Zero my gosh. I am so excited to be here. She cant outdo me in excitement. This is a woman. It was super good. Im foremost an activist im a rape survivor and im just so thrilled to be here. Im not here today without you. I did not expect that. A little housekeeping thing. Im so glad to welcome you all to the book club. For this evenings perp performance. For those of you who are using cart please turn off the sound on your mobile device and for all others please turn off all electronic devices. The first time i saw you in person. It was at the 2,017th i remember feeling scared. Afterwards there is a hush silence of all. At that moment i didnt feel nervous anymore. I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart is so hard to be what you cant see and you showed us what it was like to be fighting for decades in the arena and because of you we all arent nervous anymore. Thank you. Thank you so much. I have to say i still get nervous. I do think we get strength from each other. I know were here today. The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off a little. The first question that we have i love quotes ive always loved quotes. If you poured water on a quote it would become a novel. When it was suggested to me that i collect my quotes. It will be easy. I do think they are something we need it now i think the third of the country that is in reaction against the profound changes in the majority of us. Its better at sloganeering than we are. And we need to state our dreams in a way that is quotable and short in march of zero and televise a ball so we need more quotes. I left two blank pages at the end of the book. All of your quotes can be there. What is your favorite quote if you have to choose. It is like choosing children. Wait a minute here. I wrote some down because i am at an age when remembering something right away is as good as an orgasm. Maybe we should make that into a tshirt. I think this is what we believe. We are linked not ranked. That is the shortest i had been able to say. And theres one in robin morgan. That i love. Hate generalizes love so many of us are living out the un lived lives of our mothers. We each do live dash mike deserve to live out our own lives. This one is more destructive. If a woman spends a year burying in nursing a child why is it a man responsible for spending that much more than half the time raising a child. Thank you for the tshirt slogan. You offer some pointers. Places to stay away from. And when you are not allowed to laugh and when you are. I think it took me a while to understand that asked laughter is the only free emotion. You can also compel love if someone is dependent long enough. You cannot compel laughter. Einstein said he have to be really careful why he shaved because if he thought of something new he laughed and he cut himself. On top of that i learned from my friend. The spirit of laughter. That is the person who pierces into the unknown. If you cant laugh you cant pray. Is that not great. We should never go any place or stay any place where they wont let us laugh. It is the only free emotion and its pretty good. Indicator of whether we are in the right place or not. That stage we were talking about things that give us joy. What has given you joy lately. Io. Here this woman it totally makes me happy. I was just on two campuses in india and indiana. Not easy for the student to get there. So full of rebellion and joy and new ideas. In crazy tattoos. It is that that gives me joy. People sitting in the circle the way we always had done around the fire. Learning from each other. Telling each other stories. It turns out thats the only way we can experience empathy as much as i love the page and the greatest screen as we cant emphasize with each other unless were together with all of our senses. Things will happen and are happening. They are completely unexpected. Im so sure you had been in many of the circles since the 60s now. In this decade we have seen me too, times out. What is in this current moment had you seen a trend that may be art. What they really need to know to have the strength to keep going. I think the good thing about being old you see it and how bad it is and you are mad as hell. This is why we need to organize together. In just a viral dash mike follow your reference. I remember in the early 70s when women students in upstate new york were gathering and they were trying to describe what happened to them on their summer jobs. They use the term Sexual Harassment. We put it on the cover and did a cover story about Sexual Harassment and we used puppets so when it be too shocking. Nonetheless we were taken off the news then. And in supermarkets it was too shocking. And then catherine mckennan. Included Sexual Harassment and discrimination law and three women of brought cases of Sexual Harassment of three black women they have always been a difficult disproportionate part of the Womens Movement. And then there was a Anita Hill Clarence thomas they educated the country we got him on the Supreme Court nonetheless. Its helpful to see what came before because now the me to Movement Thanks to all of this and thanks to technology and the web it is now all over the world. Its a process and now it is a majority is going for it. Take you for this great segue into our next question. How do you work to be more intersectional. What we need to know is that it was intersectional before there was the word intersectional. It isnt cover that way there is racism and the Womens Movement we published the first ever poll on womens opinions. And issues of equality it turned out that 60 some of black woman supported that and only 50 some were there. And they look at the results of the last president ial election. More than 60 of black women supported Hillary Clinton and 51 percent of white women supported donald trump. I just want to say for a lot of reasons we could go on about why. It has always been disproportionally black women and there is a reason why i learned feminism from them. Its very hurtful and frustrating i think. It is pretrade differently. [applause]. I work with an Incredible Team of activists we are waking up to news every single day burning dumpsters around the world and as someone who is her this. One thing i would love to get your advice on is how to combat the teeth especially for those of us are working in an issue tied to our own personal trauma. There is often this classic pedestal or box where we are expected to perform im wondering if you have any advice for that. First of all, your experience it. Not everybody experiences us the same way. I think in general we burn out when we dont have each other support. The most important thing is to have a group of people to whom you can be honest and who can help you and say you are doing this too much or you are messing up. I do think we need to show support and the biggest and baddest things happen when we are isolated. The question of using our experience. To change the law is difficult but the more difficult think is to not speak it. Secrets only remain powerful when they remain secret. Is a wonderful book called trauma and recovery. She addresses trauma in all kinds whether its for veterans and more or children all kinds of trauma. And she said the final stage of healing is using what happened to us to help other people. Because then its not wasted. No that has a purpose. Of course you still need to take care of yourself and not get so externalized caring for others more than yourself. Heres what i think is my mini to women need to reverse the golden rule. I think we have to learn to treat ourselves as well as we treat others. There are a lot of inferior things. Many of them are related are there a few truths who can point to the piss you off the most. Otherwise we think its normal. That it doesnt even have a name. I do think that it is the Little Things that get to us. And theyre not Little Things actually its that we as women or people of color or whatever it is that means were not as powerful we have to learn to speak as much as we listen and the more powerful groups have to learn to listen as much as they speak. And just a little bit of democracy is very helpful and the lack of democracy in that it drives people crazy. If you think of the politics and the groups of people talking and my the politics comes about i think that is the most outrageous. If youre less powerful you dont feel heard or seen the lack of existence is the most outrageous. Scream over the course of your work what is most surprising thing that you found or counterintuitive. You must remember it was shaped in the 1950s. Everything is counterintuitive. There are a few people here remember that. In the discussion theyre going to tell me if i messing up i think i was surprised that the conventional wisdom that was so complete was so wrong. That everybody had to live in the same way. That was the wisdom of the 50s. I went right on believing that i have to marry and have my husbands name and identity. And that was normal and only way. I just kept putting it off. Fortunately the Womens Movement came along and actually not everybody has to live the same way. So my intuition was so shaped by my early life for a while all of the social Justice Movements seem to counterintuitive and great. I love fashion. Oftentimes it is described about that. We have the right to express ourselves. If you doubt that is a universal human expression many tribes of People Living in Eastern Africa i think you will see photographs of they decorate themselves men and women everybody decorate themselves every day with flowers and mugs and color they decorate their whole body. I do think that body decoration is probably a human instinct it just doesnt have to be governed by group judgment. Men dont have to strangle themselves with ties. And we dont have to wobble around on high heels. We should be able to express ourselves individually in the way that we decorate our bodies. If we have audience members who want to change the world what is your advice for them. Start now. My advice is sound so big that we get overwhelmed. In fact is like doing everything you can. When you see something unfair or someone to answer question if you just try to do it day by day then we understand the revolution like the tree does not come from the top down it comes from the bottom up. Then we get rid of the sheds and just do everything we can. Thanksgiving just happened im sure it was a lovely ordeal for many people we may have family members had different points of view from us. Im wondering the advice you have what are your strategies to send front of someone else who may have a completely different worldview from you. How do you get them to understand. Its hard because it is complex. If you want someone to listen to you you have to listen to them. That is helpful to look for shared experiences allow for difference because the systems we want allow for difference is there anybody in particular that youve have the sweat that you could share with us. I think there was and is a dear friend of my who is a brilliant organizer and is very catholic. She was very put off by the idea of concept contraception and abortion. We finally sat down together and i said she didnt quite realize that it was a question of choice over our own bodies. There was no such thing as a pro abortion movement. There was a pro democracy starts with governing our own bodies. It allowed us to come together. She could be against abortion for herself we could work together. Sometimes i ask people what makes you cry what moves you im wondering what makes you cry what moves you. I think like a lot of women i cry when i get angry. It keeps us from getting angry because we feel vulnerable and pathetic and i met a woman executive in the midwest somewhere and she said when she got angry she cried and she realized she have to be able to get angry with things that were angry. She developed a method of getting angry crying and talking through it. She would say to the men around her im crying because i am angry. I thought that was liberating. Weve talked a lot about how things have changed im wondering what would you tell yourself 18 years old i guess i would just say its good to be all right. You dont have to be a rocket i think maybe cell boys in poor neighborhoods see sports as the way out. That is where you see people who look like you. For years that i was cannot tap my way out of there. I desperately wanted to be a rocket. Im glad you brought up men. What role do you think men have in the feminist movement chose the word in my experience we chose the word feminist instead of womens proliferation. We chose feminism because that was what it was chosen. Anybody who believes in the full social economic quality of all human beings. And it saved the lives of men to because as we figured out that if you take out the statistics about why men die of tension related diseases of all of the things that could be related to the masculine role it turns out men live about five years longer. I always say you can live longer. Women get to be whole people by expressing all of the parts of ourselves that are wrongly called unfeminine and i think men get to be whole people by expressing those things that are called on masculine. This comes from raising children are being raised to raise children as because thats where all of those things that are called feminine. When we are traveling in small groups and raise children as much as women that feminine role did not exist. It is comforting to me to know that the masculine, feminine thing did not always exist. We were talking about in different cultures that you are mentioning. I would say matrilineal whenever you say matriarchal. That women are going to dominate men as men have dominated women. Women had control over our own physical selves. In the tribe for the clan or the clan lineup therefore passed through women many with the cherokee and a lot of others were matrilineal. In all my women friends they all make jokes about what does columbus call primitive, equal women. And men perfect dissipated in childbirth and the languages that have gender pronouns. I am added mostly in the way he studied history we dont study pre patriarchal things and so we think that the way it is is human nature when actually its not. When we have these masculine and feminine roles. In the whole process of colonization we learned the history of this country from when the first person was and set up when columbus who was a natural. Instead of when he showed up. In a few moments we will turn it over to you for audience q a but before we do one last question. Give a favorite organizing story or moment that you can share with us. I have so many. Here is the magic for me because i had traveled so much that is i come back to someplace i havent been in ten years and i discover that the one thing that happened in an audience like this. Someone stood up over there and said that the school was racist in some way. That is my neighborhood also. And then i come back and they transformed their school system. That is what is moving. The most satisfying thing to me is that i meet someone i havent seen for five years and i dont really know and they tell me that something i did was meaningful to them and helpful. Its almost always a surprise. Its not that we can plan this. If we do what we care about and try to make each moment as close to what we hope for as we can actually plant seeds to grow and revolutions like trees dont grow from the top down. One of the great things about being old as i get to see as i travel around changes that i never would have dreamed of and people who had blossomed into all kinds of incredible ways. I get to see people that are nice also. I was in bellingham washington the other day and some guy got up and told me was completely unnatural. But then i just said i am pam to say that. Thank you for planting many seeds tonight. We will not take questions now take questions from the audience. I am so glad to see you. You can give us answers as well as questions should i start taking so much for being here. I had been working a lot lately with women who are just out of college. If you stop talking about feminism you realize that actually everything is equal. There is backlash with this 20 i want to understand whether hoping that the world has become more equal. But on some levels they had been kicked around a little bit by life. What are your feelings and your thoughts on how to move forward with that. I can do what you are experiencing is my in a general way women are a group that gets more radical with age you have to experience the injustice before you realize it and hopefully on campus now you are being treated with more equality than in the past and probably with more equality and one reason you are treated more equally on campus is because your pain. You are pain, paying, you are not getting paid. I assume and i believe that their hopes that are intact. Its when they run into an air of unfairness they will be mad and radicalized. That is the pattern with activism. I dont mean that there arent many organizers obviously there are. But in a general way [applause]. Think you for all of your ears years of inspiration. My question for you is do you have any regrets. My question for you is do you have any regrets. How long do we have. First of all im a writer all of the social Justice Movement everything that i find so compelling about trying to make change happen has given me what i want to write about and not enough time to write it. I regret that it just is. I dont have what are conventional regrets that i didnt live in a a conventional womans life actually i dont regret that. I do have personal regrets about my work. It has been very distressing to that the people that are the harshest women are senior women. I wonder what light you could shed on that. How you can help me increase the awareness with an academic fact i simply dont know how to help these women who actually where the feminist label but they set out way more non feminists in their behavior to the junior women. Business as well as academia. I dont know. Only you know what youre experiences. The sometimes people invite me to speak and so on. Part of the problem is that women who are chosen to advance our them women who put down the other women. We need to be inclusive when we organize for instance and we need to be honest with each other. So the more we can speak to each other in groups that dont have the same hierarchy as us. The more we can women who are in support roles and executive roles and so on can talk to each other and make a weekly time to do it and be honest with each other. The better it is. In those organizations as yours totally women. The school has men and women. I just find it very upsetting that the harshest critics are my female colleagues. In the Civil Rights Movement is called the crap in the basket phenomenon. In australia its called the tall poppy syndrome patriarchy and racism is not just out there it is in us. If we see a woman doing while we think how dare she. Of course that goes against against our own self interest. The most important thing to say it is talk about it and do it in a group its not just one on one. Not whether youre up or down it is in no one self interest thank you for all that you do and all that you will do. I was wondering if you could go a little bit more in depth with that. There certainly has been a lot of change. Its something that really stuck with you. Those unexpected changes. To Wander Around campus is now as i just did and discover that the challenges to the gender altogether is amazing. To me anyway it is amazing that we are getting out from under that kind of conformity it is amazing to me that students say okay, im in a travel even though i dont have any money. Eminent work my way around the world because i realize that im not ready to get into a slot or a job i want. You have the courage to do that. Im also amazed that women who had four children at home are going back and getting phds. They are all kinds of ways in which we are not following the traditional pattern and i see more and more malefemale raising children couples in which the men are raising children almost as much is that women are. And sometimes even more. That is extraordinary. That means they are developing their whole human self. I just see people getting out of these restricted roles. And i see people challenging and being angry about racism in a very important way. And naming it in a very important way. Saying this is unacceptable in a very important way. Its a way that i have not seen before. It is still uneven obviously but it is growing. What is now a majority consciousness is a movement consciousness. Influenced by all of the social Justice Movement. The third of the country that Still Believes in the old hierarchies they are mad. They are dangerous and they might win but we should celebrate and use the fact that the majority consciousness has been changed by the environmental movement. Look at the Public Opinion polls. That is a huge difference. It is huge there is Something Else that is both good and dangerous. In just a few years. We will not be a majority white country. And the white nationalists know that and are up in arms about that. It seems to me that that is a good thing. Well had more we will have more identity to other nations around the world. The fact that the majority opinion has changed and that we will soon no longer be a majority country. Its also why we should remember we are the majority. And not necessarily. We cant always convince those people. We should be kind but we should move forward as the majority. Think you. [applause]. I promise to answer shorter. So i loathe the kardashians. I just think they are setting women back decades if not more than that. They have a opinion as well. I am just curious what do you think about them and their place in this world. A billion dollars is not a feminists make. If that was true i was just doing an event in los angeles with jamil. And she is great about the kardashians. Totally great. I dont know if they have ever called themselves feminists. It certainly doesnt rest on how much money you make or how many injections you put in. Or other parts of your body. Its up to them, not me. I dont see evidence that they are feminist. If i start right its because i speak to my idol right now. I read an article years ago about how you started miss magazine i read about what you went through, about going up to men and trying to get advertising its so ironic as im crying i would actually like to hear something positive can you share with us a great memory you head with those women in that room trying to create something for us. First of all it was enormously exciting and fun the womens magazine has been in somewhat still are dictated to by advertisers. If you want to get ads for clothing and cosmetics you have to editorial feature those in a way that is not true and mens magazine with clothing. Advertising does still a dictate the content too much of womens magazines. And we started this. First we started to get advertising. We spent a lot of years doing that. And then we made the revolutionary discovery that women would actually pay for that without advertising. We buy paperback books. And that turned out to be much healthier. It was a journey for us. I do want us to think about advertising. We would not had donald trump in the white house if the ridiculous roadside accident show that he did Television Show have not got so many eyeballs that i got advertising. And there was some executive who was in charge of the show. He said, he may not be good for the country that is good for the network. Someone once asked me. What were the greatest forces for censorship. We need to think about that. If we want good media we need to subscribe to do it ourselves. And not necessarily be so dependent on advertising. [applause]. First i want to say thank you. Thank you for the dedication of your life to our freedom. Im very grateful for the world that i have come into. Currently one of we are fighting a hard battle. One of the most devastating parts of this has been the journey from getting a lot of support from the women around us and then as people begin to realize that we werent just going to shake the tree we intend to bring it down. They started to realize at the same people that were paying their salaries were the people that we were targeting. Is this a point where the point where we all go down. Is this the point where we decide that our security is more important than a new world where women would have equity and equality i wanted to ask you you must have come across a several times in your lifetime. How do we get past this point. It is an organizing problem. The women who are immediately effective are the ones you are talking about. But they are women like me and men in this audience who would support you. I dont know if you are free to say who it is the Mount Sinai Health system in new york. Is the Information Online . With the dean dean of the medical school. Its all against the Mount Sinai Health system. We have a website it was equity now at mount sinai. Com. If you do tell others tell anybody you know at mount sinai they are not on mount sinai. Thank you so much for coming tonight. Im really honored to be here with you. My question is about working women. My daughter and stepdaughters. Im wondering what kind of infrastructure you suggest to this decade. Whether its 4yearold kindergarten or some kind of communal schooling for preschool kids. What you suggest in a way of liberating women so that they can have careers like men. We are the only advanced democracy on earth without national systems. With much more liberal parental leave. And i dont know if they have partners or partners who are women. Its so still very far from equal. It is still very difficult there are group things we need to fight for. And there are individual actions that we need to take most of all we need to understand its not our fault. They are neighbors who dont have children. They are kind of making a Little Community with them. They become the default and an uncle. So whatever solution we can find or whatever help we can find that most of all we need to get mad. It is not our fault. Raise children and therefore to have proper parental benefits thank you. [applause] i also want to say thank you. I am a bread winner of hi household. My husband is a stay at home parent and having that as a norm in my neighbor, its new york, but still thank you for making this world a place where that is open. Me questiones this. I work in health care, ironically for mt. Sinai, and i fine that the women that i care for disproportion natalie the ones that are not getting care are women of color, and how do we okay for women of color and know that they are not being served in this Society Without participating in white savior behavior. Well, i think we do what they ask us to do basically. We dont decide what needs to be done. He ask women of color what needs to be done and then we do it. So i dont know if thats relevant to your situation. Yes. Of course its a systemic problem. Its mostly women in poverty that arent going to the doctor, that end up with Chronic Health issues, and so poverty is a larger issue than what im able to deal with on my daily work. But also i know that while the system is trying to boost people up, its still most of the people are making decisions are not these members of the community. Well, write about it. Put it out online. Ask people at mt. Sigh snow who hey resources to do something pout it. Talk to somebody subversively at the New York Times to do a report on it. Kind of by any means necessary. Its an organizing problem. Its an opportunity, and as long as we are not trying to take over decisions from the people who are doing the suffering, we are asking them what they need done, then we can work together. Thank you. [applause] hi, gloria. I just want to thank you for being here and i want to thank everybody else for providing this extremely comforting environment when we can open our hearts and really be one. Im on my way here with two of my soul sisters, we were able to talk openly on a subway, and thats what i love about new york, because we are survivors of trump, but thats not why im talking. Im having a really hard time with my daughter, and i live in a very republican town, and both my kids were told that their mom was liar and my son, who is younger, handled it much better than my daughter. And my daughter is now 18 and she is in college and i thought maybe this would be the time where she could see that my mission was really about helping the world and our country, but the resistance she as as an 18yearold is so painful and its not but me. Its about wanting to do the best for her and i dont really know how to handle this. Right now. Well, im theres a whole lot of experience there that youre speaking from, right . And i so im not sure how helpful i can be except i would just say that love her, listen to her and wait, because she will get out into the world and learn, too. I dont know what she is feeling because of the situation i think she is very embarrassed and i think a lot of the pushback i got were from women, not men, and i think that it makes her feel like i made a mistake, and i should have just been quiet because she has lost babysitting jobs in our town. She because of your because of me, yeah, and she has been told that her mom is has problems and all those sorts of things and her mom is a liar, like i said before, but its affected her life tremendous tremendously and one of the main reason its did what i did was for her so i feel really well, youre here with your friends from the subway. They can talk to her. They can tell her they have a different feeling about her mother. Right . And also time will make a difference. We were all called liars. Thats true, we were. We only have time for two more questions. So sorry about that. So, what im glad one of them. Is mine. I want to say a very brief thank you because ive had the good fortune of meeting you and embair bracing myself and weeping in your presence before. The first person who spoke talked about why 20yearold women didnt seem to be aware of the disparate between men and women and i worked on a stewed on the representation of women in theater and came across a book which i recommend to arch which looked at perception studies and one thing it showed was that with the minutist differential. I if a woman and man enter the work force with exactly she same credentials and a one percent disven shall happens at the beginning of their careers, you see over time that its becomes an unbreachable breach. And also accountants for why women have so much less money as well as power. And another thing that was in the book was that women, when they fail, internalize it, blame themselves and that allows hem to stay in the fray because if they accept that its an external force, they become hopeless and drop out, which is true of many women. And i cant remember the third one oh, yes. One that sort of vaguely relevant is that the stories of men are universal and the stories of women are specific. And i thought that was really amazing observation. My question is, now im watching my colleagues, who have been in this theater world, reaching the ages of 50 and 60 and 70, and a whole new barrier is coming up, and that is ageism, which affected men but fakes women much, much more, and the emphasis in the theater world which i know best is on young, emerging player playwrights. This not what i expected. Thought ill knew about feminism and then to reach a certain age with all the experience and qualifications, and have the doctor door shammed and the door slammed. Its a very big taboo because people will assume that you are somehow inferior, that it it cant be simply a matter of age. I wondered what you had to say about that. Its women we are so classically or conventionally valued for what we do in the center of life or supposed to do, which is have children and raise children and so on. That were less and less valued with age, where men are men sufficient age discrimination, too, but not nearly as much because they are supposed to have gained experience and so on. And can continue to father children apparently, although we once had a wonderful article in ms. Called the older the sperm, be been beware so we need more and more centers of power that may not be exclusively women or may be exclusively women in which women are an authority, and there are centers of such power in the theater world now, here more than there were before. Its just not enough. Right . But i want to say, as a 85yearold woman [cheering] you can get a hand just for saying your age. Its great. I mean, amazing thing is that youre still the same person inside, you passed all the requirements of society that you have been rebelling against, and now you are free. So, i think just in terms of who is radical, who is active, who is political, and the army of grayhaired women, or concealing gray hair, are going to take over the earth. Woo all right. Our final question of the night. Hi, im mya. Im one were bras granddaughter and i found mid schools first feminist club. Thats wonderful. I just wonder how i can continue to make a difference within my school and slowly reach out as well also get more boys involved because right now were all girls. Well, obviously you are doing it. We are here to support you. We are here to do what you tell us to do. Right . And you can tell them, whatever you think of the real arguments makes sense to them, that they get to be more whole people, that they dont have to be afraid of each other because of all the masculine contests that they will live longer, as i was saying. But it is wonderful to see you and to realize that you are the future. Im so glad you are here. I know barbara is. [applause] now, the only thing is, we dont heave time, right . We dont. Sew sorry but we have but heres we are all together in this place, okay . So heres my suggestion. You dont have to do anything i suggest. Look around before you leave, see two or three people you dont know, introduce yourselves, say what you care about, what youre doing. If we come here, we probably care about a lot of the same things. And this is the magic that we are physically together, and you may leave here with a new job, a new love affair,. The future. Future, yeah, right. But truly, this is a night i am not going to forget. We are not going to forget. Im not either. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, whether its i just so want this to be a night that, as for me and i think for beth of us, and for all of you, makes our lives just a little bit more just and fun and outrageous and full of companionship than it was if we had not been here. Yes. Thank you, gloria and thank you everybody for coming tonight. [cheers and applause] the new as soon as onliner to as booktv products. See what is now for booktv and all the cspan products. Wire back with cale shirley the author of the new book Mary Ball Washington the up told story of George Washingtons mother. Good morning. Thank you, jesse. Host why white brought mary ball was . We have heard the story of George Washington of. Why write about his mother. Guest because she is a misunderstood figure of history. Badly treated by american history. Theres never really been a definitive biography done of George Washingtons father which is remarkable and its