--- title: Gloria Steinem: Bernie Sanders Comment Was Out of Context description: Feminist author Gloria Steinem says her comment on "the boys" being with Bernie Sanders was taken out of context canonical: https://time.com/4318829/gloria-steinem-bernie-sanders-boys/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-05-06T01:03:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:39.464Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Gloria Steinem Says Her Comments on Bernie Sanders Were Taken Out of Context og:description: The feminist author spoke to TIME about her critics and the election og:url: https://time.com/4318829/gloria-steinem-bernie-sanders-boys/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt809ee83c83b8d457/69889212cf40a8d944c43234/gettyimages-528349530.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1991 og:image:height: 1120 og:image:alt: VICELAND New York Premiere Screening Of Gloria Steinem's "Woman" og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Gloria Steinem Says Her Comments on Bernie Sanders Were Taken Out of Context twitter:description: The feminist author spoke to TIME about her critics and the election twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt809ee83c83b8d457/69889212cf40a8d944c43234/gettyimages-528349530.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Gloria Steinem Says Her Comments on Bernie Sanders and 'Boys' Were Taken Out of Context > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=1c0f7f2c-6102-433a-ad47-46db08571280&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 10 Questions for Gloria Steinem [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Gloria Steinem](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zHI7xfDR.m3u8) (5:22)  _Published 2011-08-04. The feminist icon talks about her new HBO documentary, the current state of feminism and why she once considered getting a ‘tramp stamp’ tattoo_  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent May 6, 2016 1:03 AM UTC  Activist and correspondent at VICE, Gloria Steinem speaks onstage during the VICELAND New York premiere screening of Gloria Steinem's "Woman" in New York City on May 4, 2016. Activist and correspondent at VICE, Gloria Steinem speaks onstage during the VICELAND New York premiere screening of Gloria Steinem's "Woman" in New York City on May 4, 2016. Craig Barritt—Getty Images for VICE Media, LLC  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent May 6, 2016 1:03 AM UTC After the Wednesday night premiere of _WOMAN With Gloria Steinem_, a new [Viceland](https://www.viceland.com/en%5Fus) docu-series about violence against women around the world, a young woman in the audience stood up to ask a question. Facing a small crowd that included Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, and Mariska Hargitay, the woman, who didn’t identify herself, began to cry. She was an aid worker who had spent years working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, she said. She was crying because someone was finally paying attention to the mass rapes that were happening to women there. Gloria Steinem asked the woman about her organization. She described the work they did but didn’t offer the name. “No,” Steinem said, “What’s the name of it? So people can help.” The woman quietly said the name of her organization, but it escaped the ears of this reporter. Steinem has long been the grand dame of modern feminism precisely because of moments like this: she is unfailingly supportive of other women down to the most casual gestures, like helping a nervous young aid worker effectively pitch her organization to a room full of people. She once [famously offered an extra room in her apartment](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/fashion/my-roommate-gloria-steinem.html?%5Fr=0) to a young woman who needed a place to stay in New York City. Which is why many women found it so [jarring in February](http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/02/gloria-steinem-young-women-voters-bernie-sanders.html) when Steinem told Bill Maher that young women voters supported Bernie Sanders because “the boys are with Bernie.” That comment, she tells TIME in an interview, was taken wildly out of context. “I didn’t understand that he had taken it a different way, otherwise I would have stopped him,” she says. “I was just talking about how angry young women were that they were graduating in debt. But the second part of the sentence got cut out.” She calls the backlash to her comments “an ass kicking,” but says she understands why young women reacted the way they did. “If I had only said what the Twitter-length version said I’d said, I’d be mad at me too,” she explains. “It was very frustrating, to put it mildly. Especially because if you’d been saying the same thing for years, you can’t believe that people think you think what you don’t think.” Even at 82, Steinem says the experience taught her something: “It made me understand the dangers of excerpting a few words.” But it hasn’t kept her from continuing to voice her support for Hillary Clinton, especially in the face of Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee. “What’s important about \[Clinton\] is not only that she’s walked around all her life experiencing life as a female human being, but also that she represents the needs and issues of a majority of women and men,” she says. “If she loses, it will mean that the majority either did not vote, or is prevented from voting.” Younger women, who criticized Steinem over her Bill Maher comments, are key to Clinton’s success, she says. “I’m greatly encouraged by, inspired by, admiring of younger women,” noting that she admires how young women have elevated the issue of campus sexual assault and work to remove the taboo from topics like menstruation. And despite the fact that young women seemed lukewarm about Hillary Clinton throughout the primary, Steinem says she thinks women are actually more likely to vote for a woman candidate than they were in the 1970s. “In the ’70s, the firm belief of many people in politics was that women would not vote for other women, that it was a negative,” she says. “We’re all more likely to be raised by women, so we associate female authority with childhood and emotionality … We have not been allowed to associate authority outside the home with being female. Now there are many more women who will vote for a woman than ever before, but there’s still the real-life situation that it’s hard for us to imagine female authority at the highest level.” And then there’s Trump, who makes Steinem “as shocked and angry as you can imagine.” She says the movement that made Trump the presumptive Republican nominee is a “backlash” to the social changes happening in this country, but she sees his rise as an encouraging piece of evidence about how far the country has come. “If we hadn’t had a frontlash, we wouldn’t have a backlash,” she explains, adding that Trump supporters are overwhelmingly white and male, and “resentful because they feel privilege has been taken away from them.” “The force of the backlash is in some ways a tribute to the success of the frontlash,” she says. “That doesn’t mean the backlash will win.” ## Transcript [00:00] Hi I'm Belinda Laskin. I'm an editor at large at Time [00:02] magazine and I have to admit this week that the person I'm [00:06] interviewing, and this happens in many reporters careers, [00:09] has actually had a material affect on my life, and in fact on [00:13] many working women's lives. But despite that I'm going to [00:17] try not to go too easy on her. Welcome Gloria Steinum. [00:21] So, you have participated for May a documentary of your [00:24] life. Why a documentary about your life, now? Are you [00:28] dying? No, they might think so, though, but, am planning to [00:32] stay here till a 100, at least. [ LAUGH ] What would [00:36] you say to people who feel, today, that the fight for [00:39] women's rights is all over, but shouting. I guess I would [00:43] send them out for an eye exam, a hearing exam. [00:46] [ LAUGH ] In other words, they're wrong. But I, but, [00:48] [ LAUGH ] but I've, I realized that that idea is, is out there [00:53] because it's a way of stopping, progress. So we hear, [00:56] words like post- racist, post- feminist. When [01:01] people I think would not say post democracy, I think people [01:05] would concede at a minimum that we haven't reached [01:09] democracy yet and we certainly haven't reached equality [01:12] of women of all races or racial equality. In [01:17] one of your earliest journalistic coos' you went undercover [01:19] at the Playboy Barney Club to show. What a dreary and [01:23] dead- end and horrible job it was. In the documentary, you [01:27] express some regret about that. Would you like to explain [01:30] why? Well, at the time, it was a gigantic career error, [01:34] [ LAUGH ] because I had just narrowly begun [01:38] to get serious writing assignments. And after I did that. [01:43] Suddenly, I could, I, I literally lost an assignment, to write [01:47] about the US information agency. But once feminism [01:50] began to dawn on me, I realized, wait a minute, you know, I [01:53] had more in common with the women who were working [01:56] there than I did with the editors who sent me there. I'm [02:00] Australian, and my country's most famous feminist let me [02:03] continue in Germaine Greer, is like you, very [02:08] good looking, and I wonder how much you think that helps, [02:14] when you are standing up for women's rights. First of all, I [02:15] have to tell you honestly. You don't think Germaine Greer [02:18] is good looking. No, no, no, wait a minute [ LAUGH ], that I [02:20] was, then when I became identified as a feminist, [02:24] I was already close to 40. So it was clear to me that [02:28] before and after I was a feminist I had a completely different [02:31] measure of how [ LAUGH ] I looked. Before I was sort of, a [02:36] pretty girl you know, attractive, afterwards [02:40] I was beautiful suddenly and so it was more a comment on [02:43] what people thought feminists looked like. Than it was, [02:48] on how, I actually looked. The [02:52] hard part for me is that sometimes those have been used to [02:55] say that well she didn't work. She just got this because she [02:59] looks good. But given that, beauty has a strange [03:03] persuasive power. And that people advertise [03:08] success is beauty when Jocks proposed with a product to [03:11] sell something. Has it ever occured to your something [03:15] trojahn horsey about it. Well, I would love to be a trojahn [03:17] horse for revolution, hmm good idea. Hahaha [ LAUGH ]. [03:21] No fine, i just feel that we just feel free to look however we [03:25] want to look. We ought to be free to wear whatever we [03:28] want and, and, be safe in the street. But if, if [03:32] my being a pretty girl, listen, I'm 77 [03:36] now I thought this would be over by now but anyways [03:38] [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] You know, was [03:44] helpful, fine. You know, then it disproved a myth. So this is [03:50] you. No botox nothing. I hear botox hurts. I [03:55] though about getting a tattoo [ LAUGH ] [04:01] A tattoo would be on the neck No I was going to get a tramp [04:03] stamp on my 70th birthday. Oh, a tram stamp. [ LAUGH ] [04:09] What is your view of the Dominique Strauss- Kahn [04:12] situation? I'm very grateful to the NYPD [04:17] that plucked him off the plane. [ LAUGH ] I'm [04:21] very grateful to the maid who, you know, knew she had [04:25] rights, and brought an accusation. It's a great step [04:30] forward and one can see it's impact say, in France, you [04:33] know, on the woman who also suffered [04:37] an attempted rape by him and is now bringing a, a lawsuit. [04:42] How do you feel about the direction feminism has taken [04:45] with pessimism and third wave feminism. Are you [04:49] encouraged by what you see? Yes. No, I'm very [04:52] encouraged because I see the, the humor and the [04:56] hopefulness and the, they just have much better detectors [05:01] that we did. [ LAUGH ] They just don't take the [05:05] same I am out of bias and it is [05:09] great to see. 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