I never met Gloria Steinem, but she was there at a pivotal moment for me, when the most prominent piece of writing I’d ever done was suddenly in jeopardy.
Several years into my gun violence prevention advocacy work, an editor at Ms. Magazine agreed to publish a four-part series I’d be writing called My Month With a Gun. I would buy a gun and take it with me everywhere I went and write about how carrying it every day made me feel physically, psychologically, and emotionally. The agreement was that Ms. would publish one installment a week for four weeks: buying the gun, living with the gun, out and about with the gun, and getting rid of the gun.
Week one of the series was wildly successful but five days after it went up on the magazine’s website, my editor called to tell me they wouldn’t be publishing the rest of the series.
“What? Why not?” I asked, stunned.
“We received over 70,000 hits and 2,000 comments, and most of them were from pro-gun advocates,” she explained.
“Wait, I thought lots of hits and comments are a good thing.”
“Yeah, usually we like that kind of engagement, but the pro-gun guys are overwhelming us and trying to publish your home address.”
“But you’re Ms. Magazine. Don’t you guys deal with these kinds of controversial topics and negative feedback all the time?”
“Yes, but I have a small team, and we can’t handle all these comments. So we’re shutting it down.”
I was heartbroken. I’d spent a month carrying a handgun to every meeting, grocery store trip, soccer practice drop-off, yoga class, tennis match, and birthday party I attended. I wanted to understand the guys who kept showing up to my events—the guys with guns on their hips who saw themselves as the “good guy with a gun.” I thought that if I understood them, I’d be less scared of them. You know, the old walk-in-their-shoes type of thing.
Angered by Ms.’s decision not to publish the rest of my series, my friend Donna Dees Thomases reached out to Joe Nocera at The New York Times.
His response? He wrote about it in his daily online Gun Report column. His conclusion was stunning: “Ms. published something the N.R.A. –types didn’t like; they responded by bullying Ms. online, and Ms. folded.”
I waited for Ms. to respond.
Nothing.
In the meantime, I became obsessed with getting the series published. It took me 26 days to find another outlet willing to run the remaining three installments—The Daily Beast.
Soon after, Media Matters ran a story about the entire saga: “Daily Beast To Publish Series Spiked Due To Pro-Gun Activist Outrage”.
Apparently, that’s when Gloria stepped in. And things moved quickly.
Ms. issued a statement on its site denying it had been bullied by pro-gun commenters and offered to publish the remaining pieces.
But it was too late.
The Daily Beast had already agreed to publish the series exclusively.
I had no idea Ms. would change their mind after I’d spent almost a month scrambling to find another home for the series. I had desperately wanted them to publish it in its entirety because, well… they were Ms. Magazine. Gloria Steinem’s magazine.
I pictured Gloria reading the Media Matters article and imagined the meeting that might have followed at Ms. I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall.
When The Daily Beast article came out, the subtitle read: “It’s the story that Ms. magazine wouldn’t publish: One woman set out to see what it’s like to be the ‘good guy with a gun’—and gun owners responded furiously to her.”
I’m sure that stung.
But Ms. didn’t take week one down or quietly move on. They kept it on their site and linked to The Daily Beastso readers could read the rest of the series.
I never met Gloria or knew exactly what happened behind the scenes at Ms. But I’ve always been grateful that she was there at such a pivotal moment. I don’t know how this story would have played out without her.
I never got the chance to thank her.
I wish I had.
