Yikes, Gloria Steinem. The feminist icon was on Bill Maher‘s show to promote her new book, My Life on the Road, and well, feminism, and ends up saying that young women support Bernie Sanders because they’re boy crazy.
After Steinem explains whether young women are politically active these days (she says they are, because they’re graduating in debt, and will be less equipped to pay that back because of the gender pay gap), Maher says straight out, “They really don’t like Hillary, though. What do you think that’s about?”
Steinem says that Hillary enjoys a huge gender gap, with more women supporting Hillary. “But not younger women, they’re more for Bernie,” Maher says. “It depends where you ask–” “America… It’s true,” Maher says to laughter.
“First of all, women get more radical as we get older… But men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, and women get more radical because they lose power as they age, so it’s kind of not fair to measure most women by the standard of most men, because they’re going to get more activist as they get older.” Then: “And, when you’re young, you’re thinking, where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie…”
Oof. Maher seizes on that, talking about how much trouble he’d get in if he said that. Seriously, Steinem provides an unexpected explanation, to say the least, and this probably won’t help Clinton win more women voters age 18-34.
The backlash to Steinem’s comments was swift, so she took to Facebook with an apology and clarification. It seems she got all caught up in talk show excitement.