janet was referring to, you know, the moral injury, people pay more and more attention to that, and let's note pretend this only exists on the military side of the equation. there's trama and disability in the world as well. to me, you might disagree, but, to me, it's the commonality here is once something happens in your life, whether it's a single event or accumulation of things, but there's some -- it's not just trauma, but something happens that just rattles you down to the bones. what do you do then? succumb to it or busy trying to recover. ptsd, civilian or military, one of the guys said, you know, life comes with trauma, and trauma necessarily comes from a sense of recovery. that's what we do, and to get back to the idea to be careful here because of the notion of perpetuating the stereotype of the imroaken soldier. that's -- there are broken soldiers from these wars. does not mean they are forever broken. probably most of them, throughout history, will not be, but that does not mean you dismiss this moment as, oh, you know, other wars were tougher. we always had a version of this. you know, people figured out themselves well, we don't have to act as before. we can act with more compassion and understanding than in the past. >> it became a legal issue in the benefits trial for my son whether we could point to a particular incident that had caused trama, and we could not. there were three possibles of times in trauma, bun one of the symptoms was he would not talk about it, and that is a frequent symptom, and certainly something we learned about in the second world war that vast numbers of of people coming home from the second world war were changed, but would not talk about it because that's part of the soldierman's speech, the man of few words. clearly, what helps is getting them to talk about it. in many cases. >> you mentioned -- it was mentioned on this panel bush and theyny, i want to know what they do to prevent the united states from going in another war, particularly ukraine where we contributed to overthrow the government, syria, which is heating up again, and all the other places that we meddle in. what are we doing to prevent this so that we do not have more discussions of this and all these things, under a democrat president, by the way. i wound every what you are doing. >> to answer the question, i guess, for me, i'm not politically -- my roll is not political agent vism, but there is a political element to ptsd in the sense and i think this is where it's good to recognize broken soldiers because those suffering are symbolic of all the suffering that went on and sufferings of wars inflighted. .. speak. >> people are now more interested in that because they are being their spouses and children come back with that. so it is an issue that people are wrestling what. i cannot think of many things that would do a better job to keep us out of fighting another stupid war than people treating ptsd. >> my answer would be that writers write in a way that we try to be activist, those of us, and unlike the journalists, because of my experience. but, you know, your question is a valid one and seems so pitifully small. i donate $25 here and sign a petition there. but what i'm really doing is writing the story that i went through. >> we are out of time on the but i think we have time for one quick western. [inaudible question] >> i am trying to teach university mathematics to the learning disabled. ptsd is a tragedy. we don't have a medical diagnosis. the circuits are broken, it's tragically not repaired. no medication, no adequate diagnosis. end we have phd's, but we do not have medical doctors. the tragedy continues, i am sorry to say. >> please thank the panel for coming. [applause] >> we will all be around afterwards if you have any other questions. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> our coverage of the 19th annual "los angeles times" festival of of books from the university of southern california will continue now with a panel on feminism. >> my clock says 1230. so we should get started. welcome to our book festival. my name is robin carrion and i am a columnist who has worked closely online these days. i hope you can check me out at "l.a. times".com/local. okay. this is the evolution of feminism panel. so that is not what you came to hear, you're definitely in the wrong place. and we have a few housekeeping issues to attend to. please silencer cell phones. you probably don't need to be told that. there is a book signing following the session so we can continue the conversation with our authors afterwards in signing area number five. personal recording of these sessions is not allowed. we are also being broadcast live on c-span, fyi. i was supposed to say something about earthquake safety and i think the drill is you feel if an earthquake, please leave calmly. [laughter] and put your hands over your head. okay. i want you also to know that about 10 to 15 minutes before the and we will be taking questions from the audience. there is a microphone set up in one of the isles. we can bring that microphone to you. let me start with myra macpherson. she is the author and a veteran journalist. she spent many years at "the washington post" writing for their legendary style section. she has interviewed serial killers, celebrities, international leaders like fidel castro. when she was an infant, she interviewed president kennedy. [laughter] >> a series that she wrote for vietnam veterans led her to write her groundbreaking book long time passing, vietnam and the haunted generation. one of the first looks if not the first to examine the insidious problem of postmatch stress disorder. in 2006 she wrote all governments lie, the life and times of rebel journalists i have stone. and she has also delved into intimate topic. she came to have an inspiring family journey and she witnessed the last three years of a young woman's life who died a can't or. her new book is the scarlet sisters, suffrage and scandal in the gilded age. it is a biography of victoria woodhall enter extraordinary sisters whose escapades in the 1870s might shock even the most liberated contemporary women. ms. rags to riches pair was born into poverty. they managed the family snake oil trade literally. before breaking free of their parents and moving to new york where they became stockbrokers, freelove advocates, suffragettes, and newspaper publishers as well. and if you think barack obama and totally clinton our political pioneers, consider this. victoria woodhall was the first woman to be nominated for president in 1872. her running mate was frederick douglass. lord is the as the journalist and cultural critic and a highly regarded teacher in this school's writing program. for many years she was a syndicated political cartoonist based at newsday and is a regular contributor to "the new york times" book review in the arts and leisure section and numerous other national outlets. she is the author of the private life of rocket science. a family memoir about aerospace culture. and she became a true literary celebrity after she wrote forever barbie, the unauthorized biography of a doll, which examine how a fantastically sexual doll that was inspired by a erotic knickknack came to a place of honor and meaning in the childhoods of so many american girls. she argues that barbie was invented by women to teach girls for better or worse what was expected of them. and now she has turned her critics face to another curvy american icon and her new book the accidental feminist, how elizabeth taylor raised our consciousness and we were too distracted by her beauty to notice. so here she argues that taylor was more than just a fine actress. she was an unwitting role model for feminist causes and ideals, whether posing as a boy in national velvet, or the bluesy and unhappy academic life and who is afraid of virginia woolf. this is all long before she was the first lonely celebrity voice to take up the fight against aids. and i think i also need to know that you are cowriting this for the l.a. opera about the 110 freeway on its 70th anniversary. and that is talent. >> yes, it is. the project is creeping along. [laughter] >> nancy is a author and expert on women in american politics. she has taught american history and political science at columbia, cal state long beach, and is currently teaching a course on women in american politics at occidental college. she has also been a visiting scholar at ucla study is a woman and research on labor and employment. her books include the we construction of american liberalism's in the 1990s, a social history. she has also written essays for the guardian, the "l.a. times", playboy and rolling as well. she is the kind of source every political journalist or talk show needs in their rolodex and i count myself among those who can count on her for her comments are always right on the money. in her new book delirium, the politics of sex in america, she analyzes the counterrevolution that was unleashed and it is persistent in its is politics. she explores how the christian right has wielded such a debate on feminism and contraception and abortion and of course the fights and the battles still rage on. the sexual counterrevolution has been going on for more than 40 years as he more politically sophisticated. it is no coincidence, she writes that the politics of this and women's rights and marriage has erupted at the moment when the gop is farther right than any other political party in american history since the time of slavery. as we have come a long way. of course, most of us are not smoking cigarettes anymore. i live in venice beach so i can attest to that. taken together your books present a wonderful chronology of the history of american feminism starting in the late 19th century with a stop in the middle of the last century and an examination of what's happening now. and it's fascinating to me that each generation fights a new series of essentially the same battle. some things really never change. until we are still fighting about equal pay, the balance between work and home life, affordable childcare, whether or not women can do everything that men can do and now we are discussing the battlefield instead of the race that you are still dismissed as jezebel's for claiming their sexuality. and they are still battling for reproductive freedom which is being narrowed all over the country state legislatures intent on making it impossible to get an abortion even if it's legal. the wondered if the attribute could start us off by giving a short the four-minute explanation of what exactly inspired you to write your book. and to let this go in order starting with miro. >> okay. before i do that, since you have really covered so much, i would really dislike to quote to quote and have you imagine where they came from. one is the love affair of the community should be left for the people to regulate themselves instead of trusting for legislation to regulate them. this is not an activist talking about the defense of marriage act but this is woodhall in the 1871. and so this was a time when men had total power and there was nothing they could do on her own. but these two actually managed to do it. and the other one is a topical to put a woman on trial for anything, and it's considered as a legitimate part of the defense. to make the most searching inquiry into this morality. this is not something we are currently talking about including domestic violence and being able to get a fair trial. so the reason is that i got involved is i never thought it would be so rip and read out of on the front page. they were for equal pay for equal work and we saw what happened this last week. the reason i went into it is because in 2008 everyone was talking about the possible wonder team of hillary clinton is and oh,. and i started reading this live that said it's been done before. there was virginia woodhall is in for douglas. and i was just astonished because i knew about woodhall, but i didn't know they had been as progressive. so then i started reading about her incredible sister and how they pulled themselves out of broad, and how they became not only the richest of the most famous women in america at that time. and i will tell you more about that later. >> tell us how you got the idea for your book and why you decided to write it in a. >> i never thought i would write a book about elizabeth taylor. my last book was about the jet propulsion laboratory and i've mostly been writing science articles. i found myself stuck in a vacation home with a bunch of children. and they really didn't have any idea. she knew her only through joan rivers upon fat jokes from the 1980s. and i was just aghast. and she knew she had some connection to film. especially the person she had in later life and a leader in that way. so the only thing for entertainment that we have as box sets of elizabeth taylor movies. so we thought, okay, it will be a camping night and we started watching chronological orders and we were absolutely blown away not just by the quality of the performances by the on lindsay feminist messages of her movies. and national velvet she challenged gender discrimination because of her gender and she poses as a male jockey and wins. exposing the pure bigotry of the exclusion of bigotry and this includes american tragedy. but i will have an opportunity to elaborate on this more. does basically no pregnant mistress, no american tragedy. so it's a woman having a right to her own body. and this includes a possession owned by a man as a spouse or rented as a hooker and she wrote notes on the mayor of her married lover's bedroom. anyone who is afraid of virginia wolf is about what happens to a woman. and this includes in this includes how women can express herself and her husband is unsuccessful and she can't have children. so i was amazed that i won't gap too long. and this includes my infantile friends and i were not rejecting 21st century ideas and so i started looking in the academy of motion picture arts and sciences library. so i latched onto was the content of american movies between 1934 and 1936. they held sway over over every word. the censors had seen this and tried to grind them out. and not the elizabeth taylor character, she asked for an abortion and had to be written on this about 12 times. to a degree that these actors had to communicate with telepathy. but suffice it to say that my suspicions were buttressed by the paperless trails left by the censors and the combination of those two things were what led me to produce the book. >> thank you. okay, one day when hillary clinton was making her first run for the president day, i had an epiphany. i was going through some of those typical women things, that work and my kid. and i thought, you know, we have experienced them of the biggest transformation in world history in the last 50 years. the revolutions in gender and sexuality and freedom. and i thought maybe there is a connection here. and this revolution and i jotted down this line perhaps that it hadn't been invented, american politics would be different today. and i thought it was a literary device, kind of metaphorical, not literally true. as many of you probably remember, the republicans convened an all-male panel to debate birth control. so i really appreciated it and so that is my book, which looks at the last 40 years of history and it has been driving our dysfunction and polarization than driving on insanity. and the real reason is the republican party has been captured who believe that sexual revolution, gay the civil rights are a mortal threat to american civilization may have been politically acting on these beliefs and i'm not saying that every republican is like this but the factions within the party. part of it is democrats and liberals who also misinterpreted public opinion and the ram stared and allowed a lot of this turning black the clock to happen. so i think that we are seeing a shift in that. but there's a lot of round to make up after use 40 years of rolling back these right. >> let me start by asking you a question. you immerse yourself in the early 19th 20th centuries. with seven of them even a word had been coined at that point? >> in fact i find it kind of upsetting when i see someone calling susan anthony a feminist because she was so urgently wanting only the vote. she was a single-minded person all she wanted was a vote from her sisters. and elizabeth cady stanton was really quiet a go-getter. she had gone right into the free love movement and all of the rest of the separatist were aghast that the sisters could go on and on in such feminist ways. they were trying to keep it just on the vote in the sisters said if all we do is reelect the same corrupt and dumb white males, there's no reason to get the vote. so they were unbelievably ahead of their time. so when you are talking about the women in this fight, that same flight was going on and it is identical in the mid-19th century. so the sisters were so far advanced that grant wanted to put them in the constitution and he said that we're not sure he wants as constitution. how about those other two along with them. [laughter] >> so they were incredibly of front about this. but they is the clergy, takes on a woman's worst enemy was a gynecologist. all anti-contraception. they were all just fiercely involved in this. and one of the thieves ways of this is that i have covered everything that we have been talking about. i covered gloria steinem and the whole movement and we saw the backlash at the time. she was able to convince women that if they had the equal rights and that is that they would end up passing to lose their husbands and their husbands would have to pay them alimony and we will have to have unisex bathrooms, which made urged as she was ever on a plane. [laughter] >> so i debated her and a woman who said she was there to protect the unborn child and i said how many of her friends will adopt a black baby and that's not the point and i said yes it is. please do have big fights. but what i wanted to say about this religious movement is today, and i'm sure you've covered because you are so smart, the money is there and you follow the money. the tea party, for us at the gift that keeps on giving because it annoys bite back at it. and i'm even tweeted everybody. all of these women, everything. every single one. as soon as the others do something they rattle it back in and so we have to fight them money. i mean, i have covered this and doctor betty should ever go to texas. but it is just horrible. [laughter] and they have, but the most to chromium off for abortion. the reason these women are my heroes is because they took such unbelievable changes and i will stop now, but i want to talk about when they were put into jail and when they blew the whistle on jury awards readers does situation. >> okay, jumping in on whether they were feminist, coincidently feminism was discovered in america 100 years ago this month. century magazine wrote that feminism is on everyone's tongue. if in the germ of our women and we must define it. we must understand it. and so what feminism was, it was imported from the french and it was to me in many ways against the susan d'antoni woman movement. we want to distinguish ourselves and they thought that they were fighting for legal birth control which was actually venture should end people were put in jail for revealing information about the. and that was kind of their spirit. i agree that the woodhall sisters were just amazing. i have been waiting for a new biography to be printed about these women. they were audacious. they start people as kind of, you know, charting a new human sacked. leaving behind the moralism and the sanctimoniousness of victorian women. so if you take a look at someone like elizabeth taylor and the very nature of what women are to be, not just the rules, it's no wonder that we have seen such resistance to accepting these changes. thousands of years of these roles for the women that really the space of half a century access, and it was completely changed. personally i look at this as the glass being half empty. i think we are on the cost of more amazing changes and we have the feminist movement to thank for it yet. but it's also these values that are now common sense throughout america. and as i also want you to address this as well. >> we have a lot of glass half-empty business. i'm glad you mentioned it. and that is one of the things made the women's movement complicated in the early part of the 20th century. was so closely linked with is temperance movement and the separating of these two movements i think was very important as well. just mentioning it. >> in some ways elizabeth taylor was, among other things, one of the first three letters. >> absolutely. there was a lot of erotic behavior. [laughter] matt and i don't think -- it wasn't like some priests having privately in a courtyard. it was the official radio station in the weekly newspapers. >> she had a fabulous response that is in your book. i'm trying to remember what she said. and i think that she really got her revenge with her underappreciated movie called the sandpiper where we have gone beyond and to make makes a decision to have a child out of wedlock. so she is this sort of emblem and kind of pantheistic. so very much linked to this and she, she manages to destroy the faith in the marriage of a protestant, which is about as close as you're going to get to a high church episcopalian minister. so it's a marvelous movie. and i think something some that appreciated at the time because they were such big stars. so one thing is you have to believe me. but it's often more than one week show a clip from the film and you don't have to trust me, which may be an obstacle for some math not at all. i wanted to ask you though, because she was born in 1942? >> is very true. okay, so she came of age in world war ii. so she was very much of the cohort of women who move through life as second wave feminism and as it became discussed and controversial and then changes were made and et cetera. so did elizabeth taylor and in her own life ever consider herself a feminist? did they ever talk about feminism or show any kind of awareness that these roles were, in fact, emblematic of the larger changes in culture? >> i think the fascinating thing about her is that directors saw things in her that only in much later life would she be able to identify in herself. these qualities, you know, you could be beautiful but you could also be very strong. she didn't have much of an education. she was a contract player from the age of 12 are sold on. she was educated at the little little red schoolhouse and she did not go to college. but she worked with some of the best directors in america and her character was leslie benedict and i don't know if you're familiar with that movie. >> the meantime you should see it immediately. it is an adaptation and you can probably see it on tmc. and it's about a woman from the east coast who marries this individual. so he really severely mistreated this individual because they are not u.s. citizens and the workers run these titanic cow ranches in texas. so feminism is a social justice movement. this character, leslie, is extraordinarily concerned with social justice. her husband tells her she cannot visit the community of mexican workers and instead of pushing that child away the way that some google might, she embraces the child and she forces the position who only tended this ranching community to address or make that child well and it's almost like and later life after she got sober, she became leslie benedict. all of her friends that were sick and many people in hollywood out of fear, she embraced him. and i have been long talking about a book that initially identified the aids virus in medical journals. and they agreed with this analogy. and this includes acknowledging this suffering. >> she wrote the same detail that she picked these rules on the concept had nothing to do with her. but i knew her when she was married to senator warner. >> well, let me tell you that when she sat there and said that i never knew senators could be so dull. [laughter] >> fried chicken and bourbon is a distraction. [laughter] >> i want to ask this question. seems like women get liberated and get liberated and then get liberated again, for instance, they went to work in droves in world war ii and then came home and the women were foes back into the home in this image of the blissful 1950s housewife to hold for a decade and a half or a and so do we have a wrong impression of how feminism has evolved? or is there always a backlash? we say that we won, but in fact there is this push back all the time now and in a lot of places like texas. if you are a young woman who needs an abortion, they don't get to have one. >> they have managed to close every plan parenthood clinic in mississippi. so i think the values of gender equality, equal civil rights for all women, people of all sexual orientations, it has one in mainstream america. only 7% of americans do not support the idea that women should have equal political rights as men. gay marriage is polling at about 60% now. but just because we live in a democracy and most everyone agrees with some thing or a super majority agrees with that, it does not mean that that is what the policy is. this is about politics. what i write about is how a small group of reactionaries are taking politics and joining school boards and getting involved at the precinct level, i worked over a trademark of 20 years to take over the republican party to a sense that even moderates in the republican party have to vote the way that the fundamentals one. so there is a vote on equal pay this week and all for republican women senators voted in at the very moderate bill. one of these women is kind of a wrong antiabortion right wing senator. and the other three are relatively moderate. but it has become a question of party loyalty in making it through the primaries that they have to vote with the tea party, which is really just the christian right rebranded. >> son of the thing that i think about as far as waves of feminism go, honestly there is a point feminism became much more into and cultural questions and questions of a violent area but at the time that feminism started kind of leaving electoral politics behind, women who i write about like the founder who want to be women and i think it was the female orgasm section of our body ourselves that she didn't want them to see. so these people decided we are going to get involved in the republican party. so while the democrats, the party democrats were kind of running scared about women's issues about the rights and a lot of feminist had turned her ask on electoral politics, the other side, the tiny minority really does not support women's equality, i think that the one in a political party and we have one end of public opinion. so if we take that next step to politics we will win in politics. but until we match these politics with our opinion, we are going to keep seeing the public policy going backwards. you look at the women who are running today. grimes is running against mcconnell, mcconnell has done a much more money. and there is the old cliché about he was an empty suit. and mcconnell calls her an empty dress and he,, quickly pull label a group because he had this hold and he is an and. so there are really so wonderful women running, but until you can get this, it's not going to work and pat schroeder said to me 20 senators is not enough we have to have 50% of the society. and 50 women senators. and then you're going to start seeing some top-down changes. and i just think that you have to be very realistic about it is what the public wants or not. it's the same thing with the nra. many people don't think the eu should have guns but the nra keeps getting both democrats and republicans reelected over and over again. so you have to follow the money and that's what we have to do more of her in. >> would you like to add something? >> nancy mentioned polling and it made me think of my students because my millennial students have very progressive attitude on most social issues and they need to be made aware of the things we take for granted can be taken away and. >> using that as a function of them being in california and in a relic liberal bubble? >> i think they take abortion rights for granted and i like showing up and assigning this so they can see the absolute horror of what a world look like without roe versus wade. you will be surprised how much more energetically political they become when they see what it looks like when the other side prevails. >> i covered abortion when it was illegal in 1939 and i can tell you that all of the people dying, i agree with you that younger people cannot imagine having that happen again. >> nancy, you write about how the christian right has been energized by women and so i'm wondering if echo the sentiments and if you could respond to it starting with nancy. women are sometimes their own worst enemies. >> women can be their own worst enemies. but i really don't think that we should expect all women to agree. so i strongly oppose the politics of these people that i call sexual fundamentalists. but they have a worldview that comes from a fundamentalist reading of this or evangelical protestantism. it's not that they are misogynist. but they believe that women's proper role is for his as a mother and a wife and have others like sarah palin who say if you can cover the mother and wife and then you can also be vice president, that's great. but it's also always premised upon the god-given role of women. and that is their view and if we want to understand what this political fight is about, we have to understand their view and try to, i guess i would say that i see them fairly political motivated. >> this is something that all the students were telling me about. and there is such amazing excitement about the idea of the first woman president and that is my next book, not the sequel to this book. and so keep an eye out for that in 2015. so i think that if we could have, you know, a discussion with these young people about this is what is motivating, then they get to decide. like most men and women in the generation, do we think that they should have equal roles and we like to see them having opportunity to be with their kids and men are struggling also with work-family balance. or do they want to share this view that there is a god-given role for men and women and that is what we are responding to. >> what do you think, are they their own worst enemies? >> i find myself going back to forever barbie. >> congratulations. and we have these required courses with concepts of gender and marketing. and also it follows me around in "the new york times" review. i thought i'll excited at the beginning of the review and i was compared a really with tolstoy and melville. but that hasn't developed. it came out that i am the herman melville of midcentury secs icons. [laughter] >> but what nancy was saying about the idea of a woman having to be a mother i think we should give it a tiny bit of credit to this 11.5-inch plastic doll when it came out. it's highly sexualized, no husband, and from the get-go, peer finale of worker. and the antithesis that taught them to be a mother and it is all about projecting your idealized adult life not nurturing a baby. it was very much an argument for the financial autonomy. so this thing, you know, creepy though it may be, they did plant the idea and i'm not sure if you could see her stand on her own 2 feet. but she could wobbled if i only without being held up by a man. [laughter] >> i had a totally different feeling about barbie. i didn't even want my daughter to have her. she had big chest and tiny waist and i thought she was antifeminist briefly. but on this business about women, it was a major situation with the sisters. and they wrote this scandal is article about henry beecher having an affair and as victoria said he speaks to 16 of his mistresses every sunday in church and they were put into jail by anthony comstock. and he was like okay, we will follow them and put them back and over in over and over again for what was a really big offense and absolutely joining that was herriot beecher stowe of uncle tom's cabin he wrote about the sisters who called them trams and wars and prostitutes. but catherine, and this is very the sort of martha stewart of her day, she was the person that told you how to be a housemate or and how to be good mother, the many steps to ironing her husband's shirts and she was an old spinster who had never been married and she didn't know anything about what she was writing and she was as individual. and she joins something like 500,000 women petitioning against the bow at the very same time as the others were. so there was always that kind of stand off and how dare you be so incredibly audacious. so the sad thing was that made them part of this. anthony comstock was a self-made man and he saw sin in everything, including medical books. as well as everything else. so there were some cartoons made and one was where he is standing of the woman next to him and saying your honor, this woman just gave birth to a naked baby. >> that was a situation where he then happened to make this with the federal law and made it tougher and he was against everything that all the best writers wrote an walt whitman and against george bernard shaw and he chased margaret sanger out of the country. and he said when you talk about the anti-movement to the women, i think he has had a steady backlash for the males and females and the women's movement in the 60s started because the antiwar movement was leaving the mouth, not letting them run anything in one of them said i got mad and tom hayden got off the plane and handed me his dirty laundry and said to clean it. and so we have had this back and forth for a long time. >> before we take questions, i would like to ask you a very current question that may not seem important, but i think it does get at something important of the culture. sheryl sandberg has launched a campaign with a girl scout to ban the word bossy as an adjective that is used for girls. and i'm curious as to whether or not you think this is an attack on language. >> what about halsey? [laughter] >> i actually think that we should embrace this work. if you have any opinion on that? [laughter] >> that is a good idea. >> unbelievably -- well, it's not unbelievable because everything is believable i'm just beginning to shake this up for speech that i have to give on sexism and politics. and the twisting of the words. a man is ambitious, great. a woman is ambitious -- it's like, oh. you can take the simplest word and put a connotation on and it goes on and on. i expect to see the word stride and come out at some point when hillary speaks. so if there. >> i want to urge anyone who has a question to please come on up. the microphone is here. >> i also feel that women who have this take a severe beating in the culture. and i have endured and i would like to speak out against that terrible prejudice. >> especially if they are single. [laughter] >> yes, exactly. please go ahead. >> hello, i write for revolution newspaper and i have a comment and a question. today is a national day of emergency action in their protests going on around the country this afternoon. so we have to confront and i think it's a poisonous idea even to explain what you meant if you look in the loss, women are being held backwards and also in this country in the last three years, so many restrictions. 47,000 women dying every year around the world from illegal self induced abortions and the mainstreaming of photography, it's getting more and more violent areas that we have a question? >> yes, i said i had a common question. >> people don't notice. >> okay, we'd like to hear your question. >> including to my generation, they don't know that. >> it's great hearing you, keep coming. >> i wish that there were more of your cogeneration. let's give this one a megaphone. >> so i will try to be brief. ultimately it will take a different revolution in a different system to and patriarchy and the violent degradation of women around the world and we can talk about that. but we do need of mass resistance. the idea that hillary, who is always conciliate it with christian fascism is going to do anything and we should rely on is that democrats are part of what has poisoned his and paralyze my demonstration and generation. but i do think people have to get out in the streets and fight. that is a lesson from previous generations it's another women that i wrote about, they were girls at the time and i happened to be very young. they had men doing everything in the world for them. they played that game the only game possible, but she got up and gave a famous speech after she was the first woman to address congress or in she said if they don't go with us, it revolution and the whole hall just burst of. so there are those moments and there are those people who will do it. but i have been very concerned about complacency and women in your age group. it can have an impact. i was talking to my 13-year-old granddaughter yesterday and she was saying my friend wants to be a doctor, i think i'm i want to be a lawyer. it's ingrained in them that they don't have to fight for very much. >> we did go down in mississippi and a lot of women are currently self inducing abortions. and they don't actually know everything, but i have a question based on the statement. when you call for revolution, what you interpret that to mean that you think that is a good idea? any of you? >> i'm a historian by training. i have studied a lot of revolutions and i think that we have learned that there are some revolutions in history that work on a do not think that we are in a revolutionary age. and i don't think that we need a revolution to accomplish a lot of what needs to happen in the united states plane and simple. >> i think it is a hard road. and what does the would actually mean. my concept, as i keep repeating, it is a revolution within. there just has to be more women elected. because that changes things. even you mentioning those for. i was talking to one of the women senators and she says that we work across the aisle and we were the ones who got congress to not have the government -- you know, not fold of the government. the women actually did it to work together. so i feel like i understand your idea of where hillary has turned this in many ways that i don't find comfortable. but i think she would be forced as if she was the first woman president to be with the women's issues, at least. i really do. >> i still don't have the energy for a revolution anymore. it really has to be in the hands of your generation. so i don't think i have enough estrogen for that one. [laughter] >> here here. [laughter] >> this is my dilemma. i'm 70 years old. i was of the free speech movement in all the movements. and i totally appreciate the way that you feel. the problem is i don't know how much longer i have. because before i die would really like to see a woman president. >> do any of you think that there could be a female candidate for president who is not severely compromised? >> elizabeth warren. >> i live in washington dc and i have been told that she is really laying low to see whether hillary runs or not. >> eclair underwood from house of cards was not a fictional character, i don't know whether i'd want her in the white house or not. but i bet she could get there. >> that's what i mean by severely compromised. >> what she has done. okay. so finally i would like to return to an old question. you particularly women who came of age in the 70s on the floor. and i don't think it ever occur to them that the way that premises had a connotation that it was something that they would be uncomfortable identifying themselves with. until you are in a classroom. and what when you hear that i am not a feminist but, with do you have a reaction or a rant or anything like that? >> i assign them a place in the sun. >> it's interesting when you say that. but back in the 70s i said that i wanted to grow up in this way. and it was an upper-class movement and a middle-class movement, as it was during the korean timeframe. the sisters came from this. and so they were looked upon -- to associate with them was a problem. so i said i want to go to detroit and i wanted to start this. ..

Related Keywords

Vietnam , Republic Of , Mexico , New York , United States , Venice Beach , California , Occidental College , Texas , Hollywood , Virginia , Syria , Washington , District Of Columbia , France , Mississippi , Ukraine , Americans , America , French , Mexican , American , Herman Melville , Pat Schroeder , Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Elizabeth Warren , Frederick Douglass , Leslie Benedict , Los Angeles , Margaret Sanger , Walt Whitman , Herriot Beecher Stowe , Gloria Steinem , Tom Hayden , Barack Obama , Elizabeth Taylor , Sarah Palin , Robin Carrion , Henry Beecher , Sheryl Sandberg , Anthony Comstock , Martha Stewart , Myra Macpherson , George Bernard Shaw , Hillary Clinton , Susan Anthony , Fidel Castro ,