WEBVTT - She Said, She Said 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:20.996 Pushkin. Imagine there's a place in our world where the 0:00:21.116 --> 0:00:27.476 known things go. A quarter of the mind, lined with shelves, 0:00:27.516 --> 0:00:33.556 cluttered with proof, A purple cowboy hat. Oh, someone's put 0:00:33.636 --> 0:00:36.716 up here on the wall poster, it says, the personal 0:00:36.876 --> 0:00:41.916 is political. I love those day glow flowers. This place, 0:00:42.036 --> 0:00:45.916 this warehouse, stores the facts that matter, and matters of fact, 0:00:46.516 --> 0:00:50.636 the evidence of the past. It's all that stands between 0:00:50.636 --> 0:00:55.356 a reasonable doubt and the chaos of uncertainty. It lies 0:00:55.396 --> 0:00:59.236 in a time between now and then. The sign on 0:00:59.276 --> 0:01:05.356 the door reads the last Archive. Step out that door 0:01:07.956 --> 0:01:11.636 to Greenwich Village, across the passage of time to a 0:01:11.676 --> 0:01:16.436 Friday night, March twenty first, nineteen sixty nine. Walk down 0:01:16.476 --> 0:01:19.556 West fourth Street and up the steps to the Washington 0:01:19.636 --> 0:01:24.796 Square Methodist Church, a cathedral. It'll cost you two dollars 0:01:24.836 --> 0:01:28.996 to get in a donation to the Red Stockings radical feminists, 0:01:29.116 --> 0:01:32.516 best known for staging a protest at the Miss America pageant. 0:01:33.356 --> 0:01:37.076 There are three hundred people seated in the church, mostly women. 0:01:37.396 --> 0:01:41.236 It's a handful of men here too. Oh and lucky 0:01:41.276 --> 0:01:44.636 for us, there's a tape recorder up there on the altar. 0:01:45.676 --> 0:01:49.196 All of us are members of the Women's Liberation Group 0:01:50.076 --> 0:01:55.556 of New York City, and we discovered that by just 0:01:55.796 --> 0:01:58.956 talking about our own experience, about our own lives, that 0:01:59.156 --> 0:02:02.476 by talking about this altogether in our group, that we 0:02:02.476 --> 0:02:06.836 were able to find out a lot more about reality 0:02:07.276 --> 0:02:09.996 than by talking about all those objects. The thing we 0:02:10.076 --> 0:02:13.036 would talk about our own abortion, and that was like 0:02:13.996 --> 0:02:18.476 our plans for the satire. So much of how people 0:02:18.476 --> 0:02:21.796 think about truth today comes from this one meeting. Like 0:02:21.956 --> 0:02:26.436 water down a waterfall, twelve women got up to speak, 0:02:26.636 --> 0:02:30.476 one by one. They passed a microphone. They testified for 0:02:30.556 --> 0:02:35.236 more than three hours. They were mad as hell. A 0:02:35.356 --> 0:02:38.156 month earlier, a committee of the New York Legislature had 0:02:38.156 --> 0:02:40.756 considered whether or not to make abortion legal in the state. 0:02:41.596 --> 0:02:45.476 The committee brought in experts to testify. Fourteen men and 0:02:45.636 --> 0:02:50.836 one woman. Anne the Red Stockings and other activists had 0:02:50.876 --> 0:02:54.796 stormed the committee meeting. They were camouflaged in dresses and stockings, 0:02:54.796 --> 0:02:58.676 they said, and they'd shouted, let's hear from the real experts. Women. 0:03:00.076 --> 0:03:03.956 They tried to tell their stories without much success. So 0:03:03.996 --> 0:03:06.756 now they were here in this church in Greenwich Village 0:03:07.316 --> 0:03:10.716 to actually have their say. The tape it's kind of 0:03:10.756 --> 0:03:13.596 crazy to listen to the man is the one that 0:03:13.756 --> 0:03:17.956 scrowls you and then when you turn to him and say, hey, look, sweetheart, 0:03:18.076 --> 0:03:21.676 I'm pregnant. How do you know it was me? You 0:03:21.836 --> 0:03:26.276 neverics love with anyone else. One of the things I 0:03:26.356 --> 0:03:28.516 love about this tape is that it's not like women 0:03:28.596 --> 0:03:30.556 crying in front of Oprah or something. It's more like 0:03:30.636 --> 0:03:36.036 stand up comedy, but confrontational, courageous. George Carlin, Lenny Bruce 0:03:36.956 --> 0:03:39.636 Awry second all the sand. It's just what am I 0:03:39.716 --> 0:03:42.836 gonna do? What I is he going to do? What 0:03:42.996 --> 0:03:47.036 am I going to do? These are the experts, the 0:03:47.156 --> 0:03:49.876 people that are sitting here, the people that are in 0:03:49.916 --> 0:03:53.196 the audience who have had the abortion. But no one 0:03:53.316 --> 0:04:03.876 wants to listen to us. I mean, you know, we 0:04:04.036 --> 0:04:08.756 are the only expert. They spoke out that night and 0:04:08.956 --> 0:04:11.996 nighteen sixty nine because they wanted to change the law. 0:04:13.036 --> 0:04:16.556 They'd also decided to talk publicly about their abortions because 0:04:16.596 --> 0:04:18.276 some of them had been reading the writings of the 0:04:18.316 --> 0:04:23.436 communist revolutionary Mao Zedong. Maoists believed in the practice of 0:04:23.636 --> 0:04:29.636 speaking bitterness, describing your oppression, and blaming your oppressor. That's 0:04:29.636 --> 0:04:31.876 what those women were doing in that church. They were 0:04:31.916 --> 0:04:36.676 speaking bitterness. They called it consciousness raising. They also called 0:04:36.716 --> 0:04:39.356 it rapping or a speak out. I'm sure that there 0:04:39.356 --> 0:04:41.996 are many many women in this audience that have had 0:04:42.036 --> 0:04:44.996 the same experience. So I know, you know, freak or 0:04:45.036 --> 0:04:47.236 that it just happened to me, it's happened. Who can 0:04:47.356 --> 0:04:51.876 eat everybody? You know? So if I get up and 0:04:51.956 --> 0:04:53.916 I say it, you know, maybe everybody can get up 0:04:53.916 --> 0:04:55.836 and say it, and we all get up and say it, 0:04:55.916 --> 0:04:59.396 you know, maybe they'll do something about changing the situously. 0:05:02.276 --> 0:05:04.916 Welcome to the last archive, the show about how we 0:05:04.956 --> 0:05:07.196 know what we know, how we used to know things, 0:05:07.516 --> 0:05:10.316 and why it seems sometimes lately as if we don't 0:05:10.316 --> 0:05:14.036 know anything at all. I'm Jill Lapour. This season we're 0:05:14.036 --> 0:05:16.276 trying to solve a Who've done it? Who killed truth? 0:05:16.676 --> 0:05:18.876 In this episode, I want to try to find a 0:05:18.876 --> 0:05:21.236 way to reckon with the consequences of a whole theory 0:05:21.276 --> 0:05:26.036 of knowledge. Speak your truth, radical feminist said in the 0:05:26.156 --> 0:05:31.276 Village in nineteen sixty nine, Speak your truth. Sure, it 0:05:31.356 --> 0:05:36.156 sounds good, it sounds great, until you start to ask, 0:05:37.036 --> 0:05:41.956 what if someone else's truth is different than yours. No 0:05:42.196 --> 0:05:46.316 legislature would recognize my right to speak as an expert, 0:05:46.356 --> 0:05:49.676 because it happened right in my body. Where a child grows, 0:05:49.716 --> 0:05:52.436 it happens in my body later on, that I don't 0:05:52.476 --> 0:05:55.356 want that child, and that I have to go through 0:05:55.996 --> 0:05:59.116 a period of time in which I have no function 0:05:59.156 --> 0:06:05.916 in this society. I've been talking all season about the 0:06:05.996 --> 0:06:07.836 end of the age of mystery and the rise and 0:06:07.836 --> 0:06:10.196 fall of the age of the fact. For a very 0:06:10.196 --> 0:06:14.596 long time, conception was a mystery, the mystery, the mystery 0:06:14.596 --> 0:06:18.956 of life. In ancient Greece, Aristotle dissected chicken eggs, which 0:06:18.996 --> 0:06:21.756 came first, the chicken or the egg was an actual experiment. 0:06:22.876 --> 0:06:25.196 Not until the middle of the seventeenth century did anyone 0:06:25.236 --> 0:06:28.516 figure out that people come from eggs too. When the 0:06:28.596 --> 0:06:31.436 United States was founded, there were no laws against abortion 0:06:31.516 --> 0:06:34.756 before quickening about when a mother can feel the baby kicking. 0:06:35.116 --> 0:06:38.956 Somewhere around four months or so later, conception was no 0:06:38.996 --> 0:06:41.996 longer a mystery and became known as the facts of life. 0:06:42.676 --> 0:06:46.756 Physicians began replacing midwives, and legislatures began making laws that 0:06:46.836 --> 0:06:50.676 made the intentional end of a pregnancy a crime. By 0:06:50.796 --> 0:06:53.396 nineteen sixty nine, in New York, the only way a 0:06:53.436 --> 0:06:56.276 woman could end a pregnancy legally was to have something 0:06:56.316 --> 0:07:00.276 called a therapeutic abortion. Mainly she had to convince a 0:07:00.316 --> 0:07:04.236 doctor that she was crazy. If you don't give me, 0:07:04.356 --> 0:07:06.596 if you don't tell me, I'm g having abortion right now. 0:07:06.636 --> 0:07:09.916 But it's go out and jump off the Ronald Bridge. 0:07:09.916 --> 0:07:15.956 Well whatever. When I hope that therapeutic abortion, it quots 0:07:15.996 --> 0:07:22.836 me more. But the therapy answered the therapeutic abortion than before. 0:07:27.156 --> 0:07:30.036 Since this speak out took place, Americans have talked about 0:07:30.036 --> 0:07:33.676 abortion a lot for or against, but usually in the 0:07:33.756 --> 0:07:36.716 language of rights, the right to choose, or the right 0:07:36.796 --> 0:07:40.156 to life. But I've always found that this debate is 0:07:40.196 --> 0:07:44.556 also about knowledge. I still care about the questions the 0:07:44.596 --> 0:07:48.076 Red Stockings asked. Who can know things? Who's an expert 0:07:48.316 --> 0:07:52.116 whose knowledge matters? I decided to go talk to some 0:07:52.156 --> 0:07:53.916 of the women who'd been part of that meeting in 0:07:54.036 --> 0:07:57.036 nineteen sixty nine to hear them have their say in 0:07:57.076 --> 0:08:00.116 the spirit of speaking out way, do you a lot 0:08:00.116 --> 0:08:02.676 of water? So my producer Ben and I and one 0:08:02.716 --> 0:08:06.156 of our researchers, Olivia Oldham, went to New York to 0:08:06.196 --> 0:08:09.676 the apartment of Susan Brown Miller, a feminist best known 0:08:09.676 --> 0:08:13.556 for a book about rape called Against Our Will. What 0:08:13.636 --> 0:08:18.116 was the question? Brown Miller had first spoken out about 0:08:18.116 --> 0:08:21.276 abortion at an earlier meeting. Her friend told her to go. 0:08:22.156 --> 0:08:25.196 At first, it was awkward. Then one woman got up. 0:08:25.956 --> 0:08:30.796 She said, we've been over this before, and you know, 0:08:30.956 --> 0:08:36.596 god damn well that I couldn't find an abortionist and 0:08:36.676 --> 0:08:42.316 I had to carry the baby to term and it 0:08:42.436 --> 0:08:46.196 was a beautiful boy, but I had to give it away. 0:08:46.916 --> 0:08:53.196 So when she said that, the floodgates opened and people 0:08:53.236 --> 0:09:00.836 started to go around the room and they were talking 0:09:00.876 --> 0:09:06.516 about being led blindfolded to a place in New Jersey 0:09:06.636 --> 0:09:10.796 for a mafia protected abortion. They were talking about things 0:09:10.836 --> 0:09:14.556 like that, and they were slowly inching up on me. 0:09:15.436 --> 0:09:22.796 So I said, well, I've had three abortions, all outside 0:09:22.876 --> 0:09:27.636 the continental United States, and my last one was about 0:09:27.676 --> 0:09:31.516 six months ago. And when I said that, I really 0:09:31.756 --> 0:09:36.236 started to cry because to me, this was the you know, 0:09:36.756 --> 0:09:46.276 the first time that abortion was spoken about as a real, 0:09:46.396 --> 0:09:48.716 as a real woman's issue, and the problem was not 0:09:48.836 --> 0:09:51.636 getting pregnant or not having the protection. Why did you 0:09:51.676 --> 0:09:55.636 get pregnant? You know, it was about what we had 0:09:55.636 --> 0:10:01.476 to do to secure a safe abortion. As I knew 0:10:01.516 --> 0:10:04.636 they were out there somehow, you know, I knew they 0:10:04.676 --> 0:10:08.236 were out there. They were out there, safe places to 0:10:08.316 --> 0:10:12.516 have abortions, but they were hard to find. They were underground. 0:10:13.396 --> 0:10:16.996 But what if they came out above ground? When brown 0:10:16.996 --> 0:10:18.876 Miller went to the Red Stockings wrap in the village 0:10:18.876 --> 0:10:22.396 in nineteen sixty nine, it was as a reporter and 0:10:22.436 --> 0:10:25.716 you said you were asked to speak to testify. Yeah, 0:10:26.516 --> 0:10:33.316 and I felt that Well, first of all, I didn't 0:10:33.356 --> 0:10:36.116 like it, you know, it was too confessional for me, 0:10:36.236 --> 0:10:38.556 you know. But second of all, I felt I could 0:10:38.556 --> 0:10:43.516 do us all a bigger favor by writing about it 0:10:43.596 --> 0:10:46.876 for the Village Voice, which I did. All the stocking 0:10:46.876 --> 0:10:49.356 and writing led to a landmark legal case, which is 0:10:49.356 --> 0:10:52.316 where Nancy Stearns came in. She met us Susan Brown 0:10:52.316 --> 0:10:55.236 Miller's apartment. She's a lawyer. She'd come out of the 0:10:55.276 --> 0:10:59.196 civil rights movement. I mean, challenging the law was the 0:10:59.236 --> 0:11:02.716 basis of it and was fundamental, but I didn't know 0:11:02.756 --> 0:11:05.076 whether we'd win. At that point, I thought we should win. 0:11:05.676 --> 0:11:08.116 Just months after the Red Stockings held that first abortion 0:11:08.156 --> 0:11:11.476 speak out in Greenwich Village, Nancy Stearns got involved in 0:11:11.596 --> 0:11:15.316 trying to file a lawsuit called Abrahmowitz versus Lefkowitz. The 0:11:15.436 --> 0:11:19.116 leading plaintiff was doctor Helen Abrahmowitz, and in the case, 0:11:19.636 --> 0:11:22.316 Stearns wanted to sue the state of New York, arguing 0:11:22.316 --> 0:11:25.276 that it's ban on abortion depride women of their right 0:11:25.356 --> 0:11:28.396 to possess their own persons. She was also making an 0:11:28.476 --> 0:11:33.956 argument though, about knowledge that women know. The crucial idea 0:11:34.076 --> 0:11:38.356 from the litigation perspective was not necessarily having women as experts, 0:11:38.356 --> 0:11:42.036 but having women as plaintiffs, the people who were challenging 0:11:42.076 --> 0:11:45.076 the law, not just being sort of passive or we 0:11:45.156 --> 0:11:47.956 happened to be there. Stearns wrote the briefs in the case, 0:11:48.316 --> 0:11:51.276 but she was young and a little inexperienced, and she 0:11:51.316 --> 0:11:53.996 wanted someone on her team who was older and who 0:11:53.996 --> 0:12:00.636 could kick ass, So she brought in Florence Kennedy. Flow. 0:12:01.916 --> 0:12:05.916 People magazine once called Kennedy the biggest, loudest and indisputably 0:12:05.956 --> 0:12:08.876 the rudest mouth on the battleground where feminist activists and 0:12:09.156 --> 0:12:15.156 radical politics join. Okay, everybody, while my chorus gets together. 0:12:15.476 --> 0:12:18.796 Hurry up, chorus, get over here, y'all, hurry up. Flow. 0:12:18.876 --> 0:12:21.756 Kennedy died twenty years ago, so we couldn't talk to her, 0:12:22.076 --> 0:12:24.196 but for a long time in the nineteen eighties, She 0:12:24.236 --> 0:12:28.316 had her own television show on Manhattan Community Access Picture 0:12:28.636 --> 0:12:32.716 between two ferns. I swear there are ferns more than 0:12:32.756 --> 0:12:40.516 two though the Flow Kennedy Show. Hi, y'all Flow Kennedy here, 0:12:41.076 --> 0:12:44.316 and my guest has written she wore a cowboy hat, 0:12:44.596 --> 0:12:51.516 a big ten gallon one, groovy jewelry, traumatic eyewear, eccentric, unmistakable. 0:12:52.116 --> 0:12:55.996 She was unforgettable. I remember her hats. Yeah, the hats, 0:12:56.356 --> 0:13:02.356 coy Yeah, wonderful, cowboy original, no doubt about it. Yes, 0:13:02.516 --> 0:13:05.276 I was lucky in a lot of ways. My parents 0:13:05.276 --> 0:13:08.916 thought we were absolutely perfect. I'm the opposite of Marilyn Monroe, 0:13:08.916 --> 0:13:12.636 who was this golden goddess who thought that she was 0:13:12.676 --> 0:13:15.556 a piece of ship, whereas I was a piece of shit, 0:13:15.676 --> 0:13:20.876 and I thought I was this bronze mahogany statue. Florence 0:13:20.916 --> 0:13:24.356 Kennedy born in Kansas City, graduated from Columbia Law School 0:13:24.436 --> 0:13:27.196 in nineteen fifty one. She opened a law firm in 0:13:27.236 --> 0:13:29.876 New York. For a long time, she specialized in defending 0:13:29.876 --> 0:13:32.996 black artists like Billy Holliday. She also got involved in 0:13:32.996 --> 0:13:36.876 the Black Power movement. She defended black panthers, including Hrapp Brown. 0:13:37.276 --> 0:13:40.836 She loved to speak in metaphors. In terms of politics, 0:13:40.996 --> 0:13:45.996 I am what I would call a generalist, general practitioner. 0:13:46.396 --> 0:13:49.436 See when people say, oh, I can work on race stuff, 0:13:49.436 --> 0:13:50.956 but I don't want to have anything to do with 0:13:50.996 --> 0:13:53.796 the homosexuality. I don't want to deal with prostitution. I 0:13:53.836 --> 0:13:57.036 don't want to deal with abortion. My theory is the 0:13:57.076 --> 0:13:59.796 way I looked at the pathology of our society and 0:13:59.836 --> 0:14:04.996 the pathology of oppression, is that you don't regard yourself 0:14:05.036 --> 0:14:06.956 as keeping a clean house if you just make up 0:14:06.956 --> 0:14:11.396 the bad don't do anything in the sink anyway. In 0:14:11.516 --> 0:14:15.116 nineteen sixty nine, Flow Kennedy, Nancy Stearns and their legal team, 0:14:15.236 --> 0:14:17.596 we're preparing that lawsuit against the state of New York 0:14:17.596 --> 0:14:20.356 over its ban on abortion. They had to look for 0:14:20.436 --> 0:14:23.196 plaintiffs before they could file, so they thought of some 0:14:23.236 --> 0:14:24.996 of the women who'd spoken up that night in the 0:14:25.076 --> 0:14:28.436 village in nineteen sixty nine, the red stockings wrapped. I 0:14:28.556 --> 0:14:33.236 know from my own experience that I had luckily sent 0:14:33.396 --> 0:14:36.596 enough to see that a seventeen year old girl who 0:14:36.676 --> 0:14:40.156 gets herself pregnant by mistakes because she has not been 0:14:40.556 --> 0:14:44.996 avail of birth control information. It's not in a responsible 0:14:45.076 --> 0:14:51.556 position to take care of the children. When I listened 0:14:51.556 --> 0:14:53.396 to that, I have to work a little bit because 0:14:53.396 --> 0:14:55.836 it can be a little hard these days to remember 0:14:55.876 --> 0:14:58.716 how new this was, how new this kind of talk was. 0:14:58.796 --> 0:15:03.556 Then it's beyond novel. People did not talk about abortion publicly. 0:15:03.916 --> 0:15:08.036 That's Nancy Stearns Again. We all knew generally whether we 0:15:08.076 --> 0:15:11.396 had illegal abortion are not. We all knew generally what 0:15:11.476 --> 0:15:14.596 it was all about. But hearing the details of it, 0:15:15.436 --> 0:15:20.836 and particularly I think listening to the women who went 0:15:21.156 --> 0:15:25.116 through pregnancy and gave their children their baby up for adoption, 0:15:26.476 --> 0:15:31.116 it all just made me angry or in truth. Starns 0:15:31.156 --> 0:15:34.916 held meetings all over the city gathering plaintiffs. Amazingly, women 0:15:34.956 --> 0:15:38.796 turned up, women stood up, They told their stories, and 0:15:38.876 --> 0:15:43.756 they agreed to be deposed on the record. Flow Kennedy 0:15:43.796 --> 0:15:47.236 took Susan Brown Miller's deposition. Kennedy and Stearns and the 0:15:47.236 --> 0:15:50.036 rest of their team wanted the women to testify in court, 0:15:50.276 --> 0:15:54.116 in open court, but the judges, a three judge panel 0:15:54.156 --> 0:15:57.636 of men, they didn't want life testimony in their courtrooms 0:15:57.636 --> 0:16:01.516 about abortions. They probably thought, well, there's going to be 0:16:01.556 --> 0:16:04.276 lots and lots of lots of testimony. You know, we 0:16:04.356 --> 0:16:05.956 don't have the time for that, We don't want to 0:16:05.996 --> 0:16:07.596 do it. You do it out there and then you 0:16:07.676 --> 0:16:10.276 give us paper. But I think they didn't want to 0:16:10.276 --> 0:16:13.276 hear from a lot of emotional women speaking out was 0:16:13.316 --> 0:16:16.476 something new. But it's important to remember too that so 0:16:16.636 --> 0:16:20.476 was the lawsuit itself. Women were not part of the picture, 0:16:20.476 --> 0:16:23.436 and nobody was interested in women other than stopping us 0:16:23.516 --> 0:16:27.476 from getting abortions. But the court would never decide on 0:16:27.476 --> 0:16:30.796 the case because in the spring of nineteen seventy the 0:16:30.876 --> 0:16:34.796 New York State Senate legalized abortion. Overnight, New York became 0:16:34.876 --> 0:16:38.396 something of an abortion capital. The CDC reported that by 0:16:38.476 --> 0:16:41.356 nineteen seventy two, New York City had nearly twice as 0:16:41.356 --> 0:16:46.876 many abortions as live births because the legislature made abortion legal. 0:16:47.156 --> 0:16:51.556 The courts declared Abrahmwitz versus Lefkowitz moot. The case was 0:16:51.596 --> 0:16:54.996 basically thrown out. Florence Kennedy had hoped that the case 0:16:55.036 --> 0:16:56.916 would go all the way to the Supreme Court and 0:16:57.036 --> 0:17:01.316 change US laws on abortion nationwide. That didn't happen. Instead, 0:17:01.516 --> 0:17:04.196 a case out of Texas Rovie Wade got to the 0:17:04.236 --> 0:17:06.796 Supreme Court and it would be argued on very different 0:17:06.796 --> 0:17:11.076 grounds a right to privacy. But the Red Stockings and 0:17:11.236 --> 0:17:16.876 radical feminism left a profound legacy behind consciousness raising and 0:17:16.956 --> 0:17:20.596 speaking bitterness. And in the very moment that legacy was 0:17:20.636 --> 0:17:24.556 being founded, you could already see too how all this 0:17:24.716 --> 0:17:32.156 could backfire if everyone's speaking bitterness. Does everything come down 0:17:32.356 --> 0:17:36.476 to a duel of personal stories, one grief pitted against another, 0:17:36.996 --> 0:17:42.676 suffering versus suffering. Could it be that this, this endless 0:17:42.796 --> 0:17:47.636 duel of bitterness? Could it be that this is what 0:17:47.876 --> 0:18:02.636 killed truth? In nineteen sixty nine, radical feminists had argued 0:18:02.676 --> 0:18:05.796 that women are the experts about their own bodies. They'd 0:18:05.796 --> 0:18:09.756 also written a manifesto. It said, we regard our personal 0:18:09.796 --> 0:18:13.076 experience and our feelings about that experience as the basis 0:18:13.116 --> 0:18:17.676 for an analysis of our common situation. Another group of 0:18:17.716 --> 0:18:21.916 women liked this approach to liberal feminists. Liberal feminists wanted 0:18:21.916 --> 0:18:24.476 to get elected to political office and pass new laws 0:18:24.476 --> 0:18:27.676 about women based on what women know from their personal experiences. 0:18:28.196 --> 0:18:31.836 Laws about abortion, laws about rape, laws about discrimination and 0:18:31.876 --> 0:18:37.996 employment and education. They also wanted to amend the Constitution. 0:18:40.076 --> 0:18:43.276 In nineteen seventy two, Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment 0:18:43.396 --> 0:18:47.276 and said to the states for ratification. It's amazing when 0:18:47.316 --> 0:18:49.476 you think about it, that it wasn't already law. But 0:18:49.556 --> 0:18:52.076 all the IRI really says is that you can't discriminate 0:18:52.116 --> 0:18:54.876 on the basis of sex. It had first been introduced 0:18:54.916 --> 0:18:57.756 to Congress in nineteen twenty three, and by the middle 0:18:57.756 --> 0:19:00.876 of the nineteen seventies it still hadn't been ratified, but 0:19:00.956 --> 0:19:03.476 it looked like it was just about to become law. 0:19:03.836 --> 0:19:06.756 It had been ratified by thirty five states, only three 0:19:06.796 --> 0:19:11.276 short of the number needed. Meanwhile, liberal feminists had gotten 0:19:11.276 --> 0:19:15.396 really ambitious. They decided to hold a national meeting, a 0:19:15.556 --> 0:19:18.396 giant speak out. The point of the conference was to 0:19:18.396 --> 0:19:29.236 adopt a national plan of action. The National Women's Conference 0:19:29.276 --> 0:19:33.156 opened in November nineteen seventy seven in the Houston Coliseum. 0:19:33.316 --> 0:19:36.836 Think of it as a second Constitutional Convention, except much 0:19:36.876 --> 0:19:40.876 bigger and with women. It was a grand and glorious 0:19:40.956 --> 0:19:48.556 right accompanying the torch on its long journey. Weeks earlier, 0:19:48.596 --> 0:19:50.836 a torch had been lit in Seneca Falls, New York, 0:19:51.076 --> 0:19:53.476 the state of the first Women's Rights Convention that had 0:19:53.476 --> 0:19:56.356 been held in eighteen forty eight. Then a relay of 0:19:56.396 --> 0:19:59.476 more than two thousand female athletes from Lean and lanky 0:19:59.516 --> 0:20:02.876 marathon runners to brawny field hockey players carried that torch 0:20:02.996 --> 0:20:06.076 twenty six hundred miles to Houston. It was meant to 0:20:06.196 --> 0:20:11.156 change history. Two thousand delegates from fifty states gathered in Houston, 0:20:11.476 --> 0:20:15.876 along with twenty thousand attendees, including Susan Brownmiller and Florence Kennedy. 0:20:16.476 --> 0:20:21.396 Maya Angelou gave the convocation, we American women view our 0:20:21.556 --> 0:20:26.796 history with equanimity. We allow the positive achievement to inspire 0:20:26.916 --> 0:20:32.036 us and the negative omissions to teach us. We recognize 0:20:32.116 --> 0:20:36.676 the accomplishments of our sisters, those famous and hallowed women 0:20:36.716 --> 0:20:42.316 of history, and those unknown and unsung women whose strength 0:20:42.716 --> 0:20:46.076 have given birth to our strength. Three First Ladies were 0:20:46.076 --> 0:20:49.396 there too, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and the current 0:20:49.396 --> 0:20:53.316 First Lady, Rosalind Carter. Jimmy sorry that he couldn't be 0:20:53.356 --> 0:20:56.836 here today, and I wanted to come and be with here. 0:21:04.876 --> 0:21:11.636 In fact, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. And 0:21:11.636 --> 0:21:13.956 and I trust that you are not going to say 0:21:14.356 --> 0:21:20.196 he said a woman to do a man's job. Members 0:21:20.196 --> 0:21:23.156 of Congress turned up to Bella Abzug and Barbara Jordan. 0:21:23.516 --> 0:21:27.396 She was the keynote speaker and There were celebrities, Margaret Mead, 0:21:27.516 --> 0:21:32.436 the anthropologist, Billy Jean King, the tennis player, and Jean Stapleton, 0:21:32.636 --> 0:21:36.236 she'd played Edith on all in the family. Gloria Steinham, 0:21:36.276 --> 0:21:39.036 a founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, was there, 0:21:39.556 --> 0:21:41.836 and so was the president of the Girl Scouts of America, 0:21:41.996 --> 0:21:45.156 who called the meeting to order using a gavel once 0:21:45.276 --> 0:21:49.076 used by Susan B. Anthony, and I rise to advance 0:21:49.196 --> 0:21:54.036 this body in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. A 0:21:54.156 --> 0:21:56.876 lot of the women at that conference were there to celebrate, 0:21:57.476 --> 0:22:01.116 including Anne Richards, later the Governor of Texas. One of 0:22:01.116 --> 0:22:03.716 her daughters, then just a little girl, would one day 0:22:03.756 --> 0:22:09.596 serve as president of Planned Parenthood. On behalf amound matters. 0:22:10.036 --> 0:22:15.276 Who cannot find women in the history texts of this 0:22:15.476 --> 0:22:19.636 country in the elementary skills, I gotta say, you still 0:22:19.676 --> 0:22:22.236 can't find many women in those books today, and you 0:22:22.276 --> 0:22:25.316 also really can't find much about the National Women's Convention. 0:22:26.036 --> 0:22:28.756 There were huge tensions in that cavernous hall in Houston. 0:22:30.476 --> 0:22:36.276 Madam chair pro family, pro life delegates are being denied 0:22:36.916 --> 0:22:41.036 points of privilege. I asked, moment, please, justin, momma, please 0:22:41.116 --> 0:22:43.716 the parliamentary and instructed the chair. The chair had to 0:22:43.716 --> 0:22:48.476 pound that gavel a lot just for starters. Think about this. 0:22:49.156 --> 0:22:51.876 One out of every five elected delegates to the Convention 0:22:52.076 --> 0:22:55.516 opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. There were huge debates on 0:22:55.556 --> 0:22:58.556 the floor about a resolution supporting lesbian and gay rights. 0:22:59.396 --> 0:23:01.556 This was a movement founded on the idea of women's 0:23:01.556 --> 0:23:05.516 common knowledge, their common personal experiences, but it had a 0:23:05.556 --> 0:23:10.516 fatal weakness because one experience for all women. There wasn't 0:23:10.556 --> 0:23:14.836 one experience. Black feminists and Latina feminists in particular, rejected 0:23:14.876 --> 0:23:17.916 that premise. At the conference, women of color formed a 0:23:17.996 --> 0:23:21.276 minority caucus. Some of their thinking was informed by black 0:23:21.276 --> 0:23:23.836 feminists from Boston who would offered a theory of what 0:23:23.876 --> 0:23:27.836 would come to be called intersectionality. They said, we have 0:23:27.916 --> 0:23:30.836 in many ways gone beyond white women's revelations because we 0:23:30.876 --> 0:23:33.476 are dealing with the implications of race and class as 0:23:33.516 --> 0:23:36.836 well as sex. That week in Houston, a lot of 0:23:36.836 --> 0:23:40.076 that nuance got lost and there was a lot of fighting. 0:23:40.796 --> 0:23:45.796 One resolution in particular rent the hall asunder Resolution twenty one. 0:23:46.316 --> 0:23:50.476 Next item on the agenda is the Resolution on Reproductive Freedom. 0:23:50.556 --> 0:23:53.636 It included a call for sex education and insurance coverage 0:23:53.636 --> 0:23:57.156 of both contraception and abortion, and an endorsement of the 0:23:57.156 --> 0:24:01.556 Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. The first speakers 0:24:01.636 --> 0:24:05.356 rose in support. Then the conservative delegates spoke out, and 0:24:05.396 --> 0:24:08.996 I rise in opposition to this resolution. If the American 0:24:09.196 --> 0:24:13.676 women do not drive out this flaw in the philosophy 0:24:13.836 --> 0:24:17.396 of what is called a feminist movement, drive out of 0:24:17.556 --> 0:24:20.596 flaws suggesting that they can kill people that are less 0:24:20.596 --> 0:24:24.916 powerful than them than they have become much worse oppressors 0:24:24.916 --> 0:24:30.276 than any of the men that they accuse of oppressing them. 0:24:30.476 --> 0:24:35.436 Please come to order, Please come to order. It took 0:24:35.436 --> 0:24:37.276 a while to quiet down the crowd long enough to 0:24:37.316 --> 0:24:40.556 call the roll, but the chairmanaged it encounter the votes. 0:24:40.796 --> 0:25:01.836 The resolution on reproductive freedom is adopted. Please come to 0:25:02.116 --> 0:25:06.356 order and be seated. A group of pro life women 0:25:06.436 --> 0:25:09.076 rush the stage carrying a giant photograph of a fe 0:25:09.956 --> 0:25:13.156 Other women fell to their knees weeping, and that singing 0:25:13.516 --> 0:25:17.236 they're singing. All we are saying is give life a chance. 0:25:20.916 --> 0:25:24.516 Fifteen hundred reporters attended the conference, but strangely, the whole 0:25:24.556 --> 0:25:26.996 thing seems to have been swallowed up by the earth itself. 0:25:27.956 --> 0:25:29.996 I ask you, have you ever heard of the nineteen 0:25:30.036 --> 0:25:34.796 seventy seven National Women's Conference. I'm guessing not reporters covered it, 0:25:35.196 --> 0:25:37.676 but given the ambition of the thing, the coverage was scant. 0:25:38.716 --> 0:25:41.996 NBC News included a report in its News Hour, a 0:25:42.156 --> 0:25:45.516 conference's stand on the Equal Rights Amendment will be incorporated 0:25:45.556 --> 0:25:48.716 into a national plan of Acting, a set of legislative 0:25:48.716 --> 0:25:51.756 proposals to be sent to the President and Congress. The 0:25:51.876 --> 0:25:55.636 question now is how seriously will all those men take 0:25:55.676 --> 0:26:00.636 the suggestions made by all these women. It would turn 0:26:00.636 --> 0:26:04.996 out not very seriously. But Houston wasn't about men versus women? 0:26:05.276 --> 0:26:09.436 Who was about women versus women? Mainly because conservative women 0:26:09.556 --> 0:26:14.116 organized a counter conference across town in the Astrodome. The 0:26:14.276 --> 0:26:18.316 organizers described their assembly as a pro God, pro life, 0:26:18.636 --> 0:26:24.236 pro family rally. The leader of this gathering was Phylish Slaughly, 0:26:24.396 --> 0:26:26.756 a mother of six from Missouri with a perfect blonde 0:26:26.756 --> 0:26:29.956 buffant who very often dressed impeccably in a pink suit 0:26:29.996 --> 0:26:33.756 and pumps. Slaughly was a political genius, and she devoted 0:26:33.796 --> 0:26:36.316 all of her talents to defeating the Equal Rights Amendment. 0:26:36.756 --> 0:26:41.076 She founded a national organization called Stop ear. She told 0:26:41.116 --> 0:26:45.116 her followers era means abortion. She also rallied women to 0:26:45.116 --> 0:26:47.476 her movement by tying the era to rights for gay 0:26:47.476 --> 0:26:51.636 men and lesbians. In Houston, she claimed she'd been banned 0:26:51.636 --> 0:26:54.356 by the National Women's Convention, and on its third day 0:26:54.556 --> 0:26:57.916 she held a press conference to say the conservative women 0:26:58.036 --> 0:27:00.996 hadn't had the chance to speak their truth. If you 0:27:01.036 --> 0:27:03.956 were at the convention last night, I think you also 0:27:04.116 --> 0:27:07.116 must have been impressed with the fact that there really 0:27:07.196 --> 0:27:12.156 isn't any debate on the equal rights. Most of the 0:27:12.196 --> 0:27:15.396 speakers at the pro life, pro family counter conference spoke 0:27:15.436 --> 0:27:19.196