Speaker 1: Welcome to Go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I don't think
Speaker 1: that there's some one soul mate. It's not like there's one.
Speaker 1: Although bon Jovi is my soul mate, there's always exceptions.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that gossiping is the same as if
Speaker 1: I'm picking lice out of your scalp and eating it. Well,
Speaker 1: you've done both. So what do you think? I want
Speaker 1: to give her too much? I don't like her to
Speaker 1: come in with an inflated head, so we won't mentioned
Speaker 1: the Golden Globe. After all we've been through. We deserve
Speaker 1: an orgasm. Cis I deserve? Welcome to Go ask Allie.
Speaker 1: I'm Alli Wentworth and this season I'm digging into everything
Speaker 1: I can get my hands on, peeling back the layers
Speaker 1: and getting dirty. And on this episode, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: what it means to be a feminist, how to be
Speaker 1: a feminist, and certainly how to raise our girls to
Speaker 1: be empowered. I grew up with a pretty feminist mother,
Speaker 1: and I remember were in six to celebrate the bicentennial,
Speaker 1: my mother put together an exhibit called Remember the Ladies,
Speaker 1: and it was so impactful to me because It was
Speaker 1: about all the wives of the founding fathers and how
Speaker 1: the women we're behind the scenes and the strength of
Speaker 1: everything that was accomplished. For example, Abiail Adams wrote almost
Speaker 1: all of John Adams speeches, But of course the women
Speaker 1: were never recognized. But this exhibit, which went around all
Speaker 1: over the country, was the first time I kind of
Speaker 1: woke up and thought, Wow, you know, women don't get
Speaker 1: their recognition that they deserve. And I have the news
Speaker 1: on behind me which is showing everything that's going on
Speaker 1: with Roe versus Wade Mississippi. I have friends crying their
Speaker 1: eyes out, and I'm sitting here wondering, certainly how my
Speaker 1: mother charted these waters, but also my two young daughters,
Speaker 1: who are going to enter this world as strong females,
Speaker 1: and how are they going to navigate everything that we're
Speaker 1: experiencing right now. So this couldn't be a more perfect guest.
Speaker 1: Rebecca Treyster is an award winning author and opinion writer
Speaker 1: covering women in politics, media, and entertainment from a feminist perspective.
Speaker 1: She's the author of the New York Times bestselling books
Speaker 1: Good and Mad, All the Single Ladies, and the award
Speaker 1: winning Big Girls Don't cry. She appears as a political
Speaker 1: commentator on MSNBC and has been featured on the Daily Show,
Speaker 1: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Full Frontal with Samantha
Speaker 1: b In Real Time with Bill Maher. All right, Rebecca
Speaker 1: tray Star, I'm just going to start by saying that
Speaker 1: this is a big day. We're not going to get
Speaker 1: into it, I think until the very end. But with
Speaker 1: Roe versus Wade is historic moment right now. And so
Speaker 1: there's no better guests to have on today to talk
Speaker 1: about feminism than you and how to be a feminist now?
Speaker 1: And I do want to start very quickly with one
Speaker 1: of your books. You had an Alice Walker poem which
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites, which is the feminine is
Speaker 1: not dead, nor is she sleeping? Angry, yes, seething, yes,
Speaker 1: biding her time? Yes, Yes, I love that. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to start with that. It is this beautiful poem.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I love her. I love her. Alright,
Speaker 1: So here we are. I'm going to ask you sort
Speaker 1: of a big broad question, which is, and this is
Speaker 1: really a personal question, how can I be a feminist now? Oh?
Speaker 1: You start on the place as hardest for me to answer.
Speaker 1: It's It's very interesting because so much of the work
Speaker 1: that I do is analysis, not prescription. But what I
Speaker 1: find over and over again is that what people want
Speaker 1: is prescription. Right. I actually really understand this hunger because
Speaker 1: I feel it too to know what choice is to make.
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of things that I would
Speaker 1: say when it comes to these sort of questions about
Speaker 1: what to do right now. But the sort of biggest
Speaker 1: prescriptive thing that I can say is that a lot
Speaker 1: of contemporary feminism, especially as it is been embodied and expressed,
Speaker 1: especially by a lot of the middle class white women,
Speaker 1: has so often been about expression. Right. This is like
Speaker 1: how do I raise my voice? How do I use
Speaker 1: my voice? Right? And increasingly over the years that I've
Speaker 1: been writing about feminism and political and ideological engagement in
Speaker 1: the project of making the country a more just place
Speaker 1: for more people, what I've come to understand that, especially
Speaker 1: for those of us who come to this conversation with
Speaker 1: degrees of power, so much of what we need to
Speaker 1: do moving forward is not about our own expression but
Speaker 1: about our own reception. Right. So that means listening, but
Speaker 1: not in that kind of like listen to others, like
Speaker 1: actual active listening. Looking around us, not just to our
Speaker 1: own experiences, though our own experiences often offer us guides
Speaker 1: and entry points to these conversations, right, I don't want
Speaker 1: to diminish our own experience as a way that many
Speaker 1: of us have come to these conversations. But like, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily about us, like it's about a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It's about working as part of a coalition. So what
Speaker 1: do you have to do to be part of a coalition?
Speaker 1: The most important thing that those who are coming to
Speaker 1: a conversation about power imbalances, and who are coming to
Speaker 1: that conversation on behalf of people who are at the
Speaker 1: margins of power, is to understand that in order to
Speaker 1: make progress from the margins, you have to be part
Speaker 1: of a coalition, right, And being a part of a
Speaker 1: coalition means not just expressing, but receiving and working in
Speaker 1: tandem with other people, which means listening, learning about the
Speaker 1: history you don't know, learning about the people that you
Speaker 1: don't know, learning about the stories that you don't know.
Speaker 1: When you talk about coalition building, you're talking about sort
Speaker 1: of building a coalition with other people that have experienced
Speaker 1: being on the lesser side of power. So it's not
Speaker 1: just about being a woman. It could it's about being
Speaker 1: black in our country, it's about being any kind of
Speaker 1: marginalized group in our country. Right. So, in terms of
Speaker 1: this question of what does it mean to be in
Speaker 1: coalition with other people, that can take a million different forms, right,
Speaker 1: there's also this sense that the only form of protest
Speaker 1: is like what we have been told is, you know,
Speaker 1: like marching, right, but in fact being in coalition with
Speaker 1: others and the beginning steps of organizing, whether that means
Speaker 1: politically or professionally. Sometimes the entry points are our own
Speaker 1: frustrations or sometimes it's initially seeing someone else's frustrations or
Speaker 1: inequity or injustice. But you know, it could mean you
Speaker 1: feel that there is some form of just injustice at
Speaker 1: your workplace that you're experiencing, or that a colleague is experiencing,
Speaker 1: and there's actually peril and you directly confronting a boss
Speaker 1: about it, right, the peril of job loss, of retaliation, whatever.
Speaker 1: And so a coalition can involve reaching out to and
Speaker 1: listening to other colleagues who may be experiencing similar frustrations
Speaker 1: or related different but related frush strations based on power
Speaker 1: imbalances or things that are dysfunctional at their office, and
Speaker 1: maybe that leads to some broader like labor organizing, right,
Speaker 1: like a unionizing effort, or maybe it's simply finding a
Speaker 1: network of support and community to come up with strategies
Speaker 1: within your workplace to find a way to address the
Speaker 1: inequities that provides the safety of numbers. Right. And of
Speaker 1: course we have the more you know, traditional ones going
Speaker 1: to meetings in your neighborhood, getting involved in terms of
Speaker 1: community activism, local politics something that we've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of people get into, especially and unfortunately only after the election,
Speaker 1: where you suddenly had people who had been totally uninterested
Speaker 1: in politics until then suddenly like and this is a
Speaker 1: good thing, right, suddenly realizing that their town had a sheriff, right,
Speaker 1: and that people had died in their local jails, and
Speaker 1: that things that they didn't even know even though it
Speaker 1: was happening down the street from them. That came from
Speaker 1: being in coalition with other people who had been active
Speaker 1: in a week to these things and on the ground
Speaker 1: for years, and it was that's part of listening within
Speaker 1: a coalition is finding yourself shoulder to shoulder with people
Speaker 1: and listening to what they have to tell you. Well,
Speaker 1: as indicative of when Trump was in power, and when
Speaker 1: you think about when we were all in lockdown, the
Speaker 1: movements that started to really get traction, like Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of activism happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like people built upon a coalition
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1: I do, Although I want to point out that there
Speaker 1: were lots of people, um who were unsurprised by the
Speaker 1: levels of racism and misogyny and sort of corporate manipulation
Speaker 1: of power structures that were evidence made manifest by the
Speaker 1: election of Donald Trump. Right, there were millions of people
Speaker 1: who have been doing this work for their entire lives.
Speaker 1: It's really like people whose daily existences had not yet
Speaker 1: felt an impact from those realities, who were surprised to
Speaker 1: learn these things and then did exactly this, like started
Speaker 1: to do some work. Right, We're like, oh, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to march. I want to get out
Speaker 1: there and show how angry I am. And there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot to be said about the Women's March and
Speaker 1: and the impact that it had both in its initial
Speaker 1: forum and then it's next year and on. But one
Speaker 1: of the really important things about that is that it
Speaker 1: was taken over and run by activists who had been
Speaker 1: very engaged in a lot of fights, and not necessarily
Speaker 1: fights around gender inequity, right, And they insisted on the
Speaker 1: form that that massive protest took, which was a historic
Speaker 1: like at that time, the biggest single day protest in
Speaker 1: the history of the United States, and of course it
Speaker 1: spanned the globe, and the organizers insisted that the people
Speaker 1: who were coming there as new to a fight, we're
Speaker 1: going to be standing their shoulder to shoulder and hearing
Speaker 1: about whether they chose to absorb it and to listen
Speaker 1: or not, right from people who had been in fights
Speaker 1: for more liberty and more dignity for more people over
Speaker 1: decades when a lot of the new people had not
Speaker 1: been attention. And so then once you got this new
Speaker 1: population of population that also has access to a lot
Speaker 1: more power resources engaged, there was listening from coalition at
Speaker 1: least to some degree, and there was learning about systemic racism.
Speaker 1: These are the years in which we have revised views
Speaker 1: of American history, coming not just around questions of gender inequity,
Speaker 1: which we have around me too, but also the sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen Project published initially in The New York Times. Tonahuse
Speaker 1: Coates's work in the Atlantic about reparations the view of
Speaker 1: how these forces didn't just erupt in the past five years.
Speaker 1: Trump was a symptom of forces that have shaped this
Speaker 1: country since before its official inception. Right, and the people
Speaker 1: that have been fighting for decades were not surprised at
Speaker 1: all by this. Right, it was everybody else that was
Speaker 1: catching up. I want to go back a little bit
Speaker 1: to Hillary because for somebody on the sidelines watching that election,
Speaker 1: I was mortified, first of all by how she was treated,
Speaker 1: but by how it was allowed, you know, weaponizing of words.
Speaker 1: I still get upset when I think about it, how
Speaker 1: the threat of a female president and the rage. It
Speaker 1: was like a tidal wave of for me, of fear,
Speaker 1: and nobody was sort of speaking up and saying, you
Speaker 1: can't treat this woman like this. You can't say hang
Speaker 1: her or shoot her or all the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that were being said at the time. And it kind
Speaker 1: of happened and then it went away. So it comes
Speaker 1: as a surprise to a lot of people, not just you,
Speaker 1: that they say hang her and she should be taken
Speaker 1: out and shot, and that there are parades as I
Speaker 1: saw in my you know, a town where I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time of like Hillary in a in
Speaker 1: a coffin on the fourth of July, just violent imagery.
Speaker 1: And then this sort of sexualized detigration of Hillary. It
Speaker 1: comes as a real shock, like a bracing shock. And
Speaker 1: yet the thing that's invisible that we don't think about
Speaker 1: is actually, we've never had a email president before. Why, right,
Speaker 1: So the inverse is invisible. Right. So it's like we think,
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves stories all the time about being in
Speaker 1: a post feminist world in which the very fact that
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton can exist means that, you know, whatever stupid
Speaker 1: phrase about women can have it all is, you know,
Speaker 1: is being tossed around. And yet if you actually look
Speaker 1: at the history of who's been president in the United States,
Speaker 1: that list is entirely white men minus one and all men.
Speaker 1: And yet we're surprised when the fact that there's an
Speaker 1: attempt by one to become president, of legitimate attempt, and
Speaker 1: in fact, she wins more votes than her opponent, and
Speaker 1: she has greeted with that level of rage. If that
Speaker 1: level of rage and hatred and denigration didn't exist, we
Speaker 1: would have had a lot more women running our political systems.
Speaker 1: We don't. But even when you look at the female
Speaker 1: senators in congresswomen and the amount of stuff that they've
Speaker 1: gotten done, the stuff that a lot of women in
Speaker 1: political positions have pushed through is enormous, And yet we
Speaker 1: don't look at that at all. We don't look at
Speaker 1: their success as something that could be a national success. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's more that so much of this country
Speaker 1: is built around a normalizing and imagining a full humanity
Speaker 1: of one kind of person, and it still is a
Speaker 1: is a white male, straight, this probably wealthy ish person, right,
Speaker 1: And like that's and that applies in every facet of
Speaker 1: our lives, like the you know, the books that we read.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that we're not completely surrounded all the
Speaker 1: time by like brilliant, inspiring, sometimes high achieving, sometimes very
Speaker 1: powerful people who are not white men. Right. There's a
Speaker 1: difference between their being exceptions, even tons of exceptions, millions
Speaker 1: of exceptions, and they're being still attitudes that are baked
Speaker 1: into how we are raised from birth. What is broadcast
Speaker 1: to us on television and on the internet and in
Speaker 1: our conversations and at bars and you know, over our
Speaker 1: dinner tables about who we have been taught can be
Speaker 1: a full human being, and who we are taught naturally
Speaker 1: has power in this country. And whenever there is a
Speaker 1: challenge to those baked in assumptions, people react really aggressively
Speaker 1: in ways that still managed to surprise us. And yet
Speaker 1: we're absorbing all those lessons every day ourselves. You know, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's time for a short break. Okay, let's get
Speaker 1: back to it. So let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1: It's it's and you're in Maine and you're watching the
Speaker 1: Anita Hill trial. Was that like the big pivotal moment
Speaker 1: that quote unquote got you angry, that got you sort
Speaker 1: of involved taking this road as opposed to being a
Speaker 1: makeup influencer. I was never going to be a makeup
Speaker 1: in those you don't know, Rebecca, but I'm saying that
Speaker 1: was the moment. In retrospect, I would say that was
Speaker 1: a moment of shifted consciousness for me. Um I have
Speaker 1: written about this story. My My mother was raised on
Speaker 1: a potato farm in northern rural Maine in a very
Speaker 1: right wing family, and I was up there is very
Speaker 1: close to my grandparents, and I was in high school
Speaker 1: and I was up on that fall weekend in October
Speaker 1: making apple cider at my grandparents farm, and the Anita
Speaker 1: Hill hearings were on, and they were very Republican and
Speaker 1: they despised her. My parents were, um, you know, my
Speaker 1: my dad came from a family of like Jewish socialists
Speaker 1: from the Bronx, and my mother's politics had shifted when
Speaker 1: she was in college, and so I'd grown up in
Speaker 1: a left leaning household. But it's not like I was
Speaker 1: at the barricades kid at all. I had. I thought
Speaker 1: about these issues. I cared about politics, but I was
Speaker 1: not an activist high school student or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And I was sitting at that table watching those hearings.
Speaker 1: And it would be totally dishonest for me to tell
Speaker 1: a version of that story where after that then I
Speaker 1: went out and got involved in activism. That absolutely did
Speaker 1: not happen. It is, however, the moment that I mean,
Speaker 1: I know the impact that it had on my brain
Speaker 1: and my sensibilities because I remember every second of it
Speaker 1: with such clarity. I feel like those hearings carved my
Speaker 1: brain right in a way that I didn't That didn't
Speaker 1: immediately change my behavior, you know, but it made it
Speaker 1: made visible to me some of this stuff that we're
Speaker 1: talking about that's just invisible. Had I ever really thought
Speaker 1: prior to that about the fact that a Senate Judiciary
Speaker 1: committee that was going to decide who sits on the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court was made up entirely of white men, at
Speaker 1: least one of whom, who is the great left wing
Speaker 1: hero of my youth, Ted Kennedy couldn't open his mouth
Speaker 1: because he himself had such a fucked up history and
Speaker 1: because his his nephew was at that point on trial
Speaker 1: for rape and Florida like okay, and I lived every
Speaker 1: day in this country, and I did care about politics.
Speaker 1: I read the newspaper. Wasn't that I was disengaged. And
Speaker 1: then those hearings, it was the beginning of like, how
Speaker 1: I now under stand the world, which provides clarity for
Speaker 1: me as just a constant, interlocking power structure, right, And
Speaker 1: those hearings made absolutely clear to me for the first
Speaker 1: time in a way that would leader absolutely shape my
Speaker 1: thinking as I began to write about this professionally, how
Speaker 1: power worked around gender and race and so that's how
Speaker 1: it galvanized me. But it's not like, oh, I watched
Speaker 1: those hearings and then I went out and changed my life.
Speaker 1: That was not the case. You didn't paint a sign,
Speaker 1: right up, I did. I certainly did not. It's it's
Speaker 1: interesting you say that because I have two teenage daughters,
Speaker 1: and we were watching the kaban Off hearing together and
Speaker 1: I saw my at the time sixteen year old daughter
Speaker 1: get enraged and furious and asking George and I all
Speaker 1: kinds of questions about how how is this okay? And
Speaker 1: how is he still there? You know? And I feel
Speaker 1: like you get re angered when you have kids that
Speaker 1: start seeing the world the way you did a while ago,
Speaker 1: and you talk about this a lot. It's sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a lens through righteousness and how do we fix it?
Speaker 1: And then there's like an overload fatigue, which I feel
Speaker 1: that a lot of women are feeling now, which is
Speaker 1: like I can't it's too much, it's too much, and
Speaker 1: we have a pandemic and Trump might be president again.
Speaker 1: I'm taking to my bed and I'm taking exam act well.
Speaker 1: So there's there's things to fear from wins and losses,
Speaker 1: especially for the newly engaged, right because with losses, and
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this this week, as you know,
Speaker 1: it seems, I mean, we won't know but like, very
Speaker 1: very likely that row will be overturned. This session, which
Speaker 1: I spent my life being told like would never happen,
Speaker 1: and that it was hysterical that I was arguing that it,
Speaker 1: that it was imperiled. But with losses comes that feeling
Speaker 1: that you're describing, especially for those who don't have experience
Speaker 1: with losses, and I actually had a really fascinating experience
Speaker 1: of this. I in I published a book about women's anger,
Speaker 1: and it was a historical look, but it was written
Speaker 1: in the two years between Trump's win and the mid terms,
Speaker 1: and I wrote it very quickly, and it tracked the
Speaker 1: sort of form that this new engagement and politicized anger
Speaker 1: took for a lot of women on the very roughly
Speaker 1: defined left. And when it was published happened to be
Speaker 1: the week of the kabinet hearings. Okay, so so much
Speaker 1: of the story that I was writing was actually a
Speaker 1: story of, in that very short, compressed period, a series
Speaker 1: of surprise wins, if not full wins, like like ways
Speaker 1: that those who were very new to the public expression
Speaker 1: of anger, new to the very notion of working within
Speaker 1: coalitions of marginalized people, like They're gonna have a women's march,
Speaker 1: and it was massive, and out of the Women's March
Speaker 1: came coalitions of new candidates who were winning primaries and
Speaker 1: unprecedented rates against incumbents. You had obviously the hashtag me
Speaker 1: too movement, and powerful people lost their jobs. All this stuff.
Speaker 1: Where was the sense of like, wait, if we're really
Speaker 1: in gauged, we really can make change. And there were
Speaker 1: these sort of in that period, small iterations of victories
Speaker 1: that of course feel good and energizing, and especially because
Speaker 1: so many of the people who were new to these
Speaker 1: kinds of fights were coming from relatively privileged climbs right
Speaker 1: where there is a sense of power like if I
Speaker 1: put my mind to it, if I put my money
Speaker 1: to it, I can make a change. I can get
Speaker 1: what I want, like steps forward, and like a sense
Speaker 1: of gratification, like it really mattered that I marched, It
Speaker 1: really mattered that I gave that speech in front of
Speaker 1: my school board. It really mattered that I told the
Speaker 1: story of harassment because there was a consequence, there was
Speaker 1: something happened because of it, and that that is really
Speaker 1: energizing for people. And then my book was published the
Speaker 1: week of the cabinet hearings, and you know, they lost right,
Speaker 1: and so many of so many of those women, We're
Speaker 1: out screaming and saying, this can't happen, it can't happen.
Speaker 1: And then it happened. He was confirmed right, And I
Speaker 1: was out there on a book tour talking to people
Speaker 1: who were like, I don't even want to get out
Speaker 1: of bed. I lost. I one of the hardest things
Speaker 1: to absorb for those who are new to these kinds
Speaker 1: of fights. Again, if we want all of them, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here, right. That so much of this work,
Speaker 1: so much of what it means to be engaged, to
Speaker 1: be awake as opposed to sort of asleep and unconscious
Speaker 1: of the amount of injustices in the world, so much
Speaker 1: of it, and staying engaged means losing over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, to to the point where we might
Speaker 1: not even see our victories in our lifetime. We let
Speaker 1: me tell you, we will surely not ali right. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've really been looking at
Speaker 1: this week, and I'm I mean, but this is really
Speaker 1: important for people here. I'm not going to live to
Speaker 1: see row reinstated, I mean, And that is like, you know,
Speaker 1: and this is this is dumb, This is dumb to
Speaker 1: cry about, because you know what, generations of people, generations
Speaker 1: of people gave their entire higher with way less power
Speaker 1: than me, okay, and way less comfort than me, who
Speaker 1: gave their lives right for voting rights, for reproductive rights,
Speaker 1: for labor protections, for environmental protections, all of which are
Speaker 1: being stripped back right now because of the sort of
Speaker 1: inattentions of institutional power structures, including in my mind, a
Speaker 1: democratic party and the and the political press right that
Speaker 1: in attention to the gravity of what was at stake
Speaker 1: here over the past six decades, seven decades, okay, but
Speaker 1: centuries worth of people gave their entire lives energies to
Speaker 1: these fights and sustained loss after loss after loss after loss,
Speaker 1: and died with no expectation that there would be a
Speaker 1: win any time soon. And when those rights and protections
Speaker 1: were finally one, they would never have been one had
Speaker 1: those people not given their lifetimes to that fight. Right
Speaker 1: There are many people alive right now who live through
Speaker 1: the victories, and I think that the horror for them
Speaker 1: of having happened to be born and devoted themselves to
Speaker 1: the fight at a moment where they get to see
Speaker 1: victory like I have witnessed you know what it feels
Speaker 1: like to win, to gain greater liberation and in a
Speaker 1: tiny bit more justice. But a lot of what I,
Speaker 1: as somebody who's born in n I'm going to live
Speaker 1: through is the erosion of those victories. And yeah, the
Speaker 1: temptation to be like, Okay, I'm going back to bed,
Speaker 1: and especially for those who can live a comfortable life.
Speaker 1: And again there's a lot of the people who are
Speaker 1: new to these fights can go back to not caring. Right,
Speaker 1: it's more comfortable that way. It's a lot less sad,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot and it's a lot less horrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to add right now is
Speaker 1: that I've also noticed where when you think about reproductive rights,
Speaker 1: there's a huge, huge amount of people that, no matter what,
Speaker 1: weren't even getting the accessibility in the first place, still won't.
Speaker 1: So much of what we have understood, even about the
Speaker 1: history of ROW, there's been this sense that, well, as
Speaker 1: ROW stands, abortion is legal, but that is a fraction
Speaker 1: of the story, and that has been true for decades.
Speaker 1: The High Amendment, which is a legislative writer that prohibits
Speaker 1: the use of government insurance programs like Medicaid from paying
Speaker 1: for abortion care, and which was first passed in six
Speaker 1: I think went into effect, has meant that for millions
Speaker 1: of Americans, abortion was all but illegal and inaccessible. And
Speaker 1: that's been true since just a few years after abortion
Speaker 1: was legalized. Right, there's a vast chasm between legality and accessibility.
Speaker 1: Then you add to that the thousands of restrictions narrowing
Speaker 1: of possibility in states around the country. You add to
Speaker 1: that the kind of violent vilification of those who require
Speaker 1: abortion care and those who provide at clinic, bombings, providers
Speaker 1: being shot and killed, creating atmospheres of intense danger in
Speaker 1: lots of areas in this country. What that has meant
Speaker 1: is that over the years that row has officially stood
Speaker 1: and abortion has officially been legal and safe, it has
Speaker 1: in fact been unsafe in many places, illegal and in
Speaker 1: many many places inaccessible, especially for the most vulnerable communities,
Speaker 1: especially for women of color, for poor women, for immigrants,
Speaker 1: for young people, for people in rural areas, for people
Speaker 1: in in red states. And that has been true through
Speaker 1: my entire lifetime. And yet there hasn't been the seriousness
Speaker 1: of like, wait, these are people's lives at stake. It's
Speaker 1: the shape of their existence. It's their dignity, their humanity,
Speaker 1: their well being that has not been at the center
Speaker 1: of the conversation of millions of us who officially like
Speaker 1: support abortion rights and access and the other thing. I
Speaker 1: want to say that this is where the reproductive justice
Speaker 1: movement has been in and too few on the on
Speaker 1: the left again, whether you're the Democratic Party, some of
Speaker 1: its strains of activism has not been good at making
Speaker 1: the very obvious and true case that in fact, abortion
Speaker 1: policy cannot be separated from questions of literal infrastructure, of housing,
Speaker 1: equality of social safety nets, the ability of families to eat,
Speaker 1: to get enough food, to have decent benefits, to have good,
Speaker 1: strong unemployment benefits, to have good education systems, safe housing,
Speaker 1: a just criminal justice system that enable families across economic
Speaker 1: spectrum to make any kinds of choices, the framework of
Speaker 1: choice being just about abortion, which is a framework that
Speaker 1: I think is very flawed, and lots of people understand
Speaker 1: its flawed. Who doesn't even begin to get at the
Speaker 1: number of factors and the number of interwoven policies that
Speaker 1: have been in place, and it hasn't permitted the cogent
Speaker 1: argument that should always have been made, and of course
Speaker 1: some people are making it, but you don't have a
Speaker 1: Democratic party making it, which is if you have an
Speaker 1: anti abortion right wing party that is arguing about the
Speaker 1: sanctity of life and forcing people to have children carry
Speaker 1: pregnancies to term, and yet not requiring that they get
Speaker 1: protected paid leave from their jobs, not requiring that there's
Speaker 1: any form of subsidized daycare for those children who are
Speaker 1: brought into the world, not you know, building up a
Speaker 1: safety net where people have good snap benefits and increased
Speaker 1: access to food or to clean water, or too good
Speaker 1: a strong educational systems. Right, you don't do any of
Speaker 1: those things. None of those things are being advocated. In fact,
Speaker 1: they're being fought against by the same people who are
Speaker 1: talking about the sanctity of life and the preciousness of
Speaker 1: every child and yet oppose the policies that would make
Speaker 1: life safer, kinder, more dignified. It's right wing hypocrisy, but
Speaker 1: it's also a left wing failure to understand and to
Speaker 1: communicate to voters and two would be activists, and to
Speaker 1: human beings. But these things are all interconnected, and that
Speaker 1: there are moral imperative for those in the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: and on the left that's a failure of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: There you go, and we'll be right back. Great, let's
Speaker 1: get back to it. I'm going to quickly switch gears
Speaker 1: here only because there's so many things I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about. I want to get to the
Speaker 1: me too movement because one of the things I've noticed
Speaker 1: in social media is that there's a feeling of if
Speaker 1: I post something that's my activism, it pulls us away
Speaker 1: from the marches and the school board meetings and the
Speaker 1: community get togethers, because we can just put a post
Speaker 1: or a quote and call it a day, and that's
Speaker 1: being active. And so I'm wondering how you're feeling about
Speaker 1: the me too movement right now, because it had a moment. Yes,
Speaker 1: Harvey Winds thean went to jail, but ultimately what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Nothing? Doesn't mean a lot, actually, but yeah, no, nothing.
Speaker 1: I should preface by saying that I was watching the
Speaker 1: Charlie Rose and the Matt Lauer as I'm married to
Speaker 1: a journalist. You know, he's sort of the last man's
Speaker 1: standing right now, and so it was sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting time to be watching everything from my bed, so
Speaker 1: to speak. Unpack that, Rebecca, we're going to start with
Speaker 1: the bed um Okay, you know, it was always going
Speaker 1: to be a moment. I was shocked by how long
Speaker 1: the moment lasted. At the time, it was like I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe. I think I wrote at the time that
Speaker 1: it was like a window had opened into which everybody
Speaker 1: could suddenly yell and through which everybody could see, like
Speaker 1: and it was like, oh my god, and I expected
Speaker 1: it to shut immediately, And I could not believe when
Speaker 1: sort of October moved into November, moved into December, moved
Speaker 1: into January, and still people were telling their stories. And
Speaker 1: if you were a journalist who was covering this, the
Speaker 1: thing that you knew and I've I've described this before
Speaker 1: as kind of like because you you know, there was
Speaker 1: a period in my reporting life. I wasn't reporting the
Speaker 1: breaking news about it at the time. I was doing
Speaker 1: analysis of it, but I was writing about these topics.
Speaker 1: And I was getting anywhere from between ten and a
Speaker 1: hundred emails every day in that period with stories from people,
Speaker 1: some of them about very famous people, and some of
Speaker 1: them about teachers and parents and relatives and friends who
Speaker 1: had abused or assaulted or her or har asked. And
Speaker 1: the view from where I was. It was like a
Speaker 1: horror movie, and it was like dipping your head beneath
Speaker 1: the surface of the ocean and feeling both like suffocated
Speaker 1: and getting a view of how big the iceberg is
Speaker 1: underneath what's visible on top. It was horrible, but I
Speaker 1: was also shocked by how much of that iceberg became
Speaker 1: visible above the surface, right like it was. I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. I couldn't believe there was a sustained appetite
Speaker 1: for it. I couldn't believe because it's so uncomfortable to hear.
Speaker 1: It's uncomfortable for all of us. It's uncomfortable. The stories
Speaker 1: were ugly, they were painful, and they also implicated all
Speaker 1: of us, every single one of us, in one way
Speaker 1: or another. And I wrote a lot about that at
Speaker 1: the time. But I always knew everybody I knew who
Speaker 1: cared deeply about these issues and these inequities also understood
Speaker 1: that a it was a moment and be that there
Speaker 1: would be a tremendously powerful backlash to that. And the
Speaker 1: question for me, looking right at this moment is how
Speaker 1: long is it gonna last? I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to that. I could see it unfolding in a lot
Speaker 1: of in a lot of ways. Um, this question that
Speaker 1: you asked about posting is really interesting to me because
Speaker 1: I actually am very open to there being a million
Speaker 1: different forms of activism for millions of different people. Right.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think that going to meetings or engaging
Speaker 1: in street protest is the right fit for everybody. I
Speaker 1: think for whom those engagements are the right fit, who
Speaker 1: have the resources to participate in them, should be doing them,
Speaker 1: and that that's like a moral imperative. The key is
Speaker 1: being engaged in the way that makes sense, right, and
Speaker 1: that's going to depend on your community, your economic position,
Speaker 1: your your nature, right, how you communicate the ease you
Speaker 1: feel in certain situations, because activism will not be sustainable
Speaker 1: if it's a matter of trying to fit yourself into
Speaker 1: a path that isn't right for you. Right. If you
Speaker 1: hate doing it, you're not going to stay engaged and
Speaker 1: you're going to turn around. So all that is to
Speaker 1: say that I actually have like I have a lot
Speaker 1: more openness in my view to say some of the
Speaker 1: people who get pretty pretty seriously mocked for like putting
Speaker 1: those signs in their yards, you know, like this home,
Speaker 1: whatever there is, I actually think that that kind of
Speaker 1: thing in communities that are really read and restrictive can
Speaker 1: actually be a meaningful form of signaling solidarity. And that
Speaker 1: signaling solidarity is powerful. It's always been powerful. That's how
Speaker 1: that's how political campaigns work, It's how activism works. Is
Speaker 1: you get you have hats, you have trinkets. So I'm
Speaker 1: much less cynical about that stuff. Here's where the problem is.
Speaker 1: It's when people who have resources to be doing other
Speaker 1: things are us to posting. Posting can be meaningful depending
Speaker 1: on the context of the community you're posting from, right,
Speaker 1: So again, in a very restrictive community, the act of
Speaker 1: posting can be explosive and and you know, perilous, perhaps
Speaker 1: socially perilous, right in ways that I don't want to
Speaker 1: just say posting is meaningless. It's not. But if all
Speaker 1: you're doing is posting, and all you're doing is posting
Speaker 1: to people who already agree with you, when you could
Speaker 1: be doing something else, and maybe that's something else is
Speaker 1: again like there's no one form of activism that fits.
Speaker 1: Maybe that something else is reading. I say this a lot,
Speaker 1: and it actually goes back to your first question about
Speaker 1: what to do as a feminist right now, for me,
Speaker 1: one of the most changing, spurring, galvanizing acts is to
Speaker 1: learn the history that has preceded us, To seek the
Speaker 1: stories that you haven't been told, which is different from
Speaker 1: seeking your own research on vaccines. Don't do that, but
Speaker 1: seek the We are not taught the history of the
Speaker 1: struggles from the margins in our school books right so
Speaker 1: it can be genuinely reading and learning history, watching good
Speaker 1: documentaries about things. Learn about a labor movement which is
Speaker 1: completely entwined with a with a women's movement. Learn about
Speaker 1: the history of the women's movement, the abolition movement, which
Speaker 1: we're both entwined and then brutally like severed by racism
Speaker 1: within the women's movement in the nineteenth century. Learn about me.
Speaker 1: There's so much out there that we haven't been taught,
Speaker 1: and that in itself can help steer you toward things.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is maybe your participation will be through a
Speaker 1: sort of workplace unionizing effort, or maybe it will be
Speaker 1: at a community center. Maybe it will be through doing
Speaker 1: rape crisis stuff, or or working for your community's community
Speaker 1: aid group like who knows, but but a lot of
Speaker 1: it can be shaped in your approaches and your understanding
Speaker 1: the dynamics around you and within your own communities can
Speaker 1: be shaped by that reading. It also is I mean,
Speaker 1: all these things you're saying, especially the volunteering stuff is
Speaker 1: especially if it's an authentic want you know, to be
Speaker 1: educated on real history, to you know, participate, then it
Speaker 1: can be very effective. Yes, yes, well, and that's and
Speaker 1: so that's what I'm saying. If you're coming from a
Speaker 1: place where you have time, resources, money, capability, energy, and
Speaker 1: a desire to be engaged, and what you're doing is posting,
Speaker 1: then that is problematic. Right. Yeah, that's what I would
Speaker 1: say about the posting, And so that is Yes, go read.
Speaker 1: It can be incredible like read and then talk, talk
Speaker 1: with your family, talk with your friends, talk with your coworkers.
Speaker 1: Like you will find if you start reading about this stuff,
Speaker 1: that that the history itself will surprise you, will probably
Speaker 1: en read you and embarrass you, embarrass you and and
Speaker 1: inspire you to to make a future that's different from
Speaker 1: the past, right like um, and then to to share
Speaker 1: that you you know you can be inspired to then
Speaker 1: in turn talk about that and share those stories with
Speaker 1: the people around you. That's part of community engagement, It's
Speaker 1: part of its part of coalition. That's also goes back
Speaker 1: to my point about listen to other people's stories. Right,
Speaker 1: are you mad about something? Go out and seek people
Speaker 1: who are mad about related things, and also listen to
Speaker 1: them if part of what they're mad about is you.
Speaker 1: That's a really important thing, um, I think, especially for
Speaker 1: middle class white women, is to understand that if you're mad, right, good, correct,
Speaker 1: But like, but there are probably people out there who
Speaker 1: are mad at you. And then that doesn't necessarily like
Speaker 1: and and maybe for reasons that go to bad or whatever,
Speaker 1: but like, listen to that. Take it seriously, take it
Speaker 1: with the seriousness that you want your anger to be heard.
Speaker 1: So you know, as I said before, I have two
Speaker 1: teenage daughters, and I find that a lot of women
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out how to empower our daughters
Speaker 1: and like you said before, have them finish our unfinished business.
Speaker 1: What can our daughters do and our sons, what can
Speaker 1: the next generations do to kind of push the wagon
Speaker 1: up the hill. I do have two kids, have two
Speaker 1: kids who are younger their daughters, and I have thought
Speaker 1: a lot about it because I do think that there's
Speaker 1: this sense of like that the project is empowerment. This
Speaker 1: goes back to what we're talking about about how, especially
Speaker 1: amongst middle class white women, it often all the advice
Speaker 1: boils down to like using your voice expression empowerment. And
Speaker 1: the one thing I will say is that I have
Speaker 1: become increasingly disenchanted with that line of advice, especially you know,
Speaker 1: in middle class families where young people, white boys and
Speaker 1: girls are going to have access to certain kinds of power.
Speaker 1: And I think that doesn't mean that you want to
Speaker 1: replicate the messages of you know, diminution and degradation that
Speaker 1: do get voisted on white women, right, that's real, Right,
Speaker 1: they're all kinds of ways in which misogyny plays itself
Speaker 1: out and white women, but often in fact to get
Speaker 1: them to serve and dependent on white patriarchal forces. So
Speaker 1: you want to keep your kids of all genders aware
Speaker 1: of the inequalities in the world and be straight with
Speaker 1: without being performatively self flagellating about the degrees of power
Speaker 1: that they have and where they need to fight for
Speaker 1: more power, and be real clear about that that it's
Speaker 1: not a simple equation, right, that it's not just about
Speaker 1: I'm going to send you out into the world to
Speaker 1: fight for your own power. It's about actually, beginning from
Speaker 1: a very early age, to encourage them to work alongside
Speaker 1: and for other people whose voices have been less valued
Speaker 1: historically and in a contemporary world. It's about teaching them
Speaker 1: not only to use their own voices, which sure, yes,
Speaker 1: but also to listen to the voices around them. It's
Speaker 1: about teaching them not to rear back from anger their
Speaker 1: own or the anger of those around them who they
Speaker 1: perceive are experiencing injustice. It's about teaching them to be
Speaker 1: clear eyed about how power works and how they profit
Speaker 1: from it and benefit from it, and how they need
Speaker 1: to fight for more of it, not only for themselves
Speaker 1: but for those who are more at the margins. How
Speaker 1: you do that via like, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: We'll see. Now. What do you think of the term, Karen? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, that's a I mean, it's a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't have a great answer for it. I'll be
Speaker 1: the judge of that. Uh. It certainly expresses, you know,
Speaker 1: what I just talked about, because part of what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about is not just not just the anger between
Speaker 1: tribal opposites, but between allies. You know. Audrey Lord very
Speaker 1: famously wrote about the uses of anger and the generative
Speaker 1: power of anger between people who are ideologically aligned, between
Speaker 1: black women and white women. So I think Karen is
Speaker 1: a character and a caricature of a figure who does
Speaker 1: produce frustration for very legitimate reasons. That said, it is
Speaker 1: also any time that you're trafficking in a cartoon, you're
Speaker 1: in very trading on stereotypes, and that that's very true too,
Speaker 1: and that it doesn't make the grievances any less real. Right,
Speaker 1: there is a reason that that character exists. That said,
Speaker 1: would it be better and sharper and more honest if
Speaker 1: we didn't traffic in cartoon characters. Probably, But there's also
Speaker 1: a reason, Like I once wrote in my first book
Speaker 1: about two thousand and eight that the best distillation of
Speaker 1: the dynamics around Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin came from
Speaker 1: a Saturday at Live sketch, which I still believe to
Speaker 1: be true, the Tina Fee and Amy Poehler sketch. Because
Speaker 1: cartoons convey truth and they also convey bias, as does comedy. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's not an easy answer. Karen's a cartoon, and
Speaker 1: therefore Karen conveys some serious truth. She's also a cartoon.
Speaker 1: There is also the critique, which I take seriously, which
Speaker 1: is the focus on the failing and the racism and
Speaker 1: blinkered issues of white women very often does wind up
Speaker 1: leaving white men off the hook. It happens all the time, yes,
Speaker 1: But to say that doesn't take away from the reality
Speaker 1: of why, And in fact, it's often because it's it's
Speaker 1: white women who think that as women they belong in
Speaker 1: a more vulnerable or aggrieved category than men, and yet
Speaker 1: replicate and profit from the very biases they'd like to
Speaker 1: present themselves as standing against. So that's why the cartoon
Speaker 1: exists and why it's so effective. If it wasn't effective,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be talking about it. Oh good answer. Now
Speaker 1: ask me something. You could ask me a question about everything.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I mean this is gosh. You know, what's
Speaker 1: the last book you read? Oh? A book called Secret City?
Speaker 1: What is it? Which is about the history of gay
Speaker 1: Americans in every administration? Oh wow, that's a good answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I could have said Marie Claire, but no,
Speaker 1: um no. But Secret City. It's fascinating how how many
Speaker 1: gay or closeted people kind of informed policy and made
Speaker 1: decisions and yet had to stay in the shadows, so
Speaker 1: to speak. And these are real policymakers and real people
Speaker 1: that were, you know, the right hand to many, many,
Speaker 1: many presidents. So I thought it was fascinating. It's great.
Speaker 1: I haven't read it. Yeah, Rebecca, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: There's eight million things to talk to you about, but
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have had this time with you
Speaker 1: to talk about feminism and everything else. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. If you haven't read Rebecca's book,
Speaker 1: Good and Mad, do yourself a favor and get yourself
Speaker 1: a copy. And now to my daughters, I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope that they are listening, and I hope that they're
Speaker 1: paying attention, and I hope that they will listen and
Speaker 1: pay attention to people that don't have a voice right now.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of what Rebecca said is so
Speaker 1: important for future generations. And now I'd like to end
Speaker 1: this podcast of Go Ask Gali with an Abigail Adams quote,
Speaker 1: Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of
Speaker 1: the husband's Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.
Speaker 1: If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies.
Speaker 1: We are determined to foment a rebellion and will not
Speaker 1: hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have
Speaker 1: no voice or representation. Thank you for listening to Go
Speaker 1: Ask Alli. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast,
Speaker 1: and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali
Speaker 1: e Wentworth, it on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth
Speaker 1: and if you have questions or guest suggestions, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you, call it. Text me at three
Speaker 1: to three three four six three five six, or email
Speaker 1: Go Ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah, Go
Speaker 1: Ask Gali is a production of Shonda land Audio and
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