Gloria Steinem Has Died. This Is The Conversation We Keep Coming Back To

0:05Speaker 1:You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.

0:09Speaker 2:I think we ought to be able to give birth to ourselves before we give birth to someone else.

0:16Speaker 3:It's Mia Friedman here and I used to be the host of No Filter. So I'm popping back in your ears briefly to reintroduce to you an interview that I did 10 years ago with the absolute iconic feminist powerhouse, Gloria Steinem, who we lost this week at the age of 92. It was one of the honours of my life to do this interview. I did it in person. She was here to promote a book about 10 years ago. She was 81 at the time. And I brought my mother along. I've never done that before on a No Filter interview. And I really wanted to do it because I wanted to give that gift to my mum. She's always idolised Gloria Steinem. She's the generation of boomer women whose lives were immeasurably changed by Gloria, who spent her life fighting for the rights of women to vote, to have choices over their fertility and whether they had children and how many children they had. She wrote and spoke extensively about her own abortion at a time when that could be ruinous for women and often was. And She was so brave. That's a word that's really overused, but in her case it was really, really true. And I remember the warmth and the kindness that she showed both

1:42Speaker 3:my mother and me in that interview. You can only imagine how many women like my mum and me who have said to Gloria, you're incredible, we love you, you've changed our life, you know, thank you, thank you. She was so, so gracious because she She is feminist royalty, and even if you don't identify as a feminist, your life is better because of women like Gloria Steinem and the women's movement that she pioneered.

2:11Speaker 2:So enjoy this interview.

2:12Speaker 3:We spoke about plastic surgery. We spoke about her abortion. We spoke about her reluctance to get married and her curiosity and hunger for life and learning. You know, she maintained that insatiable hunger and curiosity about everyone right up.

2:31Speaker 2:Until the end.

2:31Speaker 3:She used to have these weekly talking circles in her brownstone in New York where she'd invite all kinds of women of different generations, some famous, some not, to sit around and talk about their lives and their struggles. And her belief was that by sharing these commonalities that we have as women, it makes us stronger. And that's how the world changes. You know, she said when she started Ms. Magazine, which was the first magazine to actually treat women as people, not just as housewives or decorations.

3:05Speaker 2:When she started Ms.

3:06Speaker 3:Magazine and wrote about all of these things, sexual harassment, there wasn't even a word for it. It was just called life. And it's only because of women like Gloria and the work that she did so tirelessly for all of us that our lives are better. So please enjoy this interview with Gloria Steinem and may she rest in power.

3:28Speaker 4:The dedication is just phenomenal in the book and straight away puts so much in context.

3:34Speaker 1:You've dedicated it to Dr.

3:36Speaker 4:John Sharp, who in 1957, when abortion was illegal, performed an abortion for you. And he said to you, you must promise me two things. First, you will not tell.

3:47Speaker 1:Anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.

3:53Speaker 4:Tell me about that in 1957, about what had happened and how you found yourself in that moment and what he meant to you.

4:00Speaker 2:I had left the States partly because I was engaged in trying to get unengaged. And I was in London working as a waitress in an espresso waiting for my visa to India. I was pregnant. I mean, I kept hoping I was not, and I did all the dumb things that you do, like going horseback riding and considering throwing myself down the stairs. I mean, you know, ridiculous. Yeah, right. And I just happened to have been at a party where there was a dreadful American theater director who was complaining about having to get an abortion for someone in his cast. And it was the first time that I knew that that was even dimly possible, you know, if a doctor as this one would take a risk and say that it was putting your life at risk, which of course it was not. So I found his name in the telephone directory in London and went to see him.

5:00Speaker 2:And he was a lovely old man and a bedsitter. who I later turned out to be the physician for the Sitwells, for Edith and Osbert Sitwell, which I didn't know.

5:12Speaker 1:And he was putting himself at great risk by doing this.

5:14Speaker 2:And he was, yeah, right. He signed for the abortion, which was the great risk. It was actually a woman physician who did the abortion, but it was he who was taking the greater risk.

5:25Speaker 4:So he had to pretend that your life was at risk, that your health was at risk and your life was at risk.

5:30Speaker 1:Right.

5:30Speaker 4:Now, in the 50s and even the 60s in Australia, other women who couldn't do that either had backyard abortions that went wrong and they died or else they had to have babies that they perhaps.

5:42Speaker 1:Weren't ready for or didn't want. Do you see that as a real sliding doors moment in your life?

5:47Speaker 2:Oh, yes, absolutely. No, I mean, I think we ought to be able to give birth to ourselves before we give birth to someone else. And at a minimum, we ought to be able to decide what we do with our own bodies. And besides that, children have a right to be born loved and wanted. And it's connected to everything. It's connected to global warming, for instance, because forcing women to have children they don't want is a major root cause of global warming. Having children against their choice and too early is a major cause of death worldwide among teenage girls.

6:25Speaker 4:And so what do you think is causing now these big backward steps, particularly in the U.S., with men trying to take away women's reproductive rights? You know, the legislation and the closing down of Planned Parenthood and the defunding.

6:39Speaker 1:Why now?

6:40Speaker 2:Well, because we've won the majority opinion in most parts of the world and certainly in the U.S., If you look at the public opinion polls, the huge majority of people believe that it should be up to the individual to decide our own physical fate, not the government. And that means they have lost control of the means of reproduction. And they are in a snit of backlash terror because in about very short order, we're no longer going to be a majority white country or European American country. The first generation of babies of color has already been born.

7:16Speaker 2:And our right wing will just cheerfully look at you and say the white race is committing suicide through abortion, sex education, contraception, and immigration. They're against all of those things. It's a profound, profound, crazy, but deeply embedded racism that is, of course, intertwined with sexism because one can't exist without the other.

7:38Speaker 4:So it's kind of no coincidence that, hopefully... we're about to have our first American female president at the same time when men are scrambling to wind back women's rights to determine their lives.

7:50Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's going to be hell. You know, I think that she has a chance, a very good chance, and will win. I didn't think so in 2008, but I do now. But you can see in the Trump-led backlash, you know, which is primarily a vote of resentment.

8:07Speaker 4:It's, I mean, I wanted to ask you about that, that Trump, I mean, I don't even have a question because it's just like Trump. Everyone here is just going, how can this be? But what fascinates me is the women who like Trump. Explain that to me because he has some support among women.

8:24Speaker 2:Very little. I think 80% of women are against him, something huge, or 80% of single women anyway are against him. But, you know, it is always the case that oppression is internalised. You know, it wouldn't work if it weren't internalised. So at the end of slavery... There were families who knew nothing but the plantation and felt uprooted and insecure and terrified without it and stayed there for a generation. And it's not so different for women who have been deeply, deeply convinced that they need male protection, that they need a male income, that they can't make it in the world by themselves. You know, systems of oppression wouldn't work with large numbers of people unless that oppression was also internalized.

9:20Speaker 4:Speaking of that sort of internalized oppression and what you said about giving birth to yourself, you write so beautifully about realizing that you.

9:28Speaker 1:Wanted to follow your father's path.

9:30Speaker 4:He was very much a wanderer and traveler and life on the road rather than your mother's. And it's funny, it's something exactly that my own mother has said to me about her awakening as a feminist, realising that she didn't want to follow her mother's path, she wanted.

9:42Speaker 1:To follow her father's path.

9:44Speaker 4:Tell me about your mother and what her life wasn't, if that's.

9:48Speaker 2:Well, my mother didn't have a path of her own.

9:51Speaker 1:She was going to, wasn't she?

9:52Speaker 2:She didn't have a journey of her own. I've chosen, in a sense, I've chosen the form of my father's life and the substance of my mother's. Because she, she before I was born she was a writer a journalist a pioneer newspaper editor she tried very hard to make it all work after she had my older sister who's nine years older And my father, who's a wonderful, loving human being and maybe the most irresponsible person. And she was always worried about money because she'd grown up in a poor family. She tried and tried and tried to make it all work. And finally she had what was then just called a nervous breakdown. And she was in a sanatorium for, I don't know whether it was a year or two, I'm not sure. But she became... Addicted to what was an early tranquiliser, chloral hydrate, which I think was also ironically given to Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath and so on.

10:53Speaker 1:And you spoke to her about.

10:53Speaker 2:And she got hooked on it.

10:54Speaker 1:why she didn't follow her dreams.

10:57Speaker 4:Because she had a slight window between having your older sister and then you, and she said, but then I wouldn't have had you.

11:03Speaker 2:Well, I mean, she continued to be a mother, a newspaper editor, the wife of a totally irresponsible guy for a. Nine years, I think, after, no, six, I think, after my sister was born. You know, she really tried and she just could not do it. And finally she gave up and followed my father to a very obscure rural part of Michigan where his dream was a summer resort. And then she tried to live her own, his life, but she had given up her own.

11:36Speaker 4:So you write about how, is it in the last 20 years you've only spent eight consecutive days at home?

11:42Speaker 1:Or was it for a 20-year period?

11:44Speaker 2:It was for a 20-year period. And it was before I actually unpacked boxes and made.

11:49Speaker 1:What even is home for you?

11:50Speaker 2:Well, you know, it's the same. I mean, you know, I've been living in the same apartment all this time. But it was full of cardboard boxes I never unpacked. It was just sort of a closet that I changed my clothes in. But after I realized that and had a kind of moment of truth that I just... You know, even birds have nests, you know what I mean? So I really made a home once I realized it. You nested a little bit.

12:16Speaker 1:Right.

12:17Speaker 2:Absolutely. So it's a balance. I think we all need a balance between home and the road.

12:34Speaker 4:Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a post on Facebook this week about how it's the 10-year anniversary of her eating Eat Pray Love. But she said it's also the 10 year anniversary of her being asked questions about being selfish, selfish for not having children, selfish for traveling, selfish for trying to be a writer. And she said, I'm done. I'm not answering any questions about being selfish anymore. And I was really surprised because I hadn't ever thought of that context around her.

13:01Speaker 1:Is that something that you've No, I don't think.

13:05Speaker 2:No, on the contrary, what people ask me is, haven't you sacrificed a lot?

13:09Speaker 1:Right.

13:10Speaker 2:They don't ask me if I'm selfish. I don't know why.

13:12Speaker 1:Yeah, they think she's very selfish, but clearly not you.

13:15Speaker 2:No, maybe because she left her husband. I didn't have a husband, so it was OK. Yeah. I don't know why. But, no, I think in both cases, it's ridiculous.

13:25Speaker 4:You couldn't have had that kind of travelling wanderlust life if you'd have had kids.

13:29Speaker 1:So was it very much a conscious decision?

13:31Speaker 2:No, I just... I mean, to be honest, I just kept putting it off. I assumed that I had to have children, that everyone had to have children or they were crazy if they were women, right? And actually, the only female relative who was an elderly cousin who didn't have children was crazy. So it didn't help.

13:52Speaker 1:Quite literally.

13:55Speaker 2:So I just kept putting it off and putting it off. And fortunately, the women's movement came along and said this revolutionary thing, which is, not everyone has to live in the same way. And there's no more reason why everyone with a womb has to be a mother than why everyone with vocal cords has to be an opera singer. It's a choice, it's a gift.

14:17Speaker 4:And then you famously wrote about a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

14:23Speaker 2:Actually, I didn't say that. That was an Australian woman. Was it? Yeah. Who was a member of parliament. You know, it's awful that at this moment I don't remember her name. But for years and years and years, I kept saying, who said this? Because I was getting credit for it.

14:37Speaker 4:Because it was a big sort of part of Ms. Magazine, the iconic magazine that you founded. That philosophy, wasn't it?

14:44Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I always said, I didn't say this. Someone else said it. And finally, she wrote me and said and explained it. that she had been here in Sydney at the university and she had read a male philosopher who said, man without God is like a fish without a bicycle. And she adopted this and put it on the wall in the women's room and it got to be on t-shirts and it went around the world. I will get her name again because she.

15:15Speaker 1:We should find that out.

15:16Speaker 2:Right, she deserves credit.

15:23Speaker 4:You got married in 2000 and I remember reading at the time, you were in your 60s then, were you?

15:29Speaker 1:No. That idea of there were a lot.

15:31Speaker 4:Of think pieces about what that meant for feminism, the fact that you got married. I haven't heard you, I mean, in doing my research, I found that tragically he died just three years after you got married. I don't know anything about him or that part of your life.

15:47Speaker 1:Who was he?

15:48Speaker 2:Well, I mean, we loved each other. We wanted to be together. We would not have even thought about getting married legally. You know, I mean, he was 59. I was over 60, you know, except he needed a green card.

16:04Speaker 1:And.

16:05Speaker 2:And I thought, well, you know, we've spent 30 years making the laws equal, so no longer would I give up my name, my credit rating, my legal residence, and all my civil rights, except for marriage equality.

16:17Speaker 4:It's the last hurdle we have to clear.

16:20Speaker 2:We had equalized all the marriage laws. And also we were about to go see my friend Wilma Mankiller at the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. to go to a powwow, and so I totally trust her judgment, so I called her up and said, I'm thinking about doing this, what do you think? And she said, well, I'll call you in the morning. And she went out and sat under the stars or something. And called me and said, yeah, why not? Yeah, it's okay. All right. So they gave us, she and her husband, who's a very traditional Cherokee person, gave us a Cherokee ceremony.

16:54Speaker 1:Okay, so you got married in that way. And what were those three years like together as a wife?

17:01Speaker 2:Well, we never said husband and wife. We always said we would refer to each other as the friend I married.

17:08Speaker 1:That's a beautiful thing.

17:09Speaker 2:Because, I mean, it may be a triumph for two women or two men to use those words, but for us it seemed too conforming. Retrograde.

17:16Speaker 1:Right, right, right.

17:17Speaker 2:So we actually never said that.

17:20Speaker 4:And then after he died, I heard recently you talking about your heart was broken recently. The idea of women having lives, let alone sex lives... after the age of sort of 45 or 50, is something our culture is not very comfortable with.

17:37Speaker 2:Yes, well, if you can't reproduce, they're not interested.

17:40Speaker 4:Yeah.

17:40Speaker 2:They don't seem to understand that there's love and romance beyond reproduction.

17:44Speaker 1:Why is that? Why do we feel so uncomfortable?

17:46Speaker 2:Because it's all about reproduction. Hello, that's what we're supposed to be doing. You know, if we didn't have wombs, we'd be fine.

17:51Speaker 4:So then when Madonna gets on the red carpet at the Met Gala and she's, you know, got her bum hanging out and her boobs and everything.

17:58Speaker 1:And the overwhelming response is, put it away. We don't want to see that. That's sad.

18:04Speaker 4:Is that just about our discomfort with.

18:07Speaker 1:What's the point of women if they can't reproduce?

18:09Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.

18:10Speaker 1:They should put it away.

18:10Speaker 2:Yeah. Right. What else are we for? I mean, you know, the idea that we have a brain as well as a womb is not yet quite totally culturally inscribed, shall we say.

18:19Speaker 1:Yeah.

18:20Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right.

18:21Speaker 4:Has that been something that you sort of had to face, like people treating you differently as you got older?

18:28Speaker 2:Well, I think I've been lucky because I am part of a movement that I love and that matters to me and that's exciting and shared company and a purpose. And the whole purpose is to say we're not just wombs. So I think I've been lucky because actually that hasn't happened to me as much as if I were in a more conventional place.

18:53Speaker 4:When you were, I remember my mother telling me this story many years ago. You were at a conference and someone asked a question and said, it was more of a comment, said, you look amazing for 40, I can't believe you're 40. And you just looked squarely at them and said, this is what 40 looks like.

19:08Speaker 2:And then I kept it, since it, I said it by accident.

19:12Speaker 1:Yeah.

19:12Speaker 2:You know, this is what 40 looks like. We've been lying so long, who would know?

19:17Speaker 1:Do you mean that's when women used to lie about their ages?

19:20Speaker 4:Yeah.

19:21Speaker 2:And so I kept saying it, you know, at 50, 60, 70, right, right, right.

19:25Speaker 4:And now at 82, which is so extraordinary. Except the thing is now, you don't know how old anyone is because everyone's had so much surgery. Does that, I don't know how to feel about the whole sort of homogenization of the female face.

19:39Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know, I hope that this passes because it is I mean, some men have plastic surgery, too. It's not just totally women, but it's mostly women, and it is mostly about the obsession with being young because young is when you are valued. And I have met women in the paid labor force who have lied their age down 20 years just to keep a job, you know. It's tragic. And, you know, I... It's not about criticising the women who have plastic surgery. It's about changing the pressure that makes them feel as if they have to.

20:20Speaker 2:And I would not do it... First of all, I don't have to. I'm lucky. I'm not in a profession where I have to. But also.

20:29Speaker 4:But you do look extraordinary for 82.

20:32Speaker 2:Well, for 82, but.

20:32Speaker 1:22, you look extraordinary.

20:35Speaker 2:No, no, for 82, not 22. But I would fear that... You know how when you're talking to a man in a bad toupee, you can't think about anything else? Yes. Okay, so I would fear surgery or Botox or something because you do get obsessed with looking and thinking about it rather than listening to what this woman is saying.

20:58Speaker 4:But tell me, so some people say, but it is my feminist choice and feminism is about choice and if it's my choice, if I feel empowered by injecting my face and having my lips pumped up and getting my cheeks made into chipmunks.

21:11Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, I totally agree. It's her choice. And especially if you're in show business or, you know, any kind of, the pressure to do it. I mean, the women I know who are actors are so pressured to do it in order to keep working at what they love.

21:26Speaker 1:So what do we do to change that?

21:27Speaker 2:Well, we rebel as much as we can. I mean, look at Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep. And she's the most brilliant actress we have. You know, so the more people rebel, the more we will normalize being normal.

21:56Speaker 4:There's this whole selfie culture is something that's reasonably new and baffling to so many of us.

22:05Speaker 1:There's also this overuse of the word empowered.

22:07Speaker 4:So women are sort of self-objectifying themselves in selfies, you know, Kim Kardashian taking her clothes off, taking a picture and saying, this is.

22:14Speaker 1:Empowering, this is so empowering.

22:17Speaker 4:How do you feel about that and this word empowering and how.

22:20Speaker 1:It's used or misused?

22:21Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I'm not here to judge other people. Each person kind of knows their own.

22:26Speaker 4:But where does that kind of fit into the, you know, ecosystem of feminism and.

22:31Speaker 2:Well, it... I mean, I think it is empowering to have our own media. People can get their messages out without going through the mind of an editor, a publisher, a sponsor. And that's great. It is completely foolhardy to think that taking your photograph with no content is empowering. I mean, I feel bad for Kim Kardashian. She's an object of ridicule because it has no content. It's only about the surface.

23:03Speaker 1:And it's like we've taken... In some ways it.

23:05Speaker 4:Feels like we've taken over the role of the male gaze and we're gazing on ourselves and self-objectifying.

23:10Speaker 2:Is that... Well, it's... I mean, you know, the male gaze is the society's gaze and we're... People are... You know, we're the... product of society. What keeps the human race going is that we're adaptable, and that's the good news. And the bad news is that we're adaptable to what is around us. But it's utterly clear that when there's no content, it is totally clear.

23:40Speaker 4:You write in the book about you feel an incredible connection and affinity with women, younger women, like in their 20s and 30s in particular. So often feminists of different generations are pitted against each other as older feminists saying the young ones aren't grateful enough and young ones saying the old ones are irrelevant.

23:59Speaker 1:Where do you fit into all that?

24:01Speaker 2:Well, I think it's wrong for usually, I mean, again, it depends on the situation, but it's usually wrong for older women to say the younger ones aren't grateful because it isn't their fault. I mean, we were active at a time when there was not much reward and a lot of punishment. But that's not the... What do you mean? Well, I mean, there were too few of us, and so we were bizarre and weird, and sometimes got punished even by our own families. But it makes no sense to look to younger women for gratitude. It's not their fault we didn't get... Not only that, gratitude never radicalized anybody.

24:39Speaker 2:So we get radicalized because I didn't walk around saying, thank you for the vote. No, I got mad on my own. So I think it's wrong for older women to expect gratitude from younger women. I think Susan B. Anthony said, our job is not to make young women grateful but to make them ungrateful so that they continue to fight and to get a more fair, just world.

25:08Speaker 1:You talk about in the book waiting... you've had the sense that you've.

25:13Speaker 4:Been waiting for some of your friends to be born and you say about this affinity you have with women in their 20s and 30s, I know that your friends or she writes about, Lena Dunham writes about you. Tell me about the feminists of the younger generation, perhaps the millennials that you're connected with and how did you sort of hook up with them?

25:33Speaker 2:Well, just by the substance of working. I mean, actually, almost everybody I work with is Everybody at Ms. Magazine even was 10 years younger than me, pretty much. And Amy Richards, who I've been working with for 20 years, is way younger, you know, like way more than, I mean, 30 years younger than me, I guess. And Lena, of course, I mean, she just turned 30. She did. Right. So she's 50 years younger than me.

26:01Speaker 4:Tell me about where she fits in and how you two, like what your friendship looks like.

26:05Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, we're just friends. I mean, we're just interested in the same things and excited about new understandings. And I love seeing that she, in her 20s, is writing, directing, acting, producing, you know, at a time when I just was struggling to write imitative things and make a living as a freelance journalist. I just love seeing it. You know, it's just so exciting. And we can help each other. I mean, I may have... some knowledge or experience that's useful to her.

26:39Speaker 2:And she definitely has a whole cultural reference that's, you know, so it's just a great friendship and collaboration.

26:46Speaker 1:Like-mindedness.

26:47Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know. It's just a great friendship.

26:53Speaker 1:Amy Schumer, Beyonce.

26:56Speaker 4:It's a pretty exciting dynamic time for feminism in popular culture, isn't it?

27:00Speaker 2:Yes, it is. You know, sitting in Amy Schumer's movie Trainwreck, I suddenly realized I had never before sat in a movie that was over the line sexual and felt safe. I was not going to be humiliated. I was not going to be eviscerated because it was Amy. It was an amazing feeling.

27:21Speaker 1:And do you consume a lot of pop culture?

27:24Speaker 2:Yeah, probably. I mean, when I go to see something, I don't sit there on Twitter. No, no, no. But I. I do because it's interesting.

27:36Speaker 4:And this idea of Emma Watson speaking at the UN and this whole new generation, now that's created a backlash in itself and people writing about celebrity feminism and how it's, you know.

27:46Speaker 2:Well, that's ridiculous. What's wrong with celebrity? You know, being well-known is like having a little printing press or in terms of more real terms, a little online audience. So why not use it? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's ridiculous that they criticise it. I mean, pay no attention to them.

28:08Speaker 4:The other thing that seems to happen a lot is that when two women disagree, there are lots of pieces or complaints that.

28:16Speaker 1:It's the failure of feminism.

28:19Speaker 4:How do you navigate this idea of being a feminist but still not having to agree with all other women.

28:26Speaker 1:Just because they have a vagina?

28:28Speaker 2:Well, you know, I did not vote for Sarah Palin. There are people who are female human beings who absolutely do not represent women in any way. I sometimes think of them as female impersonators because they're actually representing the other side. And I, for instance, the Women's Media Center, which I helped to start, we protest if they are humiliated in the press because they are female, we protest. but we don't agree with what they're saying. You know, we're absolutely free to say, you know, no, no, no, that's bonkers.

29:08Speaker 4:Because the idea of supporting every woman as being feminism, that's not true.

29:13Speaker 1:I mean, Catlin Moran says that's Buddhism, that's not feminism.

29:16Speaker 2:No, it's not even Buddhism, I hope. Well, that's just.

29:19Speaker 1:Some weirdism of just, I don't know.

29:21Speaker 2:Well, I mean, not every African-American supports Clarence Thomas. He betrays, he's against every majority opinion, you know, and that's why he was put there. by President Bush to run. So that is, at a minimum, internalized oppression because those folks have been made to feel that they have to identify with the powerful group in order to survive, and I can understand that. But it means they're not representing the less powerful group.

29:51Speaker 4:It's been fascinating to see in America there's a lot of these remakes of sort of true crime, the OJ Simpson case, the Clarence Thomas case, looking at Bill and Monica and what happened there.

30:03Speaker 1:That was... It feels like, where was feminism in the 80s? Like, who was defending Monica?

30:09Speaker 4:There was more around Anita.

30:13Speaker 2:You know, I think you're right.

30:14Speaker 1:Did I have a little sleep around that time?

30:17Speaker 2:I was defending Monica and also defending Bill Clinton because the right wing was trying to prosecute him as if it were sexual harassment. For it to be sexual harassment, there has to be some kind of force or reward or something, and there wasn't.

30:31Speaker 1:And Monica Lewinsky's always said it was potential.

30:33Speaker 2:Yes, and I so admire her that at such a young age, she had the courage to say, no, this was my free will. I was in love with my boss, as she says. So I wrote at the time defending Clinton in the sense that, okay, maybe he needs therapy. But it's not a case for sexual harassment law because the right wing was trying to use it against him. And also, you know, because it was free will and because she said it was free will, which I admire enormously, right?

31:08Speaker 2:But she had the, I mean, she was 22 or something.

31:10Speaker 1:And she still says that. You know, she's a very interesting.

31:13Speaker 2:No, I think she's a hero, you know, because she, you know, she was... arrested out of nowhere, put in a hotel suite with all kinds of FBI agents, told that, you know, all kinds of falsehoods about what would happen to her and her family. And she didn't give in. I think that's brave.

31:34Speaker 4:Hillary is very centrist, but there seems to be, I mean, it's been a bit baffling for us in Australia to watch this attraction to Bernie Sanders, who no one in Australia can kind of understand his relevance and his appeal for young women.

31:47Speaker 1:I suppose he's very far left and he's quite idealistic.

31:50Speaker 2:It's sort of like Nader.

31:52Speaker 1:It's like the two old white men.

31:53Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's like Ralph Nader. I mean, it's the appeal of the outsider with a principled position. You know, I'm glad he's... And especially because he's talking about free universal education and young women especially are graduating in huge, I mean, men and women are graduating in debt, but the young women are going to earn a million bucks less over a lifetime to pay it back, so they're very mad. It happens that the president has no influence, has no ability to create free universal education, that you need to work with the state legislatures and get them to stop building prisons we don't need and start funding universities and so on. So he's doing a good thing in saying this is the goal, but of course, you know, it's not a practical.

32:41Speaker 1:And he'll never be elected president.

32:44Speaker 2:No, I don't think so.

32:45Speaker 1:I mean, if he was.

32:46Speaker 2:A candidate, he... No, he's... Listen, I am a lifetime democratic socialist. I believe I'm one of six democratic socialists. And I value him as a diagnostician, but not as a doctor. It's two different things.

32:59Speaker 4:Just finally, I wanted to ask you about the whole issue of transgender women has become a real intersection of conflict among certain feminists.

33:09Speaker 1:I mean, Germaine Greer has.

33:10Speaker 4:Been quite outspoken and been given lots of chances to step back from her quite hardline view that transgender women are not women and they should not be in any way included under the sort of the umbrella that is women.

33:24Speaker 1:Where do you stand with all of that?

33:27Speaker 2:Well, I don't, I mean, it's not like there's a blanket rule for everybody. You know, we have to look at each situation. I mean, But in a big general way, I think it's a good thing that we challenge gender polarity and the whole idea that human beings are stuck in masculine-feminine roles when we all have all human qualities. And the old, old languages didn't even have gender. They didn't even have he and she. Human beings were human beings. How great is that?

34:00Speaker 1:It's a huge jump, but in the way it's backwards.

34:04Speaker 2:No, it's forwards. No, it's a good thing. It's a good thing to get rid of gender polarity because they're prisons, even if it's a superior prison like masculinity is.

34:13Speaker 1:Because of all the stereotypes that go with them.

34:15Speaker 2:Well, it cuts off your humanity. We all have all human qualities, whether we're male or female. It is utterly ridiculous to divide. You know, the old languages didn't have gender polarity. And it got so into patriarchy that gender was given to tables and chairs and fountain pens. You know, how bananas is that? So I think in the overall, it's a really good thing. I can understand that women, some women, you know, if it's treated like just changing your clothes, you know, then women say, wait a minute, you have to experience... what it's like to be a female human being. You can't just go into somebody else's closet.

35:02Speaker 2:But on the other hand, many transgender people have deeply identified with the other gender all their lives. So they have had that experience. So I just think we need to honor each other's experience. And I would not say no platform in answer to Germaine Greer. I don't think it's so great to cut off somebody else's speech.

35:30Speaker 4:You clearly aren't someone who needs routine to feel grounded, or as part of your life on the road, do you create routine on the road?

35:40Speaker 2:Yeah, you create a little routine, it's true.

35:43Speaker 4:What are some of the things that you take with you no matter where you are, or the things that you do that are the same?

35:52Speaker 2:Well, you know, I have my... I still have an old-fashioned paper diary besides an iPhone, and I have, you know, certain hand cream and things. I don't know, just little, little stuff. I used to carry around the same coffee cup because it made me feel comfort.

36:11Speaker 1:I do that even when I'm just going to Melbourne.

36:12Speaker 2:I take my own coffee cup. But mostly I think it's a balance. What I have discovered over time, and it took me a long time, is that it isn't a question of home or the road, it's a balance. And that's what we need. And I think society makes you, we live in an either or society and we need to make an and one, an and society.

36:38Speaker 1:Gloria Steinem, thank you so much. It's been an honour and a privilege, quite literally.

36:41Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you.

36:46Speaker 4:Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.