Moving Beyond Words

Steinem's career-spanning collection of essays-each one a book in itself-re-imagine everything from the masculinization of wealth to Freudian thought and aging.


With cool humor and rich intellect, Gloria Steinem strips bare our social constructions of gender and race, explaining just how limiting these invented cultural identities can be.

In the first of six sections, Steinem imagines how our understanding of human psychology would be different in a witty reversal: What if Freud had been a woman who inflicted biological inferiority on men (think "womb envy")? In other essays, the author presents positive examples of people who turn stereotypes on their heads, from a female bodybuilder to Mahatma Gandhi, whose followers absorbed his wisdom that change starts at the bottom. And in some of the most moving pieces, Steinem reveals something of her own complicated history as a writer, woman, and citizen of the world.

Gloria Steinem (b. 1934) is an American feminist, activist, writer, and editor who has shaped debates on gender, politics, and art since the 1960s. Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, and was raised by a single mother from her tenth year on. Cofounder of Ms. Magazine and a founding contributor of New York magazine, Steinem has also published numerous bestselling nonfiction titles. Through activism, lectures, constant traveling as an organizer, and appearances in the media over time, Steinem has worked to address institutional inequalities of sex, race, sexuality, class, and access to power in the United States and abroad. She lives in New York City.