[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good evening friends. Welcome to the berkeley Hillside Club. The latest in a series of events produced by the wonderful folks at berkeley arts and letters. We are very privileged to have them as a regular contributor to our cultural events here. Evan is the boss and you have him to thank you and his volunteers to thank for all of these wonderful events. [applause] how many of you have been in this hall before . Fair number. That is good. How many of you have not and have not a clue what this place is . Okay, thats great because im good to take about 30 seconds to tell you about the berkeley Hillside Club. It was founded in 1895 women who were really concerned about the plan the city fathers has for laying a Great Organization and paving reading in and says, they got physically active. We think we probably need some more of that these days. They were able to get the city to turnoff the way it has and in large measure it is just one of the most beautiful cities in this part of the country. I believe. In 1910, the gentleman under the two light spectra, famous for the architect was our president in 1910. He designed and built the first clubhouse. Unfortunately it burned down. Have his clients homes were burned as well. Much bigger than the open fire. To replace the beautiful clubhouse listed on the site, his brotherinlaw another architect named john wright felt this wonderful mop tutor revival structure. It has been our clubhouse ever since. Have a long tradition of involvement in civic activities. Live cultural activities. We do conscious and talk like this one. And dances and dinners. If youre interested in joining the Hillside Club, either a membership application in the hall or the membership rolls are currently open. It is a Great Organization to become a part of and help contribute to if you also shameless, as i have to apologize. We actually rent this hall for certain discrete events. We do not do fraternity mixers but birthday parties and memorials for, in any case keep that in mind. If youre interested rentals that hillside from. Org will get you there. I think thats all we have. If you have any electronic anointed that we tend to carry in our pockets please turn them off. If there are any empty seats available, raise your hand next to an empty seat. There are a couple of them. Are we looking for seats still . I think we are good. And i will bring evan up berkeley arts and letters, let them take over from here. Thank you very much. [applause] hi everyone. Thank you bruce. I want to thank the Hillside Club for hosting us tonight and as a regular host for our series. We generally, weve been around for seven years. Most exceptional authors and thinkers with new books. It is a process concept. We have posted everybody from heidi smith and others. You can find more about our past and Upcoming Events at berkeley arts. Org. That we are very excited to be hosting rebecca in support of her new book mother of all questions. And with her tonight we have jeff chang. Please anybody here in november when we had jeff chang . Awesome. Youre very excited like me then to have him back. [laughter] i want to thank rebecca and jeff for being here tonight. These guys are asking the hard questions for all of us. And fighting on behalf of all of our rights. I just want to get in a round of applause. [applause] so i am going to read a little bit about them and then i will get out of the way. Just in case, there are books of theirs that you do not know about you are about to find out. So rebecca is a writer historian activist and the author of 16 books about environment landscape, community art, politics, hope and memory. Including the National Bestseller men explain things to me. Hope in the dark, faraway nearby, paradise built and held them a gut getting lust, wanderlust, future walking and vigor of shadows. For which she received a guggenheim, the National Book critics circle award and a literary award. A product of the California PublicEducation System from kindergarten transects. [applause] she is a contributing editor and as you probably know the mother of all questions is a new collection of feminist essays. Joining rebecca as it is jeff chang. Jeff has most recently published we gonna be all right which is a total much reflection. I can mention that we have all of the books, not all of them but we have a bunch of books in the back. Amy is waving at you right now. Berkeley arts and letters is organized by both smith, a bookstore in San Francisco. We would be happy to sell you books tonight. [laughter] jeff has been extensively on culture pulses and the arts. His second book was released under the title who we be. He cofounded culture strike and color wars, color lines its he is a winner of that news prize. Who is named one of 50 visionaries for changing a world in 2016 they named him one of the 100 list of those shaping the future of american culture. Do you guys mind helping me welcome them to the stage. [applause] i did not want to spell that. I think david was laughing at me for pulling books out of my bag or something. [laughter] good evening. Hello thank you so much to evan, berkeley arts and letters, both smith staff, wonderful staff. The Hillside Club and all of you for coming out tonight. I get the honor to ask you questions tonight. Well, hiphop, right . Although i do not rap. Shall we start . We shall. The last time we got to talk you just come back if i remember correctly from Standing Rock. Was it that long ago . I went out there in september with a real sense that you know it was the center of the world and i wanted to see what was happening. It was amazing being there. I was happy i went when the weather was bonnie. I have so much admiration the people that stuck it out for the winter. It is one of those things. You know like occupy the arab spring black lives matter, nobody knew it was coming. And it is one of the things that you knowing that we are supposed to talk about this book but we could talk about this one too. We definitely will. To see, so much about Standing Rock which felt it was not there to adjust one pipeline. But to really kind of remedy in turn half the millennium, i think in meaningful ways we do not know what stan iraq has done because it will take decades to find out. But it was amazing being out there. Lets pursue that idea in a second. I also, if i remember correctly when you were coming back from north dakota, he was sitting next to a chump supporter, yes . Yes this is what happened. I have had to conversation with trump supporters. [laughter] you know my friends in nevada, new mexico and i think have had some more. It was fascinating. I do not remember. What i found fascinating was that both of them were voting for a man who was you know completely fictitious. It wasnt even a facial trump propaganda. It was there platonic trump. Who is this platonic trump to them . While i set next to a week and swabian farmer whose son had addiction problems. Which is how you know you are in america. That type of junkie and you know, he was like this was right around, was it before . He had all the scandals that were fabricated and it wasnt really you know he thought he was a much better man. He basically thought that trump is more like him than any of the evidence would suggest. Then every four years my amazing friend who organized this radical Progressive Coalition for the state of nevada, it is my sacrifice on the democracy to try and ward off evil. And i was in this kind of legal suburb about 10 miles north of downtown reno doing this and some women steadily badgering me. She was there to dig it out for trump. Alex wanted to figure out what she liked him. She had two things she was really committed to. And if there was no arguing with her about. She was convinced that immigrants were preventing the family from actually she was egyptian. Undocumented immigrants were preventing her family from legal immigration. As of the portal system was somehow tied to all of these people that walk in mexico so that you cant come. Which is completely ridiculous. Although there is a really weird kind of relationship they are. Because in some ways, you can argue that undocumented or not undocumented folks but the government approach to undocumented folks is the reason she hasnt been able to become legalized. She was legal but she wanted her family to come explained that somehow people can get paperwork to become legal immigrants because of and illegal immigrants. And they clog the system but theyre not even in the system. I think thats true because all of the resources have been moved away from naturalization. And enforcement. And that is something that has happened since the reagan administration. Before this immigration used to be about trying to get people naturalized as fast as possible. The minute she was a kind of quotas that they put in each country which for the most part, they got rid of in 1965. But still limit the number of folks that can become legalized every year. So if youre in the queue and you are filipino or mexican, it will take you 20 or 30 years to get to the head of the line so to speak. And so, she is right in a really weird way. But for the wrong reason. She also said i was literally kind of like a numbers game. Give 5 million undocumented people disappeared and 5 Million People with suddenly get immigration visas. And another thing she told me was that you know, she believed about Climate Change and donald trump was going to do all of the right things. He wasnt going to favor fossil fuel. You know and bring back things like that. So its just like, where do you get your information . Can i go bring some doorbells and handsome door hangers and escape from you . She really wanted to argue. So those my two trump supporters. Is explaining. There is variations on this. Yes. Well, i did not want, i do not want to sort of relitigate where sort of relive november. I guess i want to ask how youre feeling now. Less beholden to people didnt like Hillary Clinton because she hung out with rich and powerful people. And i was like, trump is rich and powerful people. So, i find nothing about what has happened surprising, except the beauty and intensity and courage of the resistance. I thought it might be a little bit like life after 9 11 when a lot of people were intimidated and afraid to speak up and there was this kind of patriotic pall all over the land. But people are ferociously outspoken. This is essay you wrote in the book next loudness of the now, which i really want to get into but i also wanted to talk about sort of what they comes out of and you have this beautiful essay called the short history of silence. So i was wonder if you could talk about how you think about silence as opposed to quiet. The english language is full of synonyms and words that overlap theres a real request good sense of silence in a monastic retreat and silence not listening to track noise and theres also the act of being silent which could stand for a huge amount of what feminism tried to address and theres literal being silenced, no Woman Holding positions of power in congress and the Supreme Court and the legal system, a womans testimony about being discountered of things like that, but theres also for the purposes of this this is sa, quiet was removal from. Noiseness and sigh license is enforced and you could use that as a summary condition for what feminism is trying to address. The silenting you know when the see lensing silencing when you consent or not consent to bat is happening. Thats agency, the right to vote we got in 1920, most of us and exthen had to fight for all over again in the south, and for men and women. So it was a very interesting essay. I set out to write about the way women are silencees, and realized that gender is a system of reciprocal silence. Theres a male silence as well. Men are silent in silenced in different ways than women are and you had to look the whole system as whole. One thing that is different from the book is its about as much as many and children as women and its all feminism. We talk about the ways in which women are silenced and the way that men are silenced and how theyre different . I think in particular i work at Stanford University and the brock turner case, of course, seems to illustrate some of these different things. Can you sort of unpack what you think are how the silences are overcome and different ways and what that means. I think of male silence is all the thing that men are not supposed to do and say and feel and like, and i recount a conversation with my five year almost fiveyearold nephew and his favorite colors were pink, purple and orange, and i was monitoring the pink. Knew the pink wouldnt stay with us. Asked him why he didnt like pink anymore and he now that pink was girly and he couldnt like girl things and he is not yet five. Its not coming front his parents. Its ambient. I know parent yu try to keep your sons from guns or war games but aambient. Parents dont succeed in doing it alone. Then i went shopping for any not yet born god sons the Clothing Department and the gendering of newborns clothes was shocking. Boys clothes were like it was rocket ships and astronauts and cowboys and Football Players and dinosaur and reptile. Girl were all this passive, cuddly infant stuff, kittens and pink. And boys dont cry, men not allowed to express weakness and certain feelings and i think that theres a great deal of deadness. If you go to brock turner, to be able to do something horrible to another person, whether its any kind of violence, degradation, abuse, you have to cut downure empathy, and if have written about it other places that you have to kill off partoff yourself before you can become a killing machine and theres a way mens bodies are weaponized as well. Theyre not tools of experiencal sensation, their weapons, and you see all that in the brock turner case, which then has all these interesting wrinkles when the victim spoke up in court and became maybe the most well heard rape victim ever, with that incredible letter she wrote. That really kind of turned the tables in the power dynamic. She was given a chance to have a voice. Were two an era where rape visit of victims werent supposed to appear but she hid her name and there was need from protection for shame or further threats or the story following her, and she just read this extraordinary thing that made him that just with justice, diminished him into nothing in a very powerful way. Just extraordinary. And spoke with empathy to all other victims of similar crimes, and really expressed the kin of greatness in here and a way in which, by having that voice, that empathy, that strength, she hadnt been destroyed by an act that was meant to dehumanize and destroy her. You wrote, if i may you may. Just beautiful. Violence against women is often against our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of voices and what voice means. The wright too selfdetermination, to participation, to consent or dissent, to live and participate, to interpret and narrate. Those are what it means to be human and we can talk about physical rights and Property Rights and economic rights and things like that, but the very core, having a voice is what it means to be human, and we can look at jim crow or the ive been talking about the antichinese riots in 1977 or different kinds theres a lot of ways that the dispossession of native americans, genocide, the criminalization of homosexuality. Theres immunable ways people are sigh lend. Disappearance of the disabled. But feminism has been a project of arriving at voices and its very exciting Susan Griffin is in the audience, great heroine,. [applause] and a great sort of muse role model and friend of minimum and he was part of this incredible thing which happened in the 70s and 60s, the feminists kept writing about violence. And i name a dozen works by feminists from that period that were addressing silence. They were clear what was at stake and i was the right to participate, the right to have agency to have a voice, the right to show up and thats the right to not be silenced. Theres a beautiful part of your book, wander lust, which is a meditation on your idea of walking, where you suddenly sort of shift gears up and talk about marching and women marching. Yeah. And it just sort of its a powerful chapter. Its one i use a lot with my students, and i guess i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your journey into feminism. Male violence is what made me a feminist. Grew up in a house of it, thinking all i had to do was escape itch escaped and then when i was 19 moved to a neighborhood where that home was safe and nothing else was. There was massive street harassment. And not just like, hey, baby stuff. Thats where the implication was that you might bit raped or murdered or tortured and where i lived in constant danger, and what was outrageous for me and still is, because young women still face and it it fades away and im now past the age of harassment except for blurryeyed bums in new york city. Its really a loss of basic freedom, of the ability to move around, to be independent, to be a full participant to be a anybody of civil society, to be in public, and its really, really hard to get people to treat it as a civil rights, human rights issue. As the women are told, like, i should disguise miss as majors buy a gun, learn martial arts, never legal home, move to a white suck bush, make money and have a car, be with man at all times. The fact that youre targeted and a problem you need to solve we dont tell victims of lynchings what were your wearing . There have been some great movements and our books are writing an incredible new with a of feminism addressing male vie license with a ferocity, clarity, refusal to see ground and a kind of collective voice through social media we have never seen before. But its still hard to bet a lot of home behind the able to walk down the street without being threaten is a basic human right and one that in a great many places young women dont have and it happens to you and you dont feel safe anywhere. Its like an initiation ritual to tell you, you dont have full rights, youre a target, bills of people billions of people may hate you and want to harm you because of your gender, think about in a parking lot in an ele