Breakthrough essay collection, my misspent youth. And the ends people, which won the usa award for your creative nonfiction. Shes also received fellowship from the guggenheim news and the National Endowment for the art fellowship. She teaches in the msa writing program at columbia university. Turning her to discuss a problem with everything is judith sorry, judith show limits. Shes a critic and journalist and the author of the seventh world. Of a different order of tide. Only the editor of Deputy Editor new York Magazine and science on the new republic. Shes written for the New York Times review and among numerous others. The key to our friends at cspan2 for your joining us to found the conversation about to be. Who that went out further ado, please join me in welcoming megan and judith. [applause] thank you thank you all for your coming out. Im always really relieved when people show up. I love coming to this lease. I love seeing people very early in my career. Will not that early actually, but earlier, was on a book tour and ibo was in minneapolis, in. It turned out to be the same night the david sedaris, was doing a reading. At the university. In minneapolis and like in a stadium basically. Anybody whoss anybody, who cas about these things, except for your one young woman shared up at my if it she driven hundred miles from her parents farm to come and see me and she was such a big fan. And she said, i thought i wouldnt even get to see you. I thought it would even get to sit near you and kind of looked around and i was like, we are here. Ly one and who, i take her to see david sedaris. [laughter] and that was actually a great night. We had a team in the overflow room on the jumbotron. And that is what its like to be in book tour. Right very glamorous. [laughter] and who, this book, i also love it the bribe to be. My father who passed away about a year ago, and to whom news memory this book is dedicated. Such if you huge fantasy span. Really troops his favorite thing. S i say i i feel like he might be in forever he has he has cspan, he is watching. Who, judith and i are going to talk im going to be little bit from the end of the book. Who if i do that just once a couple of things about it. This book is about a lot of things. It is about the generation gap, seem to be the current political situation in the culture wars, it is about what we have called identity politics whats good about them, useful about them. It is about growing older, is about ulcers of things. But really, it is about this notion of the problem with everything. Who the title really refers to not only the way we call who muchay problematic now, theresa problem with everything is a problem with everything. Me, themately tog problem with everything refers to that conversation were always having either with ourselves and if we are lucky, with somebody else. Its like what is it about the world. What is the problem with everything. Why are things the way they are. Why am i sort of bothered and why to have this cognitive distance. Who really thats at the heart of this. That is something that is captured in the very end of the book. I will read from there. Who to be a very chart reading because i have been told you cannot tolerate more than five to seven minutes of reading. That is what it is. Who the sunglass chopper. With the problem. Until very recently, one of my most abiding ideas about myself was that iem was young. The other was that i was tough. The former is ridiculous and the latter is just meaningless. Everyone uses and smears as their youth and everyone is exactly as tough as they need to be at any given time. Another idea i had about myself was that i was a liberal and a feminist. I believe those things are still true. They also now say those labels no longer serve meet the way they once did. I actually say that labels are part of what got us into this mess in the first place. Labels at the are either bad ass her biggestst social Justice Warrior or white supremacist, hands down contradictions. And leave no room for your cognitive dissonance. They deny us our basic human rights to feel conflicted. And as i like to tell my students, if you are not conflicted, you are either lying myto yourself or you are not vey smart. The fact in the middle of writing this book, i went to my 25 year college reunion. In full disclosure, i crashed the reunion. Rubbing up the for the day that went out a reservation after a friend convinced me at the last minute that i should go. O ive never been to a college reunion. I have complicated feelings about college. Most of them stemming from guilt over the fact that he often didnt bother to get to know people as well as i couldve. Sink my classmates and middleaged though, i felt i did know them. I knew then because i recognized my very face in their very faces. I saw the ways in which the passing of time had yanked some of our certainty out from underneath us. I saw howe life and grabbed usy the shoulders and taken us everything who slightly loose from our foundational coolness. Not that we still were cool, we were just human now is it too. We were human in that way the you have to grow into. We were cumin in the way you cant beat when you are 20 or even 25. By which, i mean, we were and direct dialogue with our failures and limitations. Medecades earlier, within bright shining nothing. And now we work fully Forum Something and in various states of disenchantment. In disrepair. One point in the afternoon, in search of a bathroom, i turned a corner and a dark dormitory corridor and run smack intodo an old friend. We hugged. How long had it been. Twenty years at least. She was in the middle of getting divorced. My divorce hasnt happened, had recently been finalized. Luna thought it wouldve been like this. We huggedd. Again. How did this all come to pass. How could we expected it to be any other way. And iterations of these questions throughout the day. People were getting divorced. They were getting low enough, having child custody disputes and having her name problems and Health Problems and dying parent problems. People were despondent over trauma. There were following News Coverage of the tides student activism and thinking the waters were maybe starting to last a little is it too far over the shores. An economic day, the campaign for your south africans investments. Another kids were calling for your boycotts and divestment in israel. We had been fierce advocates for your gay rights help we were one of the gayest colleges in the country. Now gate was passe. Transgender activism has students turning in their professors who were improper use of pronouns. Labeledy bathrooms were genderneutral pride which is fine, who we couldnt help but remember the unisex dormitory bathrooms from back in oure tia when men and women thought nothing of showering in adjacent cells. Who why the big production. In my by the way, who much racial discord. We knew it was time for your National Recognition for your structural racism. We read, hosey codes, we supported black lives matter, or at least be said who on facebook. But now, from what were hearing, the entire western canon of art, our literature and philosophies, were being written on in white supremacy. How this happened. What was wrong with these kids. Or was there something wrong with us. It was likeus we can taste our n irrelevance. It was the sour taste inside our very amounts. It was a warm june day, the pansies and miracles in the shakespeare were in full bloom. The tulips lining thehe closet r your holding onto the last breath of spring. Bring sandals and clutching bags from the bookstore, the olympics strolled along this brickbats of the campus. In the times since we graduated, many walkways and buildings, have been retrofitted better accommodate people init wheelchairs. Back in 1990, students protested had shuts cooldown for your days he demands for your such things. Like hiring a rabbi, offering kosher meals, and establishing an intercultural center. This demands at the time had seen who radical. Today, they seem who reasonable as to be a matter of course. Lb irrelevance. The obsolescence. The creak of aging out before you even get old. The phantom of time haunted me as i drove back to the city and my 17 yearold volvo station wagon. It followed me back to my apartment where he poured myself a glass of wine and was in bed by ten. In the ensuing and the feeling of irrelevance, became a near constant companion, it clouded my vision like the membrane on the eye of a lizard, shielding me from what i couldnt comprehend. Staring me the mortification of cluelessness. And we both staring at myself in the mirrors and avoiding mayors. Had meat lying awake at night contemplating the end of the world. Or maybe just the end of my world. It woke me when its over i said to myself. Again and again. It is never over though. Every day becomes yesterday before you knows it. But there always tomorrows and problems to look forward to. Tomorrow, the young people now nipping at my heels, will be walking the brickbats as their own school reunion. Feeling some combination of embarrassment and pride in how they used to be. The day after tomorrow, their kids might be calling as well. In thend end, i say it come to realize that the problem with ngeverything is meant to be solved. It is meant to feed us. It is meant to pump oxygen through our lungs, it is meant to giveo us something to talk about. It is meant to feel accommodates and inspires great art. It is meant to keep relationships alive until the last possible hour. It is meant to invite our smartest selves to join hands with our stupidest self and see with the other leads us. The problem with everything is meant to keep us believing despite all evidence to the contrary in the exquisite life of our own irrelevance. What a gift. When a problem to have. Thank you. Its [applause] thank you. Im going to now open a piece of paper to scare you all. A lot of questions. I just write them down who i can ignore them. The fact always be prepared. That is my favorite passage from the book. T is no spoiler though. You still have to read the book. There is no ending. We do partially, sorely me into my first question. Which is about the generation gap. Which is what your book is mostly about anything. Largely about. I was skeptical when i start reading the book. I was skeptical about five years ago but generation gaps because dont believe in generations. I believe generally, generations are about generalization. Really about, whoever has grabbed the media might manage sort of define a group. And they are not born out of any sort of demographic or cultural analysis just sort of a pile of means. About five years ago, ten years ago, i started noticing the phenomenon you are talking about and, who there really is the gap between our generation. You see, you take back the had met some of the book is the hard generation is all about being tough. And their generation is all about being fair. Which i would once again, every generational stigma is wrong. Is the hypothesis. Im just throwing out there. Is correct yes. I was a quivering mass of jelly when im junk who tough was not in my vocabulary. I definitely felt a lot of pressurewh. That was like a thing that ourin generation was all about. I dont know if the upandcoming generation is necessarily all about being fair. A sense of it being enhanced or following due process or any that there certainly about being just. About changing framework. Changing norms, and sort of policing the changing of norms. Who you know, there is like a gap where i feel like the discourse of trauma has gone is it too far my daughter feels mylike i took my yearold daughter feels like what did you put up with that. My flight did you say that was okay. Who, my question for you is, how do you happened. Between our generation news gen xers and millennial agencies, assuming we can usese those ter, putting the ministries, what happened. Stuart to be honest, im still trying to figure that out. I guess thatl by packing up a little bit and talking about how i came to approaches. Who this book has who many iterations like initially is going to be all about feminism and is only going to be, you are not a bad ass. This would be called you are probably not a bad ass. Like i was wavering. I sued Hillary Clinton would be present. This going way back. I started wrestling with all of the stuff in the net didnt happen in the conversation around social justice issues and the cultural forms were run out and intersection only and whatever that means. As of the topic had to go beyond women but i will see in trying to figure out the answered that question, i had to say about the fact that i grew up right alongside ticket wave feminism. I was born in 1970, i was three years old when rookie way past. I remember being 12 years old 1982 is sitting at the Kitchen Table with my mother listening to npr. Cspan2 the mpr. And hearing the equal b rights amendment had not been ratified and remember my mother being really sad about that and remove are talking about who was Phyllis Schlafly and how can anybody be like that she was leaving on the equal rights amendment. Famousr feminists they worked outside the home a great deal. I remember having these conversations ive remember at te same time, dwelling and growing up those decades, never feeling like i as a girl was any less powerful than any boy. Back the girls were doing better. I thought was better be appropriate to he would get it greater spectrum of thanks christian theres just more ways to be in the world grows it better in school printed by the time i got to college, there were more women than men and. College. And were just doing better and buying our own real estate. Having babies on her own. All thatwe stuff. Who fastforward a couple of decades, maybe about five years ago or six or seven years ago, suddenly, the default premise of the conversation around women is that where this underclass. And that somehow we live on this patriarchy that we are causally fighting against. And i wondered in my first instinct was to see well thats just wrong this is stupid. And around a lot of pages an app. Then i had to say, well, i know a lot of people even my own edge who say that is true who for your this book really lifts, is that conflict. I didnt know as i was ripe enough. Who the book more than anything is the self interrogation. Its not a fun make im trying to sort through. Who to answered questions specifically, i say there are certain conditions that we enjoyed as gen x people that later generations did not have the benefit of for your instance. I say that if you grow up in the 70s as a kid theres just a sort of androgyny to making a a child at the time. Like everybody watch the bad news bears. Remember soon. Theres just in this study, there is the sort of androgynous ascetic that really affected the experience of being a kid. Int i say any accident that the two biggest childless celebrities of the 70s work jodie foster and Kristi Mcnichol both, major lesbians and i wanted to be that. They were not addedy at the ti. Just for the record, then not out of the time but like they were not girly girls. Its not cool to be a girly girl. We did not have a disney phenomenon. We did not have pink toy isle and blue toilet tile in the toy store. Then we had the benefit of the sort of, agency around our gender thanks christian. For your a variety of reasons starting to huawei later on. And i that that maybe makes us a little bit cavalier about how e move through the world. And certainly had to check myself in that regard. What is driving this gender difference and would you see that social media which says pornography also recent forces sexualha stereo or intent. Assuming we did not grow up with online pornography for your any of that. I say it really changes the game in terms of sexual negotiation. And i say that we have recognized that. And just cut them some slack with that. I have to see, this is kind of like a crackpot theory but im beginning to say this is more more true. Who when the technology became available to know the of a fetus in utero, i say that was the moment when it started to change. I say parents subconsciously internalized gender stereotypes and may have affected how the children were raised. You come into the nursery decked out in pink versus like, camera or whatever. Maybe that makes a difference. Soon well just came home to like, what room was like a closet. I feel like that was all he ever had. They had. Who let me just throw out a quote that i found fascinating. I thought you are sort of being a little disingenuous. You see, when i am justified in not understanding is what women stay on to gain by reinforcing a narrative that they are a persecuted group. This of course referring to the sense of notorious sensitivity with the generation where talking about this precise for your warnings, trauma of having grass wrapped or whatever it is. Who what do they stay on to gain by reinforcing a narrative there a persecuted group. You dont give an answered. I dont believe you dont have an answered because your making you have an opinion on everything. Revocable different answers that. One of the answers, we stay on to gain from identifying as a persecuted group, group affiliation, i say what really lonely. I say that this manifest in all areas. Not just womens areas. Ideology. People are really lonely. Theyre not having interpersonal interactions and not having like extended dynamic frenzied, arguments with their friends over drinks. But is taking place online. It was just easier to silo yourself. I have to see, with any of these identity based discussions, particularly around women, as a set of approved messages. Theres a set ofss assumptions o im around women, it mighter jut be for your instance, women on College Campuses are in grave danger of sexual assault. The gender wage graph gap is result of largely almost entirely of systemic discrimination that would be none. Women are being prevented from injuring stem fields because of misogyny in the skills. His ideas and get connected to like slogans and statistics and like one in five. Seventynine since on the dollar and that kind of thing. You are single things, are legitimate or not. Theyre not exactly correct. They become articles and then social media comes and and take those articles of faith and turn them into vehicles of styles. That is like the means. Unlike your bad ass tshirt, and it then results in the sort of rhetoric in beacons vocabulary that we swim in. And that there is a war on women. Politicians use and corporations use that to sell things in hollywood uses it. What bothers me about it is that results in this paradoxical dynamic were being strong woman means constantly emphasizing her weakness. And thats me is really backwards. Let me disentangle this just a little bit. Im aware about the date the debates about the one in five statistics on campus im aware that the main critique is the myth based on two unbelievable unrepresentative studies of com