Turtle Soup: Steinem Still Doesn't Get It

One of the most popular stories of the pop-feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, is one where she thinks she has this epiphany about a turtle she tried helping when she was young. The story is told by her as follows:

"I took geology because I thought it was the least scientific of the sciences," she told an audience at Smith College.

"On a field trip, while everyone else was off looking at the meandering Connecticut River, I was paying no attention whatsoever. Instead, I had a found a giant, GIANT turtle that had climbed out of the river, crawled up a dirt road, and was in the mud on the embankment of another road, seemingly about to crawl up on it and get squashed by a car.

"So, being a good codependent with the world, I tugged and pushed and pulled until I managed to carry this huge, heavy, angry snapping turtle off the embankment and down the road.

"I was just putting it back into the river when my geology professor arrived and said, 'You know, that turtle probably spent a month crawling up that dirt road to lay its eggs in the mud by the side of the road, and you just put it back in the river.'

"Well, I felt terrible. But in later years, I realized that this was the most important political lesson I learned, one that cautioned me about the authoritarian impulse of both left and right.

"Always ask the turtle."

What I find absolutely amazing about this story is the fact that Steinem didn't interpret her own experience correctly as to not see the glaring contradiction between this story and her own push of pop-feminism. 

First, Steinem thinks the take away is that you should always "ask the turtle." But ask the turtle what? The turtle can't talk. It isn't doing what it personally, as an individual entity from other female turtles, wants to do. Steinem seems to be attributing an individual pathos to the turtle that it doesn't have. Instead, what Steinem has misread in the original scenario, and apparently doesn't get it years later, is the BIOLOGY of the turtle, and what the turtle's biology means for what the turtle is doing in life.

Second, by misreading the biological needs of the turtle, Steinem actually does harm to the turtle and what it needs to do to fulfill that biological need.

I find it absolutely astonishing as to how blind feminists are in their cult that they can't see what is right in front of them. She then goes on to misapply her misunderstanding of the event to how she interacts with people. Talk about adventures in missing the point.

The most obvious application of what is actually going on, i.e., that Steinem didn't listen to the biological nature and subsequent needs of the turtle, and thought she knew what was better for it, is that this is exactly what she has done with women.

Steinem, very early on, refused to admit the biological differences between men and women (yes, you read that right). She became more nuanced later on, but still interprets the difference as a Gnostic would (emphasizing mind over biology). She didn't listen to the biology of men and women, and as a result, ended up doing a massive amount of harm to women, children, husbands, families, society, the workplace, etc. The amount of devastation her views have had on society, and the fact that her brainwashed cult of admirers think she has a good ideology, is mind-boggling. What she did actually might have killed the turtle (egg impaction). She might as well have made soup out of it, and then had everyone call her a hero for saving it.

In the same way that she didn't get that the biological nature of the turtle dictates what is best for the turtle, she doesn't get that the biological nature of the woman dictates what is best for the woman. She spent her life tugging and pushing and pulling women to do something other than what their biological makeup was telling them to do. But Steinem's ideology didn't allow her to see the lesson about biology and role. And what should we all conclude from that lesson?

"Always ask the turtle."