http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/ms-magazine-2011-11/index1.html
President Nixon to Henry Kissinger on White House Audiotapes, 1972 Nixon: [Dan Rather] asked a silly goddamn question about Ms.—you know what I mean? Kissinger: Yeah. Nixon: For shit’s sake, how many people really have read Gloria Steinem and give one shit about that?
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Intra-Feminist Discord
Ellen Willis’s Resignation Letter, 1975 (contributor, 1973–75; co-founder of the Redstockings, a radical feminist group; died in 2006.) “No attempt has ever been made to recruit and hire experienced feminist writers, theorists, organizers …Ms.’s politics [include] a mushy, sentimental idea of sisterhood designed to obscure political conflicts between women … I hope that this explanation will be received as the honest feminist criticism it is meant to be.”
Carbine: Compared to every other magazine being published primarily for women, Ms. was—and was thought to be—wildly radical. But that didn’t help us with our downtown friends.
Gornick: People in Redstockings started calling Gloria and Ms. enemies of the movement because the “message,” from the radicals’ point of view (and here I include myself), was too watered down. But I hated the Steinem-bashing. I wrote a piece to say, “If you don’t like Ms., start a magazine of your own.”
Morgan: Some of the carping from self-described radicals was plain crankiness at not running things, or resentment at feeling not included (despite repeated invitations), or jealousy when Ms. succeeded beyond expectations.
In 1975, the reconstituted Redstockings accused Steinem and Ms. of being part of a CIA plot to collect information on the women’s movement. Steinem refused at first to dignify the charges with a response, and Betty Friedan, feminist pioneer and author of The Feminine Mystique, seized on her silence.
The New York Times, August 29, 1975 “Dissension Among Feminists: The Rift Widens,” By Betty Friedan “By dismissing the Redstockings’ charges as ‘McCarthyism,’ I don’t think she shows respect for the women’s movement.”
Braudy: Betty Friedan was jealous of Gloria and claimed (with some justification) that because Gloria was younger and beautiful, the media anointed her spokesperson. That said, when I was trailing after Betty for a piece for Playboy, I was appalled by her loud vocal disdain for some women. For example, she cruelly berated an older woman selling train tickets at Philly’s Penn Station for being too slow. In a hundred years, Gloria would never do such a thing.