about them. >> host: your quiz in "women's history for beginners," who founded bryn mawr college. i wrote mrs. mott but i don't think that is the correct answer. >> guest: i know who it is but i am so distracted by this last discussions so am i going to hear about this. forgive me, really dynamic woman. everybody should read to believe in women which looks at founders in access to women's colleges. >> host: paul in hemlock, mich. who was the first woman admitted to medical school in the united states? >> caller: i am going to blink. i don't know. >> host: that makes two a bus. go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: i am a father of three daughters and i have three granddaughters, violence has

been used against everybody in this world walking this earth but when it comes to my children i would lay down my life for them. my question is why culturally do we have people abusing women in the eastern bloc of europe. is a cultural thing. in the south pacific women should be held in higher regard. my mother was held in high regard. i don't understand how all cultures have formulated their idea of keeping women down so address that. >> host: do you consider yourself a feminist? >> caller: no. i am man who believes in equal rights for everybody. that is not feminism, that is humanism. >> guest: the answer is elizabeth blackwell. she was admitted to geneva medical college as a joke. >> host: as a joke? >> guest: yes. was applied and was put to a vote by the male student body

and they thought was sophia hilarious and that she will surely fail and they were amazed when she showed up and completed the course and study. okay. why is there violence against women? it is local as well as global, it is not limited to any nation. is an issue in every country, and the fbi can offer all kinds of better statistics that showcase how much she is part of american culture. o will to keep women limited or to treat women as property which is supported by custom and laws, a lot of it is simply a part of patriarchy which enables men to control women and anyone in their households. that included in ancient history servants and slaves and concubines and the index. a man was empowered to punish anyone. the earliest code of law we

have, the code of how robby shows that there were already dozens of laws about controlling women and how to punish them and distinctions between good women and bad. also gave men the right to put their wives and children to death if they disobey. it begins with scriptural support, violently controlling anyone who is disobedience and the absolute authority men had over wives. and it moves into the control families permitted for their kids and some people take that to a violent extreme. it has only been identified as pathological behavior in my lifetime. >> host: adjust got the answer. in the control room, writing

upwards about -- >> guest: somebody else. >> host: chris in seattle. please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: chris williamson calling. >> guest: i love you so much! this is one of the most important figures in women's music whose albums should be known, who put forward the future of olivia records with her best-selling album the changer and the change. >> caller: you are the best. i called because i am so proud to see you on the show. i watch it pretty regularly to see who is writing. as a writer myself, i feel it is my job to lean in to the wheel and i love that you love harriet the spa because musicians and writers are all spies. that is what we do. it is where we get the pulse of life by listening. you are such an avid listener

and your embrace is huge and i have seen it get wider and wider. i want to thank you for keeping the heart in there because you know when i came in there just weren't any courses in this at all. so i learned by heart and at the feet of really intense women who were intent on changing the world for women bit by bit by bit. so the cheyenne -- i want to throw this in, the cheyenne nation have a great saying, they honor grandmothers because they are the keepers of the story. and the greek word history just means the story. we are in charge of the story of our lives and the cheyenne nations says when the hearts of women are on the ground in

nation is finished. so i think the work you are doing is just imperative to keeping the heart of this world up there where it needs to be, on the high road and one of your influences that you enter the wave unafraid and you always have. >> host: how did you get involved in the music industry? it is a way of life is what it is. we have been involved in independent, three different times. libya records which i had in d.c.. that is where women gather their

ideas circular lee. by left the major label in the second. the big gene pool, a lot of us were invisible, look at this, look at this, look at this, the history, all of it so that we are not in visible and what i have done is mostly, without much, if you at the top and sweet woman, love song to a woman by a woman, women wrote to me and said i had to drive of the road because i was weeping so hard to, and we addressed the heart of the matter and honestly, the man who said he was a few menaced, not a feminist, if the embrace goes

wider, with all due respect, feminists are humanists. this is the human condition, we are born, we have this middle period where we can do some good work and we check out at the end like a grand hotel. bonnie has been at the hotel desk checking people in, checking them out, noting their passage through life so thank you. this is just me calling to say how proud i am. you are the arrow we shot from the boat in the 70s. we shot it high and far as we could and you are still flying. hart senate office building 0 >> guest: nothing like having your role model calling and give you a compliment. chris is on the cover of my book, eden built by eve, one of the musicians featured, one of

tony armstrong's -- she is right there, and of course every album chris ever recorded inkling of the first one on the different label. one of my best memories is chris singing in the arena at the temple of diana. of very famous bass were all the women were told -- the women's music tradition predates the 70s movement. there were women's songs in every culture, oral tradition is what made it possible, women were illiterate. and related to an earlier caller, stories of women of color. chris has been very good, and

grandmother's land is one of my favorite songs and it has been important to me to incorporate native american and native canadian women. aboriginal women of all backgrounds. when i lecture in new zealand, they are historical and their survival. one of the things i am very proud of is helping women's basketball team get to the all native basketball court and in british columbia and this comes from the queen charlotte islands off the coast of british columbia. one of the oldest, in average size of north america.

and others trying to preserve ancient ways as well as participating in modern life. it is often left out of women's history and will focus entirely on black and white women and struggle. the experiences of native american women, while. not having the right to be an american citizen from 1924, let's start there. highest degree of sterilization without consent, many reservations, women with great names like wilma man killer and great traditions with poets and writers. all that is important to me. women like chris horn not leaving them out of the story and others to bring in a diverse perspectives of women's lives in

song and performance. >> host: berkeley girl 63 tweets in excited to hear from chris williamson, the changer and the change is a must have in every collection. next call from renee in akron, ohio. from "women's history for beginners," what is griswold vs. connecticut? >> caller: i have no idea. >> caller: >> guest: married couples have a right to a birth control prescription. a couple in connecticut found as a married couple couldn't get birth control. and it became reinterpreted as a right to privacy issue. >> i will do my best here.

just went on line and ordered your book. if you have the first african women, it piques my interest in what the valuable writer truly are. when i considered the history of slavery and domination and oppression about african-american women in this country. do you write about in your book about identity struggles, trying to align themselves, movement throughout history. what to take seriously or what not to take seriously. and what you have encountered,

do you feel they have made an adequate attempt whether recognized or not to try to put forth a chronological and realistic history of our struggle in this country? >> yes. thank you very much for that great question. obviously i was very affected by the writings of alice walker, audrey lord, also the work of bell hook. a lot of really dynamic critics. of very good library of writings about black feminism. also a lot of literature and i would say d.c. is definitely a place where you hear those voices, busboys and poets is a location where the best writing by a black feminist critics can be bought. part of the spoken word stage, for 14 years, a very diverse

than you for women to read poetry to the microphone about identity as black and female and participated as well and a lot of readings and workshops that are held at the university's. georgetown in spring of 89, very intense three day conference on ethnic identity and feminism. very contentious as these things go. definitely one of the issues is to what degree anyone identifies primarily with her racial or ethnic group and when the focus shifts to being a woman in that community. i will joke that in a group of women, i am a woman and if somebody makes an anti-semitic jokes than i am jewish. and so forth.

what i find is the difficulty of bringing this material into the classroom where you might have, let's say, 20 white students and let's say, 20 white students and three black students and the black students are put on the spot to recognize everything about women's history they might be reading about for the first time. and assume that they should be on the defensive and can't participate in the discussion. those are real issues of how each generation transmits important material to the next. i would definitely say that we are not given enough information in particular about the lives of black women in slavery but it is difficult to put a focus on that without keeping the kind of feeling of violation at the forefront.

this is the same issue in feminist studies. where do you draw the line between history that paint you as a victim and history that makes students feel truly empowered? you have to look at the outrages and violations but you also have to talk about what are the tools that empower women to survive? how do they cope? how do they teach each other to read? what were the songs of slavery. escape maps through the underground railroad in their embroidery. who did rebel? who did take acts of revenge? who did run away continually to be reunited with the child? who were the women who had the run away or turned her away? all of that and it's us together. i credit my mother with putting them early on the path to studying racism. she remembers when i was a toddler sitting on the front

steps with me explaining why the trash collectors were black. i became very involved in looking at these issues from a young age because i had a short story i wrote in second grade on martin luther king. and the language of slavery, very unusual little kid. that story is there and in that story i was able to relay the struggle for black identity with my own understanding of having a jewish identity. when you start a conversation with a kid it will flower. a lot of people will believe you have to delay those conversations until you are in college. a lot of people don't go to college. this is why we have to get women's studies, black history, everything into high school sandals. and kerri thomas came to me in the synapse just now. >> host: that was my best thing.

i wrote it down, they gave me that information. marvin tweets in to you please ask professor morris to narrate her story about asking president clinton to watch the women's basketball game. >> guest: sure, okay. already women's sports fan and basketball fan, when i first began teaching at gw in 1994, i went to a double header and this is when they would have one ticket, the men's game and the women's game, a long afternoon. i will see two games but i was surprised to have to go through a metal detector which had never happened and someone said the president is here. president clinton had brought chelsea to the game. he was very accessible. you could go right up and shake his hand. he went to the crowd and met folks. the men began to play.

the president got out to leave and i was startled and outraged. here is the commander-in-chief who is supposed to support title 9 law. at that time, by the way, the women's team had a better record than the men's and was going to walk out with his daughter when the women took the court? i didn't think so. i pushed my way through the crowd, stuck out my hand and said hi, mr. president. i am a women's studies professor here and i would like to ask that you stay and support the women's team. don't leave now that the men had won. it would be important to the women of america and your daughter to show your support for women's sports. he shook my hand and said i would love to stay but i have a meeting at the white house that 2:00 or something. i will cut my watch and said you can watch the first half of the women's game please it down. he went back and sat down. a direct order to the president of the united states. he became the first president to

phone in congratulations to the reigning women's team of the n.c.a.a. championship that march and i like to think i had something to do with that. >> host: sultan, delaware. >> can you hear me ok? i do appreciate the great passion i sense from your guests. i am coming at it from a different perspective. there is an argument that the violence for so long was not handled in an appropriate manner by the system. i would like to speak to the whole issue of, quote, women subjugation and being the victims of the violence. with everything that has been done now, i see this throughout history, i have studied history. when you attempt to confront the social ills, inevitably you go

to the other extreme. we have the axiom called the pendulum affect. i have seen that. in fact i will be speaking at a conference in d.c. this summer sponsor by the senate for integrity. it is going to highlight from my experiences, i was arrested nine times which had been expunged and i received an apology. it was based on allegations of what was proven to be an emotionally disturbed individual but because there has been one extreme to the other, my experience was not isolated. it seems to be that that is where we have gotten to. the system of going by the rule of law regarding domestic violence issues we now adhere to more of an air on the side of caution. at has been my experience and i would like to get any kind of

feedback from you regarding -- >> host: let'swhiffo thfl theypt point. i understand what you're saying. i have a friend who was falsely accused recently. i this think you're quite right -- i think you're quite right that the erring on the side of caution has been a problem in terms of families being charged, for example, with potentially abusing kids if the kid shows up at school bruised. we have schools expelling kids for bringing in aspirin or a fork because of our anxiety about weapons. i would say these are aspects, yes, of a system that's adjusting to responding to things no one ever did respond to before. i don't think that there is that much of a extreme pendulum swing. i think, if anything, we're uncovering more and more examples that we're horrified to see have been accepted as normal

all along. i know that in the past, for example, a double standard sent women to prison for much longer sentence terms of families being charged because we were so shocked about breaking the law at all. there is plenty of room for adjustment in the justice system and i am sorry for what you experience. i would say that looking for evidence of domestic violence as part of say a patrol car's response in any scenario, that is a good thing and what we found is when women are paired with men in police partnerships, often we do get a better story or a fair story in a call like that. i would also add that having discovered the huge problem of assaults on girls we have rapidly moved into an almost

total focus on assaults on bullies and while that is an important thing, looking at what happened in penn state, boys being molested and so forth, again makes it much more egregious if boy is violated and a girl. and i think we respond more rapidly. i don't have an answer to how we present -- prevent false accusations and i do know of women who have abused the system by making false reports. people do that also with inventing hate crime is. we certainly know there are women who in fact were guilty of abusing their kids, who blamed an outside party. all of that is part of people abusing the system. >> host: half an hour left with professor bonnie morris. dep teaches at george washington and georgetown university, the

author of six nonfiction books and poetry books as well. the most recent is women's history for beginners which also is powerbook tv book club joyce for february. if you go to booktv.org you will see a tab at the top, you can click on that, participate in the conversation. we will be posting everything tomorrow. this video from this program as well as reviews and articles by bonnie morris and also posting questions, discussion questions throughout the month of february. pick up a copy and we would love to have you participate and interact, kind of an online book club since so much of our world is on line anymore. our next call is from san antonio, texas. from women's history for beginners, who is the first

female member of congress? >> caller: i don't know that. i am 80 years old and i can't remember dates any more. i was an activist. in nashville, tennessee. all the recordings of women's music that you talk about. i have been a jazz musician all my life. but the thing that impacted my life the most negatively in terms of developing as a jazz musician was unintended pregnancies because birth control was not in sight any place. it was not in the media, it was

not available, it was not legal and so i had been a jazz musician all my life and just last year received a lifetime achievement award in san antonio. i would like to hear you talk about margaret sanger. >> host: there's a statue of gen that rank and in the capitol rotunda now. second of all, thank you for everything you have done. i am writing a book chapter about women's bookstores and i will add you. i am delighted to hear about your car rear in jazz. i right about that as well. i play the music of women who were in jazz for my classes including the international sweethearts of rhythm mixed-race banned in world war ii but many other women in jazz.

margaret sanger, yes. a personal hero to my grandmother, my mother's mother, it would appear, was one of the first young women in the united states to go to margaret sanger's clinic as a young woman in the 1920s and held her in the highest esteem. i regret seeing birth control re-emerge as the controversy almost 100 years later. she was forced to leave the country in part because she published a magazine called the woman rebel at a time when it was illegal to send information including discussions about birth control to the u.s. mail. so postal sees the magazine, she had to sleep and basically steady in europe's first birth control clinic in holland and returned with information about the diaphragm for american women. what most people don't realize, birth control became legal because men were at risk.

condoms were legalized after world war i because more men returned from service overseas with sexually transmitted diseases than with actual bullet wounds, much embarrassing uncle sam and as a result we made condoms legal for men as long as they wrestle with provisions for the prevention of disease so we actually protected men's health through legalized contraception before women had access to it. this is vital to what my students are reading, but the body project, the girls who went away, all books that look at the lack of information about sex education and birth control that created pain and suffering and unwed moms and interrupted

opportunities. great question. >> host: next call from mary ellen in livermore, from bonnie morris's book "women's history for beginners" who was the slave who bore thomas jefferson's children? >> caller: i cannot -- not quite getting it. >> guest: sally headings. >> host: go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: this is fabulous. i want to be in the book club but there seems to be some really strong voices in pop music today. katie perry has a huge following, i turn on the radio and hear these powerful women and then there is miley cyrus and a lady gaga and i am wondering if you have any

comments on that? >> guest: i don't want to say that all the music i listened to was in the 70s, i am a big fan of a lot of contemporary musicians. one of the things we are looking at is how women present themselves. we have to present yourself as a sexually provocative way in order to be considered commercially viable, do you have to appeal primarily to the male audience in the commercial contract, if you don't present yourself in a certain way will you be dropped or rebuked? shin 8 o'connor shaved head, to look more feminine. my students are concerned with not that little kids want to be famous but appreciate celebrity,

up looking at someone who dresses provocatively. one of the things you study is when you are not worrying about making a good impression on guys who want to date you, it brings out human -- talented women who cannot fit the bill or -- a big issue is the degree to which performers generate millions of dollars, so much opportunity to say useful things to the microphone. do they take advantage of that opportunity, what do they say to young girl women how do they help women accept themselves? how to be a role model to young women who don't fit what they think is the american ideal of

appearance. it is important that you not just be successful but that your message contained elements of empowerment. a lot of young artists are doing that now. there is work that can be done. >> host: next call from astoria, new york, karen, who warned her powerful husband he better, quote, remember the lady. >> caller: abigail adams. from dr. morris's book. with c-span booktv, brought her work to my attention when you interview much shorter interview several months ago. so i read "women's history for beginners" from my public library and i am currently

reading "revenge of the women's studies professor," learned the lot from both of them. my comment, i wanted to thank c-span booktv for bringing this to our attention, points of view that are so immortalized in other media. you are devoting three hours that we can learn from bonnie morris and i am thankful. >> host: tell us about yourself. >> caller: 9 a feminist, always have been, always will be. a graduate of a women's college. >> guest: i can thank you enough. i spent many happy years in a story and i hope you use the public library just around the corner. many memories and hello to all my friends in the story.

i would say, thank you again, i also want to thank c-span for giving me the opportunity, doing this kind of work. many people doubted me when i announced my intention to become a women's studies professor. my family had concerns, my friends, they were supported. and how to live learn -- if i find a job, i think it was an unusual occupation to be interested in. no one was sure how it would work out. it has worked out wonderfully. i have managed to carve out for myself, managed to do the things i wanted to within a feminist action and also as a citizen of the global world. i would add when people are considering going into women's studies, do not let anyone tell

you it is not a good occupation, profession. when i see how students respond and how lives have changed, i am one of the scholarly advisers to the national women's history museum. we hope to build in indian d.c.. we don't have one. we don't have a national museum of women's history and when i see how my students are outraged, we don't have more monuments to women in the capital, what does it mean if you don't see your life or your sex represented in statues or in the architecture of the city. we need everyone. event everyone to remember the ladies as abigail adams said. >> host: laura tweets in all the women's studies majors i knew in college were back in school five years later getting business

degrees. >> guest: a lot of students in my class are in the business schools, they are doing work as future wall street women corn or running non-profits on their agenda. a lot of people may hear something that may not necessarily be what they worked on later on but i wouldn't discourage anyone from pursuing it. i would also say what is interesting is we have more majors in women's studies than math and physics combined. lot of people minor, we have a huge number of students who simply take the courses, they don't necessarily major. working with athletes on both campuses is such a privilege. many athletes that discovering the history of women in sports for the first time, they are thrilled, uplifted, go to other games conlan and making the

information available to people you might not think would take the class, football guys, they are incredible. basketball players, track stars, everybody, women in sports. having everyone together creating a climate in the classroom is what makes the study of women a successful enterprise for everyone because they connect to each other's lives and students from all over the world in all my classes, haiti, singapore, hong kong, vietnam, and one thing i allow students to do is to write from their own cultural perspective, what is it like for them to observe the changing status of women in their culture and society? we are engaged in global perspective, we are working on

the development of different countries. i have a lot of students as well who are very excited by the possibility of doing work, in what is going to prevent the illnesses that can gentlemen from participating more fully and in terms of women's sports one of the things i really love is cheering on players. >> host: our j williams, is margaret chase smith, republican of maine, senatorial experience of disgust when the issue of women in politics is raised and do you consider christina hoff sommers of feminist colleague? >> yes. i include the history of women in classes absolutely, and a lot of time on women in politics, who were the first, the unknown candidates?

she has been very critical of women's studies, a lot of her books are very hostile, i am happy to talk to that viewpoint. the field is both academically viable, scholarly, sound in a scholarly way. very mixed stereotypes about women studies, one is that we are all actors wielding, castrating man haters. that is a very harsh image and there is the opposite which is we are tree hugging, nothing really goes on in the classroom and it is all very, very -- and so on. wrong. what is startling to my students is just like anything else you can flunk this material, do their readings, take the test, turn the work in on time, or watch your grade go down the tube. that is a wake-up call. people who enroll, thinking this

is easy or i have to agree with the oppressor and i will get an a or we will sit in a circle and give each other pap smears, wrong, inaccurate. i have to be fairly tough on the first day and scare away anybody who is not going to work seriously. you have to do that. i have to interrupt students who are shaming other students whether it is an intentional, someone makes sweeping generalizations about anyone on welfare, we talk about unwed moms, suppose somebody is one. let's check out who is in the room. make the material personal. it is personal because it is about the body and sexual alan and wife giving and so on. at the same time i am very clear i am not a counselor, i am not a rabbi, i am not your therapist. students who need support icahn

referred to the appropriate places. i have students who have cheated, had to deal with plagiarism. obviously it is a sign of the times that a lot of students are unfamiliar with how you quote correctly from the internet. what this says is women's studies is mainstream. it is like any other class in terms of the academic aspects. what brings students in is a variety of motives and being ready for each of those is also a very demanding aspect. at an end of the day i come home exhausted, my replenishment very much comes from being able to write in my journal about my teaching day and i find i write more and more about teaching and less and less about other things because i am concerned with doing a good job but also because these interactions raise so many questions about our

current moment historically. >> host: mary jo e-mails in to you from dearborn, michigan. i question deals with the novel the help. my sister is white in a women's studies professor at a small college in kentucky, she assigned this to one of her introductory classes and was criticized by black colleague for using the book. i remember there was a lot of controversy surrounding that book and wonder what you think about it. >> my mother gave me the book and i assigned it. i used on number of other books as well. i use the made merit of which is a very useful book because it is actual interviews with women who worked as maids. also interviews with women whose moms worked as maids and women whose moms had made, white and

black women, everybody involved in these intricate relationships. i understand the criticism of the help was it was written by a white author and at the same time i think it is useful in getting students to think about a really complicated problem in women's history. segregation kept people apart in housing, schooling, public accommodation. but women were with one another intimately because black women worked in white women's homes and were assigned to do the daily into medicare, child care, actual in nursing white babies with their own breast milk. all of that, an intimacy that sounds strange when we look at how segregation is supposed to keep us from touching. demonstrates a whole lot. one aspect we delegate,

child-care, and less socially important, and throughout history aristocratic women have always had wet nurses and servants. the history of servants as well as racial history all of that can be summarized, it has to be supplemented to the experience and there is a way to do that in the curriculum. >> host: robert in atlanta, georgia. in what year did woman's bathroom finally have to be added to the senate building so newly elected women would not miss the roll call for votes? >> that would be 88. >> guest: 1992-'93, and after the anita hill hearings. and to the other venue, and

another example through architecture. and science buildings and one to another bathroom until recently. and women major in science, make a broom closets into a women's room. and it is okay to laugh at this stuff. >> host: go ahead and ask your question or make your comment. >> caller: i am 58 years old. i have a position on the archie bunker and i consider myself a feminist. duplicity is the subject of this column and it has bothered me. and one is david manner -- i propose this question, a group

of women together in a room and asked to take a vote would you prefer your future husband make more money than you or less money than you? that was an interesting answer considering you want equal pay and anything you feel about that. >> host: i don't know enough about that respond. part of what she was anxious about with her work was empowering women or reclaiming in her book sexual personae the agencies that women had that they shouldn't jettison that or that they should feel they could use different -- to attract and that was in the negative thing. she was hostile to the concept of victim feminism which many people argued puts feminists in a bad light in emphasizing negative aspects.

the question about earnings was also addressed in a great tv interview about women breaking into women's sports so i am very familiar with that question. the idea that women expect to be supported by men in some scenario and want equal pay in others. part of the problem is if a woman takes time out to have kids, if she doesn't get maternity leave or doesn't have health coverage, to what degree is a woman compromised financially by giving birth for kneading time for child-care and if she doesn't have a partner who can assist, one of the reasons to live in poverty than

men. women who expected to be supported emotionally or financially by a loving husband, then abandoned, need to go to work in a scenario where they will be paid wages that they can live on and one of the reasons the 70s saw so much change is many women were divorced and discovering suddenly without a husband's income they were badly off but they weren't being offered fair wages if they entered the work force in their 30s and 40s. i would also add a unique issue here of course is we have a work calendar that is built around the idea, one person working and a partner being at home. now we expect everyone to work so we have every one out in the public's fear, million-dollar houses and nobody is in them. concerns about who is taking care of the children. i understand where that comes from. we now have the ability for everyone to work out of the home

again because of computers. you don't have to go in the public's fear to be a businessman or woman. these are all changes we look at in my classes, wonderful discussions, what does it mean to have everybody have a private identity outside the home? yet homes are more extensive, invest all of that in a home, you want to be there some of the time? i ask myself the same question. i have a nice apartment i am hardly ever in and this winter i have been enjoying being in it in the cold weather and looking around at my 1500 books and going yes, i live somewhere, i live in dupont circle. i am happy. >> host: mar e-mails, an academic, is there any sustained actionable focus on feminist on

behalf of women in prison? >> terrific question. i to my two colleagues in grand school. i am fortunate to teach in a women's studies program, george washington, chaired by dan motionburg whose focus is women in the prison system. we offer an excellent curriculum on this topic. i show the film what i want, my words to you, in which he teaches a writing class at bedford hills prison in upstate new york. my students then address the issue of not only women as subjects of violence but women who are in prison for crimes or have taken violent action, and living long term in prison, much of that literature covers the way that women are either rewarded or punished with access to their own kids, what to do with women who become mothers

while behind bars, hal we accommodate access to child rearing in those conditions but also examined the fact that many women are in prison because of intimate violence. they take the rap for a boyfriend, fight back if they are battered, turn to prostitution because they are addicted, all the other social ills we are familiar with. that is very much on my syllabus. >> host: dan riley e-mails in male chauvinism that, female chauvinism good. i use of the significant part of my weekends watching this generally excellent tv show. this morning at segment however is pushing the limits of objectivity and honesty. this should not be the place for political propaganda. thank you for your comments, appreciate that. the next call for bonnie morris is from any in pilot hill,

calif.. >> caller: this is a terrific show. you are on booktv. i grew up in the 70s and it seemed like it was sort of the first hero when girls were asked what are you going to be when you grow up instead of just assuming everybody was going to be a mother. it dovetails on a question earlier about katy perry and pink and people in the entertainment industry. i was wondering what your comment is, if you think there is progress in fact we have everything from women who choose to be a professor or an astronaut or even, god forbid, the star of a reality show where your job is to dress up and fight with a bunch of other women. do you see f-cat as we have made progress? that now women can basically

make choices like that? do you see that as backsliding? >> guest: i do think we have made progress, very limited to a small section of the western world. i have traveled widely and in much of the world, women are living in very traditional villages, subject to tribal law, they are not permitted to advance in any profession let alone get an education, primarily living agriculturally, doing very hard work in fields throughout china. many women are working in factories, making stuff. the conditions for women very from place to place. what we experience in terms of progress is a mask for the work that still needs to be done but we have been -- american culture, one of the predicament we have is we value people based on how much money they earn,

something i resent bitterly because i am infamously underpaid. i would also say there is the sense that to be provocative is the same theme. as long as people see you can make money being controversial, we have hate radio, reality tv, women fighting each other in a public forum because it will improve ratings or generate in come. i don't know how much of that will go on if it wasn't compensated. part of it is to what degree do people still look to become rich as a motivating factor? i never did. i am not. but i am issue driven as opposed to materially driven. i think a lot of girls and boys are pushed to identify with material gain and comfort. so that is going to affect the choices they make in terms of how they can be rich and famous.

>> host: in your favorites list we got from you that we ran at the break you listed writing in your journal, 168 of them. are they ever going to be published? >> guest: i am proud to show off the last girdle. and i am ending this one. here is the last page. i am ending my journal on national tv. i am starting the next one this night. i have been keeping the journal since i was 12. i don't know if it will never be published. my handwriting has gone, as i write on the keyboard more and more, my hand can't keep up with my thoughts. i still use a fountain pen. i love the feel of paper and the journal in my lap and the physical act of writing, i don't

want to lose that. i try to write historically and to write about what it is like to be a lesbian in late 20th century america. those accounts in my journal will be instructive to somebody someday. i have an archive on my papers, the schlesinger library of radcliffe. they will get my writings on music culture interviews and narratives and sell on. i try not to write anything unkind and try to be honest about my life. >> host: bonnie morris.com is a website, thanks for being with us on in depth. >> on this weekend's newsmakers lori miller is our guest, interim president of the naacp and talk about issues including the minimum wage, voting rights and the criminal justice system which were topics of discussion

at a meeting this week with president obama and other civil rights leaders at the white house. you can watch the interview sunday at 10:00 eastern and 6:00 eastern on c-span. >> if there is a general sitting in the witness chair. they tend to fawned over him. i noticed that with general david petraeus. i noticed it with gates in his hearings when he was nominated secretary of defense by george w. bush. they were so thrilled he wasn't donald rumsfeld they didn't ask the really hard questions and the lot of those pertaining to his activities. he was involved in iran-contra. he was a very prominent member of the cia at the time. they required intelligence that

iran was somehow moderating and that intelligence was conveniently forthcoming. >> former capitol hill staffer mike lofgren rights the party is over on c-span's q&a. ..