Gloria Steinem and Emma Watson in Conversation

and hi Doria hi thank you for being here and for letting me interview you this opportunity felt so unreal I think to me and I was so nervous that it only kind of hit me about 20 seconds ago that it was really happening so it's it's a real treat for me and I know everyone here is very grateful for all that you do and that you continue to write and speak publicly and I absolutely loved my life on the road I wanted to start by asking you a few questions about your life and and you personally in the book you say that you didn't go to school as a child and that you travel a lot with your mother and father who is an antique dealer do you think that this kind of unique experience enabled you to see the world differently differently more imaginatively do you think that it has me bearing on what you ended up doing with your life I think the absence of school which I regret it at the time you know I wanted to go to school like the other kids you know like I saw in movies people lived in houses not in house trailers yeah but in retrospect I think it was the kind of good thing because I missed a certain amount of brainwashing especially as it has to do with gender which was very is still true and was way more true in my childhood so it's odd how the things that you regret sometimes turn out to be the things that you celebrate and also the traveling part turned out to equip me well to live with insecurity which is a good thing yeah and to lead to a life I never would have imagined because of course I spent a fair amount of time rebelling against that part of my life since I wanted to be like the other kids but I it allowed me to be a feminist organizer the road I think anything that when you're a child that makes you different is really difficult and then what would you like to address it I knew this was gonna happen no no it's true I know but I'm serious because I think it's so important you know that we understand that we can't control what happens but we can use what happens definitely I think I mean just to be incredibly superficial I used to hate that I had strong eyebrows as a nine-year-old I desperately wanted to pluck them and make them to very thin lines and you know you come to you come to embrace these things and my mother desperately tried to tell me that he gave my face character and if I made them too thin lines that would be a shame and but you you know you don't you don't listen but I think also I spend a long time trying to pretend that I wasn't like Hermione when of course I was rather like Hermione and and finally finally had come to accept this fact so and it's made me you know it's it's made me who I am and and now I celebrate so yeah I think that's all that's an interesting journey you didn't go to school but you did go on to go to college you went to Smith what was that experience like having not sort of had a formal education uh well it was heaven at first you know because they gave me all the books I wanted to read and three meals a day I mean you know I couldn't understand why everybody else was complaining it was great I felt a little insecure though because I had come from a high school that was how shall we say it was the the main thing about it was its football team let me put it that way and and they were so football craze that you could stay until you were 22 if you played football Wow otherwise you left to work in the factories or to get married or something so to have come from that kind of high school into Smith made me kind of socially insecure but fortunately I didn't know enough to be really insecure because you know after Christmas vacation people would come with tans you know and and I would think to myself gosh I didn't know so many people lived in Florida or California so it was falling in love with books and also reading Aristotle about how women are so immortal immoral or weak we break mirrors we you know there was not only not women's studies there was no break on male dominant studies I was going to ask sort of when when did you er your first feminist text can you remember what the first thing that you came across that started to shift well it should have been Virginia Woolf I suppose because I did read Virginia Woolf then but she herself was misunderstood then you know in a way I mean she was treated as neurotic instead of understanding the abuse she'd suffered in childhood and so on so I think that all of my idealism and hope for change fastened on other countries which is why I took a course on India which was very rare because we were then almost always studying European countries not any other right colonialism was alive and well in our curriculum and so my idealism centered on India which had just then recently become independent and it didn't Center on me at all I didn't understand that I had any role to play except to be of service so you went on to where you started as working as a journalist and then at some point you kind of segwayed into the sort of much broader larger activism I'm interested in how you yourself when you when you think of yourself how do you self define do you well I still call myself a writer because it's what matters most to me even though the truth of the matter is I spend more time on the road organizing you know doing other kinds of activism but I have to say that writing is still the one thing that when I'm doing it I know I shouldn't be doing anything else as much as I love and excited by organizing and seeing groups suddenly become I mean okay here here we are we're each looking at each other's backs we are in a hierarchy hierarchy is based on patriarchy patriarchy doesn't work anywhere anymore and so in groups like this it's great to suddenly see discussions emerge and people somebody over here asked the question somebody there answers of announcements of upcoming troublemaking meetings the feminist library is about to close right and there's a demonstration against its closing hello right as we speak okay so yeah as we speak today right there the rent was the rent is raised significantly I think by sort of Thornton so it's just it's the I mean writing us personal but I'm very grateful that that I couldn't get published what I thought I hope to publish about the women's movement and therefore I ended up in desperation going out to speak even though I thought I was going to die and say oh well when I first gave my speech I was really convinced that I was gonna die it was all I've learned is you don't die but I still die I still do saliva is that yours is that a symptom of nervousness oh you get really dry mouth right each tooth gets a little angora sweater on it I can't I just shake and I'm just really embarrassed and conscious of the fact that I can see people the people can see me shaking so trying to keep my hands out of you is part of and then I try and introduce the later on so that I don't look really stiff and then and also just my mind goes blank often if I'm very nervous which is really frustrating because I were prepared for something a lot and and then my mind will go blank but I said and for you when you were being a different person it's interesting it's been both the most liberating and terrifying things speaking authentically for myself as Emma but but also terrifying there's a freedom in speaking somebody else's words and pretending to be someone else but also you kind of it's it's not as meaningful it I mean it's it's a transcendent amazing experience I love what I do but to speak from my own experience was was really meaningful to me yeah and I think it's so remarkable and admirable that you've taken a year off from you know admirable work to do feminist activism to do the United Nations campaign it's really how shall I say even though you're acting another role hmm I think people come to know you on screen right and I think we trust you i hope saiyr and that is why i hope that that is why it is so great and important that you are taking that trust and putting it to work by giving out activist information by doing lists of books for feet you know that's that's very precious and unusual don't you think well I mean I guess if there were anything I had to hide it would have come out by now I've been it's been me too yeah I mean it's been a I've been in the public eye for a little while now it's been pretty crazy but it's great to get to do this you get to do this with it um I'm I'm interested you've spoken about the fact that marriage laws once meant that marriage wasn't equal for men and women but the feminists and the feminist movement has managed to change marriage enough to mean that it is possible to have an equal marriage but I'm when when we enter into it there are all sorts of traditions that come along with it and I'm interested in how how do you have a marriage that is authentically genuinely grounded in equality mutual respect for the idea of if you do want to have a family we do not have a career or and what do you see as being the kind of booby traps or the kind of the minds that might there might be involved in that for a feminist well that's a big question and you know yeah we all get to answer it in our own lives but it is important that the law is more equal now at least in our two countries it's still very unequal in many others but if I had married when I was supposed to get married I would have lost my name my credit rating my legal domicile and most of my civil rights so it we have made that part equal and we have marriage equality it's very important that everyone who choose choses to marry is able to marry at least we almost have marriage equality we're on our way to marriage equality but there is still the pressure of the outside world when you leave your door of your household means that you are treated differently women who women with children are way less likely to get to be employed and men with children are way more likely to be employed because they are perceived as responsible and women are perceived as distracted so I think it's it's not going to equalize completely in isolation and and we need to help each other make changes you are far ahead of my country in terms of parental leave you know we have no such thing really but not even for maternity I mean you know we're way behind we're where you are and the Scandinavian countries are ahead of where you are so we can we can learn from each other but I really you know if if you choose to have children I don't think it's possible to have a real equal marriage until men are raising children and ours loving and nurturing towards children as and I'm not I think we are not just saying that for the sake of women or men and men want to be close to their children it's for the sake of the children because if they do not see that a male human being can be loving and nurturing and patient they won't know that that's possible and if they don't see women outside the home being achieving and daring and so on they won't know that that's possible I mean we do what we see way more than than what we're told so you know where we're moving forward slowly and I think that's probably the only way we can because we're what what happened to us in our childhood is also normalized and so we go as for as far forward as as we can but at another level it's really it's also important because the family is if we don't have democratic families we're never going to have a democratic society ever and if we don't eliminate violence in families we're never going to have violence free society outside either so it's not just about equal relationships and and families it's deeper than that the last I'm going to skip around a little bit now you've brought that up because the last time that we met you gave me a book called sex and World Peace which i think is got to be one of the best titles I've ever come across it's two things we want it is it's true but I got to the fourth page and had to put the book down because I was so blindsided by this statistic and I couldn't really wrap my head around it and then spent the next ten minutes trying to google it and like see if it was really true and it really is grounded in fact but there are now 101 point three men to every 100 women on the planet so women are no longer half of humor I'm quoting the book here but it says more lives are lost through violence against women from sex selective abortion female infanticide suicide egregious maternal mortality and other linked sex causes then were lost during all of the wars and civil strife of the 20th century I got I can't even wrap my head around that figure so all of the wars and silver story for the 20th century so from this perspective the greatest security dilemma then is systemic kind of social devaluation of a female life I'd never come across a statistic like this I had not understood that we were literally affecting the balance of the population of the world and how that population is made up and do you think am I just am I just way behind do you think other people understand the kind of effect that we're having and that it's kind of on this scale no I don't think so i-i-i-i I don't know I'm not asking for a show of hands but I bet that statistic is a surprise to a lot of us here right and this book which is a wonderful book sex and World Peace uses a great image which is a bird having two wings and if one of one wing is broken the burn convert can't fly so if the female half of the human race is not as safe as an imbalance with the male half we had fly and it also points out that the best indicator of whether there will be violence inside a country in the streets and so on or whether that country will be willing to use military violence against another country is actually not poverty not access to natural resources not religion or even degree of democracy its violence against females not because female life is any more important than male life it's not but because it's what we see first it's what family and in the houses you know the whole idea that it would it's okay for one group to dominate the other is normalized by that so it's it's important not only to females per se but to everybody that we look at the microcosm of violence that is and and sexualized violence in war zones and for all these reasons that we are no longer half the human race it's crazy I mean I often get asked with regards to gender equality I mean really in the face of terrorism and war and poverty and climate change you know is gender equality really is that really what we should be talking about when these awful things are going on around the world and I have my own answer but I'm interested in yours it often gets pushed down to the bottom of the agenda oh well we'll figure this out and then when things are better we'll address the issue of gender inequality why do you think it should be because the basis of all those other things excuse me it's it's what normalizes domination earliest in life it's it's what it's what has created the idea that there's feminine and masculine hello there's human and you know men who have been off faulted there's been born into this come to feel that they have to prove their masculinity especially by superiority to women but also by superiority to two other men the the single root biggest root cause of global warming is forcing women to have children they don't want and increasing population beyond you know if you let women decide what whether and when to have children it it evens out just slightly over replacement level where ever I know of in the world women have been it because it's a health issue you know it's your it's your body it's a health issue and forcing women to have children they don't want which much of the world is doing is is the biggest cause of global warming there's a one single thing on that list that isn't fundamentally about the status of half the human race versus the other half what do you say when they say mine is a little long okay but well I try and soundbites it which is really just to say what you said at the very beginning which is that all of these issues I see as being I keep learning over and over and over again are directly linked to and caused by these other issues and they're they're intrinsically connected and linked and they have to be part of the conversation I mean how different would the world be if there were women involved in peacekeeping and in treaties and you know in those negotiations I think they would be really really different if we had if we had women involved I just do yeah it's really good it's not that we're so wonderful we're not but we don't have our masculinity to prove you know so so that the Irish Peace women or that the women's movement in Liberia was able to make you know it's it's just true it's absolutely true that if there is a better statistical chance I mean all the studies show that if you put men together at a table they will choose the most aggressive role even if it's wrong and if you put all the women only women together at a table they will choose the most conciliatory even if it's wrong so we need each other you know in order to have all of the you need a balance of the two you need a balance of both yeah I think you should get matter at those people who can say that okay I'll try I'll try that it's interesting speaking about anger which we're told is not feminine and you know I think you talk about in my life on the road this is my favorite anecdotes which is that when you get really angry you start to cry and I do the same thing that's really embarrassing and really annoying and I loved how and you also talk to Lena Dunham about this in Lenny and I loved how you said that you know what we should strive to do is to say I'm crying because I'm angry not because I'm sad don't confuse the two and well I'm sure is a little bit of both both in there as well but I'm curious whether you have actually managed to pull this off in your own I like to confess that I have it I need you but I I am going to I am writer this the the the woman who told me that was an executive in a ball mail situation and she also cried when she got angry I bet there lots of people here at this right okay I think it's because we hold it in for so long and then when we finally let it out it's like a loss of control and she figured out that she should just talk through it yeah to all her male colleagues you may think I am sad no thanks my face is saying one thing but it means I'm right this is the way I get mad and she says it works yeah alright so I am absolutely gonna try it I mean so so far I haven't been in that situation where I've had to keep going yeah because I don't work in her kind of situation but I'm gonna do it we should both take the pledge we should because it's interesting I did a scene recently for a director where we were kind of there was like improvisation involved and and whatever else and so my character was meant to cry in the scene and during and about halfway through he came up to me he said why do you keep apologizing after you crying it's not in the script and like why are you doing that and I was like I don't know it for me that such a natural thing is to start immediately apologizing to whoever round that I'm kind of expressing this expressing this emotion so maybe if there were less shame around shame around the client connecting us why is it so shame around crying exactly I mean I think that people who are watching a horrific event and don't cry but to explain why I agree I love to cry I think crying is great it also releases stress chemicals as we know you know it's good for you okay so just entrando just made his throat Trudeau just made his cabinet 50/50 and this is awesome I was kind of hoping those to be this landslide where every single other government in the world decided that they were gonna do this as well unfortunately there hasn't in the case but do you think that you know men like this taking the lead and sort of saying I don't think this is right I do you think we should have parity in our political institutions do you think do you think he will start to have an impact well I hope so I mean he had a great answer when asked why he said because it's 2015 which it that one and I think we do need to recognize based on sex and class and ethnicity and caste in all kinds of things that if if we if our ruling bodies don't look something like the country there's probably something wrong but it's going to but and it's going to take a very long time which is okay because we're going to have a lot of fun fighting the revolution you know it is going to take time you know I'm comforted by the Native American and on my continent but they always say you know it takes four generations to heal one act of violence because it's normalized in that way so you know I do think we need to celebrate how far we've come and take a long view at the same time that in the moment we do everything we possibly can it's not to hold back but it's also not to be discouraged at the slowness yeah having spends a little bit of time with you is really funny the first time we met I went away and I and I went and saw a friend and she's like what was she like what was Gloria Steinem like looks like well she was just really zen-like but you just seemed on the one hand did I the German lady too sir no well it looks good from where I'm sitting but the challenge time seemed sort of like insurmountable and you know we are climbing Everest and can we see the peak and and whatever else and you've been doing this almost your whole life and on the one hand you're so engaged and mad as hell and like totally in it but at the same time you have this amazing kind of sense of patience and this amazing kind of aerial view of it somehow and I'm well I you know I I don't want to make us patient okay is not agent but but I do think okay here's here's what I think at the moment that the marks and angles were really nice guys okay but they made one big mistake I think which is to say that the end justifies the means in fact the means are the ends that the means create the ends that we're going to get so if we want humor and love and good food and dancing at the end not that there's an end but you know what I mean if they are right then we want humor and food and for dancing along the way otherwise we won't have it then so and we'll burn out on the way so I mean I'm not saying I'm a model of doing this but I do think that the the process the friendship the craziness the aha you know when you suddenly realize something the sense that you're doing what you love that you forget what time it is when you're doing it you love it so much that you just just just keep going is the most moving to me and when I see people at the end of their lives or the end of their rope and they pick themselves up and they go on it just makes me cry you know it is so it's so miraculous and it's so much what we need to do it does make me cry did you say that's like that's like a Gloria kind of mantra in a way just never never never never never give up yes absolutely absolutely um and dance a little and done dancing is good um I want to ask you about porn um I want to ask you we had a really interesting email exchange recently very recently about the difference between pornography and erotica and one of the most interesting things that you explained to me was actually the etymology of both of those words and that the clues or the and the answers I think are within the definitions of those two words and so you say that pornography has this Greek root which means female captive or harlot akin to the word meaning to sell and graph off which is writing about or the description of and erotica is a word that you think sort of can begin to change save lives and it comes from the Greek roots sexual desire or passionate love and so two very different two very different meanings there do you think that when you speak out against pornography people mistake that as you being sort of like anti sex or aunty not a sec know what sex is you know I mean it as I always say to audiences of men you know cooperation beats domination trust me you know sir no I look I I think we are so inundated by pornography that that what I learned from us talk to each other yeah is just how prevalent it is so prevalent that you almost we can't imagine anything else and it presents itself as sex so the the other my best analogy for this is where we started with rape those of us who were older here will remember that rape was considered to be inevitable it was considered really to be only possible if a woman was a virgin it was what men said to women about it was oh you're supposed to lie back and enjoy it I mean the you know there was really no differentiation of rape from sex and we have spent a lot of time and I think with a fair amount of success explaining that rape is not sex it's violence right now that's taken I don't know 30 years or something to to get that conceptually across to most folks it does not mean that rape does not happen obviously but it means we condemn it instead of blaming it on the victim and saying what did you have on you invited it you know all the things that that happened before all right I fear that if we let if we don't begin to differentiate pornography from erotica violence from from pleasure that that it will it will seemed it will win because it will encompass all of sex and you know so I will see what happens and each of you here you know think what you feel about this but I find it helpful to at least have a word for sex that is mutual and pleasurable and not about domination and pain and violence and humiliation and so on and I think we kind of know when we look even at representations of sex whether both people want to be there or whether you know it's all about the masculine role dominating and power differences and you know it I really do worry we both this was the end of our discussion why we're both worried about the envelopment of the earth in pornographic images because of the web and just young people especially I mean that the right wing on the one hand right wing just in a general way is suppressing sex education and allowing or profiteering off pornography so young people look at pornography and thinks that's it that that's what it's supposed to be I don't know the answer but I I was hoping that maybe having a word erotica which at least at least maybe there are other words at least some different word for for shared mutual pleasurable empathetic sex realreal you know pleasurable sex would help us to do something about erotic because I mean about pornography because now there's just no other word really if it all words welcomed here if you have some other ideas about how to do this it's interesting because while I was able to definitely differentiate or understood rape to be an act of violence not just another kind of sex that sometimes happens it was difficult for me to imagine I just sort of thought that it was inevitable part of culture and society that it was just something that was going to happen and having danced you know there are cultures that exist in the world where it just doesn't happen where it's just not a statistic and I know that you've done a lot of traveling and you've done a lot of studies of these other cultures and these other ways of setting things up where that doesn't happen but I have to say hearing you speak as well at the same time it's difficult for me to imagine a world where pornography doesn't exist I think it's well I just know it's I don't know it's maybe not existing is a long way off but having an alternative yes well that's that I definitely think is possible we should be creating lots of awesome great alternatives to pornography and I you know I think about the say the Native American cultures on my land get my North America and some of the other oldest cultures in Africa and in India and so on I mean the whole idea of sexuality was really very different you know I've been I started to read code but Christopher Columbus's letters you want to read about a bad guy because he arrived and and was so was writing down you know how wonderful and welcoming everyone was and how gentle and how they offered food and so on and then he took some of the women's sex slaves for his crew and he was shocked that they fought back he could not understand you know the next Columbus Day I'm going to put a big sign a Columbus Circle in New York says murderer underneath but there where where there were cultures where women control their own reproduction and with herbs and abortifacients and timing and so on and there was there were the in the old cultures they're mainly seen not to have been even gendered pronouns not even he and she people were people what a concept and it was about a circle as a paradigm not a hierarchy so it's not it's not I just say that because we otherwise think it's human nature you know to dominance and hierarchy it's not it's actually rather new in human history at least there were alternatives before we don't know exactly but at least there were huge cultures that functioned on the idea that we are all linked we are not ranked yes I wanted to go back to your book for a minute because one of my favorite things about the book was opening the first page and seeing the dedication that you made and when you're sharing such kind of intimate and personal experiences from your own life does it ever take you a minute to think wow do I really want to share this do I really want to make this um public um do you ever how does that what how does that mentally real life in real life it took me from from when I was a new college graduate here working in an espresso and Mayfair as a waitress realizing I was pregnant because I had broken engagement at home and I was on my way to a fellowship in India okay that was 1957 it took me from then to 1972 when we published a petition from women who had had abortions in MS magazine saying we have had abortions we demand you know the decriminalization of it so that's a long time I mean I didn't talk about it for a long time either but I hope it's much easier now for I and I think it's important that we tell the truth that's how we find out what's happening in the world to all of us one in three women in in this country and one in three women in my country has needed an abortion at some time in her life so you know why are we being silent about it and in a way my coming back now is a kind of saying thank you to this country which was slightly less crazy than my country and so I was able to find a doctor here who was a wonderful man who took a huge risk of his own profession and who said you know you still had to have two people two physician signing as you do though I know you're trying to change that but the conditions under which they could sign were way way more stringent so he said he would take this huge risk if I promised him two things one I would never tell anyone his name and two I would do what I wanted to do with my life so I dedicated this book to him oh yeah so I've come back a half-century later to say thank you um just still on that topic in terms of you know immunity to pain loss disease the toughness sometimes of this world in general and what have you found to be if it's not too personal your best defense coping mechanism what sort of kept you saying when challenges have seemed friends I mean you know we're communal animals we need each other if we're by ourselves we come to feel crazy or wrong and what what is the source of all change or part the mechanism of all beginning of change is small groups of people supporting each other I mean in the Chinese Revolution it was called speaking bitterness groups in the civil rights movement in my country it was in the southern churches speaking truth about racism in the women's movement it was people and is women actually they used to call them see our groups and rap groups now they call them book clubs really I I just made my group my oh really so it's it's that you know it is the ability to say what's troubling you to tell your bad experience find out you're not alone other people's if I mean you know that's it we haven't been sitting around a campfire for millennia upon millennia for nothing we need to be together tell stories see what's common if they're common problems they're probably political otherwise it wouldn't be happening to the unique people right and if we get together we can change them you talk about the importance of bearing witness to somebody else's pain or loss or suffering and I was moved by that as well I think I remember when I was younger feeling very panicked when someone was emotional suffering having a really hard time because I thought that my role was to find a way to fix it as quickly as possible or to try to get them to stop crying as quickly as possible how what could I possibly have what can I do to help and this would give me this sort of panicky feeling because often I didn't have answers and then one day when I came to the realization that oftentimes the the kindest and most meaningful and important thing that I could do would just be to witness someone else in that moment not even necessarily touching them hugging them giving them tissues going at in water doing all of these things I used to like flap around doing and actually just to sit and be comfortable with listening to someone else in these difficult moments and I didn't really set set me free in that way and I think I hope helped me be a better friend by just being not uncomfortable around being with someone else in a really tough space or old place and I thought oh you I thought you described that really well really wasn't sounds to me like you do it really well thank you I well I hope so it's it means a lot to me when people sit and listen to me when I'm on one of my you know having one of those days one of one of those well I can't do it days um Rebecca Treister wrote a an article recently for New York magazine and she argues that single women or unmarried women are now arguably the most powerful voting group this year in this in this presidential election and you know I'm I'm interested there have been times in my life when I felt I just don't know enough I don't know enough about these potential candidates and I you know and will it make that much difference and you know I've really I don't know enough to feel like I can make a decision and with the media being the way that it is I'm really interested what do you think is the most empowering way that a young person can find out information and make a decision about who about you know a candidate that they would want to support and if they feel that there isn't someone that they really want to support it do you have how will you offer advice around around that when I have Trump in my country saying I'm so sorry um I would say that it's entertaining but it's yeah I D terrified it's too dangerous because he's a brand you know so people know his name and they think because he has a lot of money that he's smart and and and he actually when people are asked why they support him they do say because a successful businessman so I just like to say that he is not a successful businessman he is a successful conman it's very different if somebody figured out that he had just taken the money that he in the money that he inherited and invested it he would be better off now than he is now because he's gone bankrupt and he's you know inflicted his debt on other people and so you know we have lots of political problems but I think we have to understand that the one place on earth where the least powerful equals the most powerful is the voting booth it is not the most we can do but it is the least we can do and you know there's really we just need to invest some time in finding out from trusted sources you know what the issues are and understand that it's that things don't change overnight you know they're not magic solutions but what is practically possible to move forward and trust your instinct you know I mean you you know authenticity when you see it probably you know that it's so valuable don't fail to trust yourself not voting as a way of voting so you know use it and move forward here's my best thing about instinct if it walks like a duck and looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and you think it's a pig it's a pig the most compelling one this is honest this is one of my favorite chapters in your book was when you recounted your experiences of you know working on various different campaigns and and you know on the campaign trail and what I was like but I loved for the want of a nail that she was lost for the one to shoo the horse was lost for the wonderful yeah for the one to the variety the battle was lost and for the want of a battle the kingdom was lost and all for the want of a horseshoe nail and it just kind of and and you know when he talked about how close the election between Al Gore and and Bush was and you know it came down to it really came down to horseshoes now it really yeah I really did I won't put you through the whole thing but it starts with about two or three thousand votes in Missouri and Harriet woods who was running for the Senate there who lost because of a lack of money purely because she couldn't answer charges at the last minute and because of that the senator who was re-elected took Clarence Thomas with him to Washington because Clarence Thomas was there he was visible as a rare conservative african-american conservative willing to go against his own community and that you know he's he successfully gets onto the Supreme Court and because the single vote that stops the recount I in the election of or in Bush and elects Bush and because of that we have a war in Iraq we have you know two wars in Afghanistan we have a bigger division of wealth more prisons than I mean you know it's it's in there it's you know like this and it's all true so for want of the nail you know you end up with three wars and and the most polarized rich-poor situation we'd had in our country almost since the depression as well as giving federal money to religious groups which he did based on on just presidential privilege and it's like a vote delivery system you know so it began to take over the Republican Party and it just you know started with a few thousand votes so I put that in there because I think it's one of those things you learn over time and and I know I mean you know the equivalents here that I don't know but it's it's crucial it's crucial just a few votes can make a huge difference and I remember in my country when Richard Nixon invented the idea and publicize itto politics is dirty your vote doesn't count he was just trying to suppress the vote because he knew he couldn't win on a good voter turnout I found you talking about trusting your instincts and how important your vote was what a massive massive massive difference it could make to the turn of history and historical events and yeah just the way that you put it so eloquently I found it very empowering and persuasive so I'm sure there are great examples here we should all start trading our examples because I think it's one way that we can inspire each other's activism uh I want to move to you as a writer and and some of your some of your books and so your other books and you wrote one called revolution from within which is about self esteem and I wanted to know why he thought this topic and and self esteem was kind of the key to revolution and the key to the key to so many things well it partly it was because wandering around my country and other countries I just saw such valuable incredible women especially some men to who who were great and didn't think they were great you know and so I started to look for books that I could that would be helpful and I I could find books that were external about activism and books that were internal about self-esteem but not that connected one to the other you know that you value yourself and your and your actions in your opinion and find other people you know that it's a it's a circle so I decided I had to write it myself right it was a big revelation for me or a big waking up for me that it was very profitable for me to feel really bad about myself as a woman very profitable indeed and once I started to sort of once this idea had started to once I've really come to understand this idea and I was able to really shut down a lot of so explain explain what you mean by profitable I mean that gosh you just feeling terrible about yourself makes you want to go and change yourself in some way that you aren't okay as you are you aren't acceptable as you are that in order to be worthy loveable appreciated attractive you are not okay as you are this requires improvement change and quite seer and quite serious quite quite big changes often uh and I think you know that's been very empowering I never I think I hadn't connected to these ideas and I was as you say without friends sort of alone thinking to myself gosh this is just me I'm just this way it must be you know this must just be a problem with me and then you start talking to other women about how they feel about themselves and it's like a five-hour conversation it's like a it's like I hate everything kind of a moment a lot a lot of the time I mean I can't generalize obviously it's not the case across the board but I was disturbed by how long I could continue a conversation with most women about things they didn't like about themselves and their appearances this was just was troubling to me this was very troubling to me um so I've lost where I was going with this that's where your question are your question okay that's fine no no absolutely right and the as long as the fault can be located in the powerless person they will stay powerless because they're blaming themselves yeah so there are whole industries you know devoted to making women feel if they just look different had breast implant plants fix their noses dudes every right to to making people of color feel if they were just not as dark skinned or if they just straightened it I mean hello you know it's a and it's all around us and it is it is huge and it is difficult and we had a 12 year old explained to me other day that she was getting fat I was like you're just going through puberty do you get to give yourself any kind of you know of a break here I mean not that maybe I was emotional after that conversation I really hated those we need to I think we're worried about our time over here we'll be going on - oh we want the group questions oh no I have to I have to are ok what's presents from my book club because well it backed back to this you know just a minute on our subject I do think that there are some things that help sports that help sports help because sports tell women especially that our bodies are not just ornaments they are instruments you know they're meant to do things hello now the purpose yeah and and going to I wrote a whole thing once about going to my first health club ever because they were I was looking at women's bodies in the steam room and I realized that each body on its own made total sense without the ridiculous little broad the thing you know that referred to some other ideal you know one woman look like a Buddha somebody else look at you know and the and the the scars from cesareans were like warrior scars you know it's it's it's hard because there's a big effort to keep us from rebelling and there's a lot of money to be made but I hope that each of us men and women can go home and look in the mirror and say yes this is ban tastic um I want to ask you one more question that's connected to this on the laminate and then I'm gonna move on to the other ones but so as a feminist when you get ready in the morning and you put yourself together and there's a kind of misconception I think that in order to be a feminist you know there were like all of these invisible rules which mean that you know you should you can't wear heels or you can't wear makeup or you know body hair no body hair I mean I mean I have an answer as well but I'm interested when you put yourself together what kind of things do you what what do you think about um well I used to have a rule anything I could do in 20 minutes was okay and over time I've developed a kind of uniform you know which is black pants some kind of top of some weird belt that you can sew but I think that body decoration is a human impulse and and men as well as women if you have you ever seen the Omo people in the valley between in Africa well it did look up on their cell phones look up oh em oh and look at these people who women and men boys and girls decorate themselves every day you know with natural clay and paints and flowers it's beautiful there's nothing wrong with body decoration it's beautiful but the question is why can't men do it and why do women have to do it you know why can't we do it with joy and imagination so far as it's a choice and it feel and it makes you feel good and you feel like Howard I didn't think that there can be any rules and so our shared self my book club Maria wants to know in your opinion how has done hasn't changed in the digital age now that women from all over the world can be informed and empowered to the Internet has the balance for quality shifted and why well it you know it's obviously great that we can get information and safety in the safety of our homes that we can find each other it's also obviously true that it's not the same as meeting you know you're not you're not empathizing with all five senses and pressing send is not activism okay it's also true that it is divisive and polarizing because the huge majority of illiterates in this country in this world are female and many many many millions of women do not have electricity do not have money for a computer to know so it you know it can be divisive and we must be aware of that here's my dream for technology I think that we should have a big you know satellite in the sky broadcasting in all kinds of different languages and there should you know those wind-up radios that you don't even need electricity for you know so each woman on the ground can get a program in her own language I mean I just think technology is wonderful but let's democratize it let's try to spread it as widely as as we can and and there is also the opposite end of it which is that females on the web get a lot more punishment a lot more harassment a lot more cruelty a lot more threats and you know we have to understand too that in the absence of five senses were able to be more cruel to each other than we are when we're actually present what do you say to people who believe that feminism is just about hatred of men and that's from Raphael he's in well I could send them to the dictionary that's good men are feminists - it's why we chose the word you know I kind of liked women's liberationists as a word but feminists we chose because men could be feminists - do you have any role models and if so who are they and why and that's from Romina oh there's so many so many when you say that I think of Wilma Mankiller the chief of the Cherokee Nation who should have been President of the United States in any fair situation an amazing woman who knew how to create independence not dependence credible gift Alice Walker I think is I always think of her as ahead of me on the path she's she's all but full yes she's number two on your book Corbin I'm so grateful and I mean that how great is it that that I'm there and Alice Walker is there and is that not we didn't know we didn't lobby we didn't do anything we're so honored and then to be chosen so I'm just totally knocked out with this right Oh craziness this is us getting to be here and still being able to talk to you who wrote these things that mean so much to us is remarkable and a complete gift so it's really it's really our it's really our honor um I want to try and get a few more questions in because they'll be mad at me otherwise oh this is an interesting one does she believe do you believe that the word feminism should change to humanism would it be easier for men to embrace feminism if the changing the word made it sound like equality for all not just women and that's from Jesus well once I went to a lecture I was doing at a big kind of amphitheater in Texas and there were people outside with with big placards saying Gloria Steinem is a humanist and I thought oh my I was ignorant of the tradition of the word humanist which means you don't believe in God which you know they were very pissed off it's not what it really needs mm-hmm yeah I mean that well I'm generalizing but if you go home over you look in your city you know that's what it means yeah that you believe in human beings I'm completely exposing my ignorance here I had thought that it meant that humanism is sort of like you believe in equality for all humans no I'm so wrong I mean histo weakened this is great meanings change over time but that's not the origin of I think that's what I think that's what it's sort of come to mean even though I don't think that clearly it's not the actual definition of it well you know first of all we should be able to choose our own word it is not if you don't want to say feminism fine women's liberationists Womanism mujer ISTA if you're Spanish girls I love girls with two or three hours so it's the content that matters not nothing right right some people say equalist that's another word yeah uh oh okay mm it's so hard to serve me good ones okay I would love if Machado saying that she would love to he talked more about the Houston National Women's Conference do you believe something like this can happen again and if it were held today do you think how do you think the conference would be different from what it was like in 1977 how the issues changed since then you know this I I don't want to go on about this because probably most people in my country don't know about it much this but it was a it was a two-year process in which in every state and territory delegates were elected in issues were selected by huge numbers of people I mean in the capital of New York State there were 2000 people just there and if also because of its guidelines was maybe the only ray economically ethnically representative meeting I've ever seen in my country and we decided then those delegates voted on a program that we all agreed on and so it caused us to unify around yes anti-lesbian sentiments or a feminist issue you know this is our around reproductive rights and abortion which were still controversial then so it was like writing a constitutional convention for women so it I described it in the book and there are other books completely devoted to it if you want to look at it and see whether you think that this would be useful and in some way what are possible solutions to a misogynistic media how can average systems and voters either change flawed mass media or simply be sure they are receiving reliable news and information free of biased and destructive misogyny and that's from Amy well I think this is on the agenda of your new women's party is it not changing the media yes and and and lots of other violence everything you know great thank you thank you thank you very much I appreciate whatever be broaches sorry oh no no do you want to repeat food oh she was just saying that she has more information for me if I'd like it okay so you know there are lots of existing groups devoted to this and we can find the Women's Media Center in my country we started precisely to do this because we realized that we had had and continue to have a women's health movement but we didn't have a women's media movement you know so it it's very important that we have our own media now more before than we did before obviously but the advertising-supported big media the ownership of the media is very restricted to five big operations around the world hello and also the ad content so I think there are any number of ways we can protest to individuals we can boycott the products that are advertised and you know and we can hook into the women's Party to the Women's Media Center to any group we know that's working on the media and understand it's really important because it's possible for the media to make you feel that it is right and you are wrong it's amazing you know so we need we need a more realistic media and I'll ask you one more quick question and we're going to ask questions from the audience but Sarah says any ideas on how to teach our sons equality my youngest is 7 they split sports into separate sexes this year I'm not sure how to explain to him why well I think it's it's how we treat our boys you know do we we don't say to them don't cry or be tough or whatever you know we kind of try to let them be who they are it's wonderful for boys to take care of littler children it makes them feel grown up and there's a wonder whether it was a great project in New York called oh boy babies sixth grade little boys took care of babies in child care centers and at first they said they were kind of both they pee and the you know but then of course they just said babies are interesting you know they were interested and also it made them feel grown up and the the program got its name because they would say you know whenever the two days a week came up oh boy babies so in a general way I think women girls become whole people by venturing out into what is wrongly called masculine and isn't and boys stay hold people by venturing out into you know what is wrongly called feminine then we get to be whole people okay questions from our answers answers yeah organizing announcement yes thank you very much that was just so inspiring and so energizing I work with refugee women in the UK and first of all I'm moving on from what you said about the importance of activism I'd like to invite you both and everybody here to a gathering we're having on International Women's Day right out there outside the home office at one o'clock to stand up for women who cross borders and need safety particularly in the current refugee crisis and Gloria can you say something about your experiences of building solidarity across borders borders of Nations races classes genders thanks very much you know it's I realized that you know obviously the refugee question is huge now right but also I think because of the particular nature of some refugees movements we have come to think that they're more that refugees in general around the world are more male than they are when actually it's 90 percent women and children refugees so you know we we need to remember that and as for working together do we know each other is is the first question I think in in New York there was an african-american women's group very big and important and a Jewish women's group very big and important they were trying to do things together and that never happened right so they called up a friend of mine who was a feminist conflict resolution expert which she became out of running to women's centers okay so she begins it right and as they called her in as a consultant then she said well do your presidents know each other and they said well no not really she said tell them they have lunch together you know every week for a while it'll work and it did I mean who do we know who do we trust nothing replaces trust who do we go to the movies with it's the bell hooks rule if you buy shoes together you can do politics together so I would say that's the first question that all of us can answer who are our friends do we have friends different from us and if not why not we're not learning if we're learning don't learn so much from sameness another question hi I'm Lisa from Germany and I just want to go back to a topic that you mentioned before briefly which is very interesting in which I plan to do research on and that is female sexuality and I think that in my opinion that this is sort of a key to equality on its own and I just want to ask your opinion about this because I think it's not just about pornography it's also about women understanding their own sexuality and being well strong about it and there in their opinion with their feeling and also women's magazines you know writing about how to best please him it's all about men and not about women and I just want to ask your opinion about how this is a key in equality you know what is the key it is a key because how we got in this Jam in the first place of patriarchy and other you know is because of trialing trying to control reproduction and that meant controlling women's bodies and that meant pleasure was that animated individual women was dangerous so we got everything from restriction in not you know in rooms to female genital mutilation to telling us to Freud telling us that there was a kind of orgasm that did not physiologically exist my name is Jude Kelly I started the Wow festival here at this lovely thank you and this will be its sixth year and it the women's equality party was born from that last year and two years ago I started a festival called BAM being a man and this is the root of my question that if women is consciousness-raising which has been going formally for formally for a hundred years lot longer forever really but men's consciousness-raising is a very new territory and my worry is that if this is the third wave of feminism then it could also AB as much as it's flowing at the moment and unless male consciousness-raising gets included in male agenda then I fear that we will ever again and that's my question really do you think that as is true do you think there's more we can do about that and of course that can't just be women urging men forward it's got to be men coming forward thank you there is I've I think in both our countries there is a fairly substantial men's movement of men saying wait a minute I'm not going to be limited to this you know dehumanized masculine role and meeting together in order to support each other in this defiance of a masculine role which is not easy and also to support women there's men's groups working against violence against women too so you know thank you for making that visible and thank you for supporting it and yes absolutely I think it's why we started why I wanted to start with the UN was to start he for she was to create a conversation that start inclusive I think feminism becoming synonymous with man-hating or is is really damaging and and really it's just incorrect so I think the more we talk about that the more that we try and open up a space in which I mean it's really wonderful to see men in this room and thank you for coming and actually we have endless research about how if you eliminate from the statistics of stuff why men die the things most associated with the masculine role of violence and speeding and tension related to you live four or five years longer I mean whatever what other movement can offer and and you know to see men with their children really being loving and caring towards their children is just a gift to everyone I owe my father to because he was a wonderful loving patient man and therefore he's personally responsible for the fact that I am still friends with all my old lovers because they were nice people well maybe there was one I'm crazy boycott and um Gloria and I started sparerib around the time that Gloria started miss hi Gloria how are you know what what suppose me is very scary nowadays is that my partner Marsha and I started the magazine as you started miss we set out with the aim to try to change everything and the worst that happened to us that was that we were told we were silly I mean that was really it we were silly and we would fail you come forward 40 odd years and Caroline three are dead Perez I'm sure lots of people in this room know of she went up and she said why isn't there a woman on the banknote which seems to me a much less offense against man than what we tried to do the result for her was death threats police protection tweets and messages and emails that were of such vileness and perversion and violence to her and it scares me now that actually it's like one's awoken the monster and in fact you hear stuff about women being enslaved in this society that it got much much much more ugly is that something you found in the States and also what do you think about that well it's true that there seemed to be stages of resistance you know when the first woman who does something gets resistance and the but she's there and then it's okay until it gets to be about a third and then you know it's like they're saying there goes the neighborhood or something you know that they're worried that we're going to be 50/50 and there's a new stage of resistance and now that there is the web where people can be hateful without names and without penalty this is reflected so it's not that the danger isn't real it is but it is a part of progress it just is you know and we have to look after each other and be aware and reach out to people men who can help and point it out and know that it's wrong but we we can't stop I mean we can't let it frighten us into stopping we're just trying to find remedies you know find ways of dealing with legal threats on the web that is a whole new area of the law for instance and stalking on the web and so on and we need to tell each other and protect each other but we're not going to stop and I'd like to speak as a supportive man to feminism also a disabled person so in a way that fighting another oppression makes one see the links between the different oppressions and I think that the real answer to feminism is that all men should become feminists because that's the only way that we're actually going to create a world we can't do it with just women fighting for this because there's too many thousands of years of patriarchy but men have to realize that by being feminist in their relationships in the way they are they're actually going to have a better life themselves and for their children and for their partners and I think that's that's the first thing I want to say the second thing is everybody in this room is going to be faced with the choice on the 23rd of June and politicians are deliberately trying to confuse people but if you see that the European Union stands for equality and those who argue against it don't want equality it's fairly clear when people need to be going and the European Declaration of Human Rights comes straight from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that's what a lot of people don't like and if we don't maintain that bastion would you agree that we are on a downhill slope in this country against equality now the women's rights in the European unit right I agree if this is not I'm not going to have to vote right but I hope and believe that folks are not going to go backward right you said that if you look like a duck and it felt like a patient and it was a peak and therefore a no vote was just as important as a vote I come from Australia where it we have compulsory voting do you think that by trying to figure out ways to encourage more women to vote we were therefore having better representation in power in power in Parliament and therefore make changes that way yes in every country that I'm aware of from from India to my country to here there is a gender gap toward candidates men - and women who represent the majority issues of women and represent equality and we need to create that gender gap and make it vocal and I I think that's what the women's equality party is doing and what we're trying to do and you know I'm even you know if it enunciates the issues right even if the it's someone from another party is going to it it publicizes the issues it makes people know what is possible and we also do our best to do that and we tend to campaign outside the parties and outside campaigns because actually social justice movements have more credibility than political parties so so it's very important I think to use that credibility there's nothing more important than a trusted messenger I think we have to throw it to a close

Channel: Our Shared Shelf Group

Views: 232,945

Rating: 4.8031497 out of 5

Keywords: Emma Watson, Gloria Steinem, Our Shared Shelf, Feminism

Id: Tm6ESsMlvYE

Length: 84min 20sec (5060 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 29 2016