The problem is that a sizable number of people -- on this mailing list, too -- appear to have begun to think that way again: the CIA as a bastion of liberalism and reasonableness, in comparison to Bush, Cheney, neo-cons, etc.
> >If Steinem had been nobody, her action would have been of no
> >consequence, but given her prominence in the US feminist movement, she
> >has cast a shadow over it. And I'm sure she wasn't the only feminist
> >who was employed in that capacity.
>
> Sure. But she was a 'nobody' when she took these actions.
The CIA in particular and the establishment in general groom young people like Steinem (especially scholarship boys and girls like her who find themselves at elite schools), with a view to cultivating them as the next generation of leaders.
> Indeed, some male chauvinist leftists tried to say the
> Steinem exposé proved all feminism was a CIA plot. But it's a stretch if you
> are attributing to the CIA the intention of making feminism look bad--at the
> time they didn't know there would be a radical feminist movement.
You have to remember that women's rights, like racial equality, were regarded in part as a Communist issue, before becoming mainly regarded as an issue for autonomous organizing. Those like Steinem, paid informers planted in that nexus of milieux, were doubly useful.
Generally speaking, a majority of American feminists -- aside from a small minority of left-wing feminists -- have not come to critically evaluate imperialists' uses of feminists and feminist issues. Steinem never got ostracized by the rest of American feminists because of her work for the CIA, which she does not appear to have regretted at all. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>