You're More Powerful than You Think

One of Gloria Steinem’s techniques, honed over decades of activism, is simple reversal. When presented with a frame of thought or judgment that implicitly assigns privilege to men or disadvantage to women, she asks what it would look like if the gender roles were reversed. Steinem started this in the 1970s with an essay called “If Men Could Menstruate” (she imagines at length how men would celebrate menstruation, make it the center of a manhood ritual, honor it in public spaces, and favor it in federal policy).