Gloria
When I was twenty six and pregnant with our second child, Joshua, I went to Anshe Emet Synagogue to hear Gloria Steinem speak. At the time, I'm not sure I knew what to expect. I don't think I even knew who she was. A friend, whose name I can't remember, brought me along with her. What I do remember is it was a riveting experience. I was such an innocent woman, still a child in so many ways. I didn't know what homosexuality was until I was twenty one. Imagine. I wrote a paper on the Sun Also Rises and used the words impotent and emasculated as if they both meant the same thing. Needless to say I didn't do well in that class. The day I heard Gloria speak opened my mind in ways I hadn't realized were shut. She wasn't the first to point out the ways in which women lacked a voice in the world. But she was the most eloquent and elegant woman to speak out on our behalf. In college, English literature classes were dominated by male authors. In fact I don't thin...