[inaudible discussions] my clock says 12 30. Lets get started. Welcome to the Los Angeles Times book festival. I am a columnist and check me out at la times website. This is the evolution of Feminism Panel so if that is not what you came to hear you are in the wrong place. I want to ask you to silence your cellphone. 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. And i was supposed to Say Something about earthquake safety. If you feel an earthquake, please, leave calmly and put your hands over your head. I want you to know at the end of the session, 1015 minutes before the end, we will take questions from the audience. There is a mike setup in an aisle and if you are not mobile raise your hand and we will bring you a mike. Lets start with mia. He she is an author and veteran journalist and wrote for the Washington Post for many years. She as interviewed killers, famous people, leaders like castro and as an infant she interviewed president kennedy. At four. A series she wrote for the post on veterans led her to write her book to examine the problem of posttraumatic stress disorder. In 2006, she wrote all Governments Lie the lifes and times of rebel journalist stone. And she has gone to intimate topics as well. She witnessed the last three years of a young womans life to died of breast cancer. Her new book talks about woodhall and her sister whose escapades in the 1870s might shock even the most liberated women. This rags for riches pair were born into poverty, went into the family snake oil trade literally before breaking free of their parents and moving to new york where they were stock brokers, free love advocates and suffrage rights and newspaper articles. If you think obama and clinton were pioneers look at this she was the first woman to be recognized for running as president and her running mate because douglas. For many years she was a sindicated can cartoonist. The author of astro turf. A family memoir about the cold war. She wrote the unauthorized biography of a real doll that examined how doll came to hold a place in the honor of so many girls. It was invented by women to teach girls for better or worse what was spect expected to them. In the the accidental feminist how Elizabeth Taylor raised our consciousness she turned her attention to another woman. She is argues that taylor was more than just a fine actress. She was a role model for feminist causes and ideals whether posing as a boy to Ride National velvet, unwed mother, or the boozy life in who is afraid of virginia wolf. And this is all long before she was the first lonely voice to take up the fight against aids. I need to note that you are cowriting for the opera about the 110 freeway on its 70th anniversary. That project is creeping along. Like rush hour. Nancy calo is an author and expert on women and American Call politics. She has taught at many schools and she is currently teaching at occidental college. Her books include the reconstruction of american liberalism and the 1990s a social history. She is the kind of source every political journalist or talk show needs in their rolodex and i count on her for comments in the money. In her new book, she talks about the sexual revolution and its n influence on politics and how the Christian Movement has talked about the gay rights, contraception, abortion and other rights. It has been going on for 40 years thanks to a small political minoritminority. It is no coincidence this is happening as the gop is further to the right than any other time since the way of slavery. We have come a long way. Most of us are not smoking anymore. At least not cigarettes. I live in venice beach. Your books present the history of american feminism starting in the late 19th century, a stop in the middle of the last and an examining of what is happening now. And each generation fights essentially the same battle. Some things really never change. Equal pay, affordable childcare, the balance between work and home life, rather woman can do everything that men do, women are still said as jezebels or sluts for claiming their sexuality. Woman are battling for reproductive freedom making it impossible to get an abortion even if an abortion is legal. I wonder if you can start off with a 24 explanation on what inspired you to write your book. I hate starting first. Before i do that, i want to quote two quotes 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 to legislation to regulate th ththe ththe ththem this isnt talking about the defensive marriage act. This from 1871 and woodall. This was time when men had total power and there was nothing a woman could do on her on. And the other one is put a woman on trial for anything. It is considered as a legitimate part of the defense to make the searching inquiry into her sexual moraltmoralty this is f 1871 with teddy speaking. The reason i got involved with these sisters never thinking they would be so rip and read from the front page. They were for equal pay and equal work and we see what happened last week. I went into it because in 2008 everybody was talking about the possible wonder team of Hilary Clinton and obama. And i started reading this tiny squib that said it has been done before. It was virginia woodhall and fredrick douglas. Where was astonished. I started reading about her incredible sister and found out how they pulled themselves from absolute fraud. They were fortune tellers living a horrible childhood to become the most richest and famous women in america at the time. And i will tell you more about that later. Tell us how you got the idea. My last book was about the jet propulsion. I was stuck in a vacation house with a bunch of children. They didnt know who Elizabeth Taylor was. Genx knew her through fat jokes in the 1980s. I was taken back. And geny knew she had a vague connection to film but knew her as the person she was later in life. An aids leader in that way. Stuck in the house the only thing for entertainment is boxes of Elizabeth Taylor movies. So we thought all right. It will be a campy night. We started watching in chronlogical order. And we were absolutely blown away. Not by the quality of her performance but by the messages of her movie. In national velvet, her character age 12 challenges gender discrimination. Excluded from an important house race because of her gender and poses as a male jockey and wins exposing the pure bigtory of the exclusion of women. Her next big one a place in the sun, 1951 is an abortion rights movie. It is an adaption of the american tragedy and i will have an opportunity to elaborate on this more but basically no pregnant mistress was a tragedy. And field eight is about a woman having a right to her own body and not adhering to the 50s marriage where a woman was a possession either owned as a spouse or rented by a hooker. She writes no sales on the mirror of her married lovers husband. And virginia wolf is about what happens to a woman and man locked into a marriage where a only way the woman expresses herself is through her husbands career or children and her husband is unsuccessful and she can not have children. So i was amazed by this. And i will not yap too long. But i wanted to make sure my friends and i were not projecting 21st centuries ideas on to mid20th century material. So i started looking if the academy of Motion Pictures arts and science library. I latched on to just briefly the content of american movies between 19341936 was entirely controlled by the production code administration. They helped sway oversight and investigations ever word in the movies. The censors tried to drag them out. The scene where the character asked for an abortion had to be rewritten 12 times. They had to communicate through telepathy to a degree. But my suspicions were held by the paper trail left behind. Thank you. Nancy . So one day when Hilary Clinton was making her first run for the presidency, i had an epipany and thought we have experienced the biggest tran transformations in history in the last 40 years. And i thought maybe there is a connection between political diem and this revolution. I jotted down the line perhaps it is the pill and hasnt been invented and american politics would be different. I thought it was a literary device. 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. So thanks, republicans. Thanks for the book promotion. I really appreciated it. So that is my book. It looks at the 40 last years of history and looks at how the sexual dysfunction is driving our polarization and insanity and as robin mentioned the real reason for this is that the Republican Party has been captured by a group of sexual fundamentalist who honestly believe that womans rights, gay civil rights, the sexual revolution are a mortal threat. I am not saying every republican is like this. It has to do with the factions within the party. But part of it is it isnt just the republicans. It is democrats and liberals to misread the public poin opinion, overreacted to the election losses and ran scared and allowed a lot of the turning back the clock to happen. I do think we are seeing a shift in that but there is a lot of ground to make up after these 40 years of rolling back these rights. Let me start by asking you myra, was feminism coined in the era you wrote your book . No. I find it upsetting when i see someone calling susan b. Anthony a feminist because she only wanted the vote. She was a singleminded person and wanted a vote. And Elizabeth Cady stanton was sexy. You would not know it looking at her. She was heavy with six kids but she had a love affair and was in the free love movement. All of the others were a gast by the behavior. The sisters said if all we do is relect the same corrupt dumb white males there is no reason to get the vote. They were ahead of their time. When you talk about the women in the fight, that same fight was going on in the mid19th century. It is identical with the religious right. And the sisters were advanced and the man running with grant wanted to put god in the constitution and they said we are not sure we wants to be in the constitution and how about the other two along with him. So they were incrediblely up front about this. They fought the clergy and the a womans worst enemy was the gynecologist. They were all anticontraception and just fiercely involved in this. Wind one of the few joys, and i mean few, is i covered everything we talk about and we saw the backlash and saw it at the time was happening with phyllis who was convincing women with the equal Rights Movement they would lose their husbands and have to have unisex bathrooms that made me wonder if he was every on a plane. And she was defending the rights of unborn children and i said how many of your friends will adopt a black child . I want to say this about the religious movement. The money is there. You follow the money. The tea party is the gift that keeps giving because we can fight back at it. All of the womens i am even tweeting, everybody on the internet you have all of these women writing everything and every single one as soon as the Koch Brothers do it we to bring it back in. Wendy davis i have covered texas politics and god forbid you should ever go there. It is just horrible. And they just came up with the mo abortion law that is mind blowing. These women are my heroes because they took such unbelievable chances. I will stop now but i want to talk about when they were put in jail and arrested for obscenity when they blew the whistles on affairs. I want to jump in on where they feminist. Feminism was discovered in the america a hundred years ago this month. Century magazine wrote you know, feminism is on everyones tongue. It is in the germ of our women. We must define and understand it. And what feminism was is it was imported by the french by bohemians to mean, you know, it was in many ways against the susan b. Anthonytype of what way called the woman movement. We wanted to distinguish ourselv ourselves. They fought for legal birth control. There was c etchinensorship at e for even writing about it. I agree with the wood hall sisters who are just amazing. I have been waiting for a new bio about these women so thank you. They were audacious. They struck people as kind of charting a new human sex. Leaving behind the moralism of the victorian women. If you take that and look at someone like liz taylor and think about the very nature of what women are to be. Not just rolls. It is no wonder that we have seen such resistance to accepting these changes. These were thousands of years of those roles for women that in the space of half a century were completely changed. And personal i look at this kind of glass half empty. I think we are on the cusp of more amazing changes and we have the feminist movement to thank but these values are now common sense throughout america. We have won. I want to also the glass half empty business. I am glad you mentioned glass because that was one of the things that made the Womans Movement complicated in the early part of the 20th sicentur. It was linked to the Temperance Movement and men would get drunk and beat up their wives. So the separation of the two movements was important. In some ways Elizabeth Taylor was along other things among the first free lovers. Absolutely. Erotic vagrancy. And i think the vatican it wasnt like a priest chatting privately in the courtyard. It was the official Radio Station and the weekly newspaper. But she had a fabulous response to that in the book. I am trying to remember. She asked can i sue the pope. He got the the revenge with the the sandpiper and we went beyond the abortion discussion and she made a decision to have a child out of wed loc and she is this emblem because she is openally ateist and linked to the goddess cults and she destroys the faith of a marriage of a pen costal. It is a marvelous movie that wasnt appreciated at the time. Because they were big stars. One of the things i usually like when i give a talk like this is you have to believe me. But it is often more effective when i can show a clip from a film and you can see and hear it yourself and you dont have to trust me which maybe an obsta e obstacle. She was born in 1932 . So she came of age in world war ii so she was the cohert of woman that came through at this time. Did Elizabeth Taylor ever consider herself a feminist or show any kind of indication of the roles . I think directors saw things in her that only in much later life would she be able to identify in herself. These qualities that you could be beautiful and very strong. She didnt have much education. Show was a contract player from 12on and educated at the Little Red School house and didnt go to college. But she learned the things she came to know by working with the best directors in america. Her character in giant leslie benedict. Give us a sample. It is an adaption of the involve and much better from the involve. The woman marries rock hudson and he severely mistreats the mexican because they are not United States citizens. The mexican workers on his cattle ranch. Feminism is a social justice issue. And this chair character is concerned with that. Her husband says she can not visit the community of the mexican workers. She finds a Sick Children and instead of pushing the child away she embraces the child and forces the physician who only intended the american ranching community to make that child well. It is almost, to me, it seems like in later life, after she was sober, she became leslie benedict. All of her gay friends who were sick and many people in hollywood out of fear were pushing them away she embraced them. And i have a long interview in the book with rock hudsons doctor who initially identified the aids virus in medical journals and he kind of agreed with this analogy of leslie benedi benedict. It was forcing the mainstream community to acknowledge the humanity and suffering of the people on the margins. Can i ask a question . My feeling is that the real feminist in that were the writers. She wrote the book it came from and the same with settling last summer. In other words, do you feel, i have an antidote about Elizabeth Taylor, but do you feel she picked these roles because of the writing, background and 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. She sat there and she said i never knew senators could be so dull. At least she had Fried Chicken and bourbon as a distraction. Mostly the bourbon. And talked about joan rivers jokes. Women get liberated and unliberated and liberated. They went to work in world war ii, men came home and back into the house wife that took hold for a decade, and do we have a wrong impression of how feminism has evolved or is there always a backlash. You say we won but pushback in a lot of time. In texas, if you are poor young woman who needs an abortion you are in trouble. They managed to close every planned parenthood in mississippi. There is one. It is about to be closed. Let me clarify when i say one. The value of equal civil rights for all women, people of all sexual orientations has won in mainstream america. If you look at polling, only 7 of americans dont 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 doesnt mean that is what the policy is. This is about politics, right . What i write about is a small group of reactionaries through taking politics very seriously and by joining like School Boards and getting involved in a prestinct level, i worked over a period of 20 years to take over the Republican Party to a sense that even moderates and the Republican Party have to vote the way the sexual fundamentals want. Put it this way. There was a vote on equal pay this week and all four republican women senators voted against that equal pay law. It is a moderate bill. One of the women is kind of a strong antiabortion, right wing senator, and the other three are relatively moderate. It is a question of Party Loyalty and making it through the primaries that they have to vote with the tea party, which is really just the christian right rebranded. One of the things i think about is the waves of feminism and there was a point when it was a much more interesting culture question and question of Sexual Violence is very important. But at the time where it started leaving politics behind women who i write about like the women who want to be women and hid feminist books under her bed so her nieces wouldnt see the pornography i think the female orgases section is the one she didnt want them to see. So while Party Democrats were running scared about gay rights and feminist turned their back on electric politics. The other side that doesnt support womens equality won in a political party. So we have won in the battle of public opinion. If we took that next step into the politics we will win in politics. But until we match our kind of politics with our opinion we are going to keep seeing the Public Policy going backwards. Look at the women running today. Grimes against mcconnell. Mcconnell has gotten so much more money. And there is the old cliche about someone not being smart and he was an empty suit. Well mcconnell calls her an empty dress. And he is practically bulletproof because he has a hold. The same thing with wendy davis. There are smart, wonderful women running but until you get the backing and the money it isnt going to work. The longest women in Congress Said to me once 20 senators isnt enough. If we are 50 of the society we have to have 50 women senators and then you will start seeing top down changes. But i just think that you have to be realistic about whether it is what the public wants or not. It is the same thing with the nra. Many people dont think you 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 is what we have to do more of. Did you want to add something . What was i going to add . Nancy mentioned polling. It made me think of my students. My millennial students have progressive attitudes on social issues but they need to be made aware of the things they take for granted can be taken away. Do you think that is a function of being in california and in a relatively liberal bubble . Or being young . I think they take abortion rights for granted. I like showing up and a signing of a place in the sun so they can see the absolute horror of what a world looked like without roe versus wade. You would be surprised how much more excited they become when they see the other side prevailing. I covered abortion when it was illegal in 1969 and i can tell you the coat hanger pictures, people dying it was a total reality. I agree with you totally that younger people cant imagine having that ever happen again. Nancy, you write in the book about how the christian right has been energized by woman. If i throw out a sentence i wonder if you can each respond to it. Woman are sometimes womens own worse enemy. Women can be womens own worst enemies but i really think we should expect all women to agree. So i strongly oppose the politician of these people i call sexual fundamentalist. They have a world view that comes from a fundamentalist reading of their religion whether that is catholic or evangelical. And they are not antiwomen but they believe womans proper role is first as a mother and a wife. You have ones like sarah palin that says if you can cover the mother and wife and also be Vice President , great. But it is always premised on this is the god given role of women. That is their view. If we want to understand what the political fight is about we to, you know, understand their view. I would say i see millennial generation motivated to vote. There was a stampede at ucla to get fsee Hilary Clinton. There is excitement about the idea of a first woman president. And that is my next book so keep an eye out for that in 2015. So i think if we could, you know, a discussion with these young people about this is what is motivating and they get decide. Do we, 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 their kids and men are struggling with workfamily balance. I think that is where they are. Or do they want to share this view of a god given role for men and women. I think we win by having that debate. What do you think, mg . In order to respond i find myself scrolling back to forever barbie which after 20 years is still in print and it is four required courses here that have to do with concepts of gender and marketing. It also follows me around. In the New York Times review of the Elizabeth Taylor book i got all excited at the Time Beginning of the review i was compared with twain and others but as it developed it came out in the the herman mel vil of midcentury sex icons. What nancy said about the idea of a woman having to be at a mother first and foremost. I think we ought to give credit to the 11. 5 inch plastic ball that was a revolutionary toy, barbie, in 1959 when it came out. Highly sexualized, no husband and from the getgo a career. Barbie was the beginning of dolls that taught girls to nurture. It was about putting your adult life on to a grown woman not nurturing a baby. It was similar to the sex and the single girl when was protofeminist and it was very much an argument for womens sexual and financial atonomy and this thing did plant the idea i am not sure she could stand on her own two feet, but she could wobble defiantly on her own two feet without being held up by a man. I had a totally different feeling about barbie. I didnt want my daughter to have her with the big tits and big waist. On the business of women being their own worst enemy it was major with the sisters. As i said, they wrote this scand scandalous article about beacher having an affair and victoria said he spoke to 16 of his mistress each week at church. And they were put in jail and followed and put back in jail over and over again for what was a small would be offense. Absolutely joining that were the two beacher sisters who wrote uncle toms cabinet and they were called tramps and prositutes. But catherine was the Martha Stewart of her day and told you how to be a house maker, how to be a good mother, the many steps to ironing your husbands shirt. She was an old spinster and was never married. She had never had children. She was this cause 11. She joined Something Like 5,000 women petitioning against the vote at the very same time when the others were. So there was always that standoff i think. Sometimes there was religious connotation and sometimes it was how are you so audacious. Anthony comstalk was his name and he was a selfmade vice star who was going to stop all vice. He saw sin in everything. Medical books. Like kenneth star . Exactly. There were some cartoons made and one is he is standing up with a woman next to him looking at the judge saying you honor, this woman just gave birth to a naked baby. But that was a situation where he then happened to make the federal it is going back to your point he got the federal law and made obscenity tougher. He was against everything the best writers wrote and walt whitman and George Bernard shaw and forced a major abortionist to commit suicide. So when you talk about the antimovement there has been a backlash from males and females. You have to remember, i am sure it is in your book, that the Womens Movement in the 60s starts because the Antiwar Movement was leaving them out and not letting them run anything. One got mad when tom hayden got off the plane and handed me dirty laundry and said clean it. Before we take questions, i want to ask you a current question that may not seem important but it does get at Something Interesting in the culture. Cheryl sanders of facebook launched a campaign with the girl scouts to ban the word bossy for girls. What about ballsy . [laughter] i actually think we should embrace bossy. I think we need to revalue it. I think it is social media stumble. Where does tina fay weigh in on this . Isnt she bossy pants . I would like her opinion. Maybe we should tweet and see if she answers. That is a good idea. Unbelievable well anything is believable. The words, i am shaping this up for a speech i am giving on sexism in politics. A man is ambition, great. A woman is ambition, oh, you know. You can take the simpliest word and it goes on and on. I was going to say that woman who have more than one cast take a severe beating in this culture. I myself i indendured it and i would like to speak out against that terrible prejudice. Especially if they are single. Hi, i write for revolution newspaper and i have a comment and a question. Today is a national day of Emergency Action around abortion and there is protest going on across the country this afternoon. We have to confront, and i real think it is a poisoning idea that even to explain what you meant by we won. It is the profound disagreement if you look at both in peoples thinking and the laws. Women around the world are being hurled backwards. But 203 restrictions against abortion, six states with one clinic left and 40,000 woman around the world die from abortions. 11 is the average age of little boys watching pornography. People dont know this. Including to my generation doesnt know this and young girls. I think it is great hearing you. Keep coming. Here is where and we want the young women. I wish there were more of your generations in the audience. Lets give this woman a megaphone. I have one. I will frame my question. Ultimately it will take a revolution and different system to end pornography and the degrading of women around the world. We need mast resistance. The idea that hillary who is a war criminal is going to do anything and where we should rely on is the democrats is part of what has poisoned and hamstrung my generation. I think people have to get out in the streets and fight and that is the lesson from previous generations. The women i wrote about were girls at the time and they happened to be beautiful which helped. But they played the only game possible. The power game was the male owned and everything but she got up and gave this famous speech after she was the first woman to address congress and said if they dont go with with us it is revolution. There are those moments and people that will do it. But i am concerned about what i consider complacency in your age group. They can have it all. My 11yearold grand daughter said my friend wants to be a doctor and i want to be a lawyer. It is engrained they dont have to fight. In mississippi, a lot of women are currently selfinducing the abortion. They dont know the hanger but it is happening now. I have a question based on her statement. When you call for revolution, what do you interupt that to mean and do you think that is a good idea . I think we have learned that some revolutions in history work. I do not think we are in a revolutionary age and i dont think we need a revolution to accomplish a lot of what needs to happen in the United States. Plain and simple. Other two . I think it is a hard what does the word actually mean. In my concept i keep repeating is a revolution within. There has to be 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 are the ones that got congress to not have the government be held up. The women did it and worked together actually. I feel unlike your thought because i understand your idea of where hillary has trimmed and in many ways i dont find comfortable but i think she would be forced, if she were the first woman president , to be with womens issues at least. I still dont have the energy for a revolution any more. I dont think have a enough estrogen for that one. It is in the hands of your generation. This is my delima. I am veteran, i am 70 and was all of the movements. I dont know how much longer i have. I will probably vote for hillary even though i have a lot of reservati reservati reservations but before i die i would like to see a woman president. Does anybody think there can be a female president who is not compromised . Elizabeth warren. The muzzle is too strong, but she is laying low to see whether hilleraary runs. If Claire Underwood from house of cards were not fictional i dont know if i would want her in the whitehouse but i bet she could get there. That is what i mean by severely compromised. She would kill a few people along the way. Finally, i would like to return to a question. Particularly women who came of age in the 70s before it never occurred that the word feminist had something with a negative connotation. So you are in a classroom and so are you and i dont know how much interaction with younger women you have when you here i am not a feminist but what your reaction . Do you have a rant . I assign them a place in the sun and they to have to do a report on it. In the 70s i wanted to go out and interview blue call coller workers. It was an upper Class Movement as it was during the victorian. The sisters came from total trash and were looked at like associating with them was a problem. But i said i want to go out and i went out to detroit and i started interviewing woman and it wasnt i am not a feminist but it was i am not a womans liberationist and i kept hearing this. I started talking to some of them and one said if i wear better tshirts my job said i would get better jobs and i reported him. So she was a feminist. And it when we start seeing this i mean speaking to the electronic union. And all of the guys were saying, its great to have a woman. Its great that we can all get together and have women in this union. She smiled and smiled and said, take over. [laughter] so i just think that it is the young women in college. You are going to see where they are and what they may have to do to counter them. When get radicalized as they get older and men get more conservative. I dont think so. I just want to put in a slightly different note on this. I am actually the women that i teach and that i run into in political activism, a couple in the room here doing absoluty