As the Class of 2017 prepares to take the leap from college to the real world, who better to offer up some inspiring words of wisdom than Gloria Steinem?
Yesterday, the feminist icon addressed 1,500 graduating students at The School of Visual Arts' (SVA) 41st annual commencement ceremony at Radio City Music Hall. During a time of political turmoil and unrest—especially surrounding those in the arts—Steinem drew on history, art and her own personal experience in activism to empower the new graduates to make positive change in this next crucial step of their lives.
"We are woke. I never in my life have seen so much organic, sustained, enthusiastic, inventive, creative and fan-fucking-tastic activism," Steinem said, reflecting on the Women's March on Washington and energy of young people following November's election.
From keeping active and engaged (but also sane) in politics, to finding and preserving passion, Steinem shared advice to empower not just the Class of 2017, but all women looking for some hope and a fresh start. Read below from some of her best commencement speech quotes.
On how her childhood dream transformed into something much more magnificent:
"I grew up in Toledo hoping and praying to be a Rockette because I think girls grow up [thinking] the only signs of rebellion are show business, just like boys grow up with athletics as their dream. And I just want to say to my 10 and 11-year-old self: I'm on the stage of Radio City Music Hall now and it's better than being a Rockette!"
On the hope of graduation at any age:
"I am and always have been hooked on graduations. They are the best of all possible traditions and occasions. They are personal yet universal, both an ending and a beginning. They are more permanent than weddings and until marriage equality, way more democratic. They are almost as much a step to the unknown as funerals yet instead of the loss of ourselves, they bring the hope of finding ourselves."
On finding your passion and equal pay:
"Make no mistake: I love being a writer, it's the only thing that when I'm doing it I don't think I should be doing anything else, which as the French say is the testé de métier, one's craft or talent. It's what you love so much that you forget what time it is while you're doing it and you would do it even if you didn't get paid, though I devoutly want every one to get paid—and EQUALLY."
On the hope of activism and resistance under the Trump administration:
"There's so much to be learned if you go beyond your boundaries and now is the time we need to blast those boundaries. Now is a time of division, when a government and a president defeated by the popular vote—lost by 3 million votes, let's remember...We are in a time, in my mind, of maximum change. On the one hand, great danger—and I am not for a moment diminishing how great that danger is—and on the other hand, we are woke. I never in my life have seen so much organic, sustained, enthusiastic, inventive, creative and fan-fucking-tastic activism."
On the importance of learning from history:
"If we studied human history when humans began, we would know that once the paradigm of society was not the pyramid, not the hierarchy: it was a circle. It was a circle in which we as human beings were linked, we were not ranked, and it is possible to go there again. The ancient languages like Cherokee, that Wilma Mankiller spoke, and many others here and those of the Quay and the San in Africa, the Africa from which every one of us here came, they had no gender pronouns. A human being was a human being—what a concept! There was no word for nature since humans were not second to nature. Now, we are again struggling to get back the invented categories of gender, race, caste, and class—and Nationalism—without knowing about societies that existed without them, even though they account for the overwhelming majority of human history."
On staying active and engaged through art and activism:
"We're grateful for technology but there is no substitute for being present with all five senses."
On the role of art in activism today:
"It is a rebellion of the visual arts, the arts of the heart...You are going to have the best of all revolutions."
On the key to keeping sane during the revolution:
"If you want to have fun and laughter and sex and poetry and music at the end of the revolution, you have to have fun and laughter and sex and poetry on the way."
Watch Steinem's speech in full here.
