>> are sent to different ounces and the veterans community has been wonderful in curious about my work and found them i'm young and i wasn't there that don't have that experience, so i really do respect people who had the first 10 picks. they are. but they often wonder, why would you ever go digging into this moment? she was terrible and she should just be left as it is. she hurt so many people and made vietnam, which is only a problem so much worse. i would you go digging around in not quite my answer is simply because she was fascinating exploration of what went wrong with our involvement in south vietnam and she sort of personalizes the history in a way people of my generation, when i is in eighth grade we couldn't even talk about the vietnam war yet is cool yet he cuts it was an okay here it was

too controversial. so now there's more education about it, but it is still a hard conflict to streamline and get people talking about. so if this is one way to do that, madame nhu is a very polarizing figure and i i think it needs to be explored, and all. >> did your personal feelings for her change over time? i don't know if you started the project is a black-and-white figure politically and historically. i don't know whether you take became from that kind of a physician, but did she become much more personalizes you in the process of working on about quick >> when i started i thought this is a woman who's been stereotyped and i was going to rescue her and all this stuff. but she really didn't need to be rescued. she was good in that. she was complicated.

i think my initial i am going to do this world a great service was quickly changed when i started learning all the facts. but i have the up most respect for her. i mean, she was a strong woman anytime in place that it was not okay to be a strong woman and i really thing she embodied a lot of the conflicts women face when they are trying to be ambitious in a place that won't let them express themselves and tries to put them down. i have a lot of respect for her. >> and not only -- yet not only strong detractors who were women in the early 60s, but a couple people who really thought she was a much more complex person and wanted to write about her were also women. they talk about margaret higgins, for example. >> harker adrian and clare booth luce for big advocates.

>> it's interesting. i think we're living in a time where we see more interesting layout or fees written by political figures and particularly from asia that we've seen. there is a really interesting biography last year written by the woman who wrote wild swans. it seems like there's a different generation of women who've come of age after the victories of feminism, offering very different as that would not have been available 30, 40 years ago. so that is wonderful. i think it's a terrific book. very happy to been able to read it. does anyone have any questions in the audience? i think we have a microphone.

yes. >> hi, you talked a little bit about how deronmadame nhu's recollections might have been colored in how you dealt with the unreliability of the source for your working on the project. >> it's a great question. madame nhu was an unreliable character. and writing a book, i chose sort of the unorthodox path of putting the elf in the book because i wanted to be someone who could see both sides. i mean, it did the research in the archives in france. i did the research of materials united states and i think there are no real check confused of madame nhu that was written about her in the 60s was also the lancet by the mostly white male reporters who are writing about her. and so, for both of these sites i had to kind of navigate okay, what is true, what is false and

in her memoirs that she wrote her she is the center of the universe, obviously that wasn't much help to me, but what was was fighting out what kind of shoes to spring,, the little details that were factual but i wasn't going to get anyplace else. but you're right, there was a really tricky thing and i try to be as honest as they can in the book about walking that fine line between believing what she's had also making sure it is factually correct. >> the photographs i mentioned earlier are really quite incredible. i noticed a couple of them came from her own collection. dashiki because photographs quick >> those are part of the memoir to be published. >> okay. >> to the question? >> first off, thank you for a great program. i am curious about what you think about how the press did commit the u.s. price. you mentioned how it was under the thumb of the vietnamese

government. how much better did the american press deal? you must have read a lot of articles and watched a lot of newsclips. the u.s. media today built her up or demonize her or trivialize her, how did the u.s. press deal? >> such a good question. the u.s. press, if you read the accounts of how versed in and she had and malcolm brown who went there in those early days, they tend to have really believed the united states was doing the right and i've been in vietnam. this is a country that aided to be saved, that the dominoes were very real, really falling and said they were really started patriotically behind united states involvement in south vietnam. but because the back, madame nhu and her family were really a stumbling block. they were stirring things up right and left in these reporters could see it and no one else is talking about it.

so they were advocates i don't want to say their advocates far-reaching change, but they were advocates for getting america more involved in south vietnam, reporting facts as they saw them, which was hard to do in that context. i don't think they build madame nhu up. i really don't think they liked her very much. >> we should point out that she read them religiously. there is a point in the book where you tell her that david halberstam has just been killed in a car accident. he was in a car accident in 2008 and you break that news to her and she actually seems kind of sad diet. but it was a personal friend of hers, someone she had known well. >> he said something about her like she was the only one of the family who knew how to do a parade. she raised her hand like mussolini. she said these things than any other reading would be not

compliments, but she was sort of like i remember him. he was a good reporter and he always told the truth. >> i'm not no, we're about out of time. we to thank very >> outside books are for sale, and we hope you will pick up a copy. thank you. >> thank you for attending. thanks. copies of "finding the dragon lady" are on sale now in the main auditorium. and ms. monique demery will be signing books. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> here is a great read to add to your summer reading list. sundays at 8:00 and a collection of stories from some of the nation's most influential people over the past 45 years.

>> i always knew there was our risk. i decided to take it. whether it is an illusion are not, and i don't think it is, it up my concentration. it stopped me being bored. it stopped of people to some extent. it would keep me awake. i could prolonged conversations, and hence the moment. if i was asked if i would do it again, the answer is rebellious. there would quit earlier, if possible. easy for me to say, of course. not very nice for my children to here. it sounds irresponsible. the truth is, it would be hypocritical for me to say no. i did know. everyone knew. >> the soviet union and the soviet system in eastern europe contained the seeds of its own destruction. many of the problems we saw at the end begin at the very

beginning. i spoke of ready above the attempt to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political and social life. the problem is when you do that, when you try to control everything you create a position and potential dissidents everywhere. if you tell artists they have to paint the same way and one says he doesn't want to you have just made them into a political dissident. if you want to subsidize housing in this country and we want to talk about it and the populace agrees that it is something we should subsidize, then put it on the ballot sheet and make it clear and make it evident and make everybody aware of how much it is costing. but when you deliver it through these third party enterprises, fannie mae and freddie mac, when you deliver the subsidy through a public company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of that subsidy for themselves, that is

not a very good way of subsidizing home ownership. >> a few of the 41 engaging stories on c-span sundays at 8:00 now available at your favorite book festival. >> our special book tv programming continues over the next several hours with segments from book fairs and festivals around the country. beginning with a panel on feminism from the los angeles times festival books. in a little more than an hour it is a freedom fest debate on foreign policy. in a little more than two hours discussing his memoir growing up in miami. after that finding the dragon lady, the mystery of vietnam madame nhu at the chicago tribune printer's row it fest.

now from the los angeles times festival books a discussion on feminism. it is a little more than an hour. more than an hour. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible discussions] >> my clock says 12:30. welcome tstard. >> mike cox says 1230, so let's get started. welcome. i am a columnist to his work on line. i hope you can check me out at l.a. times / local / sectarian..

this is the this is the evolution of feminism panel. if that is not what you came to hear you're in the wrong place. a few housekeeping issues to attend to. what you came to hear you are in the wrong place. i want to ask you to silence your cellphone. there is a book signing following the session so you can continue the conversation with our authors afterwards in signing area five. personal recording of the sessions is not allowed. we are also being broadcast live on c-span. and i was supposed to say something about earthquake safety. if you feel an earthquake, please, leave calmly and put your hands over your head. i want you to know at the end of the session, 10-15 minutes before the end, we will take questions from the audience.

there is a mike setup in an aisle and if you are not mobile raise your hand and we will bring you a mike. let's start with mia. he she is an author and veteran journalist and wrote for the "washington post" for many years. she as interviewed killers, famous people, leaders like castro and as an infant she interviewed president kennedy. >> at four. >> a series she wrote for the post on veterans led her to write her book to examine the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder. in 2006, she wrote all governments lie the lifes and times of rebel journalist stone.

and she has gone to intimate topics as well. she witnessed the last three years of a young woman's life to died of breast cancer. her new book talks about woodhall and her sister whose escapades in the 1870s might shock even the most liberated women. this rags for riches pair were born into poverty, went into the family snake oil trade literally before breaking free of their parents and moving to new york where they were stock brokers, free love advocates and suffrage rights and newspaper articles. if you think obama and clinton

were pioneers look at this she was the first woman to be recognized for running as president and her running mate because douglas. for many years she was a sindicated can cartoonist. the author of astro turf. a family memoir about the cold war. she wrote the unauthorized biography of a real doll that examined how doll came to hold a place in the honor of so many

girls. it was invented by women to teach girls for better or worse what was spect expected to them. in the "the accidental feminist: how elizabeth taylor raised our consciousness" she turned her attention to another woman. she is argues that taylor was more than just a fine actress. she was a role model for feminist causes and ideals whether posing as a boy to ride national velvet, unwed mother, or the boozy life in who is afraid of virginia wolf. and this is all long before she was the first lonely voice to take up the fight against aids. i need to note that you are cowriting for the opera about the 1-10 freeway on its 70th

anniversary. >> that project is creeping along. >> like rush hour. nancy calo is an author and expert on women and american call politics. she has taught at many schools and she is currently teaching at occidental college. her books include the reconstruction of american liberalism and the 1990's a social history. she is the kind of source every political journalist or talk show needs in their rolodex and

i count on her for comments in the money. in her new book, she talks about the sexual revolution and its n influence on politics and how the christian movement has talked about the gay rights, contraception, abortion and other rights. it has been going on for 40 years thanks to a small political minoritminority. happening asncidence this is .. further to the right than any other time

since the way of slavery. we have come a long way. most of us are not smoking anymore. at least not cigarettes. i live in venice beach. your books present the history of american feminism starting in the late 19th century, a stop in the middle of the last and an examining of what is happening now. and each generation fights essentially the same battle. some things really never change. equal pay, affordable childcare, the balance between work and home life, rather woman can do everything that men do, women are still said as jezebels or sluts for claiming their sexuality. women are still dismissed as jezebel's or for boldly claiming their sexuality but let's say

it's working at the ama's. women are battling for reproductive freedom which is all over the country by state legislators intent on making it impossible to get an abortion even if abortion is legal. i wonder if each of you can start us off by giving a short maybe two to four minute explanation of what exactly inspired you to write your book and let's just go in order starting with myra. >> i always hate the starting first. before i do that since you have really covered so much i just want to quote to quotes and have you imagine where it came from. one is the love affairs of the community should be left for the people to regulate themselves instead of trusting legislation to regulate them. this is not some activists talking about the defense of marriage act. this was what hall in 1971 -- 1871.

this was a time when men have total power. there was nothing that a woman could do on her own but these two absolutely managed to do it. the other one which is again topical is put a woman on trial for anything and is considered as a legitimate part of the defense to make the most searching inquiry into her sexual morality. this is not somebody currently talking about the problems of rape and domestic violence and being able to get a fair trial. it was back in 1871 and the reason i got involved was never thinking they would be so rip and read out of the front page. they were for equal pay for equal work and we saw what happened this last week. the reason i went into it was because, precisely because in 2008 everybody was talking about the possible wonder team of hillary clinton and obama.

i started reading this tiny little squib that said it's been done before. it was virginia woodhall and frederick douglass. i was just astonished because i had known of woodhall but i didn't know they had been a progressive. then i started reading about her incredible sister and found out how they pulled themselves out of an absolute fraud and they were fraudulent fortunetellers living a horrible childhood to become the most famous women in the world and i will tell you about that later. >> tell us how you got the idea for your book? >> i never thought i would write a book about elizabeth taylor. my last book was about the jet propulsion laboratory. [laughter] and i had mostly been writing science articles but what happened was i found myself

stuck in a vacation house in palm springs with a bunch of children. gen x, general i. they didn't know who elizabeth taylor was. they really had no idea. jen x. newhart on me. joan rivers appalling shows of the 1980s, you know more of chance than a chinese phone book. and general why, jen why he knew she had some vague connection to film but mostly they knew her as the person she was in later life and age philanthropists and a leader in that way. anyway stuck in this house the only thing we have for entertainment is boxed sets of elizabeth taylor movies you know. so we thought oh all right it will be a camping night and we started watching in chronological order and we were absolutely blown away. not just by the quality of her performances but by the unrelenting feminist messages of

her movies. national bell that her character delta brown aged 12 challenges gender discrimination. she's excluded from an important horserace because of her gender. she poses as a male jockey and wins, exposing the pure bigotry of exclusion of women. her next big one at a place in the sun, 1951 is an abortion-rights movie. it's an adaptation of an american tragedy. i will have an opportunity to elaborate on this more but basically no pregnant mistress, no american tragedy. butterfield eight is a movie about a woman having a right to her own body, not adhering to the mentions of 50's era marriage for a woman was a possession.

either owned by a man as a spouse or rented as a. she writes no sale in lipstick on the mayor of her married lover's bedroom. and even who's afraid of virginia woolf is very much about what happens to a woman and in fact both a man and woman locked into a marriage where the only way the woman can express herself is through her husband's career or children and her husband is unsuccessful and she can't have children. so just, so i was amazed at this onslaught and i won't yap too long that i wanted to make sure that my friends and i, my infantile friends and i weren't protecting 21st century ideas onto mid-20th century material so i started looking into the academy of motion picture arts

and sciences -- sciences here at the library and what i latched onto, just briefly the content of american movies between 1934 and 1936 was entirely controlled by the production administration. they held sway over everyone of those movies and all the things that my friends and i had seen in the movies, the censors had seen and tried to grind them out. the scene in which the shelly winters character, not the elizabeth taylor character asks for an abortion had to be rewritten about 12 times. to a degree these actors had to communicate through telepathy. but suffice it to say that my suspicions were buttressed by the paper trail left by the censors and the combination of those two things were what led me to produce the book.

>> thank you. >> so one day when hillary clinton was making her first run for the presidency i had an epiphany. i was going through some of those typical women things balancing work, balancing my kids and i thought you know we have experienced some of the biggest transformations in world history in the last 50 years. the revolutions in gender and sexuality, in freedom. i thought you know maybe there is a connection between our political delirium and this revolution that up-ended the most intimate relations that we all have. and so i jotted down this line, perhaps if the pill hadn't been invented american politics would be very different today. honestly i thought it was a

literary device, kind of metaphorical, not literally true and then the week that the book came out in 2012 is many of you probably remember, the republicans convened an all-male panel to debate birth control including at least one celibate. so thanks republicans, thanks for the book report -- promoti promotion, i really appreciated it. anyway so my book looks at the last four years of our history to see what i call this sexual counterrevolution has been driving our dysfunction, driving our polarization, driving our insanity. and you know the real reason for this is the republican party has been captured by a group of sexual fundamentalists who honestly believe that women's rights, civil rights in the sexual revolution are a mortal

threat to american civilization and they have been politically acting on these. please i'm not in any sense saying every republican is like this. it has to do with the factions in the party but part of it is it's not just the republicans. it was democrats and liberals also have misinterpreted public opinion, overreacted to the election losses and brands scared and allowed a lot of this turning back the clock to happen. now i do think we are seeing a shift in not that there is a lot of ground to make up after these 40 years of rolling back these rights. >> mayra let me start by asking you a question. you immersed yourself in the 19th and early 20th centuries. was feminism even a word and had a bit pointed that time? >> no it wasn't and i find it

upsetting when i see somebody calling susan b. anthony a feminist because she was so urgently wanting only the boat. she was a single-minded person and all she wanted was the vote in the sisters and i was with cady stanton was really quite. he wouldn't know it to look at her. she's very heavy and had six kids when she had this love affair. she was right in to free love movement. all the rest were aghast that the sisters could go on and such feminist ways. they were trying to keep it just on the vote in the sisters said hey if all we do is reelect the same corrupt and some white males there's no reason to get the vote. they were unbelievably ahead of their time but when you're talking about in the fight, that same fight is going on and it's identical in the mid-19th century with the religious rig

right. the sisters were so far dance and they wanted to put god in the constitution. they said we are not sure you wants to be in the constitution and how about those other two along with him? [laughter] they were incredibly upfront about this but they fought these clergy and they fought the mos most -- the woman's worst enemy was a gynecologist. they were all anti-contraception and they were all fiercely involved in this and one of the few joys and i mean few days i covered everything you are talking. i covered gloria steinem and a whole movement. we saw the backlash and we saw it with phyllis schlafly at the time. she was able to convince women that if they had the equal rights amendment they would end up having to lose their husbands or their husbands would have to

pay them al-omari. she said we will have to have unisex bathrooms which makes me wonder if she was ever on a plane. [laughter] i debated her and she was there to protect the rights of the unborn child and i said how many of your friends will adopt a black baby? she said that's not the point and i said yes it is a wheeze to have these real big fights. what i wanted to say about this religious movement in today and i'm sure you have covered it because you are so smart, the money as they are. you follow the money. the koch brothers, everybody else. the tea party for us is a gift that keeps on giving because weaponize fight back. although women's, i'm even tweeting everybody. on the internet you have all these women writing. emily's list, every single one. as soon as the koch brothers do something they rattle it back in.

we have to fight the money. windy davis and i have covered texas politics. god forbid you should ever go there. [laughter] but anyway it's just horrible. they have just come up with the most kryptonian abortion law. the reason these women are my heroes is because they took such unbelievable chances. i will stop now but i want to talk about when they were put in jail and arrested for obscenities and they blew the whistle on henry ward beecher's, adulterous affair. >> i just want to jump in on where they feminist. coincidentally feminism was discovered in america 100 years ago this month. century magazine wrote them in a sum is on everyone's tongue. it's in the germ of our women.

we must define it. we must understand it. what feminism was, it was imported from the french by greenwich village bohemians. to me it was in many ways against the susan b. anthony type of what they called the woman -- they wanted to distinguish themselves. they fought for legal birth control which wasn't legal at the time. it was actually censorship and he couldn't even write about birth control. people go to jail for mailing information about birth control. it was kind of their spirit. i agreed with the woodhall sisters who are just amazing. i've been waiting for a new biography so thank you. they were audacious. they struck people as kind of charting a new human sex, a new

meeting behind moralism and the sanctimoniousness of victory and women. if you take that and look at someone like ms. taylor and you think about how the very nature of what women are to be, not just rolls. it's no wonder that we have seen such resistance to accepting these changes. these were thousands of years of these roles for women and really in the space of a half a century were completely changed. personally i look at this kind of glass half empty. i think we are on the cusp of even more amazing changes and we have the feminist movement to thank for it but it's also these values are now common sense throughout america. we have one. >> i also wanted to address.

>> on the glass half-empty business i'm glad you mentioned glass because that is one of the things that made the women's movement complicated in the early part of the 20th century so closely linked with the tampax movement. men would get drunk and clean -- beat up their wives and the separating of these two are very important. just mentioning it. >> in some ways elizabeth taylor among other things she was one of the first few -- i don't think the vatican, it wasn't like some priest chatting privately in a courtyard. it was an official radio station and a weekly newspaper. >> but she had a fabulous response to that and it's in the book and i'm trying to remember what she said. >> i think she really got her revenge with an underappreciated

movie called the sandpiper where she has gone beyond, we have actually gone beyond the whole issue of abortion and she makes a decision to have a child out of wedlock. she really is this emblem. she is -- the characters openly atheistic kind of because of her physical appearance links to the ancient goddess cults. she manages to destroy the faith and the marriage you know of a protestant which is about as close as you are going to get to a high church episcopalian. it's a marvelous movie. it was not appreciated at the time. because they were such big stars, one of the things i usually like when i give a talk like this is you have to believe me. it's often more effective at and

if i could just show a clip from a film. if you see it in here at yourself, you don't have to trust me. >> i wanted to ask you because she was born in 1942. 1932, yes so she came of age basically in world war ii. she was very much of the cohort of women who moves through second wave feminism became discussed and controversial and changes were made etc.. it's elizabeth taylor and her on might consider herself a feminist or ever talk about feminism or show any kind of awareness that these roles were in fact emblematic of the larger changes in the culture? >> i think the fascinating thing about elizabeth is director saw things in her that only in much later life which he be able to identify in herself. these qualities you know that you could be beautiful and you

could be very strong. she didn't have much of an education. she was a contract player at mgm from the age of 12 on. she was educated at the little red schoolhouse. she didn't go to college but she learned the things that she came to know by working in some of the best directors in america. her character and giant leslie benedick. i don't know if you are familiar with this movie. >> give. >> give us a little for novices. >> you can probably see it on tmz. it's an adaptation of the edgar ferber novel about a woman from the east coast, i'm searching, marries rock hudson. he mistreats the mexican because they are not u.s. citizens. the mexican workers on this gigantic cattle ranch in texas.

feminism is a social justice movement and this character leslie is extraordinarily concerned with social justice. her husband tells her that it's a community of mexican workers. she defies them and visits anyway. she finds a sick childcare there and instead of pushing that child away the way that some people might she embraces the child and she forces the physician who only attended the euro-american ranching community to address, to make that child well. to me it almost seems like in later life after she got sober she became leslie benedick. all of her friends who were sick and many people in hollywood out of fear were pushing them away, she embraced them. i have a long interview in my book with rock hudson's doctor initially identified the aids

virus in medical journals. and he kind of agreed with this analogy of leslie benedick. it wasn't just raising money. it was forcing the mainstream community to acknowledge both the humanity and the suffering of the people on the margins. >> could i ask a question? my feeling is that the real feminist with their writers and ferber was an intensely feminist woman and she wrote the book that the giant came from. it came suddenly last summer was written by tennessee williams. i have one little anecdote about elizabeth taylor and the second thing as me, did you feel that she picked these roles? the writing in the background and the concept had nothing to

do with her. >> it's not a bright light. >> let me tell you when she sat there and she said i never knew senators could be so dull. [laughter] >> probably she had fried chicken and bourbon. >> mostly the bourbon. >> i want to ask this question of nancy. it seems like women get liberated and are unmoderated and liberated again. they want to work in droves in world war ii. though men came home and the women were forced back into the home in this image of a blissful 1950s housewife took hold for a decade and a half until betty for dan came along with "the feminine mystique." do we have a wrong impression of how feminism has evolved or is there always is there issa

backslash? you say we won but in fact there is this push back all the time now. and a lot of places like texas if you were a poor young woman who needs an abortion you haven't won. >> they have managed to close every planned parenthood clinic in mississippi except one. >> so let me clarify when i say one. i think the values of gender equality, civil rights, equal civil rights for all women, for people of all sexual orientations has one in mainstream america. if you look at poland, only 7% of americans don't support the idea that women should have equal political social and economic rights as men. marriages is polling at about 60% now. just because we live in a

democracy and most everybody agrees with something or a supermajority agrees with it doesn't mean that's what the policy is. this is about politics. so what i write about is how a very small group of reactionaries through taking politics very seriously, by joining school boards and getting involved at the precinct level. i worked over period of 20 years to take over the republican party to the sense that even moderates of the republican party have to vote the way the sexual fundamentalists want. i will put it this way. there there there was a vote on equal pay this weekend doll for republican women senators voted against that equal pay laws. it was a very moderate bill. one of those women is kind of a

strong antiabortion right-wing senator. the other three are relatively moderate. but it has become a question of party loyalty, making it through the primaries that they have to vote with the tea party which is really just the christian right rebranded. so one of the things i think in about in this question about the waves of feminism honestly there was a point when feminism became much more interesting cultural questions, questions of sexual violence very important but at the time feminism started kind of leading a electoral politics behind, women who i write about what the founder of those fighting against equal rights amendment to hit feminist books under her bed sober nieces wouldn't see the pornography. i think it was the female sections about bodies themselves

but she did not want him to see. these people decided we are going to get involved in the republican party. so while party democrats were running scared about women's issues and, and a lot of feminists had have turned their backs on electoral politics, the other side, the tiny minority that really does not support women's equality in the sense that i think most people in this room think about it, they won in a political -- so what i'm saying is we have one in the public opinion and if we take that next step into politics we will win in politics but until we match our kind of politics with our opinion we are going to keep seeing the public policy going backward.

>> look at the women who are running today. grimes is running against mcconnell and mcconnell has gotten so much more money and there is the old cliché, i have covered five presidential campaigns in their state old cliché that he was so smart he was an empty suit. mcconnell calls her an empty dress. he is practically bulletproof because he has this whole thing he's an incumbent. the same thing with wendy davis. they were smart wonderful women running but until you can get the vacuum in the money it's not going to work. as pat schroeder who is the longest woman running in congress said to me 20 senators is not enough. we have to have 50% of the society and we have to have 50 women senators. then we will start to see some top-down changes.

but i just think you have to be very realistic about what the public wants or not. it's the same thing with the nra. many people don't think you should have guns but the nra keeps getting both democrats and republicans reelected over and over again. so you have to follow the money and that's what we have to do more often. >> m.g. did you want to add something? >> nancy mentioned polling and it made me think of my students. my millennial students have very progressive attitudes on most social issues. .. a signing of a place in the sun so they can see the absolute horror of what a world looked like without

roe versus wade. you would be surprised how much more excited they become when they see the other side prevailing. >> i covered abortion when it was illegal in 1969 and i can tell you the coat hanger pictures, people dying -- it was a total reality. i agree with you totally that younger people can't imagine having that ever happen again. >> nancy, you write in the book about how the christian right has been energized by woman. if i throw out a sentence i wonder if you can each respond to it. woman are sometimes women's own worse enemy. >> women can be women's own

worst enemies but i really think we should expect all women to agree. so i strongly oppose the politician of these people i call sexual fundamentalist. they have a world view that comes from a fundamentalist reading of their religion whether that is catholic or evangelical. and they are not anti-women but they believe woman's proper role is first as a mother and a wife. you have ones like sarah palin that says if you can cover the mother and wife and also be vice president, great. but it is always premised on this is the god given role of women. that is their view. if we want to understand what

the political fight is about we to, you know, understand their view. i would say i see millennial generation motivated to vote. there was a stampede at ucla to get fsee hilary clinton. there is excitement about the idea of a first woman president. and that is my next book so keep an eye out for that in 2015. so i think if we could, you know, a discussion with these young people about this is what is motivating and they get decide. do we, like most men and women in the millennial generation, think that women and men should have equal roles and we would like to see men having more opportunity to be with their kids and men are struggling with

work-family balance. i think that is where they are. or do they want to share this view of a god given role for men and women. i think we win by having that debate. >> what do you think, mg? >> in order to respond i find myself scrolling back to forever barbie which after 20 years is still in print and it is four required courses here that have to do with concepts of gender and marketing. it also follows me around. in the new york times review of the elizabeth taylor book i got all excited at the time beginning of the review i was compared with twain and others

but as it developed it came out in the the herman mel vil of midcentury sex icons. what nancy said about the idea of a woman having to be at a mother first and foremost. i think we ought to give credit to the 11.5 inch plastic ball that was a revolutionary toy, barbie, in 1959 when it came out. highly sexualized, no husband and from the get-go a career. barbie was the beginning of dolls that taught girls to nurture. it was about putting your adult life on to a grown woman not nurturing a baby. it was similar to the sex and the single girl when was

protofeminist and it was very much an argument for women's sexual and financial atonomy and this thing did plant the idea -- i am not sure she could stand on her own two feet, but she could wobble defiantly on her own two feet without being held up by a man. >> i had a totally different feeling about barbie. i didn't want my daughter to have her with the big tits and big waist. on the business of women being their own worst enemy it was major with the sisters. as i said, they wrote this scand scandalous article about beacher having an affair and victoria

said he spoke to 16 of his mistress each week at church. and they were put in jail and followed and put back in jail over and over again for what was a small would be offense. absolutely joining that were the two beacher sisters who wrote uncle tom's cabinet and they were called tramps and prositutes. but catherine was the martha stewart of her day and told you how to be a house maker, how to be a good mother, the many steps to ironing your husband's shirt. she was an old spinster and was never married. she had never had children. she was this cause 11.

she joined something like 5,000 women petitioning against the vote at the very same time when the others were. so there was always that standoff i think. sometimes there was religious connotation and sometimes it was how are you so audacious. anthony comstalk was his name and he was a self-made vice star who was going to stop all vice. he saw sin in everything. medical books. >> like kenneth star? >> exactly. there were some cartoons made and one is he is standing up with a woman next to him looking

at the judge saying you honor, this woman just gave birth to a naked baby. but that was a situation where he then happened to make the federal -- it is going back to your point -- he got the federal law and made obscenity tougher. he was against everything the best writers wrote and walt whitman and george bernard shaw and forced a major abortionist to commit suicide. so when you talk about the anti-movement there has been a backlash from males and females. you have to remember, i am sure it is in your book, that the women's movement in the '60s

starts because the anti-war movement was leaving them out and not letting them run anything. one got mad when tom hayden got off the plane and handed me dirty laundry and said clean it. >> before we take questions, i want to ask you a current question that may not seem important but it does get at something interesting in the culture. cheryl sanders of facebook launched a campaign with the girl scouts to ban the word bossy for girls. >> what about ballsy? [laughter] >> i actually think we should embrace bossy.

i think we need to revalue it. i think it is social media stumble. >> where does tina fay weigh in on this? isn't she bossy pants? i would like her opinion. >> maybe we should tweet and see if she answers. >> that is a good idea. >> unbelievable -- well anything is believable. the words, i am shaping this up for a speech i am giving on sexism in politics. a man is ambition, great. a woman is ambition, oh, you know. you can take the simpliest word and it goes on and on.

>> i was going to say that woman who have more than one cast take a severe beating in this culture. i myself i indendured it and i would like to speak out against that terrible prejudice. >> especially if they are single. >> hi, i write for revolution newspaper and i have a comment and a question. today is a national day of emergency action around abortion and there is protest going on across the country this afternoon. we have to confront, and i real think it is a poisoning idea that even to explain what you meant by we won. it is the profound disagreement if you look at both in people's

thinking and the laws. women around the world are being hurled backwards. but 203 restrictions against abortion, six states with one clinic left and 40,000 woman around the world die from abortions. 11 is the average age of little boys watching pornography. people don't know this. including to my generation doesn't know this and young girls. >> i think it is great hearing you. keep coming. >> here is where and -- >> we want the young women. i wish there were more of your generations in the audience. let's give this woman a megaphone. >> i have one. i will frame my question.

ultimately it will take a revolution and different system to end pornography and the degrading of women around the world. we need mast resistance. the idea that hillary who is a war criminal is going to do anything and where we should rely on is the democrats is part of what has poisoned and hamstrung my generation. i think people have to get out in the streets and fight and that is the lesson from previous generations. >> the women i wrote about were girls at the time and they happened to be beautiful which helped. but they played the only game possible. the power game was the male owned and everything but she got up and gave this famous speech after she was the first woman to

address congress and said if they don't go with with us it is revolution. there are those moments and people that will do it. but i am concerned about what i consider complacency in your age group. they can have it all. my 11-year-old grand daughter said my friend wants to be a doctor and i want to be a lawyer. it is engrained they don't have to fight. >> in mississippi, a lot of women are currently self-inducing the abortion. they don't know the hanger but it is happening now. >> i have a question based on her statement. when you call for revolution, what do you interupt that to mean and do you think that is a good idea?