Zero my gosh. I am so excited to be here. She cant outdo me in excitement. This is a woman. It was super good. Im foremost an activist im a rape survivor and im just so thrilled to be here. Im not here today without you. I did not expect that. A little housekeeping thing. Im so glad to welcome you all to the book club. For this evenings perp performance. For those of you who are using cart please turn off the sound on your mobile device and for all others please turn off all electronic devices. The first time i saw you in person. It was at the 2,017th i remember feeling scared. Afterwards there is a hush silence of all. At that moment i didnt feel nervous anymore. I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart is so hard to be what you cant see and you showed us what it was like to be fighting for decades in the arena and because of you we all arent nervous anymore. Thank you. Thank you so much. I have to say i still get nervous. I do think we get strength from each other. I know were here today. The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off a little. The first question that we have i love quotes ive always loved quotes. If you poured water on a quote it would become a novel. When it was suggested to me that i collect my quotes. It will be easy. I do think they are something we need it now i think the third of the country that is in reaction against the profound changes in the majority of us. Its better at sloganeering than we are. And we need to state our dreams in a way that is quotable and short in march of zero and televise a ball so we need more quotes. I left two blank pages at the end of the book. All of your quotes can be there. What is your favorite quote if you have to choose. It is like choosing children. Wait a minute here. I wrote some down because i am at an age when remembering something right away is as good as an orgasm. Maybe we should make that into a tshirt. I think this is what we believe. We are linked not ranked. That is the shortest i had been able to say. And theres one in robin morgan. That i love. Hate generalizes love so many of us are living out the un lived lives of our mothers. We each do live dash mike deserve to live out our own lives. This one is more destructive. If a woman spends a year burying in nursing a child why is it a man responsible for spending that much more than half the time raising a child. Thank you for the tshirt slogan. You offer some pointers. Places to stay away from. And when you are not allowed to laugh and when you are. I think it took me a while to understand that asked laughter is the only free emotion. You can also compel love if someone is dependent long enough. You cannot compel laughter. Einstein said he have to be really careful why he shaved because if he thought of something new he laughed and he cut himself. On top of that i learned from my friend. The spirit of laughter. That is the person who pierces into the unknown. If you cant laugh you cant pray. Is that not great. We should never go any place or stay any place where they wont let us laugh. It is the only free emotion and its pretty good. Indicator of whether we are in the right place or not. That stage we were talking about things that give us joy. What has given you joy lately. Io. Here this woman it totally makes me happy. I was just on two campuses in india and indiana. Not easy for the student to get there. So full of rebellion and joy and new ideas. In crazy tattoos. It is that that gives me joy. People sitting in the circle the way we always had done around the fire. Learning from each other. Telling each other stories. It turns out thats the only way we can experience empathy as much as i love the page and the greatest screen as we cant emphasize with each other unless were together with all of our senses. Things will happen and are happening. They are completely unexpected. Im so sure you had been in many of the circles since the 60s now. In this decade we have seen me too, times out. What is in this current moment had you seen a trend that may be art. What they really need to know to have the strength to keep going. I think the good thing about being old you see it and how bad it is and you are mad as hell. This is why we need to organize together. In just a viral dash mike follow your reference. I remember in the early 70s when women students in upstate new york were gathering and they were trying to describe what happened to them on their summer jobs. They use the term Sexual Harassment. We put it on the cover and did a cover story about Sexual Harassment and we used puppets so when it be too shocking. Nonetheless we were taken off the news then. And in supermarkets it was too shocking. And then catherine mckennan. Included Sexual Harassment and discrimination law and three women of brought cases of Sexual Harassment of three black women they have always been a difficult disproportionate part of the Womens Movement. And then there was a Anita Hill Clarence thomas they educated the country we got him on the Supreme Court nonetheless. Its helpful to see what came before because now the me to Movement Thanks to all of this and thanks to technology and the web it is now all over the world. Its a process and now it is a majority is going for it. Take you for this great segue into our next question. How do you work to be more intersectional. What we need to know is that it was intersectional before there was the word intersectional. It isnt cover that way there is racism and the Womens Movement we published the first ever poll on womens opinions. And issues of equality it turned out that 60 some of black woman supported that and only 50 some were there. And they look at the results of the last president ial election. More than 60 of black women supported Hillary Clinton and 51 percent of white women supported donald trump. I just want to say for a lot of reasons we could go on about why. It has always been disproportionally black women and there is a reason why i learned feminism from them. Its very hurtful and frustrating i think. It is pretrade differently. [applause]. I work with an Incredible Team of activists we are waking up to news every single day burning dumpsters around the world and as someone who is her this. One thing i would love to get your advice on is how to combat the teeth especially for those of us are working in an issue tied to our own personal trauma. There is often this classic pedestal or box where we are expected to perform im wondering if you have any advice for that. First of all, your experience it. Not everybody experiences us the same way. I think in general we burn out when we dont have each other support. The most important thing is to have a group of people to whom you can be honest and who can help you and say you are doing this too much or you are messing up. I do think we need to show support and the biggest and baddest things happen when we are isolated. The question of using our experience. To change the law is difficult but the more difficult think is to not speak it. Secrets only remain powerful when they remain secret. Is a wonderful book called trauma and recovery. She addresses trauma in all kinds whether its for veterans and more or children all kinds of trauma. And she said the final stage of healing is using what happened to us to help other people. Because then its not wasted. No that has a purpose. Of course you still need to take care of yourself and not get so externalized caring for others more than yourself. Heres what i think is my mini to women need to reverse the golden rule. I think we have to learn to treat ourselves as well as we treat others. There are a lot of inferior things. Many of them are related are there a few truths who can point to the piss you off the most. Otherwise we think its normal. That it doesnt even have a name. I do think that it is the Little Things that get to us. And theyre not Little Things actually its that we as women or people of color or whatever it is that means were not as powerful we have to learn to speak as much as we listen and the more powerful groups have to learn to listen as much as they speak. And just a little bit of democracy is very helpful and the lack of democracy in that it drives people crazy. If you think of the politics and the groups of people talking and my the politics comes about i think that is the most outrageous. If youre less powerful you dont feel heard or seen the lack of existence is the most outrageous. Scream over the course of your work what is most surprising thing that you found or counterintuitive. You must remember it was shaped in the 1950s. Everything is counterintuitive. There are a few people here remember that. In the discussion theyre going to tell me if i messing up i think i was surprised that the conventional wisdom that was so complete was so wrong. That everybody had to live in the same way. That was the wisdom of the 50s. I went right on believing that i have to marry and have my husbands name and identity. And that was normal and only way. I just kept putting it off. Fortunately the Womens Movement came along and actually not everybody has to live the same way. So my intuition was so shaped by my early life for a while all of the social Justice Movements seem to counterintuitive and great. I love fashion. Oftentimes it is described about that. We have the right to express ourselves. If you doubt that is a universal human expression many tribes of People Living in Eastern Africa i think you will see photographs of they decorate themselves men and women everybody decorate themselves every day with flowers and mugs and color they decorate their whole body. I do think that body decoration is probably a human instinct it just doesnt have to be governed by group judgment. Men dont have to strangle themselves with ties. And we dont have to wobble around on high heels. We should be able to express ourselves individually in the way that we decorate our bodies. If we have audience members who want to change the world what is your advice for them. Start now. My advice is sound so big that we get overwhelmed. In fact is like doing everything you can. When you see something unfair or someone to answer question if you just try to do it day by day then we understand the revolution like the tree does not come from the top down it comes from the bottom up. Then we get rid of the sheds and just do everything we can. Thanksgiving just happened im sure it was a lovely ordeal for many people we may have family members had different points of view from us. Im wondering the advice you have what are your strategies to send front of someone else who may have a completely different worldview from you. How do you get them to understand. Its hard because it is complex. If you want someone to listen to you you have to listen to them. That is helpful to look for shared experiences allow for difference because the systems we want allow for difference is there anybody in particular that youve have the sweat that you could share with us. I think there was and is a dear friend of my who is a brilliant organizer and is very catholic. She was very put off by the idea of concept contraception and abortion. We finally sat down together and i said she didnt quite realize that it was a question of choice over our own bodies. There was no such thing as a pro abortion movement. There was a pro democracy starts with governing our own bodies. It allowed us to come together. She could be against abortion for herself we could work together. Sometimes i ask people what makes you cry what moves you im wondering what makes you cry what moves you. I think like a lot of women i cry when i get angry. It keeps us from getting angry because we feel vulnerable and pathetic and i met a woman executive in the midwest somewhere and she said when she got angry she cried and she realized she have to be able to get angry with things that were angry. She developed a method of getting angry crying and talking through it. She would say to the men around her im crying because i am angry. I thought that was liberating. Weve talked a lot about how things have changed im wondering what would you tell yourself 18 years old i guess i would just say its good to be all right. You dont have to be a rocket i think maybe cell boys in poor neighborhoods see sports as the way out. That is where you see people who look like you. For years that i was cannot tap my way out of there. I desperately wanted to be a rocket. Im glad you brought up men. What role do you think men have in the feminist movement chose the word in my experience we chose the word feminist instead of womens proliferation. We chose feminism because that was what it was chosen. Anybody who believes in the full social economic quality of all human beings. And it saved the lives of men to because as we figured out that if you take out the statistics about why men die of tension related diseases of all of the things that could be related to the masculine role it turns out men live about five years longer. I always say you can live longer. Women get to be whole people by expressing all of the parts of ourselves that are wrongly called unfeminine and i think men get to be whole people by expressing those things that are called on masculine. This comes from raising children are being raised to raise children as because thats where all of those things that are called feminine. When we are traveling in small groups and raise children as much as women that feminine role did not exist. It is comforting to me to know that the masculine, feminine thing did not always exist. We were talking about in different cultures that you are mentioning. I would say matrilineal whenever you say matriarchal. That women are going to dominate men as men have dominated women. Women had control over our own physical selves. In the tribe for the clan or the clan lineup therefore passed through women many with the cherokee and a lot of others were matrilineal. In all my women friends they all make jokes about what does columbus call primitive, equal women. And men perfect dissipated in childbirth and the languages that have gender pronouns. I am added mostly in the way he studied history we dont study pre patriarchal things and so we think that the way it is is human nature when actually its not. When we have these masculine and feminine roles. In the whole process of colonization we learned the history of this country from when the first person was and set up when columbus who was a natural. Instead of when he showed up. In a few moments we will turn it over to you for audience q a but before we do one last question. Give a favorite organizing story or moment that you can share with us. I have so many. Here is the magic for me because i had traveled so much that is i come back to someplace i havent been in ten years and i discover that the one thing that happened in an audience like this. Someone stood up over there and said that the school was racist in some way. That is my neighborhood also. And then i come back and they transformed their school system. That is what is moving. The most satisfying thing to me is that i meet someone i havent seen for five years and i dont really know and they tell me that something i did was meaningful to them and helpful. Its almost always a surprise. Its not that we can plan this. If we do what we care about and try to make each moment as close to what we hope for as we can actually plant seeds to grow and revolutions like trees dont grow from the top down. One of the great things about being old as i get to see as i travel around changes that i never would have dreamed of and people who had blossomed into all kinds of incredible ways. I get to see people that are nice also. I was in bellingham washington the other day and some guy got up and told me was completely unnatural. But then i just said i am pam to say that. Thank you for planting many seeds tonight. We will not take questions now take questions from the audience. I am so glad to see you. You can give us answers as well as questions should i start taking so much for being here. I had been working a lot lately with women who are just out of college. If you stop talking about feminism you realize that actually everything is equal. There is backlash with this 20 i want to understand whether hoping that the world has become more equal. But on some levels they had been kicked around a little bit by life. What are your feelings and your thoughts on how to move forward with that. I can do what you are experiencing is my in a general way women are a group that gets more radical with age you have to experience the injustice before you realize it and hopefully on campus now you are being treated with more equality than in the past and probably with more equality and one reason you are treated more equally on campus is because your pain. You are pain, paying, you are not getting paid. I assume and i believe that their hopes that are intact. Its when they run into an air of unfairness they will be mad and radicalized. That is the pattern with activism. I dont mean that there arent many organizers obviously there are. But in a general way [applause]. Think you for all of your ears years of inspiration. My question for you is do you have any regrets. My question for you is do you have any regrets. How long do we have. First of all im a writer all of the social Justice Movement everything that i find so compelling about trying to make change happen has given me what i want to write about and not enough time to write it. I regret that it just is. I dont have what are conventional regrets that i didnt live in a a conventional womans life actually i dont regret that. I do have personal regrets about my work. It has been very distressing to that the people that are the harshest women are senior women. I wonder what light you could shed on that. How you can help me increase the awareness with an academic fact i simply dont know how to help these women who actually where the feminist label but they set out way more non feminists in their behavior to the junior women. Business as well as academia. I dont know. Only you know what youre experiences. The sometimes people invite me to speak and so on. Part of the problem is that women who are chosen to advance our them women who put down the other women. We need to be inclusive when we organize for instance and we need to be honest with each other. So the more we can speak to each other in groups that dont have the same hierarchy as us. The more we can women who are in support roles and executive roles and so on can talk to each other and make a weekly time to do it and be honest with each other. The better it is. In those organizations as yours totally women. The school has men and women. I just find it very upsetting that the harsh