for financial services innovation senior vise president rached synder followed the spending habits of over 235 families over the course of a year in the financial diaries. and journalist drew phillip chronicles rebuilding an abandon house in his hometown in a $500 house in detroit. look for these in bookstores in the coming week and watch were the authors on booktv on c-span. >> good frafternoon, welcome to the heritage foundation.

for those joining us online, welcome you. and those joining us on future broadcasts of booktv. we ask you to turn ouf off your devices. and we remind you you can e-mail us online and we will post the program on our heritage home page for future reference when the event is over today. ryan anderson is heherin here l the discussion. he is a senior research fellow in american principles and public policy and if founder and editor of public discourse, the online journal of theing witherspoon institute. and the author of truth overruled, the future of marriage and religious freedom, and co-authored with princeton writers the book what is

marriage, man and a woman. he earned a bachelor from princeton university and his doctoral degree in political philosophy from the university of notre dame. please join me in welcoming brian anderson. >> thank you, john, and thank you everyone for coming. we are in from an a treat today. people are trying to deny men and women are equal but not the same, ashley mcgire has appeared on cnn, fox, pbs, and the bbc. her writing has appeared in the new york times, washington post, "time" magazine, weekly standard, the federalist, the new york post and the huffingpen

ton post. her new book, "sex scandal: the drive to abolish male and female," she explores debates about women in the military and the workforce, the campus hookup culture and campus gender identity policies and explores gender neutral parents and homemaking. her arguments may not shock many people in today's audience but they come with a trigger warning when delivered on college campuses and perhaps we should issue that warning for booktv. we best protect women's equality and dignity when we stop trying to make women and men the same. she will give us a taste of arguments in her new book today. please join me in welcoming ashley to the podium. >> thank you, brian and thank you to the heritage foundation for having me and especially thank you to my good friend roger. i would like to open with a quote that at least in this

brave new internet world of fake news is attributed to plato. quote strange times are these in which old and young are taught fallshoods in the school and the person who dares to tell the truth is a lunetic and a fool. i suspect most of you are here because you are interested and distressed it has has been an issue to speak the truth about sex. but the sex most people immediately think of when they hear the world but sex as male and female two of the most patently obvious self memorials. that is one of national scandal that continues to play out daily. in just a few weeks since my book came out, countless examples making headlines news shows jus how skew society is when it comes to sexual reality. the boy scouts announced it will

go coh-ed and allow members to par isis pate. when i heard this i wondered how long until the girl scouts was pressured to go in the same direction only to learn after brief research the girl scouts announced biological boys could participate if they self-identified as boys. the british organization published guidelines saying expected mother wasn't inclusive enough and suggested people use the phrase chest feeding instead of breastfeeding because someone being insulted by the fact only women can birth chin children.

when the alliance received angry blow backs from some feminist one writer who described himself as an expecting parent said some have the adacity to assert only women can give birth. the iconic dog company particular to everyone in this room, american girl, came out with its first over dol that is a boy or at least looks like a boy. one on the website praised the company for making greater strides because goodness forgive little girls have a corner in the toy industry all to themselves. and one more headline. the nude photo sharing of marines. as npr wrote quote the pentagon

is investigating the sharing and members of other branches of the u.s. military were involved it is being reported. and online bulletin boards were being used to share explicit photos of nude women in the military. a website confirmed it was still active just a day or two ago. women in particular get the short end of the gender neutral stick. underage girls are endangered by a policy placing them in close quarters overnight with boys and adult men with the boy scouts. pregna a company called american girl is not inclusive if it doesn't market to boys and women in our armed forces are violated and graded in the aftermath by opening all rules to women and

forcing the marines to make its boot camp co-ed. we have become completely scandalized by sex and in my book i argue it is women who have the most to use in a world mafrning toward gender neutrality. equal treatment doesn't yield equal outcome rather it has the affect of dissempowering women by holding them to male standards which we are almost always doomed to fail. i would like to set back and stalk about the language of the debate in the gender wars and then give three of the most powerful examples of what happens to woman in a world that denies sex, talk about how we got to this place and why i believe there is a cause for hope. as george orwell put it corrupt language is corrupt.

i am asked about the difference between the meaning of sex and gender and i boiled it down to this. sex means something, gender means nothing. sex has a definition, a pretty uniform one you can find in just about any medical text become or scientific resource. it means male and female as denoted by one's chromosome and genitalia. the definition of gender is something even the gender movement is struggling with. in facebook in 2015, they expermene experimented to move way from male and female and offered selections like pan gender, two spirits. facebook wasn't expected to get raked over the progressive coals for this inclusive gesture but the company had criticism for failing to include this gender

or that winding up replacing all the options with a simple fill in the blank which eventually became other. one professor suggested how to you put down meaning around gender? he wrote quote once we assert the problem with gender is we currently recognize only two of them the obvious question to ask is how many genders would we have to recognize in order to not be oppressive? how many possible gender identifies are there? the only answer is seven billion give or take. there are as many gender possibilities as many people as there are on the planet. your gender can be pizza, pure darkness or anything. what becomes of women when we have the same legal status as pizza? i will read from the opening chapter on military which i

think highlights what happens. in february, 2010, then secretary of defense robert gates announced the navy would lift its long standing ban on female sailors serving on submarines. they presented a unique challenge to the navy's ongoing effort. cramped quarters, minimal privacy and tours as long as three months sea. the navy was worried locking up a group of men and women under wat for three months might cause less than ideal things to transpire between the sexes. the uss wyoming is one of the first submarines to bring women on board and the first two to see a woman receive her dolphin and become a submarine officer. the navy announced the integration was smooth sailing. but in 2014, a rumor began

surfacing that lewd videos were being formed aboard the wyoming and an investigation confirmed. a ring of male soldiers had been collaborating to share videos of the women in the shower and share them. this wasn't a one-time prank but an effort that implicated dozens of mean why they used banned electronic devices to film women as they bathed. every single woman aboard the uss wyoming was filmed naked every time she took a shower. woman were violated for months on end because of policy built on blindness to gender differences tearing down

barriers designed to protect women and the integrity of the navy. but the navy gave the perpetrators a slap on the risk and pressed toward integrating nuclear powers and eventually all enlisted submarines. then defense secretary, ash carter, announced the pentagon would be opening every single combat role to women and the process had to begin in 30 days. more stunning secretary carter refer today the submarines as the example of success. the marines resisted this move not because they are sexist but because they spent time and tens of millions studying what happens in mixed sex combat units. the findings were stunning. mixed gender units performed

worse than all male ones by significant margins in every metric. overall, male units faired better 69% in the area of speed which the marines considering one of the two most important in combat readiness. all male units were more accurate in their aim with every single weapon system. male units engaged targets more quickly and scored more hits than mixed gender ones. the study found that the male infantry performed with greater accuracy than women who are received formal training. the measure considered the physical impact of placing women into the combat roles alongside men. those findings were equally devastating. women suffered injuries at six times the rate of male colleagues.

they were more likely to develop an injur but slower getting an injured marine off the battlefield. one female marine points out the high stakes and i quote her no one questions why there are no female athletes in the nba and nfl. no one questions why the women compete against women and men against men in the olympics. she knows on to say there are great achievements but lives are on the line. you could die or get someone else kid. a former marine put it more bluntly the only possible outcome of this policy is more dead marines. women are given an equal opportunity to fight on the front line we know they have an unequal chance to fight without injury.

two more point about how this approach harms women. the next is the college campus recently labed as one of the most dangerous places in america by cnbc. no one suggests this has to do with co-ed housing. 90% of dorms are co-ed many by floors, hallways and bath rooms and many by room. schools are trending toward co-ed rooms disspite statistics published by our government found 7 # % of reported rapes, # 2% of reported on campus and 53 of what they termed on campus fondling happened in student housing. another study conducted over a decadeing rape and sexual assault in college found 81% of

rapes and sexual assaults took place in the dorm versus just 9% in housing and apartments and 4% in fraternities. yet, schools are pressing forward with more sex integration often forced in the most private spaces. i give the example of harvard university which in the aftermath of former president larry summers daring to propose there are aspect of female and mail -- male that are not social -- sought to address the campus rape student by telling students they would be punished if they participated in single sex clubs. never mind noting there were equal numbers of clubs for male and female. students in the clubs were not eligible for school endorsement for scholarships and sports team captain positions. the school wasn't prepared for the response which includes

hundreds of female students many victim of sexual assault marching through campus and launching a twitter campaign with hash tags such as assault is not our fault. the school's reaction was calling the women discrimnitory. quote change is difficult and initially met by opposition. few today would reverse the then controversial decisions. we continue to believe gender discrimination has no place on harvard's campus. women are sexist for demanding single sex safe places even when they have been aasausaulasaulte. the last example i will give is a girls and womens sports

because it implcatses. title nine which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender, helped to pave the way for women sports which created opportunities for millions of women and girls. its passage saw a 179% increase in female participation in sports which didn't take away from boys and then sports which grew by 22% in that same period. multiple generations of girls such as myself have sense grown up experiencing athletics as a mean to build self esteem, leadership skills, and for some a path to scholarship and lucrative professional opportunity. title nine was designed to correct for unequal opportunities for women where no

sports team was offered for girls she could play with the boys and schools had to play they were making a good faith effort equally in both boys and girls sports. under the gender theory regime, it is being co-opted to permit boys to play on girls teams. it went mostly unnoticed until 2011 when a high school senior completed in the girl's complete and won the 50 freestyle race and broke the record with a time that would not have qualified him to compete in the same race in the boys division. the lead paragraph of the boston globe article covering the controversy that ensued quote the governing body that regulates high school athletics in massachusetts is taking a closer look at the controversy surrounding girls swimming teams and will soon address the issue.

boys competed on eight teams and several qualified to compete at the state level. as the globe summed up t situation, athletic officials are limited in what they can do in the eyes of the association. there is no stopping boys from competing on girl's swim teams because state law mandates equal access for both genders. if a boy wants to swim and there is no swimming program for boys at the school offered he is allowed to swim with the girls. in pennsylvania, a study found approximately 30% of schools reported having boys on a girls sports team. when worried parents of girls began to protest the state dug in heels taking the position that gender equity in sports means blindness to differences.

pennsylvania's attorney general said athletic equality is required and they will not allow a rule barring boys from participating on girls teams just as we will not allow a law allowing girls to be banned from playing with the boys. equal treatment creates unfair competition should gender blind equity trump fairness? should boys and girls play sports assigned for the other gender is there any legit reason to have teams classified by gend gender? should classifications be merged and be considered co-ed? such an approach would devastate female athletics at the high school level and isn't a realistic or practical option.

i haven't gotten to the question of biological males who identify as girls or the biological female who self identifies as a male and competes against girls as they are. i don't need to because it is obvious in every single scenario girls sports loses out. so how did we get to this brave new gender fluid world? how did we reach the point br legos are banned? father-daught father-daughter dances are canceled? where centers are fighting in court to far biological males entering and not every race is a gender motivated hate crime as the judge put it in her ruling against the singer kesha who

sued sony for her manager use using his authority over her. in my book, i argue this has been unfolding for decades. i trace it had the way back to the sexual revolution when it was beginning to be argued the differences between the sexes are the source of social inequity. if women could eradicate what makes us difference it could make us equal. the problem with this is it assumed there was something wrong with women and the male mold was what should be mirrored.

i offer a quote from one man, an early self professed feminist, hugh hefner, he said the sexual revolution permitted women to be natural sexual beings as men are. that is where feminist should have been all along. play boy is the antidote to puritans. i helped sponsor the lower court cases that eventually led to row v wade. i was a feminist before there was even such a thing as f feminism. now we are living saying our biological sex was a random accident and the reproductive

differences are arbitrary and socialized. as the author of the forthcoming book, burn down the binary, put in a recent article, the ultimate goal of the gender identity movement is to demolish the gender structure of the world. is this possible? in the book, i point to the pact that even a society is trying to deny sexual reality and institute wide forced androgynus behavior but it is recognizing sexual difference perhaps more than every before. in the field of medicine, scientists, doctors and researchers are realizing they have only hit the tip of the iceberg when it comes to undering how important sex is to good medicine. pharmaceutical companies have learned they must include both men and women in drug trials as the female and male body might

react differently to the same drug. the gender reveal party is a craze expecting parents announced the sex of their gender. in one six month stretch, youtube saw a large increase in videos up loaded to the site. single sex education is making a comeback. in 2004, there were only 234 single sex public schools and now it exploded to over 800. lego introduced a line of legos tailored to girls only to see it become one of the best selling and making progress closing the

much fretted gender gap. the disney castle is a 400 piece toward gender equal. the kind of set that would make a girl scream uncontrollablely on christmas morning. women are the drivers such as women-only gyms, and even recreational opportunities like women-only ski clubs. people are just understanding. bill gates attributed his decision to give away most of his fortune to the women in his life. and adam grant documents the ways influence women. male ceo's pay employees less on average when their first born is

a son but more if their first born is a girl. the reality to quote beyonce carter knolls that quote humanity requires both men and women and we are equally important and need one another. men and women compliment each other and we need not to be threatened by what makes us difference. so many on both sides of debate are seeking is only to be found by starting with recognizing, accepting and celebrating what makes us different. as the timeless adage goes. thank you. i am happy to take questions.

>> my question is how would you argue the differences to someone on the other side? because they say it is just engineered into us by society. >> i would start by saying a lot of the emerging research is finding that the differences are not, at least entirely, socialized. to go back to the sex versus gender the world gender originating to describe our experience as women. in our culture, men don't wear skirts but in other cultures they do. that is an example of what is socialized but doesn't get to the core of being a man or woman.

>> i would actually encourage people the go and read the speech that got larry summers fired, because he goes into this a lot as well. he talks a lot about the research, especially with boys and girls, that finds that, you know, yes, there are certain aspects of culture that are social, and he talks about, for example, women not excelling at least to the, you know, in equal levels, at certain high levels because of sort of innate differences between men and women, especially women's

desire, you know, which has been documented extensively by the pew foundation to spend more time with their kids. so i think, certainly, you can look at within maleness and femaleness and find a whole spectrum of loved experiences. -- lived experiences. there are still, at the end of the day, sort of patently obvious and biological differences that, you know, anybody in the medical field are immutable. i mean, the phrase that i kept coming across was something that mayo clinic uses to talk about sex which is from womb to tomb, that they live -- they're with you from the moment of conception until the moment of your death, and those are sort of the deeper, chromosomal, hormonal, reproductive realities that now we're actually trying to deny are real. >> thank you so much. my question is when we talk about the nuclear family and the importance of father figures, how can we protect women and champion the unique contributions that civil society also empowering fathers and telling them that they have an

important role to play in society? >> well, again, i think this is where some sociologists are really making important contributions like brad wilcox and others like him who are finding, first of all, the effects on children of growing up without one or the other. and, obviously, the more common scenario you see are children growing up without fathers. the problem is our society is actually starting to celebrate the idea of the single mother, and i think this gets back to what i was talking about with the sexual revolution. i think it's this idea that we're celebrating something that women are doing that menussed to do, which is overwhelmingly be the providers for their family. so for some, when that number came out that four in ten households are run by single mothers, that was a celebratory moment for certain strands of feminism because they saw women replacing men. but the reality is, you know, you don't really have to look far at all to find extremely well-documented research about

the effects on women of raising children without a father, definitely on children of growing up without one or the other, especially girls without, growing up without fathers. but then more and more evidence is coming out. and if you start to read the news with, like, this filter in your mind, you'll see every day there's some article, you know, that men who are raising families without a woman in their life are more prone to depression, things like this. so clearly, i think relying on the huge body of research that's out there that shows the social cost to both sexes and to children of this, but also i think sort of celebrating the distinct roles of fathers and mothers. and i think, you know, that's still very much possible in this postmodern world where you have any be number of arrangements where, you know, both couples may be working full time, you may have a stay-at-home dad or

mom. i think instead of sort of being threatened by that as conservatives, it's important to step back and realize that even in all of those different scenarios, there's still at the end of the day distinct contributions that men and women are making in their homes. >> first of all, i think you were really harsh to pizza in your -- [laughter] remarks. gregory t. angelo, i'm the president of log cabin republicans. on a serious note, i want to ask would your opinion on any of these -- let me back up. some of your statements about an opposition to these constructs of gender identity was based on their vagaries. >> right. >> would your opinion of any of those issues change if there was more specificity to what constituted gender identity? in other words, if a student had a note from a therapist, advisory opinions from a

counselor, a doctor's note that stated that they had a recognized medical condition of gender identity disfore ya, would that -- disforya, would that change any of your opinions on those issues? >> probably not, well, for many reasons. one, i don't dispute the reality of gender disforya. i think that's a real medical condition, and i'm certainly not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but i don't dispute that's a real thing. but as somebody who spent the better part of my adolescence wishing i was a boy -- [laughter] buzz i didn't identify with what -- because i didn't identify with what i saw, what i perceived as sort of social constructs regarding femininity, i was more likely to be in the politics club with guys and wasn't super into girly things, but i'm really glad no psychologist or doctor ever pushed me in the direction. i'm increasingly hearing stories of parents whose children for

one reason or another have wound up in some sort of psychology, and i've read that actually psychologists now cannot -- i think they're not even allowed to sort of therapeutically treat that situation. in other words, if like a 7-year-old says i think i'm a boy, they have to run with that. so i'm a little concerned at how some of these medical associations can get politically hijacked. in the book i talk a lot about other, you know, things that i think the medical and doctor community are signing off on that are not okay such as, like, plastic surgeries on young girls that don't even have to do with gender dis forya but other things like that. i mean, i certainly think there's a real need to be sort of charitable in our approach to people who are going through that and in recognizing that that is a very hard and difficult thing to go through with. but especially when it comes to children, i get very uncomfortable. you know, i just think childhood

is -- a hallmark of childhood is confusion. and that is a natural and normal thing. and i think we're not going to help children by essentially encouraging that confusion, especially when we give it sort of the stamp of the medical community. i don't know if that answers your question. >> yes. my name is -- [inaudible] and my question is that since you are involved with this movement or this subject, do you think that -- [inaudible] would issue an executive order that no federal funds should be used for any sex -- whatever people believe it? as a taxpayer, i feel offended that my money is being used just because somebody is confused -- [inaudible] so i don't want to waste a penny on this. if that person wants to do that,

more power to him or her, but taxpayers' dollars shouldn't be used for that purpose. so my question is, again, do you think donald trump can issue an executive order about this? thanks. >> i think it's conceivable. i think if there's one thing president trump has made clear, it's trying to eliminate wasteful government spending, so i could certainly see that falling into that category. >> hi. my name's tom booth, and i'm a trained special forces operator. i spent eight years in special forces at aid attachments, and i'm a combat veteran as well, and i'm still heavily plugged into this community. and we have real concerns now, special forces qualification course theoretically is open for women to attend. the problem is the special forces radar operator, my rucksack weighed in excess of 100 pounds, i weighed 190 pounds in field trim, then there's my vest is all sorts of other weight, so you're looking at a composite of 320 pounds moving on two legs.

and when i go down, like the woman sitting next to me is a very fit woman, but there's no possibility she could put me in a fire carrier and get me out of a gunfire. in special operations right now is carrying the fight. we're the ones taking the daughter-in-lawties is in syria -- the casualties in syria, iraq and afghanistan. it's extremely high stress, and it's an ugly world that we live in while we're operators. and where's the sanity to this? why do we have to force this down our throats? and how does this raise combat effectiveness? how does it help us? do you think there's any potential that the military's going to stop this nonsense fairly soon? >> well, thanks for your question, and thank you for your service. i think it's certainly plausible, and i think you raise a lot of the issues that, you know, it was -- i was sort of shocked when i was doing the research on my chapter in the military as to how many active

members of the military were speaking out against which was happening which i think is sort of uncommon for military, a big part of which is, you know, sort of staying in line and not questioning things from above. but it was clear there was a lot of unease going on about all of this. and, you know, i think the military is a good example of, you know, i talked to the a lot of people who are in the military, and many of them made the argument that women can't rise in the ranks in the military unless they have combat experience and that this is something that's sort of holding women back. and so i think rather than trying to force women to do things that, on average -- i mean, certainly, there are women who are exceptions to the norm, but they're extremely rare, and even in the study that the marines did, the women that they chose, they sort of selected like an average range of performance for men for the study but chose sort of the top 1% of women. and even those women still --

and some of the women actually spoke out because i believe it was ash carter or it was one, maybe it was -- i think it was ray may have vis who said the -- mavis who said the study had been rigged, and they hadn't chosen the standout women. and the women were like, excuse me. [laughter] everybody was insulted by the idea that the study was rigged. but, you know, i was interested because i looked at not just the military, but firefighter and police, and fire fighting i have a similar issue as you do with military combat which is, basically, the quality you most need is physical strength and, you know, the ability to carry somebody wounded off the field, the about to fire a eye nor moss weapon with accuracy, things women struggle to do. and not just that, but by pushing these women into roles we're putting them at greater risk. i talk about just women going

through the firefighter training were coming out and winding up on disability because it was so hard on their bodies to have to carry around all this equipment. but contrast that to other types of first responders such as police where actually women, as soon as you give them a gun, they're sort of on an equal playing field with an assailant or with their fellow male police officers. and so much of what policing is about is deescalating violent situations, skills where women actually bring something to the table that men don't. and i talk about the fact that, you know, a lot of people are saying maybe the solution to our problem with police brew untilty untilty -- brutality is getting more women in there. they know if it's me against some 250-pound guy, just like a physical fight, he's going to beat me, so i've got to use my wits to talk him down out of the situation. but i do think that, i think it was general mattis, actually, who was very outspoken against all of this. i know he's on the out, but i certainly think his reservations

about what was happening were shared, and i think this photo scandal is really getting the attention of even the left-wing media about, wait a minute, maybe we're accelerating too fast with this. but i think it's unfair to women at the end of the day to say that you're not an equal soldier with a man unless you can perform the most sort of extremely physically rigorous roles which even in the military not all men are =ly qualified to do -- are physically qualified to do. so we're sort of holding women soldiers to the highest, sort of most macho male standard which is setting them up to fail, setting them up to be more likely to be injured, more likely to die and potentially risking everybody's lives as well as our military readiness. so i think it is certainly plausible that this administration will take a closer look at the really rapid changes that happened under the last in the military.

>> al -- [inaudible] am media. do you have a recommendation for the state and for the schools and for the athletes involved? the female school wrestler trying to become a male, taking drugs, taking -- it's giving an unfair advantage, but the state is saying has to compete as a female. i mean, i know i was disturbed when, as a baseball fan, you know, with athletes getting unfair advantage with steroids. but what is your evaluation of that? >> well, i certainly think there should be a hard and fast rule about biological effects of compete -- biological sexes

competing with each other. i have a whole section on this in the book, but what's interesting is even a lot of left-wing feminists agree with that, especially women who sort of pioneered female athletics because they can see, you know, really the argument for having women's sports dissolves really fast as soon as you're arguing that sex is not a valid category for, essentially, separating the sports in terms of teams. but, i mean, the case of the wrestler was interesting. i think people got confused. they thought it was a biological male competing against other females. we've seen other cases of this in different sports, but this is actually a biological female who was taking testosterone. and i think, you know, these athletic institutions already have rules against taking performance-enhancing drugs. so i feel like the rules are already in place, and either we're going to throw them all to the wind and let everybody take performance-enhancing drugs and

let either sex play on whatever team they want, which is kind of the direction that we're going, or we're just going to observe the rules that we already have in place, and, you know, that to me is sort of the simple solution to that. you know? sure. >> ken dillon, cnc press. is this problem specific to the united states, or it an international -- or is it an international problem and cross-cultural problem? >> in terms of legal and social policy, i don't -- i certainly know in a lot of western countries you're seeing similar issues crop up. i'm not sure quite to the colorful dee you're seeing in the united states -- degree you're seeing in the united states. but i give the example of the british medical association also falling prey to some of this sort of p.c. sensitivity about how we talk about pregnant women.

so, you know, i really can only speak to that. i don't have the best answer to your question, but i think it's certainly permeating much of the sort of western world, if you will. >> hi, my question to you, based on this argument, how would you reconcile the need to recognize these biological differences between men and women and the potential outcomes of that with this struggle and this movement for equality of opportunity? like, so i think that argument -- the argument that you make is great. one potential fallout i could see in places like saudi arabia, one justification given for women, you know, not being able to drive a car is, oh, you know, women are more prone -- >> worse drivers. [laughter] >> so i could see some potential downfalls there too. >> okay. that's a good and interesting question. and, actually, i think one thing we're seeing in the united states is some of these quests

for social equality being undercut by the gender neutrality thing, so i'll start with that first. i'll give the example of ivanka trump and the paid maternity leave plan that she helped her father put up. she got raked over the coals because it actually emphasized women. in fact, i think it was just about women, the plan that she had proposed. there was nothing in there for fathers, or maybe it was less. and a lot of people were very angry with her that it didn't offer equal leave for fathers and mothers. and she was like, look, women -- what women go through is different than what men go through -- [laughter] and just saying that was actually hugely controversial. i mean, almost all of these, like, women's magazines and even, you know, i mean, they just went after her for that to the point that i think she was a little sort of flustered, like why am i even defending this reality? but, actually, what was interesting was that not long before that a study had come out that found that in the university setting when you

offer male professors and female professors identical paid leave, it actually hurts women which makes sense because, essentially, all you're really doing is sort of just, like, paying everybody a little bit more while keeping everything equal in society. and men have sort of -- i mean, women physically, emotionally are much more vulnerable for a long time after childbearing, especially if they're doing things like breast-feeding, things like that. so it actually gives men a leg up because they're getting, you know, six months time off, but they're not breast-feeding, they're probably not getting up as much as the women, they're certainly not, you know, still struggling to walk around, things like that. so i think actually a lot of these issues that are considered more progressive quests for equality between men and women are not attainable, especially even just the idea of, you know, not being able to discriminate against women for getting pregnant. i mean, if we can't even say

"pregnant woman," how are women actually going to be able to make claims? and, actually, this is where you're seeing left-wing feminists line up with social conservatives in agreement that we're all sort of concerned about the status of women in a world where sex is not a valid category. i mean, what happens to rape? i mean, this is sort of a crazy question, but sort of not. the reason rape is considered such a heinous crime is because it's, you know, the one sex taking advantage of the other sexually in a way that's particularly egregious. and i give the example in the book of the judge in kesha's case making this weird -- i'm not sure what she meant, but it gets at what i think we're all sort of concerned about. i mean, obviously, there's cases of sexual assault against, you know, by men against men, but certainly there's not -- rape is a one-way street, but is it in a world where we're all the same, in other words? so to your point about saudi arabia, i mean, i think we have

to sort of differentiate between what are, i mean, that's an example of, i think -- and i think a lot of people get concerned that, oh, you just want to take us back to the 1950s where we had these super gender roles, and women were excluded from all these places. no, the reality is we have to understand the things about us that are actually the same which is our intelligence, our ability to, you know, make political choices, voting, our ability to contribute to civil society, participate in civil society. we may do that in different ways, but at the end of the day, there's certain sort of baseline rights that have to be in place in order for us to equally contribute in those ways. so that's recognizing what's the same about us, which there certainly are a category of things that are truly the same about us. but, you know, i'd say that there's a much -- there's certainly a broad section of qualities about us that are quite different. and require society to recognize

that in order for men to not be able to oppress women. any other questions? i wanted to make one more point about your question about socialization and gender, because i do actually think -- i talk about this in the book, i talk about the princess culture and how i think there are certain aspects of socialization that people are uncomfortable with for good reasons. but i often -- what i go back and forth in my mind about is how much of that is sort of consumerism and corporatism. and this is not exactly what you asked, but i don't want to say that it's totally unfair to always be, you know, concerned about sort of external pressures on boys and girls to be a certain way. and, you know, for example, it's kind of funny that my cover is a barbie, because i just -- i don't let my daughter play with barbies. i sort of don't like barbies. [laughter] and i know barbie has tried to

remake itself and redo the body so it's not a completely reworked image of a woman. that's not to say i would stop my daughter from playing with dolls, but even the disney culture, i think a lot of parents are really vigilant about this, and this is interesting again where you're seeing social conservatives and left-wing feminists, i think social conservatives may not like seeing the sort of sexuality, especially the way, like, females in disney are increasingly portrayed as hypersexual or damsels in distress. and you see the same thing on the left. but then, you know, so i never let my daughter see frozen, and somehow, i don't even understand, she knows all of the words, has a frozen dress, has a frozen doll. [laughter] and so i think there's sort of like an innate inclination for girls to celebrate their individuality. and that tends to manifest into the princess culture. but then there's aspects of it that, you know, the princess culture's like a multibillion dollar industry. and it's hard to escape as

parents. so this is just to say that i think, you know, there's finish raising questions about some of that does not mean, you know, you're raising questions about should girls be allowed to dress like a princess or, you know, the other way around. but i just, that was another thought that i had, so -- >> so please join me in thank ashley. >> yeah, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at some books being published this week. elizabeth rosenthal, a former doctor and editor-in-chief of is