Owning the Plot: Steinem’s Call to Agency
Created at: September 19, 2025
Refuse to be a passenger in your own story — Gloria Steinem
Refusing the Passenger Seat
Gloria Steinem’s imperative, “Refuse to be a passenger in your own story,” urges a shift from passive endurance to deliberate authorship. Rather than letting circumstance, convention, or others’ expectations chart the route, she asks us to reach for the wheel and navigate. The metaphor resonates because stories are how we make sense of life; to be sidelined in one’s own narrative is to surrender meaning itself. Thus the quote becomes a hinge between intention and action. It suggests that identity is not only discovered but also drafted, revised, and performed. The point is not to deny luck or limits, but to claim the power to interpret events, choose responses, and set direction. In short, agency begins where spectatorship ends.
Feminist Roots of Self-Authorship
Steinem’s line springs from second‑wave feminism’s insistence that the personal is political. Through Ms. magazine (1971) and decades of organizing, she linked private choices—work, marriage, reproductive freedom—to public structures that shaped them. Refusing to be a “passenger” was never merely motivational; it was a strategy to expose and change the rules of the road. Consequently, self-authorship meant more than self-help. It required consciousness‑raising groups, litigation, and policy reform so that women could steer their lives materially as well as symbolically. The movement’s lesson endures: personal agency grows where social conditions—fair pay, safety, health care—make steering possible, and where collective voices defend each person’s right to drive.
The Psychology of Narrative Agency
Psychology expands this insight. Dan McAdams’s narrative-identity research argues that we construct life stories to integrate past, present, and future (“The Stories We Live By,” 1993). When we reposition ourselves from passenger to protagonist, we alter the plot: setbacks become turning points, and goals gain coherence. Likewise, Albert Bandura’s self‑efficacy theory (1977) shows that believing one’s actions matter increases persistence and performance. Moreover, Julian Rotter’s locus‑of‑control framework (1966) suggests that an internal locus—“I influence outcomes”—correlates with proactive behavior. The act of authorship, then, is not illusion but practice: by choosing interpretations and next steps, we strengthen the very capacities that make agency real.
Agency Within Structures and Intersections
Yet agency is never exercised in a vacuum. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality (1989) demonstrates how race, gender, and class overlap to constrain or enable choice. To “take the wheel” means recognizing traffic laws we did not write—biases in hiring, caregiving norms, surveillance—and organizing to rewrite them. Audre Lorde’s essays in “Sister Outsider” (1984) similarly insist that self‑definition is a political act for those historically misnamed. Therefore, refusing passengerhood includes redesigning the vehicle and the road. It is both inner stance and outer struggle: expanding options, redistributing risk, and refusing narratives that render some lives peripheral.
From Intention to Daily Practice
In practice, authorship is built from small, structural moves. Implementation intentions—“If X happens, I will do Y”—boost follow‑through (Peter Gollwitzer, 1999). Choosing verbs that place you as subject (“I propose,” “I decline,” “I build”) reconditions behavior, while visible commitments—calendar blocks, accountability partners—turn aspirations into scenes. Habit design can start tiny and scale (BJ Fogg, 2019), converting values into routines that survive busy days. At the same time, editing your environment—limiting distractions, curating inputs, setting friction against unwanted defaults—protects attention, the fuel of authorship. Over time, these choices stitch a plotline where your priorities become the spine of the story rather than its footnotes.
Collective Authorship and Shared Power
Finally, stories are strengthened in community. Ella Baker’s organizing wisdom—“Strong people don’t need strong leaders” (c. 1960)—captures the shift from charismatic passengers to many drivers sharing lanes. Story circles at institutions like Highlander Folk School (1930s onward) showed how exchanging lived narratives creates strategy and courage. When people write together—co‑ops, mutual aid, civic coalitions—they redistribute authorship, ensuring more voices shape the plot and the ending. In that light, Steinem’s challenge scales: refuse to be a passenger alone, and refuse a politics that makes passengers of others. The road widens as the storytellers multiply.