Steinem opened her speech by inviting us to imagine we were all friends, sitting in a circle, as opposed to us just being in a crowd filled with people that we did not know. She wanted it to feel like a conversation, rather than a speech. She spoke for about 25 minutes, and then opened the last half hour to question and answer. I thought it was amazing that she let us ask questions, because there are often many questions that we have while attending events like this, but never get the …show more content…
I am in a women’s studies class at the moment, and we have talked about this concept a lot. We have even read some of Gloria Steinem’s work, so it was very interesting to hear her talk and connect it to an article from class. Two of my favorite quotes from the lecture were “We are all necessary,” and “We each deserve to decide who we are.” The second quote can relate to our class because it deals a lot with identity. We are all individuals, and we all have different qualities, and nobody but ourselves should be the one who determines our identity, or what we are “allowed” to act like, look like, believe in, etc. This lecture was very inspiring because it made me realize how brave Gloria Steinem had to be. In our world, it is so hard to stand up for what you believe in. You can be ridiculed, harassed, and even punished for it. I think that the one thing that holds us back most from standing up for our beliefs is the idea of what others may think of us. We rely so much on the opinions of others to validate our own lives, that we live in fear of what will happen if we go against the