Feminist icon Gloria Steinem today apologized for contending that young women are backing Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton so they can hook up with his cadre of young male followers.
“They’re going to get more activist as they get older,” Steinem told Real Time host Bill Maher Friday night. “And when you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.”
The remark sparked a storm of online criticism, prompting Steinem to walk back her remarks in a Facebook post earlier this afternoon.
In a rare display of humor Steinem insisted she misspoke due to case of “talk-show Interruptus” and contended her analysis was “misinterpreted” to imply “young women aren’t serious in their politics. What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what’s happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back. Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.”
Interestingly, Steinem did not apologize for her phallo-centric and hetero-sexist assumption that all of Bernie’s women supports are attracted to men and none have the hots for other women.
But at least she has finally conceded that women do, in fact, need men more than a fish needs a bicycle.