Gloria Steinem, the pioneering American feminist, journalist, and co-founder of Ms. magazine, spent decades challenging rigid gender roles and advocating for bodily autonomy. Her positions on transgender people shifted notably over time, reflecting both the evolution of her thinking and broader changes in social understanding. Steinem died peacefully at her home in New York City on September 2, 2026, at the age of 92, continuing her work for equality until the end.
In the 1970s, amid early public debates over figures like tennis player Renée Richards, Steinem published critical writings. A 1977 essay argued that transsexuals were paying “an extreme tribute to the power of sex roles” by surgically altering their bodies to fit societal expectations rather than transforming those expectations. The piece drew on contemporaneous radical feminist ideas, including those associated with Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire. Steinem framed the issue partly through the lens of opposition to non-consensual or socially coerced surgeries, drawing parallels to protests against female genital mutilation.
From Criticism to Affirmation
By the early 2010s, Gloria Steinem publicly revised her stance. In a 2013 op-ed for The Advocate, she addressed earlier statements that had circulated online out of their original context. She stated unequivocally: “I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make.”
She added that her decades-old words no longer reflected current knowledge as society moved beyond strict binary boxes of “masculine” and “feminine” toward a fuller continuum of identity and expression. She expressed regret for any pain the earlier language had caused.
This clarification aligned with Steinem’s long-standing emphasis on individual freedom from imposed gender norms. She repeatedly described feminism as the belief that women and men are equal human beings and argued that rigid sex roles limited everyone’s full humanity. In later interviews, she spoke of gender roles as largely invented and predicted they would eventually fade, much like outdated racial myths.
Later Advocacy and Legacy
Gloria Steinem’s support became more active in subsequent years. In 2020, she co-authored a letter to The New York Times opposing the Trump administration’s removal of certain nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in health care. The letter described such policies as harmful and noted historical recognition of gender variance in some Indigenous traditions. In 2021, she signed an open letter released on Trans Day of Visibility affirming that transgender women are women and transgender girls are girls, while criticizing legislative barriers and those who used feminist language to promote division.
Throughout, Steinem linked these positions to core feminist principles of bodily autonomy and resistance to external control over personal identity and medical decisions. She viewed the fights for reproductive rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ equality as interconnected. Her later public statements consistently rejected questioning of transgender people’s authentic lives and supported their right to self-determination in health care.
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Gloria Steinem’s trajectory on this issue illustrates both personal reflection and the capacity of long-term activists to update their views in light of new information and lived experiences. While her early writings remain part of the historical record of second-wave feminism’s internal debates, her explicit later affirmations placed her firmly among supporters of trans-inclusive feminism. Her death closes a chapter on one of the most visible voices of the modern women’s movement, leaving a complex but ultimately affirmative record on transgender equality.
