Tonight we are thrilled to welcome Rebecca Solnit of the publication date of her new book recollections of my nonexistence. Please note there will not be a signing tonight after the event but Rebecca Solnit did arrive early to sign each and every one of your books. [applause]. And now a bit our guests, Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than 20 books including a field guide to getting lost, the faraway nearby, a paradise built in hell, rivers, shadows and wanderlust. A history of walking, shes also the author of. [inaudible] a product of the California Public Education System from kindergarten to graduate school she is a regular contributor to the guardian and lid hub. Leslie jamison is the author of the New York Times just sellers the recovering and empathy exams and the novel the gym closet. She is the contributing writer for New York Times magazine and her work has appeared in publications including the atlantic, harpers, New York Times book review, oxford american and virginia quarterly review, she directs the graduate Nonfiction Program at Columbia University and ab please help me welcome Rebecca Solnit and leslie jamison. [applause] [applause] [cheering] [applause] before we get started i wanted to say, im not doing book signings afterwards because a more Perfect Technology for lots of people to handle objects which i then handle before i handle other peoples objects has never been invented and we are in a global pandemic. I also want to say, im canceling most of the tour for the next couple weeks because its the responsible thing to do. I want you all to wash her hands and i want you to use Hand Sanitizer between washing her hands and i want you to not touch anything and dont sneeze or cough on anybody, be really careful. Those of us who are healthy and robust and have options have an obligation to exercise utmost care for those who are more fragile and for the social body. [applause] i decided last week i wasnt going to sign books and assigning line because of germs. The pandemic is clearly, is not rumbling, is this a sign . Is it a sign or a subway . Is that like the ultimate new york question . I wasnt worried about my health but i didnt want to be running around the country being a vector and i didnt want to be an occasion for large gatherings because they are being banned. Thats the pandemic conversation, which may intersect with the recollections of my nonexistence conversation. I wanted to make that psa im going to read a little bit and then of a sit down with leslie to whom im so grateful to paying so much attention and coming up with such fantastic questions for our conversation. This is just a little bit of the beginning of the book. One day long ago i looked at myself as i faced a fulllength mirror and saw my imaged documents often and seemed to retreat as though i was vanishing from the world rather than my mind shutting it out. I studied myself on the doorframe just across the hall from the mirror and then my legs crumpled under me. My own image drifted away from me into darkness as i were only a ghost fading even for my own site. I blacked out occasionally had dizzy spells often in those days but this time was memorable because it appears as though the world wasnt vanishing from my consciousness but that i was vanishing from the world. I was the person who was vanishing and the disembodied person watching her from a distance. Both and neither. In those days i was trying to disappear and to appear and trying to be safe and someone. Those agendas were often at odds with each other. And i was watching myself to see if i could read in the mirror what i could be and whether it was good enough and whether all the things ive been told about myself were true. To be a young woman is to face your own annihilation in innumerable ways or to flee it or the knowledge of it, or all those things at once. The death of a beautiful woman is questionably the most political topic of the world, said edgar allan poe, who must not of imagined it from the perspective of women who prefer to live. I was trying to not be the subject of someone elses poetry and not to get killed. It was trying to find a poetics of my own with no maps, no guides, not much to go on. They mightve been out there but hadnt located them yet. Or find a way to admits amidst abwork that many and most young women have to do. In the early years i did not do it particularly well or clearly but i did it ferociously. [applause] [applause] thank you for being here rebecca, its wonderful to have the chance to talk to you and its a gift to all of us. It was wonderful to hear the beginning of the book in your voice. Thank you. I was wondering, we are in a strange time and theres a lot i want to ask you about the book on its own. In the past couple days leading up to this event ive been thinking about the ways in which the ways in which some of these ideas in this book, particularly about ideas about how Community Functions and how art arises out of community and how identity raises out of community. They feel like they speak to this moment in particular ways but maybe we could start with how you been thinking about this present moment we are in, thinking about contagion and health in the ways we met care for each other. How some of those very urgent realities of the moment are spoken to you by the book, speak to the book or how whether they are connections that feel present for you . The tragedy of epidemics is that no ordinary disasters earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. , if the authorities and racism dont muck it up too much, people often come together in amazing and beautiful ways as they did for example in Hurricane Sandy and 9 11, much more so than anybody really reflected at the time as we let the bush administration, i think i can say, hijacked the meaning of that event. The idea we all have to be separate to be safe is such a complicated one that gets so close to xenophobia and as we sit here in a synagogue, weird ideas about purity and although im excited to be in a synagogue and especially a synagogue that ab whats interesting to me is we have to be separate to be together, that being separate is how we take care of each other, we are going to separate ourselves in various ways out solid asolidarity. And how do we communicate that . Its almost the antithesis of what happened to me as a young woman, i remember at a certain point i was like why was by political when i was young . Then realizing to be politically up to feel like you have something in common with other people and that you have power. I started out with neither of those things and obviously have ended up with plenty of both. But it was a journey. If you like also, every crisis is partly a storytelling crisis. How do we tell the story that we are doing this not because other people are bad and we must shun them but because we care about them, how do we tell the story that we are separated physically because were coming together. In terms of managing the cdc, the information flows and the rest. I think i think theres a lot to say from what you said but i think there is something really subtle and vital about the role that narrative can play in framing separateness as a form of care rather than a form of fear mongering or scapegoating or distancing and that even just starting to talk about it in that way the separateness is a way we are trying to care for each other rather than protect ourselves. Its already an important framework to put out there. Thinking about care rather than protection. Its also good to be interesting because we are such a profoundly unequal society, some of us have great healthcare coverage, some have none. Some people can telecommute from home, some people are gig workers who will be, lose their apartment if they dont show up and work even if they are worried, even if they are sick. Theres been a bunch of people, this is not my original point, noting that a better case for medicare for all, paid sick leave and a bunch of other stuff could not be made then by this pandemic, which i think also makes a great case for Elizabeth Warren, sadly, who was a [applause] [cheering] my people [applause] saying smart things about the pandemic and economic crisis last month and saw it coming. Of course, Elizabeth Warren could be a beautiful segue to the fear and loathing and silencing of women in american society. I was gonna pick up on something you said a few minutes ago about how when you are young woman thinking about it meant to be political to you then that you neither felt he had power nor deeply in touch with the feeling of having things in common with others and us connecting that to the portion of what you read where you talk about one of the really core ideas of the book that to be a young woman is to face the prospect of your own annihilation. Both of those made me think of one of the really compelling origin stories in the book that i thought would be a great point of departure which is the story of your writing desk the concrete literal base of the writing comes from and you tell the stories, and him hoping you might share with us of receiving the desk as a gift from a friend who had experienced trauma and you say i wonder if everything ive ever written is a counterweight to that attempt to reduce the young woman to nothing. I wonder if you could tell us the story about desk and the fraud reflected the writing that happened on it. The book has a pretty mild start after that opening passage. Its the moment when the economy was going to turn away from the new deal and the Great Society and social safety net to become the monster that now destroys so many lives in this country. I was looking in the want ads for the cheapest apartments in San Francisco and there was a 200 a month apartment and i called the number and the building manager told me to come and look at it and i made an appointment and so i start with this story thats also a really positive story about a complete stranger and old black man who saw how much i wanted and needed this apartment and a place of my own and went out on a limb to make it possible for me to have it. Then i talk about the apartment and the neighborhood which was a black neighborhood in a deeply spiritual neighborhood this is the chapter about my experience as a young woman constantly harassed and menaced on the street and elsewhere. In a society that would not acknowledge existence of this violence except by telling me that i just had to accept it as a given and adapt myself to the fact that lots of men want to kill and harm and torture and degrade and intimidate and insult women all the time. The chapter begins as a segue from pleasant stuff from my apartment about writing desk and describing it it was given to me right after i moved into the apartment by a friend of mine id known for a few years who had left her boyfriend the year before to punish her for daring to leave him for daring to choose what she needed rather than he wanted he stabbed her 15 times and left her to bleed to death. And because somebody came along, because there was an ambulance, because they were transfusions in the hospital, she didnt die, all the police blamed her and the school she was and blamed her and everyone blamed her for what happened and there was no justice. She moved far away this is one of the really interesting things about writing is that it makes me look harder, go deeper, everything ever written, i write in chairs i write on sofas, i write in bed, i write everywhere but mostly ive written at that desk since i was 19 and it was only writing this book i realized everything ive ever written has been given to me everything ever written has been written on a platform given to me by a woman and mad tried to silence forever. And therefore i can think everything ever written, which was pretty early on about feminism in my pocket magazine cover story 1985 in wanderlust and so many things since then. It has been a counter to that attempt to make women nobody and nothing and dead and silent and powerless. There was actually kind of shocking. Now i know i can get a bigger desk. [laughter] for a while. Or that you have been writing on a really big desk the whole time. Thats a great way to think about it. The desk has been bigger than you. The desks legs go all the way down to the bottom of the story. I was thinking about how sort of you make choices around what that writing involves and i think certainly for me as an admirer of your work and somebody whos been really influenced by your work im sure i speak for many people when i talk about that admiration, one of the things i love the most is the way that you are work totally raises distinctions between what it means to talk about the personal and political and the counterweight youre describing very much involves invoking both in trying to document the kind of constant conversation between the personal and political. I was really struck by a moment in this book when you describe coming out of this background as an undergrad was more focused on journalism and shifting or pivoting away from the more objective language of reportage or kind of the mode of the oped toward trying to find a more personal language that could get i wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that evolution was like away from the sort of objective editorial journalistic mode not that you have banded the methods of reportage but claiming the role that the personnel could play in the political import the choice to invoke the personal in your work, how both how thats evolved for you over the years and how you think about that question of invoking the personal. aball of us speak from a particular place that has to do with who we are and values and consequences. Because before that there was such a sense of something neutral and objective which is usually white and usually male and usually pretending to some weird rationality. But what i was really doing back then and 80s was writing in three different veins, trained as a journalist actually abi was doing journalistic work, writing working as an art critic or you sue authoritative tone but its personal and your opinion but its very extra light these are my opinions and associations but not this is my inmost story. Then i was writing much more personal lapidary essays and it just felt like three things that were really far apart and then it was actually being an activist that changed everything. We so often talk about activism as a kind of broccoli you should eat because its good for you with implication a [laughter] a lot of the best things that ever happened to me came to me and the best people that ever happened to me in the 1988 i started going to the annual spring actions begun by franciscans were more than 9000 Nuclear Bombs had been detonated experiences that became part of it comes up later. It was such an extraordinary experience. You had mormon down windows atomic veterans, nuclear physicist, japanese survivors of atomic bombs dropped there and japanese buddhist monks, these wonderful franciscan priests and nuns who were radicals. Lesbian and separatist payday guess because of still 80s. Scary tiedyed guys who kept trying to hug you. But it was abwe were dealing with the rehearsals for the end of the world and this dusty remote place very few people had ever seen was where the cold war was being enacted. It was also western shoshone land i became very involved in the western shoshone land rick stargell which was one of the most transformative and eyeopening and wonderful things that ever happened to me. I did a few things for them but they did so much for me. It was the complexity of all the layers of meeting western attitudes toward the desert, the history of civil disobedience from throw through gandhi antinuclear activism all these other layers ia realized they needed every tool i had that meant journalism, critical analysis, you can actually take the tools you use for criticism and apply them to the politics of the nonrepresentation of native people. The representation of Nuclear Weapons and war and the coded masculinity that an anthropologist was decoding in new among nuclear physicist. You could use all those tools but also the personal experience. What is it like standing in handcuffs watching the most beautiful sunset in the world in a kettle pin with 500 people who care about the same things you do. I realize that, i bought into the idea this was three different kinds of writing but could all be one kind of writing. And at the personal voice experiential thing was it like to actually be in this place. What is it like to camp next to a nuclear crater. What is it like to be handcuffed and driven 70 miles in these rituals of arrest . Was it like to unlearn the versions of western history that so erased native americans . Was it like to drive to join the indian wars in the 1990s manifestations. So that was actually probably my one big literary breakthrough was, they all belong together and then predicts my second butch savage dreams. So, in a way your answer to the question enact the very thing you are describing by invoking those particular examples of being handcuffed and that cattle pen and watching that beautiful sunset 500 people who care about the same things you do. It gives me chills anyway that feels quite related to what youre saying. There is a beautiful passage in the book where you describe a long essay about so much of this book as people are getting is about you coming of age as a writer and not just comingofage one but comingofage over and over again. You talk about adulthood as a constant process of evolution rather than a single threshold to reach but you describe trying to work on this essay about walking alone at night and you say you are looking for a way to wed the poetics of what you wanted with the politics of what obstructed you from having it or reaching it. I was so struck by the desire to wed the poetics of desire with the kind of politics of obstruction it made me think about the role of poetics. I was curious to hear you speak to as it moves through this book. What role you think beauty has come of the production of beauty, the production of beautiful language. The particular articulation of outrage or injustice. What role does beauty play in that project . Works on a great later literary influences is abyou saved us from the hideous clichcs of marxism warned over moldy casserole in the back of the refrigerator marxism. And gave us this poetic language that was grounded as girls people are in metaphor and flowers and animals. Theres a sense that politics is ugly and impersonal and very separate from beauty. Somebody asked me what was the last book that made you cry and i hardly ever cry over sad things but something so noble so generous so hopeful can make me tear up. I feel like theres a kind of emotional beauty and generosity its actually one of the kinds of beauty im really interested in. To be a really awesome preschool teacher your whole life is Beautiful Department is small. I think, what was that . [laughter] yay, teachers, i salute you. My sisterinlaw is an amazing middle school teacher, my aunt was a kindergarten teacher. I have so much respect for teachers. And so to twist the knife with power and violence and i learned so much and i thought that meant i get to work with these people who taught me so much but there is also a leftwing coming out from all directions. There are some leftwing idea that we shouldnt have that adn talk to the revolution when everybody has something nice but there will always be suffering and people that are incompatible to the liberation of all beings in the universe. The not necessarily for preschool teachers to have very nice dresses from the amazing rummage sale. [laughter] i think about when you describe that hypothetical preschool teacher of a Beautiful Life and very small apartment maybe it isnt so small that in the multitudes. There is way in which somehow being at the call or pursuing ethics in ones life or writing isnt necessarily incompatible with beauty or pleasure with a stark divide. One of the things that i loved about reading this book is your attention to various kinds of pleasure. You are attentive to the pleasures of friendship of urban living like the devotion you felt around you this beautiful scene where you describe being part of a piece of performance art. You can tell the full story but sitting with your hand in the jar. Yes. The book at its core is about feeling graham of that ambient violence that surrounds women everywhere all the time. I think of it in some ways as the anti memoir because so often to tell the story this way is what happens to you , happens to you personally so that you could overcome it and you know this is the story if you are poor, if you cant pay the mortgage or in debt it is your own damn fault rather than the system being stacked against you. And then to learn to cope with the fact a lot of men want to harm and kill people like me. But i wanted to convey the story because in the context of a society that dont want any of us to have a voice so what gets you through that . First of all i spent a lot of time alone reading and writing and also that point of the book i didnt even know how to connect to people and somehow i ended up having really good friends which became part of the story and the conversation in the collaboration the way we supported each other and made work that influenced each other as a part of it. So also what got me through tha that. And all those things that tried to silence and how central voices are. And to the possible silence in a society were women have equal access to the law or the courts et cetera. That violence would be almost impossible Harvey Weinstein may have been stronger than some of those women but the fact he was stronger and in control of the narrative that let him get away with it for 40 years. And then when the narrative changes that is why he never imagine that they would come. I wanted to be visceral and personal and thats a beautiful stuff and some of it is so horrifically ugly another pandemic we have not dealt with enough many people have done wonderful things with feminism and women shelters which i hope someday we live in a world that is so nonviolent that we dont have houses where women and children hid from men and have to disappear from their violence like a bizarre scene from a wounded society. But i wanted to convey the particulars of my life and the generalities of the life that we all live in so intent on destroying women in so many way ways. So little discussed and as part of the silence i wanted to break that silence with this book. I meandered there. No. Makes me feel at home. I had someone always told me i speak in paragraphs. The way you answer questions are beautiful because you have the strands but then they are all necessary and converge. Something you were saying about your book as the anti memoir in a particular way to push back against the idea ones own story somehow exist in isolation or is only personal. Also that you are personally responsible for resolving a problem and an individual man who is abusive you can do whatever it takes to overcome a traumatic experience but we live in a society where these things happen there is a beating once every nine or 12 seconds and also it didnt happen to you well violence against women is violent and there is no guarantee it wont happen to me. But also the woman is an island. I felt so impacted by the fact i read about violence in the news every day i am so impacted by what happened to my friend, the fact my mother was a battered woman, these little girls who are my nieces and my friends kids worry about what will happen to them. Because we also tell the story that happens to you personally if you are a victim of violence or you have not and we really understand around racism and what could happen to you. We dont understand enough around gender violence or racism either. And hearing how that could cause diabetes and hypertension which are huge Health Things in this country. And i wanted to open a conversation if you like we have never had what does it mean to live in a society where you have to think about the fact that people want to kill you all the time. Was starting to hear those stories from women. And a woman told me how her university thought they wanted to focus on the stockers needs and a woman who prepared herself how to go numb when she was raped. Wall you werent raped when everything was fine during the formative years imagine people doing horrific things to you. But does have an impact what does it do to our psyche . There is no single extreme after violence as an adult but i am a person with the threats but all these things would happen to me so what we now understand as ptsd and then to diagnose coming home from war rarely diagnosed and not even discussed so it much more commonly impact survivors of rape and the iraq war vet wrote a book about ptsd from the ied in iraq and how actually the violence is higher of those that were in war so what does that say about our society we have not even gotten there to talk about that yet because the experiences are so ordinary and we are all impacted by this, whatever our gender or our role so we still need to talk about a better and go deeper to understand we are all impacted by living in the world in which these things happen to so many people because we are queer or nonwhite or not male not adult and not powerful. And that toll is immense it is almost impossible it is such a stretch to imagine a society to be feel free and confident and safe and valued but take it as the north star to direct all of our political movements. We were talking in the back but you have to me, where at one point in the book that you are moving through the world and maybe you follow in one fall into the water trauma than thinking about it you do fall in the water or you dont. Maybe we should recognize that. The framing is part the bad thing happen to you and then the rest of your story is how you climbed out of the water. What if there is no dry land . It is not my job to adapt to violence against women it is unacceptable they will never adapt by accepting it. [applause] that i will never escape it. I have been doing this thing for a while friends of the Guardian Newspaper and you know those things how many of the squares have crosswalks prove that youre not a robot. How do these stories are violence against women . The story with trump and weinstein but all with the women protest yesterday. But five out of seven are violence against women so it is not my job to adapt to accept the unacceptable and that the only adequate solution is profound social change and that is what feminism is here for and why i am here for feminism. And you know isnt that a voice and why i am right like fund im appear in the triumph is that around 2012 the slowgrowing subterranean force to be so powerful open the space to have this conversation nobody would have with me when i was young facing constant harassment and started to have this amazing transformative conversation resulted in new york and california active positive consent laws. And suddenly out of nowhere october 2017 it started in 2012 as a result of 15 years of feminism with the groundwork women judges and University President s for those to decide newspapers and tvs and listening to women in ways they have never before that comes out of 150 years of feminism and one of my favorite human beings ever wrote about the french revolution writing a book about the rising women in the 17 nineties so no it didnt start in 2017. [laughter] and with the crisis to be represented as a tree but how did we get here genealogy is not a pedigree how the suffrage influence gandhi to invent with the civil disobedience after reading our local guide which became an influence on Martin Luther king and then to launch occupy and to open the conversation why the Democratic Party is forced to be. And then to be connected and then the ways to think generationally it is generational and then to have deeper roots i will open it up in a minute or two there are so many questions i will ask one or two more i wrote a book of questions. But i know there will be some thoughtful questions from everybody else. But i will ask one more before i turn it over. It kept going back among other things not everything that lies ahead one of the conditions that you describe at one point losing a job as a away trust one a waitress in a restaurant and then you say you were grateful because it led to everything and in particular and then that led to your first book. But i love to that particular narrative as a failure or obstruction that led to all of these things. I am curious to hear you speak either in the book are outside of it, other failures or disappointments that you feel grateful for or rejections. Im not good at very many things and am socially awkward person and i feel that i met people who are charming and multitalented who gets bread really thin charming hundreds of people dining out on their charm and that dabbling a little bit i was good at one thing growing up i was incredibly lucky because i always wanted to write but because i was so bad at Everything Else it was like the channel their road and i wasnt a broad meandering Prairie River by the fire hose. [laughter] because you see people who were good at things and get seduced by them. Im glad i got out of the Service Industry young because i got a museum job doing research which taught me about modern art which led to a job ad and art museum. And i think there are things we are good at. I have seen people who are charming who get caught up they dont know where they have forgotten what they want so somebody could write that was very intentional Cambridge University to take divinity orders and become a minister according to the families and he played hooky and walked across france in 1790 at the height of the french revolution. But the way he failed at Everything Else to be the poet he was meant to be. So its really hard some of it was accidental i left my last job in 1988 i thought it was temporary and i would get another one and i havent gotten around to it yet. [laughter] but it was this thing and i wanted to be a writer writing 500 word things are 1000 word things which is really ambitious and then i got my first book contract 1988 and i was terrified and i psych myself up by saying, okay a chapter is like an essay i know how to write an essay. So i write books that i think are together but they are like essay collections but because nobody had big ambitions for me, also i have seen young white man that will write the Great American novel which will be so fucking great that they cannot write anything but the modern journalism and that i would write a little bit more so it wasnt a failure exactly but incrementalism which gets a bad word but thats of things happen. So i let myself go along to the next thing and the next thing in the next book was a historical narrative and then it taught me how i would really write the second book which is a narrative shifting in tone and focus from more objective history to firstperson experience to weave that all together and i was off and running. It struck me when you were describing the incremental work in various forms it all led to that breakthrough. Also about the genealogy about the anti memoir that ties back to the pandemic come im interested in how things are connected. Part of my anti memoir is my last book is a different kind of anti memoir i wanted to say we are made out of stories that imprison us they create us in the stories that breakdown or the stories that rise up in a moment of crisis. And that brings us stories of people that we would never meet and the lifejackets that we are in the narrative throw and skin is not our boundary. And the same way we are connected this is about what happened to me happened to so many women and the change that has to happen is a change we do together so to feel connected which is coming to feel this could be changed and stuff. And the epidemic is also how we need to do this thing together. Nobody will stop the epidemic but if everybody does what we are supposed to do you can washing and not touching things or dont touch your face. Right now dont touch her face. [laughter] dont expose fragile people to unnecessary risk. You all know that. But we are all in this together the epidemic will be overcome by everybody doing the right thing. Also what is interesting if we do what we need to do that was a lot of fuss about nothing because we dont want mass death and hospitals because they are overwhelmed are massive quantities it will look like nothing and you can see that in the statistics the decline of violence and the decline of the catastrophe the prisoners who were not executed so if everybody does the right thing in this country we will not be italy and the pandemic that did not become catastrophic but because of 1 million tiny decisions everybody was making. With that importance of narrative not just in absence and of that incremental decisions you were describing. And then to prep for boundaries so i wonder if we could open it up. Here is microphone right here. Rose and geranium oil i recommend it highly. I come from a family his patriarch is named patricia and her daughter is also named patricia as is her daughters daughter i would ask your advice how to navigate that and all the wisdom and fuck you energy that i need. It is okay. We are not in a rush. My question is. Could you this moment i need all the wisdom and fuck you energy. Would yall like us to shout fuck you . Fuck you. Not knowing the person in question but lets do fuck you patriarchy as a collective. Everybody ready . Fuck you patriarchy. Wrap around it and send it to the white house and those peoples whose boundaries are so tight you who wrote a book the complete ability other than profit matters. And that failure matters. Okay. We could say fuck you. I touch that. Sorry. [laughter] stand back. Speaking of patriarchy. Your work is important to me with feminist text and structurally and then to have an asterisk next to it. On the gender queer scales so how do we coalesce multiple people under the umbrella of feminism and then to include more people in the fight to do together. I have been so rooted in the patriarchy rooted in the evil. Way we say working on native american and Hurricane Katrina and new orleans and feminism is a subset of human rights and we want them for everyone. Part of this book i wanted to write an essay for years and years called thank you gave men. On gay men. The queer city in america and i am so proud of that. I was so proud for the San Francisco that was. I grew up there also. What the men were modeling to what these queer people were modeling for me we dont have to accept our gender assignment. It is totally worth it to break the rules. There will be punishment but it is worth it. And i feel like if we dont talk about it this is down to the personal game and my Gay Liberation and black people want antiracism but with that example you learn so much through the struggle through feminism and gender vocabulary and that is being worked on on the very moment with the work in progress and the wonderful ones keep emerging but what feminism has been theres no rules to what it means to be a woman your genitals are not your destiny your parents intentions are not your destiny they dont determine your destiny so we all belong anywhere we want to be so what i got to write about several years ago in a way that samesex marriage became possible so what exactly is the defensive marriageable shed about long bullshit about . Like jack and bob getting married doesnt compare but the defense of traditional marriage it is a hierarchical relationship in which the man is dominant and the woman is subordinate. Feminist dismantle that is some way and it should be between equals and there are these intersections and a lot of the key feminist of the seventies were lesbians and not doing conventional marriage. Because as more people think it is a negotiable equal relationship it is more more possible even for straight people to imagine every consenting adult to marry the people that they love. But the dialogue could be smarter, more conscious or open. Do you want to see it specifically . I have been wondering for a long time as ive read your books and it adheres to a lot of the mentality it could be trans exclusive so i dont know how one i dont have the answer answers. Its interesting how much the last five or ten years have opened the question how we will think about gender and the complex that are intended to each other and just paying attention to trans rights and issues and making space for them everyone who knows me on social media and knows i am the third biggest Elizabeth Warren in the world but she said more about trans rights than other candidates. And said well run for president together is so interesting to see how different the conversation had become so what i also say is it is great the country addresses the problem it doesnt mean we got to the finish line, but its all on the table in a different way and i think thats exciting. But i feel blessed to have grown up around queer women and queer men i was one neighborhood away and just to have the person the kids between 13 and 18 was a gay man. I benefited so greatly from it just like i benefited from parts of the struggle and part of how i want to change the story is the idea of how we are connected and benefit from each others benefits from each others liberation and experience and thinking. And that morally we shouldnt just care about people exactly like ourselves but imagine we have so much to gain from the other points of view and experiences and identity. Thank you for letting me ramble around. Hi. I guess related to that and with the other movements and writers and to quote such an appropriate Kindred Spirit shout out. This is a simple question but to have dinner with any three people that would be serious candidates i am just questioning from your end who would you want at your table that you find it incredibly empathetic and brilliant . Current living humans . I had carmen maria, some may continue actually im supposed to do an event in San Francisco and it will be broadcast may 11 so we have had a number of long walks mostly talking about feminism but how it relates to feminism which is Everything Else. [laughter] and it is just so smart and brilliant and tough and the way she work herself out of the shitty rolls the hollywood gives and how she is the creator and boss is a story so thank you for bringing her up. And i will talk with mary beard and i cannot tell you how excited i am. Maybe the conversation will switch to latch and ill be out of my depth but she is a lovely person and she has been so bad ass writing about feminism. I really feel we are in a golden age for both feminist thinking and writing and we dont need to envy them because the writers and thinkers and activists that are alive right now the woman that started black lives matter this is the worst time to live and why i am a climate activist but it is also the golden age to formulate the tools and ideas and i feel really lucky with the company that i keep. So thank you for letting me go into that. I have a question of the people raising and discussing the things i have never felt before or the empathy for things i have never set out loud and other people are thinking the same thing i would be interested to hear i did not know then what i know now or the feeling that time has been lost or there could be made different behavior. I think middleage for me is an acceptance that we progress through mistakes and we have to make those mistakes to learn to change. Also in the beginning the book i say i dont envy people anymore who have amazing awesome families and they have the values that are what they have now and didnt have to make mistakes to learn anything or change anything or run away and reinvent themselves. I feel like if i have one great stroke of luck commits the instability that allows me to continue to evolve and change and say thats not who i want to be your how i want to be treate treated. And a stronger here or there but one of the things that i learned and they are things we already know but it is on our phone we are not living according to them and those are people who were full of mockery that you were told you dont have a sense of humor if you dont take your stride it took me well into my thirties to say actually, actually, leaving aside Major Political figures, dont want to mock people or be cruel to people are be around people who do that. Ingests kindness as a criteria that enters into this book with the concept maybe i should be treated well. But there are so many things like that. It is easy to tell the story of how it could have been better you couldve skipped the phase but it always feels like a process to me you could do this and this is a culture that wants shortcuts so often the long and direct path is the only way you get there. A big thing in my book wanderlust the in the labyrinth almost directly to the center and then you have to turn your back to continue to face every possible direction and you do all the stuff and then you truly arrive and then the real question of the left is that you dont stay there. How will you exit. So i like the meandering path. [laughter] we will not have a chance in new york to vote for Elizabeth Warren because she has dropped out that are you endorsing another candidate . I have slowly and i will tell you later. [laughter] your winker of the mayor who doesnt have other things to do with you like the whole way to be framed the lady has to serve a man i have a really big problem with. [applause] so yes, one a great new deal i want medicare for all that could suggest some leanings. But there is also strategy to i it. Is it bad to endorse the person that will not win does that cause problems for the winter . She didnt endorse anybody at the primary at the time she is under zero obligation be there is anybody else. Like aoc you lucky people who are in proximity to her district. [laughter] i am of the nancy pelosi district so i will support whoever makes it through this with two elderly gentleman from the vibrant young energetic women people of color. But shit is weird and fucked up. [laughter] lets have a question that is not invoke bernie or biden. Thank you to both of you for speaking this has been very validating. And also people that are not important in some way but also want to say the other day my roommates and i were talking what the world would look like if women were taught to have the confidence men were taught in trying to teach that confidence in a certain way and more often than not i used to teach eighth feminists bike maintenance class it is great at all these women come but we needed the presence of women to show this is actually something women can do the venues to read the gospel but also i want to have a comment because you and i met when i was working at a bookstore. That was so lovely. Thank you. But you told me that i was in the process i was working there of accumulation before distribution all the women that live there still to this day are still messaging each other to say what is your distribution right now and what are you accumulating . I would just like to tell you that you gave me validation of violence against women and i just wanted to see maybe what your mantra or daily routine is to bring in the women because i find myself to say i remember your idea. What is your daily mantra . I dont know if i have a daily mantra i have many but they are all situational but i do want to go back to talk about confidence because i dont they say god give me the confidence of mediocre white man nothing against white men who are not mediocre. [laughter] that many marginalized and oppressed people suffer from less confidence than they should have many suffer from more confidence than they should have been then to explain things about thes men who feel entitled to explain things without finding that the person they are talking to actually understands it without grasping that they dont. So overconfidence, and this is a book about what it means not to have a voice and then to get him arrested and prosecuted all those years. He had too much voice. There is a meeting in the middle talk about gender and segregation and categories because feminism. Yes. I just want to say that you see people who are confident about what they are doing. That could be a useful thing. Do we really want to be doing this capacity . And to be really constructive. But im so glad to know i succeeded in one of my missions in life the woman that i was with at uc merced because the mom worked three jobs and go to paris. Shes the pediatrician and i do believe she will make it and look at the teenage mom and so exciting to travel with her because everything was new to her. I could go to some book signing and book tour stuff. And just be was somebody who is so full of wonder. So thank you for bringing that back. I will text her tonight until her and congratulations again on your novel. [applause] all of you who are standing up if you want your book washed and sprayed before she signs them and we will say thank you to all after this into my amazing publicist who put together the amazing thing we ever thought of in my editor paul since 1993 the most longterm monogamy i have ever observed. I have fucked around with other publishing houses but we wont talk about that. Hi. And the story about im constantly thinking about the things that i inhibit and around me and before that it isnt what they prevent themselves so my question is what about the women around you and the women in your family . That is a tough question because what is it like to be a paranoid schizophrenic and maybe a severe refugee. And from what i know of battered woman and my grandmother was a battered woman but it is interesting because as a feminist and a friend of mine who was a best friend for a long time and dated a brother of mine and saw the treatment of her completely change because my mother was boy crazy but it is about the challenging relationship with my mother who died in 2012. If youre trying to survive someone in with a passionate commitment to justice fair housing work in the 19 sixties after she divorced my father she was in a battered woman shelter for years it is not somebody elses job to stand up was one of her core values. And it is much more complex. She really loved trees like thomas hardy and i inherited a lot of anxiety and selfdoubt. Without that ethical core and my maternal grandmother who was supposed to be schizophrenic and actually it is heartbreaking she was a loving person and didnt know how to recognize it and we both benefited so much how do we know what love look like and how to accept affection but i had to survive so i didnt. She died when i was 20 my other grandmother stayed in queens the rest of her life until the very end so i didnt really know her growing up she was the daughter of an irish immigrant who died giving birth to her. So they are with me in various ways. I think that moral courses the most important and it did come from my mothers background and before they were more people a lineage as outsiders and anti colonialist. Thank you for the great question. I cannot wait to find out what the people behind you will ask. Thank you for coming up to ask. We were wondering what its like to have a young feminist. And my friend for 30 years said what can i do as an individual and you say stop being an individual meaning find your people and this can be a wonderful thing but kids who have been doing fridays for future. Have you done that . You are the best. Just wonderful and amazing people. And feminism means just looking really hard what is going on as a gender perspective because as women we are told that did not happen we will trust anyone before you find people who back you up the people who value you and people who believe in you that you Say Something happened and those of the people who are feminist i hope you find both of those people and you are the people i think about when i do the work because you are the future and i wanted to be as beautiful and generous and inclusive as Carbon Neutral as possible dont laugh it is serious we need to leave it in the ground one of the great revolutions of the 21st century going from nuclear in 2000 when they were completely inadequate to power all Energy Systems where we are now thank you to engineering and technology we could all leave it behind and make the transition and one of the things that is nice 58 and three quarters is really old to see the arc of change is a 17 yearold said last week im so crushed by warrens defeat will it ever change when i say how terrible it was to women when i was born i know it has changed so much and people will be after will keep changing it because of 5000 years of patriarchy is a big project we have done so much in 50 years and that Climate Movement which was almost nothing in 2000 is so powerful and effective and creative and inspired right now challenged in many ways but i believe that we can win thank you all so much. 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