God, you know, ten years ago, that word vagina would have not been said, you know, on public television. So when you sit back and you think, wow, i really have had an impact, i mean, on many levels, but on that particular issue the fact that you have changed how one word about a womans most intimate anatomy is seen and discussed. What does that mean for you . You know, its really hard to evaluate what youve done, you know, and its actually not for me to figure out. Hinojosa and youre such a humble person, i know that, but. What i feel good about is that people seem to say the word more, and what is significant about that is it means that vaginas actually exist, and if they exist, then we can have agency and rights over our vaginas, and we can know what gives them pleasure or doesnt give them pleasure, and we can say no when we mean no, and we can. We can actually create a reality so that bad things dont happen to them in the dark and thats exciting to me. Hinojosa because essentially,
Of women, whats interesting to them, what matters to them. And i have to say, i was just fascinated with this statistic 92 of the women who you asked said that the Biggest Issue that they face, that theyre most concerned with as women in america today, is Domestic Violence and sexual assault. We were surprised also. We performed this study as a benchmark to the beginning. For the beginning of the 21st century to measure where women stand on a range of issues. And the question was asked whether women believed that a Womens Movement was necessary. And there was surprisingly strong support for a new Womens Movement. And then we asked what should be the priorities what are the issues that need to be addressed urgently . And we were really quite stunned that domestic and Sexual Violence should be addressed, basically a statistical dead heat with equal pay for equal work, which has been the mainstay of womens concerns. Hinojosa but, you know, the interesting thing is that when you are involv
Special prosecution force. Oh my god. And youre an artist and a writer. I dont know how you do all these things. How do you do it all . Its usually one at a time. Hinojosa laughs so not multitasking . Well, that too, on occasion. Hinojosa but fascinating, even though you devote your life to understanding communication, democracy, literacy, access, you are not one of those people who is on facebook, on twitter, communicating all the time with the masses. Well, one of the reasons i have time to do the other things is that im not on facebook and communicating with an amorphous mass of people who, you know, distract your attention from what you may think is more important. Hinojosa so those of us who are, for example, in the media and who are feeling quite challenged in terms of reaching all of these audiences, especially in the public media. What are you saying to us, in terms of audiences and reaching them . Are you saying, look, youre going about it the right way, or do we need to stop
Could be seen, more like a victim, and heres another story of how my life could be seen, which is a life of extraordinary possibilities and choice. And you basically say you want us all to think about how we choose the narrative of our own life. Because how we choose to see ourselves says everything about kind of how we do end up seeing ourselves. Am i right . Yes. If i were to ask you, you know, why are you here what is it that ended up making you do what you to today . You along with anyone else, if you were to answer that question, you could give me any one of three versions of that story. You could tell me how you were destined to be here. You could tell me how there was some fortunate event that led you to be here, some chance event. Or you could tell me the story of how you chose to be here. And i think that its probably accurate to say that any of those stories might be true, or at least not falsifiable. But i think theres Something Special when you tell the story of your life i
You and your work as a journalist saved not one or two or dozens maybe hundreds of lives during the dirty war, how does that sit with you . Difficult to deal with, but at the same time a satisfying thing, because thats what i realized that our journalism was doing. It was saving lives. Thats why it was so important to us. And to go back now, as i have been able to go back, and to live in argentina or living there for several months a year, and to find people who stop me in the the street and thank me, and to meet people who were held in this terrible esma, this awful torture and killing how would you call it . In the center of buenos aires. Hinojosa which is one of the most extraordinary develop. And thats one of the things that, as i was reading for this interview, you know, you think of world war ii and it was like, well, that was perhaps a long time ago. What happened in argentina was happening in the 1970s, literally historically right around the corner. And its like, oh my god, ho