Gloria Steinem: Laughing Our Way to Liberation (Best Of)

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Speaker 4 Today on We Can Do Hard Things, we are speaking with and mostly listening to Gloria Steinem.

Speaker 4 Gloria Steinem is

Speaker 4 Gloria Steinem.

Speaker 2 She

Speaker 4 is a writer, lecturer, political activist, feminist organizer, and lifelong listener.

Speaker 4 She is the author of The Truth Will Set You Free, but First It Will Piss You Off, My Life on the Road, Moving Beyond Words, Revolution from Within, and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, and a founder of New York Magazine, Ms.

Speaker 4 Magazine, the National Women's Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Free to Be Foundation, and the Women's Media Center in the United States.

Speaker 4 Although she wants us to be linked and not ranked, it's true that she is widely regarded as the iconic leader of the second wave feminist movement.

Speaker 4 She has spent decades traveling in this and other countries as an organizer and a listener.

Speaker 4 She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, in nonviolent conflict resolution in the wisdom of Indigenous cultures, and in organizing across boundaries for peace and justice.

Speaker 4 In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, and in 2019, she received the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum.

Speaker 4 She lives in New York City and in the DNA of every woman who is trying to give birth to a movement or to herself.

Speaker 4 Welcome, Gloria. Thank you for doing so many hard things with such tenacity and wisdom and humor.
And most importantly, with the refusal to leave anyone behind.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you for that introduction. I'm already worrying about can I live up to my

Speaker 2 but I'm really looking forward to this talk today because I know I'm going to learn too.

Speaker 4 Oh my goodness. So we would love to begin where it all began with Ruth, your mother.

Speaker 4 You knew your mother as a woman whose life was ruled by her mental illness. And by the age of 10, in fact, you were her caretaker.

Speaker 4 And later on, you learned that she was a pioneering journalist with huge ambitions and a man she loved, both of which she never pursued.

Speaker 4 In Ruth's song, which I reread all the time, you said of her, I miss her, but perhaps no more in death than I did in life.

Speaker 4 Oh, does that line speak to

Speaker 4 so much. Can you tell us what you meant by that?

Speaker 2 I think many of us had mothers who could not be fully their own talented, autonomous, independent selves. And that's a source of sorrow for us.
And also,

Speaker 2 in some ways, we're living out the unlived lives of our mothers.

Speaker 2 I'm a journalist, and I'm happy to be a journalist, but I'm sure that it had something to do with the fact that I knew that my mother had worked for the Toledo Blade, and she used to show me how to fold a piece of paper to make a like a reporter's notebook in your palm before there were reporters notebooks i mean i'm i'm sure that i absorbed some of the love for it from her and the sorrow is that she should have been able to complete her own life and to continue with what she loved and she just couldn't

Speaker 4 can you tell us about

Speaker 1 when you asked your mom about why she didn't pursue the love and ambitions of her life?

Speaker 2 Well, I knew that she had not actually left the Toledo Blade, the big local newspaper in Toledo, until my older sister, she's 10 years older than I am, was about six.

Speaker 2 So I realized that she had tried to continue even after

Speaker 2 she had a child to look out for, and even after

Speaker 2 she was married to my father, a wonderfully kind but kind of also irresponsible person.

Speaker 2 But I realized that it had been such a toll on her that she had had what was then termed a nervous breakdown, quote unquote, and been unable to function, spent almost a year in a sanatorium.

Speaker 2 And when she came out, I think her spirit was broken. She felt she couldn't continue as she wished to.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and I love this part of, I think it's an on the road. When you said, why didn't you continue the ambition, go with that man who you were truly in love with?

Speaker 4 What did she say? You, well, then you wouldn't have been born.

Speaker 2 Yes, it's hard to argue with that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But in your mind, you did argue.

Speaker 2 But I did, I did argue with that. I mean, he did say, but that would have been okay.

Speaker 2 And indeed, I said, but you would have been born instead.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 that fate was the same for a lot of women, and indeed it still is. You know, there are a lot of women who still have to give up their dreams and their occupations in order to take care of children.

Speaker 2 It's still the case that women care for children more than men do, even though there's not a star in the east. Children have fathers too.
I mean, fathers should be

Speaker 2 equally responsible. So it's better because

Speaker 2 of the civil rights movement the women's movement all the great social justice movements but it's still unequal very unequal

Speaker 3 and you realize that later that what you had when you were young attributed to some personal or individual failure in your mother, you realized that it was actually this structural failure, that it wasn't that she was crazy, but that the system that she was born into was crazy.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 you dedicate your life to making sure that women know that they are not broken, but they were born into a system that was intended to break their spirits.

Speaker 3 Can you talk to us about talking circles and how they change

Speaker 3 everything in terms of people understanding that They are not crazy, but they're all part of this system

Speaker 3 that is making them feel that that way.

Speaker 2 I think this simple act, whether it's a talking circle or two women

Speaker 2 at a kitchen table or whatever it is, of being able to tell the truth about your feelings and your life experience

Speaker 2 and be heard and hear someone else's truth is how we understand

Speaker 2 the collective truth. It's possible to understand it from reading statistics and so on, but I think it's much more likely if we hear other people's personal stories that we identify with.

Speaker 2 So every social justice movement that I'm aware of started out that way. The civil rights movement started in Black churches in the South with people testifying about what happened to them.

Speaker 2 The anti-Vietnam War movement started with a few men resisting, going off to what was an unjust war in the first place. And there's nothing more basic or radical than

Speaker 2 telling the truth and listening to the truth from other people.

Speaker 1 In so many photographs of you and your organizing partners, whether it's you and Bella Abzug, Flo Kennedy, Dorothy Pittman Hughes, or Wilma Mankiller, you all seem to be laughing.

Speaker 1 There's so much joy and laughter. We have to understand how this is possible after so many decades of fighting against this unrelenting bullshit.

Speaker 1 How were you and are you so full of laughter instead of bitterness?

Speaker 2 Well, I think we need each other. I'm not sure that if I were isolated, I would be laughing.
Right. Maybe.

Speaker 2 But laughter is crucial, you know, because laughter turns out to be the one emotion that can't be compelled. It's a proof of freedom.

Speaker 2 And in many Native American cultures, there's a god god of laughter

Speaker 2 who is neither male nor female and connects the known world to the unknown world you can make somebody afraid obviously you can even make someone feel they're in love if they're kept isolated and dependent for long enough but you can't make them laugh and i just love that as a a proof of freedom and laughing together is such a communal experience and i think we should beware of churches and temples that keep us from laughing.

Speaker 2 You know, wait a minute, what is that about?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 4 I can't stop thinking about the laughter as proof of freedom because,

Speaker 4 Gloria, one of the things that makes me so furious about myself is when I giggle, like it's compulsory at something a man says that isn't funny.

Speaker 4 It's like I'm in the middle of this mandatory scripted, like it's my job in any public square to reward a man for mediocrity or bullshit.

Speaker 4 The other evening, I was at dinner with a guy and it was a work thing. So there was a power differential.
And I couldn't say what I wanted to say.

Speaker 4 I really couldn't in that moment because there were other people there. But I swore to myself, what I'm not going to do is laugh.

Speaker 4 I'm not going to laugh at any of the things he says and then expects me to laugh. And Gloria, it felt like a war.

Speaker 4 He would talk and then I would refuse to giggle. And then he looked confused and then furious.
And then once he said something so arrogant that I actually burst into laughter.

Speaker 4 And he looked like he wanted to kill me.

Speaker 2 Well, now that's very interesting. You've raised a whole other frontier of laughter that I wasn't thinking about.
I was thinking of the

Speaker 2 kind of sincere, irresistible desire to laugh. And you're thinking about compulsory laughter as an expected response to bullshit or, you know, whatever.
Right.

Speaker 2 So thank you for saying that. Now, from now on, I should talk about the resistance to phony laughter.
Fake laughter, right?

Speaker 4 Like it felt like

Speaker 4 the bravest thing in the world. I felt like I am a warrior of non-laughter.

Speaker 4 And then, Gloria, I think about like Christine Blasey Ford, when she's talking about the laughter of the men, when she testified and she said, what is indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter.

Speaker 4 There's something about laughter that is so fraught with power and

Speaker 4 I guess proof of freedom.

Speaker 2 Yes, well, that's yeah, that's a belittling kind of laughter. Yeah, no, I agree.

Speaker 3 Because when you think about it, yes, the one that can't be compelled is the actual axiomatic response to something where it's just the reflection of your connection and joy and

Speaker 3 solidarity with that person. You get them.

Speaker 3 But then the fake laugh that you're talking about, Glennon, like I think of a fake laugh is exactly like a fake orgasm and a fake orgasm is exactly like a fake laugh.

Speaker 3 Both are intended to placate the outside while slowly killing you inside because it's this idea that it isn't for you. It's for keeping the outside steady.

Speaker 4 Steady, yeah.

Speaker 3 We're giving up on our right to have that pleasure and enjoyment and instead placating the moment and the power dynamics that we're in.

Speaker 2 Right. And it's such a form of internal control

Speaker 2 because it isn't as if there's anything forcing you you know

Speaker 2 uh it's an acquiescence internally

Speaker 2 so okay this is the impulse not to laugh is just as important as being able to laugh yes i realized that with tish i was at the grocery store with my daughter and some dude said something that was really dumb and I giggled and Tish looked at me as if I had betrayed the earth And I had.

Speaker 2 Well, that's great. How old is she?

Speaker 4 She is now 16, but she's been fighting the fight since she was about three.

Speaker 2 No, well, that's that's great because that's yes, the younger people around us can be great correctives.

Speaker 4 That look, that look, that look of betrayal. Yes.

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Speaker 1 It might be easy for people to think of you as a superhero who happens to be made for conflict. I think of Glennon in this way too.
But you talk all the time about how you actually hate conflict.

Speaker 1 You cry when you are angry.

Speaker 2 Yes, I do hate conflict. And

Speaker 2 I guess part of the reason that I became a writer was so I could deal with conflict in a peaceful setting. And the French who have a phrase for everything have a phrase, maux d'Escalier.

Speaker 2 It's the words that you think of on the staircase on the way out that you should have said and didn't say. So if you're a writer, you have a place for those words.

Speaker 2 But whether it's laughing or not laughing or

Speaker 2 saying what you really feel,

Speaker 2 it's all about the right to be authentic and not to be so governed by the shoulds of life, what you should do, that it takes over your body, your face, your laughter, and even your voice.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I think I was telling my sister when we had read something that you wrote about laughter, and I was telling her that

Speaker 4 the thing that makes me the saddest that my mom does is giggle when she should.

Speaker 4 Whoever, who has said the thing. And the thing that makes me most joyful is when my mom laughs from her belly and it looks ridiculous.
And it's like hyperventilating, snorting.

Speaker 4 And it's when I see my mom the most free. And it is often when she's with her sisters

Speaker 4 or her grandkids. And

Speaker 4 Yeah, I guess it has to do with bodily autonomy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and authenticity. Have you told her that?

Speaker 4 No, but she'll listen to this.

Speaker 2 So, hey, mom, love that about you, Tisha.

Speaker 2 Great. Hey, mom, I'm sending you my love too.
And laughter.

Speaker 2 A laughter of your own. Yes.

Speaker 2 Perhaps that's, we should do that. We should say that as well as a room of your own.

Speaker 4 A laugh of your own. Yes.

Speaker 3 Speaking of bodily autonomy, you say that the root of sexism is controlling reproduction. And

Speaker 3 many people think of reproductive justice as kind of one slice of the pie. Why is it that you believe that every aspect of liberation is predicated on that?

Speaker 2 Well, it's the most universal and the most basic. I'm not saying that people who are waits or domestic workers without rights, it's not that that's necessarily immediately connected to reproduction.

Speaker 2 But the very definition of patriarchy is controlling women's bodies as the means of reproduction because we happen to have wombs. And

Speaker 2 there were

Speaker 2 many centuries and cultures before patriarchy. It wasn't always this way.
The power to give birth was

Speaker 2 a reason why women were equal and powerful and not something

Speaker 2 to be controlled. I remember sitting once with with women in the Kalahari Desert, and they were showing me the natural growing herbs that they used for contraception and abortifications,

Speaker 2 and that they also use to increase fertility.

Speaker 2 So obviously, ever since there have been human beings, and this is probably true of animals too,

Speaker 2 there have been ways of increasing and decreasing fertility according to the food supply or how many children or cubs you already have. I mean, it's always been present.

Speaker 4 And isn't that part of how the witch trials started, looking for women who were using herbs to control?

Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And witches got the reputation for, quote, eating babies, unquote, because a woman would go in to see a witch pregnant and come out unpregnant.
That was very sinister.

Speaker 2 And the witch trials, of course, went on not only in Europe, but here too, in New England.

Speaker 3 So the PR hasn't changed much.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 4 I'm going to ask you about this. So something I'm constantly learning is that one can be a feminist who is white and not be a white feminist because

Speaker 4 White feminism is a brand of feminism that seeks more proximity to hierarchical power instead instead of the destruction of hierarchy altogether.

Speaker 4 So, if patriarchy is a ladder, white feminism identifies up instead of down,

Speaker 4 and white feminism is just forever abandoning folks. It helps white women kind of sneak in the door.

Speaker 2 That's interesting because that's another way of putting it. I would just say if feminism doesn't include all women, it's not feminism.
There really is no such thing as white feminism.

Speaker 4 So what is the kind of quote feminism? So examples, Betty Fredan in the 60s insisting that feminism at first move on without lesbians. Or like right now,

Speaker 4 one of the examples that I would think of is the TERFs insisting that feminism shut the door on trans women. So it seems like it's mostly related.
to when white women run things, but what is that?

Speaker 4 If it's not feminism, it seems to be there's a taste of that that is tricking people into thinking it's feminism. What is it?

Speaker 2 Well, I think we're born into some kind of hierarchy. And in order to move up in the hierarchy, we may think we have to imitate a hierarchical mind.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 if you're identifying up

Speaker 2 only,

Speaker 2 then it may be much whiter up there than it should be.

Speaker 2 But it's still, to me, not feminism because if just just in the dictionary, you know, feminism includes all women or it's not feminism.

Speaker 4 So we have a lot of theories, but why, Gloria, do you believe that so many of us white women are still voting with the patriarchy?

Speaker 2 Well, for one thing,

Speaker 2 a large proportion of white women are dependent on the identity and incomes of white men.

Speaker 2 So they may be voting the interests of their husbands.

Speaker 2 They may not have information to the contrary.

Speaker 2 So in some ways, it's amazing that the majority of white women are not voting

Speaker 2 in the way that they're supposed to, and the ever-increasing majority. Because it is kind of

Speaker 2 crucial where your income is coming from and who your neighbors are and what you know.

Speaker 2 And it's the job of a movement to make

Speaker 2 another

Speaker 2 supportive force in the world so that there's more choice.

Speaker 3 It's so interesting to me because it just occurred to me that we're talking about fake laughing at men and fake orgasm. Is it possible that

Speaker 3 we fake laugh at offensive things for the same reason we fake orgasm for the same reason

Speaker 3 we vote

Speaker 3 with men because we believe that we somehow have a stake in their happiness that if they're content we're treated better whether it's the grocery store or the bedroom or the polls that on some level we believe that pleasing them

Speaker 2 will make our life easier keep us safe safety well it's it's not just belief if you're entirely dependent on a man's income

Speaker 2 But women do in those situations also rebel.

Speaker 2 I mean, I remember meeting a woman after one election who told me she locked her husband in the bathroom for the entire election day because she realized that his vote negated her vote. Wow.

Speaker 2 So she locked him in the bathroom so he couldn't vote.

Speaker 4 It takes all approaches, doesn't it? Oh my gosh. But it's so true what you're saying.

Speaker 3 It's like a fake vote almost.

Speaker 4 Even Even Gloria just said

Speaker 4 that we need to extend choice, expand choice for voting.

Speaker 4 Like she's applying the word choice for voting, because if you believe your only security is in the fact that your husband stays in power, do you

Speaker 4 feel that you have a choice?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, that may be a localized, individualized economic truth, but the larger truth is that unless we vote, we don't exist. That's right.

Speaker 2 You know, we don't have a voice in the governance of our

Speaker 2 county, city, nation, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 And that's the role of the movement.

Speaker 3 If it is true that I vote with you and my life is easier or better, then the role of a movement is to create an opportunity to say, no, actually, that is the thing that will make my life better and easier.

Speaker 2 Right, and our schools should be doing it too.

Speaker 2 You know, our civics courses, our American history courses. Why did we fight a civil war over the vote and equal citizenship? Why did people die for it?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It is interesting. I was reading the poem that Alice Walker wrote about you called She.

Speaker 4 And there's this one stanza that says, you make activism irresistible because you yourself are irresistible.

Speaker 4 And that makes me think about what you're saying, that we have to create a movement that looks and feels like what we actually want

Speaker 2 so that there's another place to go other than these shitty consolation prizes which are unequal structures because we're social animals you know we there's a reason why solitary confinement is the worst punishment everywhere in the world so so we need each other and we need to create a supportive place where women can vote for themselves.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because the pictures of you laughing, it makes me ache. That's what we want.
We want to be in powerful places with women who are laughing.

Speaker 4 Like, that's, I don't know how else to say it, other than I feel the yearning come up when I see

Speaker 4 you doing that with your sisters. And that's the alternative to this other thing.

Speaker 2 It's good that you say that because it's probably true that when you say the word movement, it seems serious and difficult.

Speaker 2 And And so we should include the laughter, absolutely.

Speaker 1 So I want to ask you about a story I read about the Ask the Turtle.

Speaker 2 It's kind of a parable. And it happened to me when I was in college and taking

Speaker 2 geology, which I thought was the easiest of the science requirements, right?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 we were on a field trip. along the Connecticut River.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 while the professor was telling us about the meander curves of the Connecticut River or something, I had wandered up a little dirt road to the embankment of an asphalt road.

Speaker 2 And there was a turtle there in the soft dirt that was the embankment. And I thought, oh, look at that.
poor turtle. It's crawled all the way up here from the river.
And, you know,

Speaker 2 how sad. And it was a big snapping turtle.
So I pushed and pulled and tugged and got this turtle back down to put in the river.

Speaker 2 And just as I swam away in the river, the professor came up behind me and said, you know, that turtle has probably spent at least a month crawling up that road in order to lay us eggs in the mud of the embankment.

Speaker 2 And I felt terrible, of course. And that became a source of a, I think, still very valid political rule, which is always ask the turtle.

Speaker 2 Don't act on behalf of other people. Ask first.

Speaker 3 It's so important because the people with the lived experience are the experts.

Speaker 3 If you get in a group and you're deciding how to help a group of people that is not present, you are not helping those people.

Speaker 4 You are a nightmare, is what you are.

Speaker 2 You're a nightmare.

Speaker 2 Well, you have a great impulse. It's just that before you act, you need to ask the people who are most impacted.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 So this makes me think of screwing up in public.

Speaker 4 I have had lo, so many turtle moments, Gloria, even though I've read everything you've written, still had some turtle moments. So we all have turtle moments.

Speaker 4 A lot of us are afraid to step up and speak out because We know that it's not a matter of if, but when we're going to fuck up and get our asses handed to us.

Speaker 4 So I myself has deservedly had my ass handed to me many times. One of the things that makes me so heartened is when I read that you call yourself thin-skinned.

Speaker 4 And this thing that Flo Kennedy said to you blew my mind and I've been wanting to ask you about it.

Speaker 4 She once said to you after a public ass kicking, She said, the ass kickings are to keep your ass sensitive.

Speaker 4 I just, my heart exploded when I read that sentence, but can you explain to us what you believe she meant by that?

Speaker 2 It serves a purpose. I mean, it's called communication.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 when somebody tells us that we could have done something better, it's very valuable. It's not that we failed, it's that we're learning.

Speaker 2 And she was always a wonderful teacher. She was always very clear about that.
When you talk about Flo, I think of her as, because all the time we were lecturing together, there would often be one,

Speaker 2 you know, dissident male person in the audience who would call out to us, are you lesbians? And Flo always said, are you my alternative?

Speaker 2 Which made the audience laugh and didn't. pay his question the honor of answering it, you know, right? So good.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 2 No, Flo is a great example and teacher.

Speaker 4 I always think about my friend, Dr. Yaba Blai, who's an unbelievable

Speaker 4 speaker, lecturer, teacher. And she always says, if I'm correcting you, it's because I believe I'm not wasting my breath with you.

Speaker 2 Like, it's an honor to be corrected by me.

Speaker 4 So.

Speaker 2 And it's how we get better.

Speaker 2 Frequently, I think we have to ask and say, please tell me what I'm doing wrong or could do better.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 people, maybe especially female people, are reluctant to say that.

Speaker 4 Do you think that sensitivity and thin-skinnedness is a plus in this sort of work as opposed to a negative?

Speaker 2 Well, it's a question of degree, isn't it? Because we do have to go. forward into areas where we're not supposed to go.
So we have to thicken up for the moment.

Speaker 2 But in general, I think it's a plus, yes, because it makes us more sensitive to what's going on in the outside world.

Speaker 1 I'm curious, has it gotten easier? Because I'm hoping that when I get to 60s, 70s, 80s, I'm hoping that I just give zero shits

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 4 about negative feedback.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you've been through it for so long. Does it get easier?

Speaker 2 I would say yes, but I think what I need to add is it's because there's a movement. I mean, we're not meant to be isolated individual revolutionary pioneers or something.

Speaker 2 We, of course, need other human beings.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 the learning process becomes a positive one to go forward in a more effective way, not a rejection.

Speaker 4 That's practical and logistical to me because whenever I get in my turtle situations, it's because I've gone rogue.

Speaker 2 I've gone rogue.

Speaker 4 And I should be unturtled. Like, but when you move with a group of people, any criticism that comes is to the movement because you have not moved alone.

Speaker 4 So it's less personal.

Speaker 2 It's true, but I'm worried about your turtle self because I want your turtle self to be set free.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I mean, don't, you know, don't censor your, your individual turtle self either.

Speaker 1 I also think that when you do get criticized, that is proof of progress. Because 50 years ago, they were not even talking about us, right? I think that it was in the documentary.

Speaker 2 Right. That was in the documentary.

Speaker 1 I think that that's really interesting. And as a soccer player, that's something that we came to understand in a different way.

Speaker 1 When people started criticizing us, we had to actually learn how to take the criticism because this was new territory. Nobody ever gave a shit before to even criticize us.

Speaker 1 So it's just like, hey, this is progress.

Speaker 2 Yeah, in my life, in my Toledo high school life,

Speaker 2 girls did not do sports really. I mean, we complained bitterly even about doing gym.

Speaker 4 I'm annoyed we even call it a movement. I just want to sit and laugh with y'all.

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Speaker 1 So prior to 1975, we have to talk about this because the term sexual harassment did not even exist. Sexual harassment was just life.

Speaker 1 What I want to know is what injustices are we living through now

Speaker 1 that we consider just life?

Speaker 2 Oh, that's fascinating. Well, I would say that a big one, maybe the biggest one, is we're still not recognizing that children, generally speaking, have two parents.
Not in all situations, but in many,

Speaker 2 men can and should be

Speaker 2 really co-parents, really an equal parent. And it's,

Speaker 2 I think it began to happen a little more during COVID because everybody was at home and men could see perhaps for the first time

Speaker 2 on a day-long basis what it takes to raise infants and little children. So we'll see, but perhaps that's been helpful.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 just as women become whole people by being active outside the home, men become whole people by being active in it.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 4 I love, Gloria, you said, we've begun to raise our daughters more like sons, but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

Speaker 2 Yes, we did. Free to be you and me is a collection of children's stories.
It became a book, a record, a television show, which people still see, I believe. And

Speaker 2 that was for boys as well as girls. I mean, there's a song called William Wants a Doll, you know,

Speaker 2 which is, he feels he shouldn't, and then his grandmother says to him, no, it's very important, and you learn how to take care of it, you know.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the song, William Wants a Doll, became a kind of anthem.

Speaker 4 I love that it's framed as men just being wholly human, not a punishment. It's always framed as like a punishment, but actually it's an invitation to full, the full human experience.

Speaker 2 It is. I think that's the punishment to all of us for the idea of gender.
We're working our way out of it.

Speaker 4 We're working our way out of it. That's the thing that makes all of this so tricky in talking about gender equality is that gender is not real.
It makes it all tricky.

Speaker 3 Your friendships that have sustained

Speaker 3 your work. and your spirit through these many decades are deeply touching.

Speaker 3 And specifically, I really love your co-conspirator relationship with Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Speaker 3 And you two planned to write a book together about the wisdom of original cultures, but she passed before you could write it.

Speaker 3 We are going to have our dear friend Caitlin Curtis on to talk about that very issue.

Speaker 3 But I wondered since writing that book together was so important to you, is there a piece of wisdom that you think that your friend would want us most to understand

Speaker 3 from the indigenous wisdom that was here long before we were?

Speaker 2 It's hard because the wisdom itself is kind of circular. Each thing depends on

Speaker 2 the equality of the next or the existence of the next. But I think just the knowledge that before

Speaker 2 European explorers set foot on this land, there were

Speaker 2 already cultures that were egalitarian. Even Benjamin Franklin, who was not, you know, your least patriarchal of all people, but anyway, he did

Speaker 2 use the Iroquois Confederacy

Speaker 2 as a model for the Constitution, because there were individual groups, linguistic groups, cooperative groups all over the country, and they came together in a long house meeting

Speaker 2 in which everyone spoke and turned to make decisions. And that was the

Speaker 2 basis for our Congress and for our departure from what the Europeans had left,

Speaker 2 which were kings.

Speaker 2 I mean, they did not leave democracies in which they were experienced. They really experienced them once they got here.

Speaker 2 So I wish that our courses in government or political science began when people began on this continent.

Speaker 2 In my experience, they don't usually begin

Speaker 2 with Native American cultures, and I think it would be helpful if they did.

Speaker 4 I just wanted to say thank you for fighting so hard to keep lesbians in the women's movement.

Speaker 4 Thanks for that. What do you see now as most important? Like, what are you waking up every day

Speaker 4 seeing as your first priority in terms of the continued movement?

Speaker 2 Well, I think, you know, to your first point, I think lesbians were often in the leadership of the women's movement and more advanced in consciousness because they were less likely to have or to need to have

Speaker 2 male support for one reason or another, whether it was personal or in jobs. I mean, it's obviously not a universal truth, but kind of relatively speaking.

Speaker 2 And what we forget, what I forget, is that in the beginning of the women's movement in the early, late 60s, early 70s, and so on, the women's movement was perceived as a lesbian movement.

Speaker 2 I remember being called by a friend of mine, an editor I'd worked with for years,

Speaker 2 who, when I became publicly identified with the women's movement, called me up and said, Gloria, I didn't know you were a lesbian.

Speaker 4 You heard it here first, folks.

Speaker 4 It's fascinating.

Speaker 2 No, I hope we get over this because

Speaker 2 the humans and other animals love each other, and there is what you might call same-sex sexual behavior in birds and animal species. I mean, hello.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of sexual behavior that's not only directed at reproduction.

Speaker 4 Is that why lesbians piss off the patriarchy so much? Because

Speaker 4 we're having sex that's not based in just reproduction.

Speaker 2 Yeah, since we have the one thing that guys don't have, which is a womb, we're supposed to use that womb for patriarchal purposes.

Speaker 2 And they clearly are not. I'm not either, but it's just slightly less obvious, I guess.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's interesting because the three of us are activists and we will continue to be activists through the rest of our lives. I need to know how you've been able to sustain

Speaker 1 the energy to keep doing this work decade after decade after decade.

Speaker 2 Like avoiding burnout.

Speaker 1 Can you give us some tips?

Speaker 2 I feel like I'm looking at three of my tips. It's because

Speaker 2 we are social creatures. We need each other.
And so I'm inspired by what you do. And

Speaker 2 my friends, you know, whether it was Dorothy Pittman Hughes or Flo Kennedy or Robin Morgan or Amy Richards, who's my colleague now, we have each other.

Speaker 3 Is that what you think power is? I've never heard you define what is power, real power, not the

Speaker 3 hierarchy and the structures that we exist exist under in this moment. But what do you think is the source of true power?

Speaker 2 Well, I don't know if we can say it in that way, one source, but I think of power to, not power over.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I don't want the power to dictate to other people because then I will not benefit from their wisdom. But I'd like to have the power to do, you know, to

Speaker 2 create more equality and kindness in whatever

Speaker 2 the institution is, you know, whether it's my house, my neighborhood, the city of New York, the government of the country,

Speaker 2 getting rid of Trump, you know,

Speaker 2 whatever it is, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I've heard you say that The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day, because a movement is only people moving.

Speaker 3 That feels so hopeful to me because the problem sometimes seems so huge and intractable that how do we know as everyday people where we fit into it and how we are additive to it?

Speaker 3 For example, you mentioned power dynamics in individual houses. If I am a person working to establish equality in

Speaker 3 caretaking for children in my home,

Speaker 3 is that part of the movement? Am I contributing to the movement for equality in doing that in my individual life?

Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely, because you're normalizing women as achievers outside the home and men as caregivers inside the home. That is, both get to do both.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 what happens in our families is

Speaker 2 the determinant of our political views, whether for or against, in a very powerful way.

Speaker 2 In order to do it, we have to see it.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 the revolutionary power of

Speaker 2 an egalitarian, equally nurturing home is huge.

Speaker 3 So that's why maybe you're part of the movement if you're not laughing at offensive things that people say because you're normalizing

Speaker 2 yeah whenever you respond as your authentic self and and and not according to whatever form of the traditional power structures around you you're part of the movement yeah because that's a challenge it's a challenge to not react but also it's making change i mean what what kids see in the home if they if kids see

Speaker 2 their fathers as equal caregivers, even

Speaker 2 when they're very little. It's a life-changing difference.

Speaker 4 I read one of your partners said, I think if you don't know how to do it, just close your eyes and imagine you're sharing your home with another woman. How do you divide up the jobs and then do that?

Speaker 2 No, it's interesting you say that because at the end of lectures with Flo or whatever, we would often with the audience end up having this kind of discussion.

Speaker 2 Just close your eyes and pretend you're living with another woman. And also, the audiences were full of wisdom.
I remember kind of worrying about an older woman.

Speaker 2 We were having a kind of baudy discussion. And I thought, oh, we're shocking her in some way.

Speaker 2 And finally, she got up and she said, well, when my husband leaves his underwear on the floor, I find it quite useful to nail it to the floor.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 So good.

Speaker 4 I remember you saying that your grandmother was a public feminist and a private isolationist. Because it is possible to be believing one thing on the outside, but then still recreating.

Speaker 4 What did you mean by that?

Speaker 2 My father's mother was a suffragist, and she organized women because even after women first had the vote, they were kept from voting because gangs of men and boys hung around the voting place and sexually harassed them and

Speaker 2 chased them and so on.

Speaker 2 She's familiar.

Speaker 2 So she organized women to go and vote in groups, for instance.

Speaker 2 And she started the first vocational high school in Toledo. She was enormously active.

Speaker 2 She did cook dinner,

Speaker 2 I believe, every night. And she had four sons, but she was

Speaker 2 doing the most that she could do, I think.

Speaker 2 Because she was, of course, still economically dependent on on my grandfather.

Speaker 1 I want to

Speaker 1 end this podcast in a way that I hope to do you honor. I became who I am as a woman, a lesbian, and an athlete because of you and your sisters and all of the work.

Speaker 2 you've done oh that's so moving because i feel like you're

Speaker 2 so much beyond

Speaker 1 we stand on Glorious Dynam's shoulders.

Speaker 2 I mean, I never got beyond tap dancing in the athletics department. So good.
But your voice. Roto sports.

Speaker 1 Your voice giving women a platform gave the 1972 Title IX law traction that gave me a chance. And I just want to thank you for mothering and sistering me

Speaker 1 and millions of others into giving birth to ourselves.

Speaker 1 You have changed the world. You have changed my life and you have changed the world.

Speaker 2 Gloria, we love you.

Speaker 2 Well, no one, no one could ask for a better reward

Speaker 2 than what you just said. Nobody on earth.
Thank you.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Gloria.

Speaker 2 Oh, my gosh. We did it, everybody.

Speaker 2 Okay, y'all.

Speaker 4 We can do hard things. We'll see you back here next time this week.
Go give birth to your damn self.

Speaker 2 Bye.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Gloria.

Speaker 3 Oh, thank you for your time.

Speaker 2 No, it was fun. Thank you so much.
It's a gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 4 If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things.

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Speaker 4 We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Speaker 4 Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.