Torches and Legacy

25 Mar 2024

I ran across this profile, “Gloria Steinem’s life on the feminist frontier,” linked in one of the newsletters I scan. Steinem is not a person I know much about or have read much about, and I suspect I would disagree with her on any number of subjects. This particular article, however, was in honor of her birthday, and there was an interesting quote from her on the subject of a legacy, which I have been musing on:

“People are always asking me, ‘Who will you pass the torch to?’ The question makes me angry. There is no one torch—there are many torches—and I’m using my torch to light other torches. There shouldn’t have been a ‘first’ Gloria Steinem, and there won’t be a last one.”

 
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