Gloria Steinem apologizes for comments about young female Bernie Sanders supporters

Gloria Steinem walked back her controversial comments about young women who support Bernie Sanders on Sunday, saying that she had misspoke when she said that they are backing the senator against Hillary Clinton because “the boys are with Bernie.”

Steinem made the comments in an interview with Bill Maher on Friday. She praised the activism of young women but said that women get more radical as they age, implying that this is a factor in the generational imbalance in the Democratic primary. Young women are much more likely to support Sanders than older women.

“They’re going to get more activist as they grow older,” Steinem said. “And when you’re younger, you think, ‘where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.'”

These comments elicited no small amount of controversy, and by Sunday, Steinem had apologized in a statement that she posted to her Facebook page:

In a case of talk-show Interruptus, I misspoke on the Bill Maher show recently, and apologize for what’s been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics. What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what’s happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back. Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.