This story originally appeared on The Advocate.
Gloria Steinem, the journalist and organizer who became one of the most recognizable figures in American feminism and a longtime supporter of LGBTQ+ equality, has died. She was 92.
Steinem died Wednesday at her home in New York City, according to social media pages for Steinem and her foundation. An announcement posted Thursday said she died peacefully, surrounded by people who loved her. No cause of death had been announced Thursday. Those wishing to honor her were asked to donate to Gloria’s Foundation instead of flowers.
Born March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem graduated from Smith College in 1956 and became a freelance journalist. In 1963, she spent 11 days undercover working as a Playboy Bunny for Show magazine. Her two-part exposé, “A Bunny’s Tale,” documented poor pay and sexist treatment. She helped found New York magazine in 1968 and later co-founded Ms., which debuted as an insert in New York in 1971 before becoming a regular stand-alone magazine in 1972.
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Steinem’s support for gay and lesbian people was visible early in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Time reported in 1977 that gay activists persuaded her to travel to Miami as they fought Anita Bryant’s campaign to repeal Dade County’s ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gay people. Speaking later that year at an American Association of University Women convention, Steinem said lesbians were “the most vulnerable group of women” and argued that the word lesbian had to become “as honorable as any other.”
Steinem was among the prominent supporters of the Human Rights Campaign Fund in its early years.
Her history with The Advocate stretches back decades. A retrospective of the magazine’s covers notes that in 1992, Steinem rebuked columnist Sally Quinn for arguing that feminism had alienated women by including lesbians. Steinem said Quinn had “disqualified herself” from serious consideration as a commentator on women’s issues.
Her record on transgender issues was more complicated, and Steinem eventually addressed it at length in a 2013 essay for The Advocate.
Steinem recalled that Ms. had published an excerpt in 1974 from writer Jan Morris’ autobiography about her transition, which Steinem described as a courageous pursuit of an authentic life. She wrote that the reaction exposed an emerging tension: Some readers believed feminism was endorsing transition as a response to sexism, while Steinem was also hearing from gay men and lesbians living under such intense homophobia that some considered transition for reasons unrelated to their gender identity. Those experiences, she wrote, informed a controversial 1977 essay questioning whether society sometimes pressured people to change themselves rather than confront prejudice.
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Decades later, Steinem said that essay had circulated without its original context and had led some transgender readers to believe she opposed transition itself. She used The Advocate to make clear that she did not. Transgender people, she wrote, were living authentic lives, and decisions about their health care belonged to them alone. She also acknowledged that understandings of gender had changed considerably since the 1970s and apologized for earlier words that suggested anything less than support.
Steinem went further. She argued that transgender people and women faced overlapping struggles involving healthcare, harassment and workplace discrimination, and she called transgender legal equality one of the LGBTQ+ movement’s most neglected priorities. Writing as Congress debated the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, she urged lawmakers to prohibit workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
President Barack Obama awarded Steinem the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. Her foundation said she continued working for equality until the end of her life.
