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Just a few quick housekeeping notes and i promise we will get started. First of all, this event is recorded so you can watch back. It will be right here at the same broadcast link for you to watch as well as on our facebook page. We also have this wonderful chat window open on the bottom righthand part of your screen where it says Say Something nice. Some of you have already found it. Please deal. Tell us where you are watching from. We do expect you to keep it respectful we reserve the right to keep it. Say something nice and we are all good. Right next to the chat box at the bottom of your screen you will see ask a question. You can type in there or in the chat any questions. We will have some time towards the end of the event to take a look at those. This is also Live Streaming to facebook. Hello facebook. Just so you know, we cannot see your question on facebook. The link is right in the video description. Finally, i would like to call your attention to the green button on the middle bottom of your screen. Purchasing your copy or copies right from our website. Again, we ship nationwide. We even have signed up for you. This is really a great opportunity to pick up a signed first edition. That is the rest of my spiel. I promise we are onto the good stuff. We are joined with think by a feminist. They rode in the review with the book with a winning mix of fellowship, the author lives out the truth under feminism and how they have evolved. Carol hey is an associate professor at university and author of the awardwinning liberalism feminism resisting oppression. She has written for the boston times and new york low. The host of radio boston and prior to joining she was a professor in social work where she taught social innovation and leadership. A longtime poverty advocate also ran boston rising a startup Antipoverty Fund and was the first woman president for the archdiocese in boston. Her awards include an award from the greatest hundred Greater Boston business journal. Caroline, we are so pleased to have you here tonight. We were looking forward to your talk. Thank you for that. How are you, carol . I am well. Thank you. There was that old joke. I laughed, i cried. When i read think like a feminist, i laughed, i cried, i got mad. It made me want to take action. Every time i checked my lipstick now. A huge bottle of emotions. It is exciting to talk to you about it and i know that the guest are excited to hear. As i was reading, okay, there is a lot in this book. It takes work to be this funny while you do it. Is this a book that you knew five years ago . I would say yes and no. Large parts of the book i had been wanting to write for a while. Especially as a social political realworld issues that i actually care about. That is actually what motivated me throughout my entire academic career. At some point i started feeling like i wanted more. I started finding my teachings would gratify. Searching regular people. A first generation student, i did not come from that background spirit i had this knowledge that regular bluecollar folks can understand this stuff. Especially with feminist brush. Inherently impossible to comprehend spirit it can be our job in ways that people could really understand it. Had you written this book before you had 10 year . It is not written to prove that you know the literature. Although, it certainly proves that you know the literature. This is not a book written for academics. For me it is a book, tenure gave me the flexibility. So, there was some moment when you decided to actually write this. When was that . I guess it was about three years ago. Dinner proposal and norton liked the idea out. I guess it all kind of came together. A transitional time in my life. I did not quite know this was going to happen but it came together. I think that it can be really helpful for people that have not read the book to get a feel for it early on in these conversations. There are a couple passages that you thought you might read. Do you feel comfortable doing that right now . One of the reasons is i found myself really frustrated with these stereotypes and characters of feminism. It felt like these characters were detracting from the conversations that feminists are trying to get us to have. Laying out the stereotype to feminism. Sort of like an elephant in the room. All of these misconceptions. It can be really hard because they actually think they know what you are going to say. I really like to just call out the elephant in the room. Talking about these stereotypes about why they exist. Feminism is radical. Radical potential. Once you clear that way then you can start telling what it actually is. A short bit of these two different stereotypes of what a feminist days. Rooted in some truth, but mostly the angry feminist. It tends to put off men and women alike. Never appalled by the sector of the angry it is their right to have women make their lives more pleasant. The girlfriend to laugh at their jokes and submit to reenactments to secretaries who deliver coffee to wives who pick up where their mothers left off. To singlehandedly ensure, the womens job is to make the world harmonious for men. The whole point of women to cater to mens need and when. Men hate them calling into question. To the unforgivable suggestion that gender divisions and the man game and feminism embraces the on accommodating unpleasant enough women to join her. If at all possible a nasty woman women on the other hand are horrified by angry feminist. We often do not see it for what it. Men and women, especially feminists, activists resist feminism because it is an agony for culture and designing in the relationship. It permitted us to feminine committee and they do this for the benefit of men. It is easy to fight them over this crap and submit to ourselves we are sometimes quite literally in bed with the enemy. A very world order that keeps us living fully to our lives. It is safer to lie to ourselves than admit that when all said and done lets pause for a minute. There are couple of things that i would love to ask about that i just heard. It is hard to read this book and not be angry. There is a different between the stereotype and anger. Boy, anger is dicey for women. Can you talk about that . Absolutely, yes. A lotta feminists of color point out that for all of the work that our culture has done to portray women, it is more emotional and less rational than the white man. For all the work that has gone into this is emotional. The one emotion that we are not permitted is anger. We dont like it when we get angry. It is probably a coincidence. Anger is the one emotion that can actually get stuff done. It can motivate. There is a reason and no one wants to talk about malcolm x. Malcolm x is someone of course. Righteous anger. Exactly. We have to polish up the version of him. The nice peaceloving one and malcolm x is the angry one. Rebecca wrote a really great book about anger last year. It political importance of anger and the importance of embracing and not apologizing for it. They put in this addition of sort of having to justify, having to point out that this anger is actually justified. Simply because she is angry. The fact that she is angry as all the evidence we need to not take her seriously. Feminists have to point out it is often justified. And if we listen to it, we can actually learn a lot. Go to the second reading. Sure. The angry feminist is someone where that character is used to brush them off. We really Pay Attention to feminism we see that anger does have a role. Just not the one that we serve [inaudible] the second stereotype is much more lovelier. She is a girl power feminist. The girl power feminist is sexy, feisty without being offputting and fundamentally unthreatening. She is confident without being pushy. She claims independence. Girl power feminists are successful. They capitalize on what they heard in childhood assuring them girls can do anything. Everyone else can do the same. Understanding the empowerment is the success of individual women. Girl power feminism claims a victory every time a woman makes it. Corporate womens Leadership Event girl power feminism. Girls rule, boys drool. [laughter] in front of a giant screen emblazoned with the word feminism is feminism. The spice girls practically invented the genre. Anyone who makes money by selling is likely a girl power feminist. Anyone who makes money on beauty congratulates himself is probably a girl power feminist. Whoever makes money that celebrate womens intuition and empowerment is in all likelihood a girl power feminist. This kinder gentler feminism talks the talk of women empowerment, but it did say without ruffling feathers. Ensuring everyone it will not be corrupted in any significant way. I found this really challenging. In a couple of ways. One, i have an 18yearold daughter. There were many times when i did want her to think a girl could do anything and girls do. I never said boys drool, because i have one of those, too. I understand that if you stop short of consistent change, you are stopping short of getting busy. This idea that the positivism around being female might be flocking in to the Current System was very challenging for me to get my head around. Sometimes it can feel somewhat innocent. You start with this challenging feminism. That might be your first taste. I dont want to say that that never happens. Other feminists see it being coopted by corporate interest. Being used to sell more crap that people dont need. More body washes that people dont need. It is just that if this is the full extent of your feminism, it is a very weak feminism. It will not tell people that really need help. It will not help the women that really need help. It will help the girls and women that are already very privilege. Probably get closer. And to be clear, that is one of those things i talk about in the book. The history of the feminist movement. One of caring too much for the women at the top and not for the women at the bottom. They are finally making progress on this. Starting to realize we will not achieve our feminist goals if we are not paying attention. Racism, angel is on, homophobia, transforming. Chances are very good to make things better. Dont call that feminism. The second half of the conversation. Before we go there, i want to stay with these two stereotypes. Part of a number of stereotypes that you laid out. You gave us critique and reporting of the waves of feminism. I would say largely, in the 20th century. Again, i said this at the beginning. All with this funny accessible irreverent voice. I wondered how you found the voice and why you either felt or knew that it was important to bring to a popular reading audience this body of work on feminism today . When they came out and called it irreverent. All of my friends started emailing me. I know. The voices very much that i speak and. Just being able to write like that is refreshing. The book they are teaching on as well. A lot of these jokes have been tried and tested all my students. Poor things. Teaching students from a variety of backgrounds for more than 20 years. You start to see that they can really understand this stuff, if it is pitched in the right way. Catching more flies with honey than vinegar. Where people stop. Everyone likes reading to where you want to turn the next page. It doesnt fit to make this any more difficult than it needs to be. This stuff is interesting. I want people to know about it. I want people to ask me questions about this stuff. Why was it important to bring more to the audience . Really sort of a disciplinary view. A real kind of history of this feminism, literature on it, the way of thinking. What does that do for our common discussion . By comment, i mean public communal discussion about feminism. Good. Yes. I think in some ways, the need to movement has made the public ready in a way that they were not before. A long overdue reckoning with our collective behavior and the ways of interacting with each other. I think the Movement Really kind of threw a lot of fuel on the fire. It made issues newly relevant. Looking like we would probably have a female president ial candidate, these were issues that the public may be more interested in. More complex than three years ago when i found this book and things like that. I do think we are a society where we are coming around to seeing feminism as something that is not necessarily just the dirty word that i think a lot of people think it was in the 90s. I want to now dive into this question of inter sexuality. I will actually look at my notes here because im careful in the way i crafted this particular question. I would like to read it to you. Careful to talk about this in the book. You talked about past ways of feminism for their conclusion of people of color, lesbian and gay communities and very specifically trans women. Why is calling that out so important to you and to the moment . Two answers and that. The first is kind of i am a feminist theorist have. This is not just one way that the feminist movement has been improving. Mistakes of exclusion. Relatively privilege women using this movement that claims to speak for all women. The most extreme example of this would be betty she claimed there was this problem that has no name. Filled with their feminine roles an important problem. The book itself was coincidental denigrating groups giving chance for women to start realizing what it means. All of these personal experiences that we would have are shared with other women. That was a really important moment. It is hard because she is often also claiming that this is as bad as it gets. They had domestic help. Almost always underpaid women of color who were giving them the time. It is hard to really be a feminist to look at that and call it the kind of feminism i want to get behind when what it does is doing the patriarchs work for it. It is not making things better for women. It is making things better for some very privileged women. If not worse for women in general. Once we start seeing this habit of thought where a lot of feminists, you realize you are really only talking about yourselves to have their interests be listened to. How damaging that was to other women and women who actually had it much worse than they did. You see it in yourself. You see that tendency. You see how important it is to just correct those mistakes over and over and over again. To that point, you may feel like you have already answered this. What is the proper posture for white privileged women in approaching conversations about feminism today . I think humility is probably the primary virtue. I think this is a case for anyone in a position of social privilege claiming to care about social justice. If you are going to be an ally, you have to be willing to sit down and listen. You have to be circumspect about recognizing your prayer pledge and be correct. Lets hear it. You have to be willing to know to use your privilege widely. People will listen to me. Less likely to be taken seriously. Challenging conversations are just that. And one cannot even begin to tap at the door without being prepared to embrace challenges. Right now, what is the most uncomfortable and challenging part of the feminist or feminism conversation . I think one that has gotten particularly ugly is about inclusion, trans women and feminism. Another reason why is my partners actually transpired i have a dog in this fight. I wrote the book before i met them. Newly motivated because i see what it is. Can you re ask me the question . [laughter] what is a feminist conversation right now . One of the things that is frustrating to see is in the feminist movement. We are very good at virtue of signaling and making sure everyone is as woke as we are in that tendency can really get in the way of the Progressive Movement because we are not as good as many traditionalists and conservatives are. Getting behind the party lines to get what they want done. I worry that the debate is i feel about jumping into the fray. At the same time, i am not willing to stand on the sidelines. I think history really will show people that look back and insist that trans women are women. One thing they tried to show in the book is not understanding progression of feminists thinking on this. There may have been a point in the 80s where it would have been difficult to make sense in the feminist movement. We have moved beyond that. The quickest way to understand that is going beyond thinking of gender. Gender being like a logical element. Now thinking of gender, a sex as a social contract as well. It is not a biological reality. How we understanunderstan d bodies. Why we think this is so fundamentally important. These are decisions that have a lot of social power behind them. Think about the gender reveal parties that are starting all the wildfires in california. Why now . My kids are 18 and 15. I dont just mean me, it wasnt a thing. Anyway my daughter is eight. The technology that has picked up on. We did not have one. I am seeing so many people just realizing gender reveals, just jumped the shark. We are done. They are revealing what genitals your baby has. Grandma is invited to the party. We use it to refer to sex. A confusion of these terms. Help us understand gender. The appropriate answer read the entire section there. Assuming people will review their homework. Can you give people a hold on this conversation about what gender is. Especially, one of the things that i loved and struggled with reading the book is how i want to be a part of what you are talking about. Still checking my lipstick and i got the jewelry and the hair. We will see that gender is a social interpretation of that. Gender is what we come up with as a social mechanism. What we do to ourselves. There is a cycle of elements into the gender. You think about it almost as the cast and characters. Only so much options. Gender is what we are given. It is forced upon us by our presumed sex. The characteristics that you both are supposed to have. We think that they tell us so much about the person they will be. It is criminally deductive. A vast variety of humans. You can notice all the blowback. People playing gender. Speaking of gender, announcing the feminist koolaid you start realizing a huge waste