Theedd4m struggle for, to use of the arabic words, karama dignity throughout the region. This isnt going away, and there are many historical events that are going to unfold in the years and decades to come that i think are going to rock these regimes or induce them to come to terms with the demands for dignity, accountability and popular sovereignty. So were going to have to do another edition of this book, mark. Thats the one thing i think we can say for sure. [laughter] mark, my coeditor, thank you very much. All of the staff at the journal of democracy, the National Endowment for democracy and our three panelists, thank you all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] booktv is on facebook. Like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers. Watch videos and get uptodate information on events. Facebook. Com booktv. From the 2014 Los Angeles Times festival of books, a Panel Discussion on feminism. Its a little over an hour. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] well, my clock says 12 30, so why dont we get started. Welcome to the Los Angeles Times book festival. I am a columnist whose work mostly runs online these days. I hope you can check me out outa times. Com local abcarian. This is the evolution of feminism panel, so if thats not what you came to hear, youre definitely in the wrong place. [laughter] i have a few housekeeping issues to attend to. I want to ask you to please silence your cell phones. You probably dont need to be told that. There is a book signing following the session so you can continue the conversation with our authors afterwards in signing area five. Personal recording of the sessions is not allowed. We are also being broadcast live on cspan, fyi. And i was supposed to Say Something about earthquake safety. I think the drill is if you feel an earthquake, please leaf calmly. Leave calmly. [laughter] and put your hands over your head. [laughter] i want you also to know that at the end of the session, about 1015 minutes before the end, we will be taking questions from the audience. There is a mic set up in one of the aisles, and if youre immobile, just raise your hand, we can bring a mic to you. Let me start with myra macpherson. She spent many years writing for the washington post. She has interviewed serial killers, celebrities, International Leaders like fidel castro, and when she was an infant, she interviewed president kennedy. [laughter] a series that she wrote for the post on Vietnam Veterans led her to write her groundbreaking book, longtime passing vietnam and the haunted generation, one of the first books to examine the insidious problem of ptsd. In 2006 she wrote all governments lie, the life and times of rebel journalist i. F. Stone. And she has also delved into intimate topics. In she came to live out loud, macpherson witnessed the last three years of a young womans life who died of breast cancer. Her new book is the scarlet sisters sex, suffrage and scandal in the gilded age. Its a biography of the pro tofeminist victoria woodhall and her extraordinary sister whose escapades in the 1870s might shock even the most liberated contemporary women. This rags to riches tale of women born into poverty, they went into the familys snake oil trade, literally, before breaking free of their parents and moving to new york where they became stock brockers, free love advocates, suffragists and newspaper publishers. And if you think barack obama and Hillary Clinton are political pioneers, consider this victoria woodhall was the first woman to be nominated for president in 1872. Finish her running mate . Frederick douglass. M. G. Lord is a journalist, cultural critic and highly regarded teacher in this schools masters professional writing program. For many years she was a syndicated political cartoonist and columnists based at newsday and is a regula contributor to the New York Times regular contributor to the New York Times book review. She is the author of astroturf the private life of rocket science, a family memoir about cold war aerospace culture. But she became a true literary celebtive after she wrote the unauthorized biography of a real doll. [laughter] which examines how a fantastically sexual doll that was inspired by a jokey, erotic knickknack held to hold 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 gaze to another curvy American Icon in her new book, the accidental feminist how Elizabeth Taylor raised our consciousness, and we were too distracted by her beauty to notice. Here she argues that taylor was more than just a fine actress, that she was an unwitting role model for feminist causes and ideals. Whether posing as a poi to Ride National poi to Ride National velvet, as an unwed mother or the boozy, unhappy academic life in whos afraid of virginia wolf. And this was all, of course, before she was the first lonely celebrity voice to take up the fight against aids. I think i also need to note, m. G. , that you are cowriting a commission by l. A. Opera about the 110 freeway on its 70th anniversary. [laughter] thats talent. Cal state long beach and is currently teaching a course on women and american politics at occidental college. She has also been a visiting scholar at the ucla center for the study of women and the Ucla Institute for research on labor and employment. Her books include the reconstruction of american liberalism, 18651914, and the 1990s, a social history. Professor cohen has also written essays for the guardian, the new republic, the l. A. Times, playboy and rolling stone. 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 comments that are always right on the money. In her new book,tily yum the politics of sex in america, professor cohen analyzes the counterrevolution that was unleashed by the sexual revolution and its persistent influence on politics. She explores why and how the christian right has wielded such an extraordinary influence on issues like gay rights, feminism, contraception, apportion, of course abortion, of course, the fights and battles still rage on. The sexual counterrevolution, she argues, has been going on for more than 40 years thanks to a small, politicallysophisticated minority. It is no coincidence, she writes, that the politics of sex, womens rights and gay marriage has erupted at the very moment when the gop is farther to the right than any Political Party in American History since the time of slavery. So we have come a long way, baby. Of course, most of us arent smoking anymore, at least not cigarettes. I live in venice beach, so [laughter] 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 whats happening now. And its fascinating to me that each generation finds a new iteration of, essentially, the same battle. Some things really never change. Were still fighting about equal pay, affordable child care, the balance between work and home life, whether women can do everything that men can do. Now were discussing the battlefield instead of the race track. Women are still dismissed as jezebels or sluts sister boldly claiming their by boldly claiming their sexuality. Women are still battling. So i wondered if each of you can start us off by giving a short maybe 24 minute explanation of what exactly inspired you to write your book. And lets just go in order starting with myra. Oh, i always hate this, starting first. [laughter] well, before i do that since you really covered so much, i just want to quote two quotes from, and have you imagine where it came from. One is the love affairs of the community should be left for the people to regulate themselves instead of trusting this was woodhall in 1871. This was a time when men had total power. There was nothing that a woman could do on her own, but these two absolutely managed to do it. And the other one which is again is put a woman on trial for anything, it is considered as a legitimate part of the defense to make the most searching inquiry into her sexual morality. Now, this is not somebody currently talking about the problems of rape and Domestic Violence and being able to get a fair trial. It was back in 1871. And they, and the reason i got involved with these sisters never thinking they would be so rip and read out of the front page. I mean, they were for equal pay for equal work, and we saw what happened this last week. The reason i went into it was because, precisely because in 2008 everybody was talking about the possible wonder team of Hillary Clinton and obama. And i started reading this tiny little squibb that said its been done before. It was virginia woodhall and frederick douglass. And i was just astonished, because i had known of woodhall, but i didnt know that they had been that progressive. And then i started reading about her incredible sister and found out how they pulled themselves out of absolute fraud. I mean, they were fraudulent fortune tellers living a horrible childhood to become not only the richest, but the most famous women many america at the time. And ill tell you more about that later. Tell us how you got the idea for your book, why you decided to write it, m. G. Oh, well, i never thought id write a book about Elizabeth Taylor. The my last book was about the jet to pulse laboratory. [laughter] jet propulsion laboratory. And id mostly been writing science articles. But what happened was i found myself stuck in a vacation house in palm springs with a bunch of children, genx, geny. They didnt know who Elizabeth Taylor they really had no idea. Genx knew her only through joan rivers appalling fat jokes in the 1980s, you know, more chins than a chinese phonebook. I was aghast. And geny, geny knew she had some vague connection to film, but mostly they knew her as the person she was in later life, an aids philanthropist and, you know, a leader in that way. Anyway, stuck in this house the only thing we had for entertainment is boxed sets of Elizabeth Taylor movie, you know . [laughter] so we thought, oh, all right, you know, itll be a campy night. And we started watching in chronological order, and we were absolutely blown away not just by the quality of her performances, but by the unrelenting feminist messages of her movies. In National Velvet her character, velvet brown, age 12, challenges jebledder discrimination gender discrimination. Excluded from an important horse race because of her gender, she poses as a male jockey and wins, exposing the pure bigotry of the exclusion of women. Her next big one . A place in the sun, 1951, is an abortion rights movie. Its an adaptation of theodore dreisers an american tragedy. But just, i will have an opportunity to elaborate on this more. But, basically, no pregnant mistress, no american tragedy. [laughter]. Eyj a5 butterfield eight is a movie about a woman having a right to her own body, not adhering to the conventions of 50s era marriage where a woman was a possession. Either owned by man as a spouse or rented as a hooker. She writes no sale in lipstick on the mirror of her married lovers bedroom. And even whos afraid of virginia wolf is very much about what happens to a woman. And, in fact, both a man and a woman locked into with a marriage where the only way the woman can express herself is through her husbands career or children. And her husband is unsuccessful, and she cant have children. So just, so i was amazed by this onslaught, and i wont yap too long. But i wanted to make sure that my friends and i werent concern my infantile friends and i werent projecting 21st century ideas onto mid 20th century material, so i started looking in the academy of Motion Picture arts and sciences library, and what i latched on to were the well, just a little bit of, briefly, the content of american movies between 1934 and 1936 was entirely controlled by the production code administration. They held sway over every word in those movies. And all the things that my friends and i had seen in the movies, the censors had seen and tried to grind them out. The scene in which the Shelley Winters character asked for an abortion had to be rewritten about 12 times. I mean, to a degree these actors had to communicate through telepath think. Telepathy. But suffice it to say that my suspicions were buttressed by the paper trail left by censors, and the combination of those two things were what led me to produce the book. Thank you. Nancy . So one day when Hillary Clinton was making her first run for the presidency i had an epiphany. I was going through some of those typical women things, balancing work, balancing my kids, and i thought, you know, weve experienced some of biggest transformations in World History in the last 50 years. The revolutions in gender and in sexuality, in freedom. And i thought, you know, maybe theres a connection between politicaltily yum delirium and this revolution that upended the most intimate relations that we all have. And so i jotted down this line perhaps if the pill hadnt been invented, american politics would be very different today. And, you know, honestly i thought it was a literary device, kind of metaphorical, not literally true. And then the week that the book came out in 2012, as many of you probably remember, the republicans convened an allmale panel to debate Birth Control including at least one celibate with, okay . So, you know, thank, republicans, thanks for the books promotion. I really appreciated it. [laughter] anyway, so thats my book looks at, you know, the last 40 years of our history to see how what i call the sexual counterrevolution has been driving our dysfunction, driving our polarization, driving our insanity. And, you know, as robin mentioned, the real reason for this is that the Republican Party has been captured by a group of sexual fundamentalists who honestly believe that womens rights, gay civil rights, the sexual revolution are a mortal threat to american civilization. And they have been politically acting on these beliefs. Im not in any sense saying that every republican is like this. It has to do with the factions within the party. But part of it is its not just republicans. It was democrats and liberals also who misinterpreted public opinion, overreacted to election losses and ran scared and allowed a lot of this turning back the clock to happen. Now, i do think were seeing a shift in that, but theres a lot of ground to make up after this, these 40 years of rolling back these rights. Myra, let me start by asking you a question. You immerse yourself in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Was feminism even a word . Had it been coined at that point . No, it was not. And at that, i find it kind of upsetting when i see somebody calling susan b. Anthony a feminist because she was so urgently wanting only the vote. She was a single minded person, and all she wanted was the vote. And the sisters and elizabeth decadety stanton who was really quite sexy, you wouldnt know it to look at her. She was very heavy and had six kids, but she had had this love affair, and so she was right into the free love movement. All the rest of the suffragists were aghast that these sisters could go on about in such feminist ways. They were trying to keep it just on the vote. And the sisters said, hey, if all we do is reelect the same corrupt and dumb white males, theres no reason to get the vote. They were unbelievably ahead of their time. But when you were talking about the women in the fight, that same fight was going on in the mid, its identical in the mid 19th century with the religious right. And the sisters were so far advanced. The man who was running with grant wanted to put god in the constitution, and were they said were not sure he wants to be in the constitution. [laughter] and how about those other two along with him. And so they were incredibly fun about this, but they fought this clergy, and they thought the most, a womans worst enemy was the gynecologist. They were all anticontraception, they were all just fiercely involved in this. And the, one of the few joys and i mean few of being older is that i covered everything you were talking about. I covered Gloria Steinem, i covered the whole movement. And we saw the backlash, and we saw it was Phyllis Schlafly at the time. She was able to convince women that if they had the equal rights amendment, they would end up having to lose their husbands, their husband would thereafter have to pay them alimony, she said well have to have univex path rooms unisex bathrooms which made we wonder if she was ever on a plane. [laughter] and i debated her, she was there to protect the rights of an unborn child, and i said how many of your friends will adopt black baby . Thats not the point. I said, yes, it is. So we used to have these big fights. But what i really wanted to say about this religious movement, the money is there. You know, you follow the money. The Koch Brothers, everybody else. The tea party for us is a gift that chemos on giving keeps on giving, because we can always fight back at it. And, you know, all the women im even tweeting, everybody. [laughter] anyway, on the internet you have all of these women writing everything. Emilys list. Every single one. A as soon as coke brothers do something Koch Brothers do something, they rattle it pack in. And we have to fight the money. Wendy davis is, i mean, ive covered texas politics. God forbid you should ever go there, but anyway finish laugh laugh [laughter] its just horrible. And theyve just come up with the most draconian abortion law. And the reason these women are my heroes is because they took such unbelievable chances. They