades later, what remains powerfully relevant about Ms. Steinem’s legacy is her insistence that people should be seen and valued as individuals rather than confined by the roles society assigns. She challenged the stereotypes that reduced women’s rights and fought for women to have the freedom to define themselves on their own terms.

Ms. Steinem not only opposed the seemingly arbitrary boundaries imposed upon women, she was a champion for the rights of men too. Throughout history, men’s identities and acceptable forms of expression had been restricted by historical norms that while benefitting few, had consequences for many men and often contributed to the development of “toxic masculinity.” Ms. Steinem paved the way for men to step beyond the narrowly defined norms and other metrics that had long defined and measured men’s masculinity, power, and value.

In sum, Ms. Steinem’s efforts inspired men and women to question the rigid demands of masculinity that had been imposed on men for centuries, e.g.., the ideas that stoicism was a metric for “strength,” that vulnerability reflected weakness, and that emotional expression was to be reserved for women, aka “the weaker sex.”

Along with other impassioned and formidable equal rights pioneers, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ms. Steinem invited society to embrace men as whole people, shredding the caricature of them being seen as merely providers, achievers, and figures of authority, and acknowledging men’s capacities as emotionally capable, professionally expansive, and socially connected individuals. The freedom for men to be strong without being stoic, vulnerable without being diminished, and emotionally fluent without being perceived as weak is, in its own right, another form of liberation that Ms. Steinem championed.