January 1, Gloria Steinem’s Legacy Hits A Wall On Women’s Rights

Wyatt’s Take

• Steinem helped secure real legal rights for women that conservatives can respect
• Her radical shift on men in women’s spaces betrayed the very protections she once championed
• Young conservative women are rejecting third-wave feminism while keeping core freedoms

Some women are finally saying what many have known for years. Gloria Steinem pushed real changes that gave women legal standing in America. But her later embrace of men claiming to be women left a glaring hole in the movement she built.

Her famous line about women being linked rather than ranked helped young professionals reject the idea that only a few women could succeed. It gave many the courage to stand together instead of fighting each other for scraps.

One speaker who grew up under tough coaches found that Steinem’s early work spoke directly to her experience. She saw that her own struggles were part of a larger pattern, not just bad luck in one gym.

When she spoke to young conservative women at a Turning Point USA event, she told them plainly what real feminism meant to her. She listed the basic rights women fought for: voting, owning property, getting credit in their own names, and keeping private spaces private for women.

The crowd cheered. These were not radical demands. They were simple protections that let women live as full citizens rather than property of fathers or husbands.

Early feminist work opened college doors and professional paths that had been closed. It gave women legal recourse when husbands turned violent. Those concrete gains still stand today.

She met Steinem in 2018 and found her nervous in a way she never was with famous athletes or singers. The woman had changed the course of American women’s lives, and the respect came from seeing those changes firsthand.

Steinem praised a film about abuse in gymnastics and called it important truth-telling. She recognized the same power structures in sports that she had named in other areas of life.

Yet her later views on men identifying as women created a sharp break. She treated those men as part of the circle of women, even when their claims pushed actual women out of locker rooms, shelters, and sports categories.

Other feminists like Germaine Greer rejected that view outright. Greer stated that surgery does not change sex and that men remain men regardless of feelings or clothing.

The speaker called Steinem’s shift terribly wrong. Men in women’s spaces were placed at the top of a new hierarchy the moment their feelings overrode women’s sex-based rights.

At the end she chose to keep what worked and reject what did not. The sentence about women being linked not ranked still holds value, but only when it protects women rather than erasing them.

Wyatt Matters

Middle America still believes women deserve their own spaces, their own sports, and their own hard-won legal rights. Those protections are not up for debate in kitchens and locker rooms across this country.