Gloria Steinem

Today is the birthday of women's rights activist Gloria Steinem. In her early professional years she found herself writing for a newspaper with assignments focused on women...types of stockings, makeup, or babies. In this video I watched, which I will include, she made it kind of clear that her boss saw her as someone who would go to a hotel with him during lunch or merely as someone who would do his secretarial work. It wasn't until she was given an assignment to cover an abortion trial that she realized she needed to create change. She stated that women need a revolution rather than reform, something that rhetoric plays perfectly in to.

Once the women's movement was well on its way her and a few followers decided to create a magazine. They titled the magazine "Ms." and it took off brilliantly, selling out in the first week. She mentioned, in the video, that these injustices towards women are so great that if they were just explained to people..they would get respect and understanding. It might be a stretch but I felt a sense of invitational rhetoric in her words. She knew there needed to be a revolution but she wanted to do it through people willingly siding with her and the movement rather than using certain gimmicks of rhetoric to force them on her side.