Feminist Activist Steinem Sees a Transforming Society

Gloria Steinem spoke to a capacity crowd at the Church Street Center on Tuesday night.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Patterns exist in social justice movements.

Conciseness, and the realization that there are shared experiences between oppressed people, progresses movements, says Gloria Steinem.

"Saying what happened to us and discovering shared experiences is the beginning of every profound social justice movement I know of," she said. "It moves from individual experience, through naming, through organizing, and to changing public policy."

The feminist activist and writer discussed the progression of feminism and social justice movements at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts on Tuesday night as part of its Public Policy Series on Equality.

Steinem earlier had spoken with students and local media.

Speaking to a packed house in the Church Street Center, Steinem discussed how a social justice movement can transform society by looking at categories and breaking them down, and that the aspect of groups or categories is what creates injustice in the world.

"Taking away these categories and understanding the uniqueness of the individual is questioning the hierarchy all together," Steinem said. "It is saying, 'Hey, wait a minute, maybe the fact that we are born into a group is itself wrong, and we are each individuals in this combination that could never happen before or again,' and that difference is bigger than the group difference."

She gave an example of this transformation in how the idea of domestic abuse has changed from a nameless occurrence into a crime and how it is proof of a positive change in the movement.

"When I was growing up, domestic violence didn't have a name, and it was the fault of the individual family and usually the individual women," she said. "It was either kept quite or if the police were involved, it was the only case in which their idea of success was getting the victim back together with the criminal."

Steinem added that there is no natural superiority in men and women and patriarchy only came out of parameters of society.  

"It is absolutely not that women have any bit of superiority by birth, and it is not about biology," she said. "It is the fact that we have not been born or raised with masculinity to prove so we are more likely to reach out to each other and to lead in a communal way and be less hierarchical."

Steinem explained the importance in the transformation process of knowing that all categories and roles were created and have no natural beginnings. Native American men and women had equal roles in the community structure, she said, explaining that they based their culture around nature and how animals interact. Patriarchy was introduced by the spread of European culture.

"At least what is probably 95 percent of human history we didn't even have these kinds of ideas of division by gender or race," she said. "We didn’t have the idea that women's bodies must be controlled by someone other than women in order to control reproduction."

Steinem said she sees the recent past as a bad experiment, and she thinks Americans are on their way to a much more equal world.

"We can begin to see that on this continent, that the last 600 years there been patriarchy, racism, nationalism and monotheism," Steinem said. "Maybe we need to declare this recent period in time as an experiment that failed, and we are now in the transformational post-patriarchal, post-racist, post-nationalist, and post-monotheist era of uniqueness of individual and community of human beings and all living things."

Steinem advocated the importance of finding humanity by breaking gender categories. She said men and women both share feminine and motherly qualities and once more men start raising kids, they will gain another aspect of humanity.

"A culture that dictates a masculine role represses those qualities," she said. "Just as in women, a culture that dictates a feminine role represses the qualities of leadership or the ability to deal with conflict."

Steinem ended by saying she was hopeful for the future but believes we still have a lot of work to do.

"Without lines, without hierarchy and without labels we are realizing new possibilities and transforming," she said. "We have gone through several stages together and we are reaching the stage of transformation."

Pryor & Peacock's Whimsical Furniture Environmentally Friendly

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
05:17AM / Friday, August 21, 2026

 

The company uses digital printing to create the upholstery fabric, saving water and saving vintage furniture from ending up in landfills.

STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — A unique furniture store has popped up on Elm Street this month.

Mom-and-daughter store Pryor & Peacock is hosting the pop-up storefront from Aug. 13 to Aug. 25 at 6 Elm. The New Marlborough business is co-founded by Rosalina Wright and Luca Shapiro, who is also the creative director. 

Their online shop was created in 2024 but they wanted people to see the pieces in person, so they're renting the space for a limited time before a long-term tenant moves in.

The store sources prints to create unique fabrics and reimagines vintage and antique furniture acquired at auctions, local shops, and online.

"We source prints from all over the world that date from the late 1600s up through mid-20th century, and Luca turns those prints into fabric by manipulating them, scanning them, oftentimes has to add or subtract things, and then we manufacture the fabric using only digital printing, which is very environmentally friendly, unlike traditional textile printing," Wright said.

Upholstering the furniture can take weeks of work. Shapiro looks for the perfect design for each piece and, if need be, uses Adobe Photoshop to extend the art work to fit or enhance the print.

"One of the most difficult parts comes in marrying the fabric to a piece of furniture because we only use antique and vintage frames also to be earth friendly, and they're also more beautiful and durable than new furniture," Wright said. "So the image has to go with the furniture, so that takes a lot of work."

One of Pryor & Peacock's missions is to be environmentally friendly. Digital printing doesn't use the same amount of water as traditional textile productions do nor does it contaminate water with ink according to their website.

Not only are they saving water, but they are saving furniture from going into the landfill while also using more durable furniture that doesn't break as easily as current pieces. They started their business to create something unique and to help the environment together.

"It's creating something nobody else is doing. People can't continue to buy throwaway furniture. Six percent of American landfills is furniture, and digital printing not only opens up the possibility of being able to put unique images on a piece of furniture, but it also is, as I said, environmentally friendly. So, for us, the excitement is to take an old East Lake settee that somebody's going to store in their barn and forget about, and make it something completely new and surprising," Wright said.

They hope their furniture helps bring a pop of fun to someone's home.

"We think our furniture is very whimsical and surprising, and most furniture today is oatmeal colored couches and gray neutral chairs, and it's boring," she said.

The two named their business after their mothers' maiden names to honor them and believe the name reflects their pieces.

Shapiro works in interior design outside of the business and the two liked working together and thought it would be great to start a business together. Shapiro says they can work well together and that her and her mother, Wright, has flipped houses before and have the same eye for design.

"So it's very easy for us to work together. When we see something, generally we agree on whether it works or doesn't work on a piece. We agree on the color schemes and that sort of thing. So it's very fun and fulfilling to work together," Shapiro said.