by Gloria Steinem
This piece originally appeared in Ms. magazine, October 1978.

Living in India made me understand that a white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking a white skin makes people superior, even though the only thing it really does is make them more subject to ultraviolet rays and wrinkles.

Reading Freud made me just as skeptical about penis envy. The power of giving birth makes “womb envy” more logical and an organ as external and unprotected as the penis makes men very vulnerable indeed.

But listening recently to a woman describe the unexpected arrival of her menstrual period (a red stain had spread on her dress as she argued heatedly on the public stage) still made me cringe with embarrassment. That is, until she explained that, when finally informed in whispers of the obvious event, she had said to the all-male audience, “and you should be proud to have a menstruating woman on your stage. It’s probably the first real thing that has happened to this group in years!”

Laughter. Relief. She had turned a negative into a positive. Somehow her story merged with India and Freud to make me finally understand the power of positive thinking. Whatever a “superior” group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever an “inferior” group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be “stronger” than white men, while all the women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be “weaker”. As the little boy said when he asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, “Oh no, that’s women’s work.” Logic has nothing to do with oppression.

So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event: Read more…

Women are fairly vocal about their frustrations with the unrealistic expectations placed on them, yet they often don’t realize that they perpetuate similar stereotypes about men. I heard all three of the following statements in sessions this week, and I was reminded of the damage that this kind of thinking does. Much of what we believe we “know” about men and sex is wrong: Read more…

(But I don’t mean it the way you probably think I mean it!)

I want his body, because I want to know what it feels like to be fast, confident, strong and powerful.

I have never been an athlete, and after three 10-pound babies, my belly is “like a bowl full of jelly” (a la Santa Claus). I am in awe of his sleek, muscular body that seems to be completely under his control. He seems indestructible and unstoppable. He is amazing.