theedd4m struggle for, to use of the arabic words, karama dignity throughout the region. this isn't 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 we're going to have to do another edition of this book, mark. that's the one thing i think we can say for sure. [laughter] mark, my co-editor, 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 up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> from the 2014 los angeles times festival of books, a panel discussion on feminism. it's a little over an hour. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> well, my clock says 12:30, so why don't 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 that's not what you came to hear, you're 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 don't 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 c-span, 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 10-15 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 you're 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 woman's life who died of breast cancer. her new book is "the scarlet sisters: sex, suffrage and scandal in the gilded age." it's a biography of the pro to-feminist 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 family's 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 school's 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 critic's 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 who's 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 co-writing a commission by l.a. opera about the 110 freeway on its 70th anniversary. [laughter] that's 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, 1865-1914, 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, politically-sophisticated minority. it is no coincidence, she writes, that the politics of sex, women's 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 aren't 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 what's happening now. and it's fascinating to me that each generation finds a new iteration of, essentially, the same battle. some things really never change. we're 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 we're 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 2-4 minute explanation of what exactly inspired you to write your book. and let's 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 it's been done before. it was virginia woodhall and frederick douglass. and i was just astonished, because i had known of woodhall, but i didn't 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 i'll 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 i'd write a book about elizabeth taylor. the my last book was about the jet to pulse laboratory. [laughter] jet propulsion laboratory. and i'd 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, gen-x, gen-y. they didn't know who elizabeth taylor -- they really had no idea. gen-x knew her only through joan rivers appalling fat jokes in the 1980s, you know, more chins than a chinese phonebook. i was aghast. and gen-y, gen-y 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, it'll 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. it's an adaptation of theodore dreiser's 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 lover's bedroom. and even who's 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 husband's career or children. and her husband is unsuccessful, and she can't have children. so just, so i was amazed by this onslaught, and i won't yap too long. but i wanted to make sure that my friends and i weren't concern my infantile friends and i weren't 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, we've 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 there's 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 hadn't 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 all-male panel to debate birth control including at least one celibate with, okay? so, you know, thank, republicans, thanks for the book's promotion. i really appreciated it. [laughter] anyway, so that's 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 women's rights, gay civil rights, the sexual revolution are a mortal threat to american civilization. and they have been politically acting on these beliefs. i'm 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 it's 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 we're seeing a shift in that, but there's 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 wouldn't 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, there's 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, it's 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 we're -- they said we're 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 woman's worst enemy was the gynecologist. they were all anti-contraception, 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 we'll 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? that's 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 -- i'm even tweeting, everybody. [laughter] anyway, on the internet you have all of these women writing everything. emily's 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, i've covered texas politics. god forbid you should ever go there, but anyway finish laugh laugh -- [laughter] it's just horrible. and they've 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 were -- i'll stop now, but i want to talk about when they were put in jail and arrested for on acceptty when they blew the whistle on henry ward beecher -- [inaudible] >> go ahead. >> i just want to jump in here on the question of were they feminists? coincidentally, feminism was discovered in america a hundred years ago this month. century magazine wrote, you know, feminism is on everyone's tongue. it's in the germ of our, you know, the germ of our women. [laughter] we must, we must define it, we must understand it. and what feminism was, it was imbolterred from the french by greenwich village bohemians to mean, you know, it was in many ways against the susan b. anthony type of what they called the woman movement. we want to distinguish ourselves. they fought for heel birth control -- legal birth control, censorship and send it through the mail. people were put in jail for mailing information about birth control. and it was kind of their spirit, you know? i agree with the woodhall sisters who are just amazing, you guys. i've been waiting for a new biography about these women, so thank you. they were audacious. they struck people as kind of, you know, charting a new human sex, a new, you know, leaving behind the moralism and the sanctimoniousness of victorian women, you know? and if you take that and look at someone like liz taylor and you think about how the very nature of what women are to be not just roles, it's no wonder that we've seen such resistance to accepting these changes. these were, you know, thousands of years of these roles for women that in really the space of half a century were completely changed. and, you know, personally i look at this, you know, kind of glass half empty, you know? i think we're on the cusp of even more amazing changes, and we have the feminist movement to thank for it. but it's also these values are now common sense. throughout america. i mean, we've won. >> can i -- >> and i also want you to address -- [inaudible] whether elizabeth -- >> the glass half empty business. i'm glad you mentioned glass, because that was one of the things that made the women's movement complicated in the early part of the 20th century. it was so closely linked with the -- [inaudible] movement because men would get drunk and beat up their wives. and the separating of these two movements, i think, was very important. just mentioning it. >> well, i wanted to -- >> in some ways elizabeth taylor was, among other thing, she was one of the first free lovers. >> oh, absolutely. the vatican accused her of erotic vagrancy. [laughter] and i don't think the vatican would like some priest chatting privately in a courtyard. it was the official radio station and the weekly newspaper. >> but she had a fabulous response to that that's in your book, and i'm trying to remember what she said. something about the pope. >> she asked, can i see the pope but i think she really got a revenge with an underappreciated movie called the sandpiper where we've gone beyond the whole issue of abortion, and she makes a decision to have a child out of wedlock, and she -- i mean, it really, she is this sort of emblem of, i mean, she's openly, the character is openly atheistic, kind of actually pantheistic. and because of her physical appearance, i mean, very much linked to sort of the ancient goddess cult. and she, she manages to destroy the faith and the marriage of a, you know, of a protestant which is about as close as you're going to get, of a high church episcopalian minister played by burton. it was a marvelous moviement one that was not appreciated at the time because they were such big stars. you just saw -- one of the things i usually like when i give a talk like this is you have to believe me -- [laughter] but it's often more effective when i can just show a clip from the film, and you see it and hear it yourself and you don't have to trust me, which may be an obstacle for some of you. >> not at all. she was born in, what, 1942? no, no, 1932. so she was very much of the cohort of women who moved through life, second wave feminism, you know, became discussed and controversial and then changes were made, etc. .. some of the best directors in america. her character in giant, i don't know if you're familiar with this movie, if you're not -- >> give us a synopsis. >> you should see it immediately. it's an adaptation and i think you can probably see it on tnt. it's an adaptation, much better than the novel about a woman from the east coast who marries -- she marries rock hudson but he's racist. he really severely mistreats the mexicans because they are not u.s. citizens. mexican works on his gigantic cattle ranch in texas. feminism is a social justice movement. this character, leslie, is extraordinarily concerned with social justice. her husband tells her she can't do this, the community of mexican workers and she defies him. she finds a sick child, and instead pushing a child away the way that some people might, she embraces the child and she forces the physician who only tended the euro-american ranching community to address, to make that child well. it's almost seems like in later life after she got sober, she became leslie benedict. all of her gay friends who are sick and many people in hollywood out of fear were pushing them away, she embraced them. i have to longer to in the book with michael who is rock hudson's doctor who initially identified the aids virus in medical journals, and he kind of agreed with this analogy of leslie benedict because it wasn't just raising money. it was showing, it was not, it was forcing the mainstream community to acknowledge both the humanity and the suffering of the people. >> could ask a question? my feeling is that the real feminist and all that was an intensely famous woman and she wrote the book that giant came from. do you feel, one little anecdote, the second am asking, do you feel she picked of these roles? because the writing and the background, the concept had nothing to do with her. but i knew her when she was married to senator warner. >> not a bright light. >> let me tell you. let me tell you your chi sat there and she said, i never knew senators could be so dull. [laughter] >> at least she had fried chicken and bourbon. >> mostly the bourbon. >> i want to ask this question of nancy. it seems like women deliberated, then i'm liberated, then liberated again. they went to work in droves in world war ii and then came home. the women were forced back into home and the image of the blissful 1950 housewife to call for a decade and a half until baby came along with the feminism mistake. to have a wrong impression about feminism has evolved? or is there just always a backlash quechee say we won but, in fact, it was pushed back all the time. in a lot of places like texas, you're a poor young woman who needs an abortion, they don't have one. >> every planned parenthood clinic in mississippi -- [inaudible] >> let me clarify when i say we they one. i think the valley of gender equality, civil rights, equal civil rights for all women, for people of all sexual orientati orientation, has won in mainstream america but if you look at poland, 7% of americans -- polling. 7% of americans don't support the idea that women should have equal political social and economic rights as men. gay marriage is polling at about 60% now. but just because we live in a democracy and most everybody agrees with something or a super majority agrees with it, does it mean that's what the policy is. this is about politics, right? what i write about is how a very small group of reactionaries, through taking politics very seriously, by joining like school boards and getting involved at the precinct level, i worked over a period of 20 years to take over the republican party to a sense that even moderates in the republican party have to vote the way the sexual fundamentals want. so there was a vote on equal pay this week, and all for republican women senators voted against the equal pay law. it's a very moderate bill. one of the women is kind of a strong antiabortion right wing senator. the other three are relatively moderate. has it become a question of party loyalty, of making it to the primaries that they have to vote with the tea party, which is really just the christian right rebranded. so one of the things i think about this question about the ways of feminism, honestly, there was a point when feminism became much more interested in cultural questions, sexual violence very important, but at the time feminism started kind of leaving electoral politics behind, women who i write about like the founder of women who want to be women, who is fighting against the equal rights amendment, who hate -- who hid feminist books under her bed so her nieces wouldn't see the pornography. these people decide we're going to get involved in republican party. and so while the democrats, you know, party democrats were kind of running scared about women's issues, about gay rights, and a lot of feminists had turned their backs on electoral politics, the other side in a tiny minority that really does not support women's equality in the sense that think most people in this room think about it, they turn to any political party. what i'm saying is we have one in the public battle opinion and we take that next step into politics, we will win in politics. but until we match our kind of politics without opinion, we are going to keep seeing the public policy going backwards. spent but look at the women who are running today. grimes is running against mcconnell. mcconnell has gotten so much more money. there's the old cliché, i've covered five presidential campaigns, the old cliché about it was a smart he was an empty seat. mcconnell does this date and calls for an empty dress. no, he practically is bulletproof because he has this hold and he's an incumbent. the same thing with wendy davis. there are really smart, wonderful women running but into you can get the backing and the money, it's not going to work. as pat schroeder who was the longest will in congress say to me, 20 senators, nina, is not enough. we have to have come we are 50% of the saudi. we have to have 50 women senators. and then you're going to start seeing some top down changes. i just think you have to be very realistic about whether, what the public wants or not. it's the same thing with the nra. many people don't think you should have guns but the nra keeps getting both democrats and republicans reelected over and over again. so we have to follow the money and that's what we have to do more of. >> m. gee, did you want to add something? >> i want to -- what was -- nancy mentioned polling, and it may be think of my students because my millennial students have very progressive attitudes on most social issues. but i think they need to be made aware that the things that we take for granted can be taken away. i like -- >> do think that is a function of in the in california and and they liberal bubble, or being young and -- >> for instance, they take abortion rights for granted. and i like showing up. i like so they can see the absolute horror of what the world looks like without roe v. wade. you would be surprised how much more energetically political they become when they see what it looked like when the other side prevailed. >> i covered abortion when it was illegal in 1969, and i can tell you the coathanger pictures, all of that, people dying, total reality and i agree with you totally that younger people can't imagine having that ever happen again. >> nancy, you write about how the christian right has been energized by women, phyllis schlafly and others, so i wonder if i throw out a sentence, i would've each of you could respond to it starting with nancy, women are sometimes women's own worst enemies. >> okay. i'm first? >> not to put you on the spot. >> i think women can be women's own worst enemies, but i really don't think we should expect all women to agree. i strongly oppose the politics of these people i call social fundamentalists, but they have a worldview that comes from basically a fundamentalist reading of their religion with its orthodox catholic or evangelical protestantism, that it's not that they are anti-women. it's not that they are misogynist. they believe that women's proper role is first as a mother and a wife. you have one like cert payload, if you can cover the mother and wife and then you can also be vice president, great. but it's always premised on this is the god-given role of women. now, that's their view and i think 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 to millennials i actually see them fairly politically motivated. it was apparently like a stampede to get into see hillary clinton at ucla literally a stampede, all the students, i was there covering all the students telling me about it. it was an amazing assignment about the idea of a first woman president. and by the way, that's my next book, that's the sequel to this book. keep an eye out for that in 2015. so i think if we can 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 millennial generation think that women and men should have equal roles and we would like to see men having more opportunity to be with the kids. and men are struggling also with work-family balance but i think that's where they are. or do they want to share this view that as a god-given role for men and women and that's a we must follow through on lies? i think we win by having that debate. >> what do you think, our women women's own worst enemies? >> in order to respond i find myself going back to for ever bob bray -- barbie. it's still thought in four required courses at the cinema school in courses that have to do with concepts of gender in the marketing. and also it follows me around, in "the new york times" review of the elizabeth taylor book, i got all excited at the beginning of the review. i was compared to tolstoy, mark twain and melville. but then as it developed they cannot that i am the herman melville of mid century sex icons. [laughter] but what nancy was saying about the idea of a woman having to be a mother first and foremost i think we are to give a tiny bit of credit to that repulsive 11.5-inch plastic doll which was a revolutionary toy, barbara, in 1969 when it came out because highly sexualized, no husband, and from the get go, paraphernalia for a career. barbee was the antithesis of the dolls, the baby dolls that taught baby girls to nurture and be a mother. it was all about protecting, your idealized adult life onto a grown woman not nurturing a baby. it was very similar in fact to something like sex and the single girl which was -- despite its prose was very much an argument for women's sexual and financial autonomy. and this thing, creepy though it may be, did plant the idea that -- i'm not sure if you can stand on her own two feet, but she could wobble defiantly on her own feet without being held up by a man. [laughter] >> i had a totally different feeling about barbie. i did not might daughter to have her. she had big kids and skinny waist. i thought she was anti-feminism briefly. but this was about women being their own worst enemy. it was major, the two sisters, as i said, they wrote this scandalous article about henry ward beecher having an affair and dance 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 -- he just followed them and put them back in over and over again for what was a really small a fence, and absolutely joy that, of course, whether to beecher sisters who wrote -- harriet who wrote uncle tom's cabin wrote about the sisters, called the entrance and horse and prostitutes. by katherine, and this is very funny to me, catherine was the sort of martha stewart of our day. she was the person who told you how to be a house maker, how to be a good mother, the many steps to ironing your husbands shirts and she was an old spinster. she had never been married. she'd know anything she was writing about. she had never had children and she joins something like 5000 women petitioning against the vote at the very same time when the others were. so there was always that kind of standoff i think between, sometimes it had a religious connotation, but also so incredibly audacious. this comstock, the sad thing about what the sisters were able to do was turn around and made him a hero. his name was anthony comstock. he was sort of a self-made, you know, vice czar. he saw sent a medical books speed of light kenneth starr? >> exactly. exactly. and everything else. there were some cartoons made. one where he's standing up with the next who in any look at the judge and he says, your honor, this woman just gave birth to a naked baby. [laughter] but that was a situation where he can happen to make -- going back to point of view. he got the federal law and made obscenity tougher and he was against everything that all the best writers wrote, was against walt whitman and against george bernard shaw, and he chased margaret sanger out of the country and forced a major abortionist to commit suicide. and he stayed in our life and. so when you talk about the anti-movement to the women, there i think has been a steady backlash both for males and the most. you have to remember and i'm sure it's in your book, that the women's movement in the '60s started because the antiwar movement males were just leaving them out. they were not letting them run anything and one of them said i got mad when tom hayden got off the plane and handed me his dirty laundry and said, clean it. and so we've had this back and forth for a long time. >> before we take questions i do want to ask you a very card question that may not seem important but i think it does get at something interesting in the culture. sheryl sandberg a facebook has launched this campaign with a girl scout had to ban the word bossy as an adjective for girls. i'm really curious what you think this is an orwellian attack on language or ball z. -- ball z.? [laughter] >> i should think we should embrace bossy. i think we need to reevaluate but i think it was a social media stumble, not orwellian. orwellian. >> how about you, any opinions of? >> how does tina fey weigh in on this? >> bossy pants. >> we will get on the. maybe we should tweet at her and asked her. >> good idea. >> unbelievably come it's not unbelievable, anything is believable but the words, i'm just beginning to shape this up for speech i have to give on sexism in politics, and the twisting of the word, a man is ambitious, great, a woman is ambitious, you know. even take the simplest word and put a connotation on it. it goes on and on. i expect to see the word strident to come out at some point in hillary's speech. >> i want to urge anybody who has a question to please, the microphone is over here. >> i also feel that women who have more than one cat take a severe beating in this culture. [laughter] and i myself have endured it and i would like to speak out against that terrible prejudice. [laughter] [applause] >> especially if they are single. >> yes, exactly. so go ahead. >> hi. i write for revolution or newspaper, and neither, and a question. actually today is a national day of emergency action around abortion and there's protest going on across the country this afternoon. look, we have to confront and i really i think it's a poisonous idea that even to explain what you meant, it's a profound, either profound disagreement. if look at both in people's thinking and in the laws, women around the world are being held backwards. but then also in this country in the last few years, many restrictions against abortion. 47,000 women die every year around the world from illegal self induced abortions, and the mainstreaming of pornography, 11 years old is the average age boys watch. east timor and more violent speed do you have a question? >> id. i said i have a comment and a question. know, look, because people don't know there's. >> okay. we would like to hear your question. >> including my generation doesn't know this and younger. >> it's great hearing from you. keep coming. here's the -- >> actually i wish there were more of your cogeneration in the audience to hear. let's give someone a megaphone. >> i have one. okay, so i will frame a question and i'll try to be brief, but look, ultimately it will take a revolution a different system to end of pornography and patriarchy and the violent degradation of women that have plagued women around the world. while people come we can talk about that but we do need mass resistance but i do what as people look, the idea that hillary who is always been to philly with christian fascism and as a war criminal besides, he's going to do anything where we should rely on is the democratic come part of what is poisoned and hamstrung and paralyzed my generation and younger, i do think people do to get out in the streets and fight. that is the lesson from previous generations your. >> the women i wrote about, they were girls at the time. they happened to be beautiful which helps an enormous the. they have men do everything for them. they played the power came. but she got up and gave his famous speech after she was the first woman to address congress and she said, if they don't go with this, it's revolution, and the whole poll just burst up. so there are those moments and there are those people who will do it. but i've been very concerned about what i consider complacency in women in your age group. i was talking to my 13 year old granddaughter yesterday and she was saying, my friend wants to be a doctor but i think i might want to be a lawyer. i mean, 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 abortion. you need women on campus in high school. there is that happening now. >> when you call for revolution, what do you interpret that to mean anti-think that's a good idea? >> any of you. >> i think -- i'm a historian by training but i said a lot of revolution. i think we learned that most revolutions in history work. i do not think we're in an a revolution age and i actually don't think that we need a revolution to accomplish a lot of what needs to happen in the united states, plain and simple. >> others? >> it's a hard, what's the word actually mean. and my concept is i keep repeating is the revolution within. it's got more women elected because that changes things, even though you mentioned those four. i was talking to one of the women senators and she said we work across the aisle. we were the ones who got congress to not have the government, you know, not a fold of the cover. the women actually did it and worked together. i feel, unlike your thoughts because i understand your idea where hillary has trimmed and in many ways that i don't find comfortable. i think she would be forced as if she were the first woman president to be with women's issues at least. i really do. >> i still have the energy for a revolution anymore. i think it has to be in the hands of your generation. i don't think i've got enough estrogen for that. [laughter] >> here, here spent this is my dilemma. i'm a veteran, i'm 70, i was at all the movements and i totally appreciate the way you feel. the problem is this but i don't know how much longer i have. i will probably vote for hillary even though i have a lot of reservations about you but before that i would like to see a woman president. [applause] >> does any of you think that there could be a female candidate for president who was not severely compromised from either end of her political -- >> elizabeth warren and. elizabeth warren. >> i've been told -- >> get up and take the mic if you want to talk about it. >> i live in washington, d.c. and i've been told that she is really laying low to see whether hillary runs or not. >> claire underwood from house of cards were not a fictional character, i don't know what i would wander in the white house or not. but i bet she could get there. >> that's what i mean by severely compromised. >> she would kill a few people along the way. >> finally i would like to return to an old question. particularly women who came of age in the '70s and before, i think it ever occur to them that the word feminist had negative connotation, that it was something that they would be uncomfortable identifying themselves at. so you're in a classroom. you're in a classroom, too. i don't know how much trust you with younger women, myrick, but when you hear i'm not a feminist, what is your reaction? do you have a rant or steel or anything like that? >> i find them a place in the sun. have to do a report on it spent when it's interesting and about and interest but, back in 70 i said i wanted to go out and do interview blue collar working women. i've talked to gloria steinem about it, it was an upper-class movement and the middle-class movement, as it was during the victorian period. these women came, these sisters came with absolutely, they were from total trash and so they would look at as come to associate with them if you're a middle-class suffragist was a problem. so i said i want to go out i went to detroit and i started interviewing women do in those days it wasn't i'm not a feminist but. it was i'm not a women's liberation as. i'm not one of those women libbers. i keep hearing this and so i started talking to some of them and the woman said, you know, my foreman said if i wore tighter t-shirts i would get a better job, so i reported him. she was a feminist and she didn't want the connotation. i do think younger women when they start examining their lives, and particularly when they get out and get a job and they start seeing these. 145 years of frat boys on wall street, and it was basically the sexism that went on with the sisters and today. as she said, the woman i was quoting of today, who has been on, she said it is institutionalized it. it's the little things you don't get them in the room here, kathleen amazing work. they believe in gender equality and sometimes they do and sometimes you don't call the feminist. i'm sympathetic to it and i want to hear why they're reluctant to use the word because i think we have been saying too much. isn't horrible they won't use the word and we have spent a lot of time listening to them? >> last question. >> this has to do with a book i finished recently by diane ravitch called reign of error. do you see any threat to the equality of women if the public schools are shut down and turned over to corporate america as they have in new jersey, new york and in some of the southern states and up in wisconsin, areas of minnesota to otherwise the koch brothers, the walton family is spending hundreds of minutes of dollars every year to get people elected to school board, get elected to state legislatures to push their agendas. one of their agendas and not against women but it's to do away with the public schools completed and turned them over to corporations. right now if you will want to know what's going on, you need to go to diane ravitch his blog and read it. she was assistant secretary of the ditch nation under bush and she was one of the architects of no child left behind. then she turned around 180° against it. >> does anybody have a thought about that? >> a little bit off-topic. >> no, it is not off-topic. [inaudible] >> come and talk at the mic. spink could we hear you? >> come and talk at the mic. >> i like this audience. isn't this a good audience? >> i was i should a student and it is a delight -- >> someone really extraordinary. >> tell us about the relationship of women's rights, feminism to this asia of the schools and the corporate -- >> i actually just showed a documentary misrepresentation that i'm a teacher in high school and one of the students near the end of the day said he doesn't want to see a woman as president. neither does his mother. he's african-american, and it's so hard to deconstruct when what you are saying about when they are 11 and they're starting to be bored. it's hard to deconstruct what i have the academic lens but i'm not talking like counter can read it occupied objectificati objectification, misogyny, the fact the adolescents, their mind is not even fully developed yet. so when you talk about juvenile justice, we tal talked about why there are more people of color in prison, you know, and you try to give them this historical contwh

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