Ms. Gloria Steinem, in the past few years, your words and actions have become harmful to the feminist movement, and you have lost sight of your progressive values. Rather than being progressive and embracing the evolution of the feminist movement, you’ve become more conservative, and unwilling to melange with the young women who will become leaders in the feminist community. This has culminated in your support for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, for whom your reasons of support are dubious, and defy everything that feminism stands for. In recent weeks, you’ve disappointed thousands who once looked up to you, and in my opinion you showed that your opponents who have been saying that you should retire from activism in your old age were right all along. The truth of the matter is that your actions and reasons for support of Hillary Clinton demonstrate that you are no longer a valid representative of the modern feminist movement because they show that you have lost touch with what feminism stands for.

Feminism is a movement whose goal is to empower women to seek equal opportunity and achieve equal success to their male counterparts. It focuses on women’s autonomy and on promoting their ability to make decent lives for themselves. Thus, a representative of the modern feminist movement is someone who advocates for both the right and ability of women to decide for themselves what kind of life to lead, and for their being given the tools necessary to do so. Anyone who can’t advocate for these things, or who advocates for the opposite, is not capable of representing the movement. Now, in saying this, I don’t want to discredit what you’ve done during your lifetime, but rather I’d like to justify my statement that you are no longer a valid representative of modern feminism.

Recently, you explained to Bill Maher on his show why you support Hillary Clinton, and why you aren’t on the same page as young feminists, a majority of whom support Bernie. It was here where you said, and I quote, “Women get more activist as they get older. When you’re young, you’re thinking, where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie” (Steinem). Your statement, in a single sentence, offends the entirety of today’s new generation of feminists and discredits their activism, chalking it up not to outrage at inequality or a genuine desire to better things for themselves and their peers, but to a selfish desire to meet with boys. Furthermore, you chalk up the votes of men to Bernie for his being a man as well, ignoring essentially all that people have said in why they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. One of the goals of feminism is to avoid generalizations by gender, and yet in one sentence, you’ve generalized all men as sexist and all young feminists as ingenuine activists. Need I remind you that as early as the age of twenty five, you were a feminist? Does that mean that you as well only did it for the boys?

Furthermore, the very reason that you support Hillary Clinton to begin with is suspect, and demonstrates a very poor understanding of feminism today. You say that Hillary Clinton, by virtue of being a woman, has your support because it is high past time that we had a female president. While I agree that to elect a female president would be landmark to a nation plagued by sexism and an oppressive, patriarchal ideology, you can’t just say, as you have, that Hillary Clinton deserves the vote of all women solely by virtue of being one. Hillary Clinton’s womanhood is not synonymous with the womanhood of all women. To compare the experiences of Hillary Clinton to the experiences of all women in general is asinine. You can’t group all feminists or even all women into one single category. There are many women of varying backgrounds and experience. This, Ms. Steinem, is called intersectionalism, and it is the realization that not all women share the same issues, and that they do not experience oppressions equally. Just as the white woman may make 77 cents to the dollar of the white man, the Hispanic woman makes 54 cents to the dollar of the white man. Your embrace of Hillary using her gender as the sole criteria causes you to neglect intersectionalism by making it seem as if one woman can encapsulate and solve the struggles of them all.

Thus, your belief that Hillary Clinton’s victory is a victory for all women is flawed, and fails to take into account that women have different struggles. What you promote to be the ultimate feminist victory is actually just a concept called exceptionalism, which is the idea that one exception to the status quo does not overturn the status quo for all other cases. Hillary Clinton getting to sit in the oval office does not clear all other women in our nation of the oppressions that they face every day. Angela Davis eloquently states, “I get upset also with all those folks who point and say ’Look, we have a Black man doing this, or a Black woman doing that... The accomplishments of those women executives have nothing to do with the situation of the majority of women in this country” (Davis). What she hopes to say is that the success of one single woman to rise to fame or power does not equate to the final victory that you seem to think Hillary Clinton’s presidency would be. Even if she becomes president, this does not negate the struggle that millions of women in the United States and the world face every single day of their lives. Hillary Clinton already lives a highly privileged life, isolated from a huge majority of the average woman’s economic and social problems. Did oppression of blacks end when Barack Obama was elected? Did oppression of women end when former candidate for California Governor, Meg Whitman, became a CEO? Of course not. In considering Hillary Clinton the final victory and discrediting feminists who vote for Bernie Sanders, you are embracing an archaic form of feminism, the first wave, whose final victory was a single law which would allow the vote. Their feminism could be summed up with one, final outcome to end the struggle for equality. As I said, you’ve lost touch with modern feminism, because in today’s world a single victory like that isn’t enough. Modern, third wave feminism does not achieve finality with a single event because its goal is to address a whole range of issues step by step. It is not as basic as changing the law. The entire ideological establishment needs to be fixed. By no means is the modern feminist movement a simple one with a simple solution, and thus, voting for a woman just because she is a woman is an overly simplistic approach and, quite frankly, a very ignorant point of view.

Now, I don’t want to discount what you’ve done for the feminist movement. You’ve been an advocate for women’s rights for nearly sixty years, and no one can deny that you possess experience and wisdom of a lifetime of activism. There are plenty of people that would argue that someone who devoted her life to the rights of women, as you have, cannot possibly be ignorant of the state of the movement today. They might say that you bring knowledge that very few other people have, and that feminism can only benefit from not only your presence, but your leadership, your abilities and capacity as a mentor and guide for the young feminists who are the future of the movement. After all the time that you have spent advocating for women’s rights, not to mention your having lived through over eighty years as a woman, I wouldn’t presume to know more about what women need than you do, especially given that I am not a woman. You’ve seen many leaders come and go, and you’ve advocated on behalf of millions of women. Certainly, it must be true that you would have a very good idea of who a good leader for women’s rights might be. If you, with all of your years of wisdom, have chosen Hillary Clinton, then who are we to challenge you? After so many years at the helm of social progression, who could know what’s best for it better than you?

However, if I may present a counterpoint, I would say that to follow icons blindly is foolish. If we follow her solely on account of her being a woman, then we may very well aid her in passing of policies which we do not support, and which hurt us. It would not be the first time that such a thing has happened with a leader. My major contention with blindly following an icon, however, is not what they might do once we follow them, but rather the limitation that it throws upon a social movement like feminism as a whole. The icons that we choose are those whom we will later use to study and define the social movement. Unfortunately, in the United States, feminism has had a problem of only representing privileged white women, using exclusively upper middle class, white women as their icons, from Susan B. Anthony to Angela Davis. Rarely do we hear of the Combahee River Collective, and even at my highly liberal, progressive high school, we touched upon Harriet Tubman only five minutes, no more. Women of color are often left out of the history of the movement, isolating an entire half of female kind. If we blindly follow what you want, then we are also continuing the trend of simply following what a white woman thinks is best, throwing in yourself and Hillary Clinton as two more white icons telling a limited single story.
Feminism, which is intended to empower women, cannot do so with a static point of view; feminism must be dynamic, ever evolving in order to match women’s issues as they change. One of the biggest criticisms of the feminist movement is from women who claim that it does not appeal to what they face. That is the case with white feminism, which doesn’t address that while white women make 77 cents to the man’s dollar, black or Hispanic women make even less. It is also the case that feminism doesn’t address the cases of males being raped or abused, which is also a critique it gets not only from male opponents of the movement, but female opponents as well. The anti-feminist named Lauren Southern has successfully attacked the movement and drawn millions to oppose it because she has capitalized on critique of feminists who stick to an unchanging, unevolving, unimproving form of the movement. Feminism which cannot see that there is a difference between black and white women, poor and rich women? That isn’t feminism anymore. For feminism to function, improve, and strengthen itself where it is weak, it must embrace intersectionalism and address issues in a dynamic, multi-faceted way, and cannot rely on one single solution or outcome as the end-all. If we want Lauren Southern to be wrong, it is time for fresh blood in the movement. This is why women not voting for Hillary isn’t wrong. It is up to women to decide how best to address the numerous issues that they face.

Women are the deciders of their own destiny. That is why your demand for all women to support Hillary Clinton not only loses touch with modern feminism, but with all eras of feminism. Consider the words of someone with whom you should be very familiar: Susan B. Anthony, who says, “In thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution” (Anthony, 1). This is the very origin of your movement, women’s right to vote. Achieving this was the first major feminist victory in the history of the United States. To be a person and a citizen is to have the right to vote--to choose whom and what they stand for. Women are people and citizens, and have the right to choose which candidate to support. Thus, women have the right to vote for Bernie Sanders if they feel that he would better represent and assist in solving their issues. If someone were to pressure women to vote for Hillary against their will, then that would be the same as trying to deprive them of personhood, womanhood, and the autonomy that is earned by citizenship. It is the same as reducing them to objects meant to follow a certain prerogative, much the same as the patriarchy reducing them to the role of mere housewives. However, women are not objects. Women choosing a particular future does not make them objects with invalid opinions. It makes them more powerful than anything else possibly could. The thing that has always been man's greatest advantage in society has been the ability to choose what the future was, which is why men were able to form this patriarchal society to begin with. For women, choosing the future begins with the ability to vote, and choose what their society will be like by whom they would like to run it. In forgetting, or perhaps simply ignoring that, you demonstrate that you are ignorant not only of what women of today stand for, but of what all of your predecessors stood for as well.

Feminism is a complex, nuanced social movement. While it has accomplished many things, and helped millions of women, there is still much to be done before the mission of the feminist can truly be said to be complete. I respect your choice to vote for Hillary Clinton. I really do. That is why I have written you this letter: to ask that you reciprocate by respecting the choice of other women who don’t want to vote for Hillary. You have accomplished a great many things in the name of feminism, and for that, women everywhere thank you. It is time, however, to step aside, now, and take your well earned rest. The new generation of women will be accomplishing a lot of things too, but they will be doing it in their own, new way, because that is the nature of feminism. It cannot stagnate, and can only continue to evolve, and thus it will get better and better, improving with each subsequent generation until true equality is achieved. You will, in these coming years, see the start of something amazing as feminists become icons and leaders in a way that you may have never even thought possible. I urge you now to pause for a moment, sit back, and look forward to it.