9 September 2026

My night in jail with Gloria Steinem

It was a surprising place to meet my hero, but she lived up to every expectation

The rumour mill works quickly at a temporary mass-arrest jail in Washington DC. It had been only an hour since I was bundled out of a police van into a freezing warehouse filled with rows of fold-out plastic chairs when Rachel, a middle-aged nurse from Philadelphia, told me that someone had told her that Gloria Steinem was here.

I didn’t need to strain far to see that two rows in front of me, wrapped in a black coat and a vibrant crimson scarf, sat the mind that helped to define what a modern life was for so many women and girls. Do not take this column as advice to get arrested in the hopes of talking to your hero. But, faced with the option of either staring at the back of her head for an undetermined amount of time, or sneaking up ever so slowly to avoid the watchful gaze of the pacing police and sidling up for a chat, I picked the latter.

Though known for her metal, Steinem, who died on 2 September, aged 92, was one of the warmest people I’ve ever met and we melted into conversation. She immediately started telling me about a trip she had recently taken to Egypt – how she was inspired by the ancient custom of worshipping several gods, including terrifying female figures. She said she had always questioned monotheism, and especially doubted that if there were a god, he was a man. A benevolent, omniscient man? I don’t think so.

She was newly invigorated by how other cultures had constructed a completely different mindset on the deification of women. She was moved by how it showed us an alternative way forward for belief systems. If other peoples could worship several women at a time, why couldn’t we?

I couldn’t believe this woman who had done and seen so much was still learning and thinking and synthesising the world around her into new ideas.

We then talked about her first groundbreaking work, a 1963 exposé of New York’s Playboy Club, for which she spent a month under cover as a bunny. I told her I was deeply inspired by her bravery and that I wanted to do something similar in the clubs of London’s West End. She didn’t know how club promoter culture worked, so I – stunned by the opportunity to teach Steinem something about the treatment of women – explained how certain expensive central London clubs use promoters, almost entirely men, to lure conventionally attractive, very young women into their basements with free drinks, and then charge middle-aged men a premium to ogle them.

I told her I wanted to be just like her: go undercover, find out what it was like to be a bottle service girl under the concrete of Mayfair. I’d seen women at such clubs be groped and harassed as though nothing had changed since Steinem’s Playboy days. She said it sounded like a great idea. I’ve still never written the piece.

We were freezing in that warehouse together because we’d been arrested for protesting on Capitol Hill – no, it wasn’t on that occasion. This was 20 December 2019. We were there for Fire Drill Fridays, a weekly protest run by another activist legend, Jane Fonda.

Fire Drill Fridays often started the same way: receiving mass-arrest training in a church basement. Then, we would listen to speeches on Capitol Hill about how climate change will impact us far beyond the temperatures outside. Steinem spoke to the crowd that day about the intersection of climate and feminism. About how critical it is that women are centred in a movement that is fundamentally about changing the structures of power and capital.

She was famous for her feminism, but she always knew that the fight didn’t stop with reproductive rights and equal pay – that power and greed so often impact women more than men, and therefore women must be part of the fight against them.

After her speech, I lost sight of Steinem. I never imagined that, aged 85, she would join us for the next phase of the protest. This was when we moved to the Senate’s Hart Building, where we initiated a sit-in, singing protest songs and chanting for action on climate change. Those of us who remained in the building when we were asked to leave were forcibly hauled up by Capitol Police, had our personal belongings confiscated and our hands zip-tied together. We were then shoved into vans and driven to the holding warehouse.

I had $50 cash in my pocket to pay the eventual protesting fine. I had this money thanks to Steinem, who fought for women to have their own bank accounts.

I was 21 at the time and found the experience strenuous. In her eighties, Steinem was most comfortable when she was putting her body on the line for causes she believed in.

She and I were deep into our conversation about how we could build a polytheistic women-worshiping world, when I looked up to see a queue of women crouching next to me, waiting to talk to her. I thought: why imagine new gods when we all worship this real woman right here? Even a police officer asked Steinem for her autograph.

As I got up to let other people take my place, I asked her if she had any wisdom she’d like to share. She said: “You never know when you’re going to meet your friends. I’m in my eighties and I only met you today.”

[Further reading: Prince George starts at Eton and enters the belly of the beast]