Get Used to It: Ep. 125, "Betty Friedan & Betty Berzon: What They Taught Us"

(typewriter clicking) (funky upbeat jazz music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It". I'm Sheila Kuehl, your host, guide, I don't know, whatever, for the show. And today, today's show was really sparked by the recent deaths of two women, Betty Friedan, feminist, icon, we might say theorist, although we'll talk about that, certainly writer, and Betty Berzon, who was a psychologist and therapist in the gay community, but also in her own way, affected the way a lot of us think and feel about ourselves and about the movement. So really, about how movements incorporate these ideas, how it's accidental sometimes I think that people become the heroes of a movement, if they do. And I have two wonderful guests today to help me figure out what the heck this show is about, because there's so much to talk about about it. My guest, Christine Littleton, she's a law professor and chair of the women's studies program at UCLA. Welcome, Chris. - Thank you, very nice to be here. - Very good to have you and Phill Wilson, who's the executive director of the Black AIDS Institute at USC. So we've got the blue and the gold, the red and the gold. - The crosstown rivalry. - (laughs) The crosstown rivalry. Welcome, Phill. Happy to have you here. - Good to be here. - Chris, let me start with you, Betty Friedan, a whole lot of stuff has been written about her, especially since her death. Some of it got her right, some of it may not have gotten her right. We both knew her, participated with her in a number of things. To me, there's a question I guess, about sometimes the crossover between movements, about theories, how things get started. I mean she, she really, I don't think knew that she was going to become such a revolutionary in her life. Tell us what you think about her, her early work, and its impact on what became the feminist movement. - Well, you know, I didn't get to know Betty, Betty Friedan, until the 1980s when we cooperated on some litigation that had to do with pregnancy discrimination. But, I remember reading "The Feminine Mystique" and being of course swept up in the notion. What she managed to do was to articulate something that didn't have a name, that was a common experience of a particular group of women that, but that was not named. And the power of naming is very significant. In fact, there's been a lot of interesting research done on the process by which things become named. And then, on the basis of naming, one can make claims and one can find a way of sort of remedy. Sometimes this is referred to as naming, claiming, and blaming, (group laughing) but the blaming is not as crucial as finding a way to articulate that. As we could think of, for instance, Lin Farley's and, and Catharine MacKinnon's coining of the phrase sexual harassment, which also named an experience of many women that had not been articulated before. So Betty's ability to talk about a, a problem that had no name and the, the dissatisfaction of women in a particular way, walk of life, where they had been educated to be active, but required by social conditions to be passive, and that disjuncture for them, her ability to name that and to popularize it really sparked something significant for, for a group of women who had not been, who had not seen themselves as part of either the civil rights movement or the, the workers' rights movement, or the women's rights movement. And they were able then to, to see themselves differently and to see themselves as potentially part of women, of a class of women, who were, you know, oppressed and discriminated against and subordinated in different ways, but that this was a, a common experience of women. And that was very significant and I think she got both a lot of the praise and a lot of the condemnation that goes along with articulating a particular social positioning. - Well, it seemed like a kind of a new moment. As you said, she had not really seen herself as part of the women's movement. And what we think of now as the women's movement, seems very mainstream to us because it became, you know, it percolated through so many different classes, so many different economic classes. So many of us, whatever race we were, people began to almost inhale this notion that the differences that society had imposed on men and women may not all be women's fault, or their, you know, disability or whatever. But there was a movement before Betty Friedan wrote her book that she would not necessarily have identified with that was seen as very radical, more, I think, out of the, sort of the left wing. But it's interesting because she came from a family that itself was a union organizing family, had grown up with this notion of movement and organizing with her. And I think her book was so transformational because it said just regular women, who were always characterized as being quite happy in their role, maybe weren't, and that was very frightening to society and to the women themselves. - Well, it's also, I mean, it's interesting that you, that you make that connection with sort of prior understandings of movements, and of social movements in general, 'cause I think that it is, it's crucial to, to be able to understand the notion that collective action can be effective. And that's a notion that regardless of what social action you're involved in can inspire the rest of your agenda, or analysis, or action. But if you don't have that sense to begin with, then it's very difficult to either, to engage either in articulating a social, a social position or in joining into a collective action. And so I think that the involvement, in fact, if you look at the women's movement and its roots in, you know, in, (laughs) well, depending on how far back you wanna go, I mean it's roots in the suffrage movement, it's roots in the abolitionist movement, it's roots in the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s. The sort of interchange and, and fresh ideas that came out of the anti-war movement in the '60s and '70s, that these and the, and the left, and all of these, and the Black church movement, I mean, these things really entered into, transformed, and enriched that understanding until, until you can say it's percolated through many groups who would otherwise have seen themselves as either too disparate or too isolated to be part of something larger than themselves. - Well, I think that the same is true in a way, though I think it disturbed Betty Friedan eventually, to think of it, the same is true in terms of the LGBT movement. Because since out of the work of Betty Friedan and many others, came this notion about gender, and how you would want to think about gender difference in society. I'm sure 100 gay people had an aha moment saying, "Wait a minute, they're also talking about us," because the reason, the deeply embedded reason for hatred of gay people has to do with the fact that they're not acting correctly for their gender. - Anyone who's stepping outside the rules, whatever, however, the rules are determined or hoped for, (laughs) in fact, I think sometimes the rules are much more aspirational than actual, but-- - I think so too. - But even so, stepping outside them is threatening. You know, you get your sense of identity from where you belong in a particular place, and then it just unsettles it. But, one of the things that's so interesting is that there were, I mean, there were thousands of lesbians in particular and women who were, who were, who loved other women, involved in both the first wave of feminism and the second wave and the, you know, the sort of struggle to how do we understand, how do we understand sex and how do we understand gender, it was necessary, in some ways, to have both, both women who are, whose lives are intimately entwined with men and women whose lives are intimately entwined with other women talking together. Now it may have been unsettling at certain times. I think, to some extent, you know, by the time that I had gotten to know Betty Friedan, she had moved substantially away from a lot of the, a lot of the concerns that had marked her early disagreements with, with certain aspects of the feminist movement and of NOW, the National Organization Women, which now the National Organization for Women, and had seen that the idea of a particular model of human life and human success that was based on not only male lives, but a particular subset of male lives, was problematic for all women and for most men. (laughs) Most of us, not only either could not, or really should not be judged by these particularistic, what we used to call masculinist or, or andro-centric models, and that we needed to find other ways of being in the world. So it was very interesting to, to meet her then at the point at which she was actually questioning how much similarity there had to be in a movement. - Well, remind me to come back to the, the California case that went to Supreme Court about pregnancy. - My favorite topic. - Yes, exactly. But I'm, in thinking about how these ideas and this notion of difference sort of percolated, Phill, I wanted to also of course talk about Betty Berzon, who has recently passed away and, and her place in history, possibly less well-known to the country, or let's say the rest of the country, certainly than Betty Friedan, but an interesting woman, a psychotherapist, or a therapist, who started being sort of therapist to the leaders of the gay movement and a kind of you're all right, the society is sick model, which was a very new one for our community. Tell us a little about Betty Berzon and what you thought about her work. - Well, you know, I think of Benny Berzon as the tiny giant in our community, 'cause she was a small woman and particularly, when you would see her and her partner together, it was always kind of amazing to see them together. Her partner was tall and Betty was short in stature, but she was a powerful force, you know, and similar to, I think it's interesting that we're talking about two Betties here, you know, that a lot of their power grew out of the ability to name their truth, you know, and that was one of the things about Betty Berzon, you know, and we're here in Hollywood and people talk about the therapists to the stars and what have you, and Betty was truly the therapist to the queers. (group laughing) And interesting in a timing way, she also was one of those voices that helped us survive the AIDS epidemic, mentally helped us survive the AIDS epidemic because what happens when you have a community that comes into its own around its sexuality and begins to embrace its sexuality, and then is attacked by a disease like AIDS, you know, and how do you begin to teach, you know, young men, for example, how to prepare to expect to die, and yet to be present until that happened. And Betty did all of that, you know, as a woman actually, because she spoke a personal truth and the power in that personal truth. And again, the whole notion of the naming and the claiming, you know, because she understood at a point and understood the struggle to determine that I am okay, and she had the courage to share that with the rest of us. You know, there was a credible voice that says, well, you know, if you think about it, if you just take a minute, you might come to the conclusion that you're okay. And then through that, collectively, maybe we're all okay, and there's a way to kind of deal with that cognitive dissidence when we see ourselves in one way, and yet we get these messages that say that we are entirely different, you know, and that when we can reflect on each other that, well, yeah, you see the same thing I see that, that maybe there's something wrong with this other message. - Well, she had some experience with self-hatred herself early on. When she wrote her biography, she revealed that she had attempted suicide in her 20s and it was really about sexual orientation. I mean, in that moment, you know, that all of us go through if we recognize this in ourselves as young people, maybe it's better to die than to go through all of what I'll have to go through because of this, because you know you're gonna go through it. I mean, you can't deny it. You're either in the closet with it or out of the closet with it, but it's there. So she really understood. And her work was also very early. I mean, she was doing this, you know, in the '70s. But she also came out of a movement. I mean, she had worked with Carl Rogers, she was part of the community mental health movement, which was really an empowerment movement in and of itself and I think drew some things out of that. - And she was critical in changing the therapist community and the mental health community's position on sexual orientation. And I think the part of her credibility grew out of her own struggle, you know, because the way she reconciled that experience of trying to kill yourself and then deciding to live, came out of an understanding whether or not, whether you decide to stay in the closet or to come out, the truth is still the truth. And so that's what leads people to the suicide, when you know it's not a matter of whether or not I'm open about it, I can't live with this inside myself. Forget to telling other people about it, I haven't resolved it inside myself, and that's the internal struggle that leads people to desperate measures. And because Betty understood that, she was very credible in talking to people on a one-on-one basis, communicating to the mental health community, "Look what we're doing here, on the basis of nothing actually," and then being able to share a whole kind of ethos, if you will, with the whole community. - Well, she was also involved, I think, in some of the research that kind of de, what would you say, you know, made being gay not a mental illness. - [Phill] That's right. - And then insisting, you know, that APA, or helping to insist that APA change their ideas about it. You know, I'm also interested because neither of these women were really academics. Friedan was a journalist, Betty Berzon was a therapist, though both wrote. And I'm thinking about the power of the written word beyond the individual person, because she combined sort of both in an interesting way. She definitely had a one-on-one impact with her clients. But how many clients can you have in the world? And yet, her impact goes beyond that. She really touched the community, people she didn't even know. - And she wrote all the time. She was very prolific in her writings and, and carrying that throughout her life actually, 'cause it's not that, she wrote, her body of work went over a span of time and so you could see the changes and touching people over the span of time. And one of the things that was funny about being in Betty's company, because Betty and Terry were very, very great hosts, and so there would be these remarkable parties, and Terry, her partner, is a great, great cook. And there would be these huge parties over food and there would be these spontaneous salons that would happen where people, I mean, amazing people in our community would gather because they knew everyone and talk about the issues of the day, and kind of have this remarkable support and group therapy session at the same time and not be afraid of whatever issue at the time. In fact, I think quite frankly, the last time Paul Monette was out in public, if I'm not mistaken, was at a Betty and Terry party. And Paul was very, very sick at the time, and yet we all gathered, and he came out in public as sick as he was and he held court and we talked about it. And that was a very social event, but it was a part of, of Betty's therapeutic culture and how you integrate the personal and all of these things together. You know, because even as late as Paul's death, the actual process of people dying was still very, very uncomfortable for a lot of folks. And I think that all of us were very, very clear that we certainly were not going to see Paul again in that kind of public forum, if we saw him again at all. And in fact, for most of us, that was the last time we saw him. - You know, there's an interesting connection that you've made here between like choosing life and, and the context of giving, of sharing food and that, that that choice to live, and to live honestly with oneself, whether or not you take that into public action is probably, you know, where things begin. And from that place, you can connect with another human being. From a place in which you are not telling the truth to yourself, there is no one to connect with. And so collective action, I mean, we can theorize about collective action all we like in an abstract way, but when it comes down to collective action really starts with one person telling the truth to themselves and then telling the truth about themselves to someone else, small or large group. - Absolutely. - And that sort of circle, I mean, I was thinking it's, it's not an exclusive kind of thing. People sort of step up to the plate without knowing that they're going to be involved in something huge, you know, in these huge social changes. You kind of, an idea will strike you and you'll go because a friend said, you know, come along and then you'll take a task or something. You know, like Bayard Rustin ended up organizing the whole March on Washington. I'm sure he didn't go into this whole thing saying, "I think I'll organize a march of a million people on Washington and Dr. King will give this great speech," you know, I mean, it was history. It isn't like it just happens to us, you have to step up and volunteer. But thinking about sort of both of them and the notion of the salon and the notion of organizing and how ideas get out, 'cause-- - But it does begin with the telling of the truth, the truth to power. Now, whether we use Bayard Rustin as an example, who quite frankly, it grew out of a decision on his part to speak his truth. You know, his experience as a Quaker, his being completely honest about his sexual orientation with the entire civil rights movement, and their stories around the conversations that happened when Martin brought Coretta to New York for the first time, to me, Bayard, you know, and how that relationship was influenced and what role Coretta played in the movement and how Bayard orchestrated that. But that only could happen because he found his truth and that's where he was going to be. And when Strom Thurmond attacked Bayard, you know, from the floor of the Senate, it was because that truth was in place and Strom had no place to go. And the same way with both the Betty's, you know, that their truth was just there. And sometimes I think that not only do you not know that what you're starting is going to be great, but particularly in the case of someone like Betty Berzon, I don't think she ever even perceived it that way. I think that to the very, very end, it was about continuing to try to find, you know, her truth and be ever-vigilant in that task. - And, you know, that reminds me of the experience when I first met you and realized that you had been the organizer of a commemorative that had published the commemorative issue, calling it volume one of "The Harvard Women's Law Journal", and I had been managing editor of volumes four and five, and we met around-- - We didn't know each other. - And we said, and Sheila said, "Oh, you mean, it's still continuing." (group laughing) We never expected to have more than one volume. So that's another example of your not knowing at the time that there would be continuity, that there would be a movement, a continuing process of women law students seriously undertaking an analysis of gender and law, and publishing the results, and becoming, and now at this point, there are so many women's law journals in the country that I can't even read them all. I can't, (laughs) let alone afford to subscribe to them all. So that it's that kind of action. You don't know where you throw the pebble in and you don't know how the ripples are gonna go. It also reminds me of someone else who who's recently died, when Andrea Dworkin died. - Right. - I think Andrea had no idea that her telling the truth about her experience of sexual violence and of bringing home to people how prevalent violence was in the lives of women, and of gay men and lesbians was going to be so significant and to change people's ideas about what could be done through law, through education, and through other means, and also had some connection to the mental health that we understand ourselves to have if we know that the violence we're experiencing is not deserved. It's not because-- - Or brought on. - Right, it's not, it's not that we did something that brought the violence, but that the violence is there and we have to deal with it. - Well you know, that's, that's another point that I think these sort of bring us to and I'd like you to explore with me that has to do with there's telling the truth, but then there's the question of meaning. What does the truth mean? Because let's say the truth is that a third of all the women in the United States are beaten by their boyfriends or somebody. Okay. That's the truth. Maybe the truth is for a woman to say, "I was beaten by my boyfriend." That's the truth. But in terms of meaning, people immediately start talking about what it means. It means she asked for it. It means she didn't put dinner on the table fast enough. It means she didn't leave when she could have. It means power, it's all about power and control. You know, people develop theories about it. And I think out of the work of both of these women, as well as other people that we've been mentioning, we started to think about difference and how difference is made to make a difference in society. You know, what is racism? We could, we can name it, but how does it manifest itself and whose fault is it in a way, right? Same with, you know-- - Sexism, homophobia. - Misogyny, homophobia. - Right, homophobia, all of it. So, do you think these beginning steps can, led somehow to our starting to understand the larger social context for this stuff? You know, Berzon saying, "It's not you, honey, it's them." And the same, really with Betty Friedan. - [Chris] Betty Friedan saying, "It's not you, honey," (laughs) it's the life that you're being almost required-- - 'Cause you're both, although you're, you're sort of, as a law professor, you're engaged in women's studies, in these theories. We're, you know, not so much, but I think we've talked and thought about it. So, tell me what you think. - Well, research does enter, enter the public sphere in some of these ways. I mean, people, people who popularize, I mean, I know the term popularize sounds bad, right? But, the folks who actually are able to translate the theories and the research that we come up with in the quote/unquote "ivory tower" and make it real to people are very significant parts of the picture. I mean, I think also of, of my colleague, Anne Peplau, who did some of the earliest research on lesbian relationships, when that was seen to be a field that would not get you tenure, let alone, (women laughing) let alone keep your job, right? But those, that information has to get out somewhere. I mean, universe academia is really a good place to have time and space to think and to bring things together analytically. It may not be the best place for actually getting the information to people and using it, you know, using it to change things. And you need people like, I mean, I just logged onto the, to the website to see some of Betty Berzon's questions and answers, and they're still there and they're still relevant. That there's something about being able to write for, to write excessive, accessibly, (laughs) to be able to give people access to information and not just to create it. Creating it is great. You know, I love, I love being an academic, but there's also a very significant role in disseminating that information, in making connections across, you know, from academia to activism and bringing those things together. - But I wonder how that transformation happened. I mean, with the AIDS movement as well. We used to think that everything was our fault. And then, maybe not at a moment, but it seemed like after a, you know, the fulcrum moment, we didn't. We began to understand societal oppression or whatever. How do you think that happens? (Chris laughing) You can tell us Phill. - [Chris] How do you think that happens? - Come on, Phill. Well, but really, you were there. You could see it shift. - Well, I definitely experienced it in, regarding HIV and AIDS and certainly in the larger LGBT movement. And I don't know that I have an answer on how it actually happened. But, what I, what I know happened for me and what I observed in many people is that life just got easier. It felt better when I felt okay about me. And in some ways, and particularly in, in the deep morass of certainly the AIDS epidemic when it was at its worst, there are times when the only way to actually be at that next death bed was to understand, you know, we're okay, we didn't do this, you know, and there is something that's very, very, very important about being present, especially when no one else is willing to be present. And then I think one of the things that happened though, out of the AIDS experience is that we concluded that, if you will, if you were to define people and this metaphor doesn't really work, but I think it'll make the point, if you define people as those who did what we did, and then those who did other things, well, the folks who did other things, they weren't so hot and the things that they did weren't so honorable. And so why should we use their analysis of us to determine our value? And whether we're talking about the political leaders at the time, whether we're talking about the faith leaders at the time, were all of those folks who wanted to say either, either wanted to be silent, you know, as happened with a lot of our political leaders, or wanted to say that this was God's punishment, that those are not very honorable ways to deal with it. And yet in our community, what we did is we cared for each other. You know, we nursed the sick, we held the hands of those who were dying, we buried our dead, you know, and those are honorable acts. And whether we explicitly understood it at the time, you couldn't do that for so long without somehow, you know, it seeping in to an understanding of who you are, to a point where I think we changed kind of the cultural definition of who we were, or our expectations of who we were to be. And quite frankly, I think that has actually gotten us to the point today where this is a community where people are extremely committed to family. Whether we're talking about a family unit that's two or adults, or a family unit where there's a natural birthed child, or the process of creating families by adopting children and what have you, that was an outgrowth of an understanding that what we did with our dying, primarily brothers, but not exclusively brothers, but with our dying brothers, you know, that was what families do. And the shoulders of that, no one could deny that we deserve to have families. - You know, two things-- - Now that is... - Okay, I'll do this and then over to you. Two things about that, one was it was, to a great extent, it was our brothers and the AIDS epidemic that brought lesbians into what became a much more unified movement. Not because we're all so self-sacrificing, but because it was about family and we recognized that, and we could be there and it was not just about the guys, it was about who we really were in the world as well. The other thing that you were saying where you're either this behavior or that behavior, it helped to define in a way for us that probably the best way to respond for women wasn't just to say, "Let's just be like men, because then we'll be okay in the world." Or for us to say, "Let's just be like straight people." We don't have to be so different, but we don't have to be like them in order to be successful. As a matter of fact, there's a lot about them that's not successful as human beings. We need to find our own way. And I don't know if that took you away from what you were gonna say, Chris, but-- - No, actually, because I was thinking about paradigms, and at the risk of being a, a little academic. (laughs) - [Sheila] Hey, that's why you're here. - I mean, Thomas Kuhn talked about how paradigms shift in scientific discourse, that you have an idea of how the world works and you ask questions based on that idea. So, when there was an idea that the earth was the center of the universe, then people asked questions, scientists and astronomers, and and all those, they ask questions based on that idea. And so they could not find certain answers because those questions didn't occur. And what happens, according to Kuhn, is that these paradigms accrue enough anomalies, enough ways in which they don't explain things, enough ways in which things happen, actions take place that are not explicable on that paradigm. And you can look at that and you could say, all right, here are these people about whom, or here we are, the people about whom the society is saying here's our paradigm of what, you know, of what the gay community is like. And yet, all of these people are doing things that are inconsistent with that, the paradigm shifts. And you cannot predict the exact moment when one more anomaly, one more person caring and making family is gonna shift that paradigm. But you know that eventually it will. It's just like, it's like sand, you know, you put, nobody knows how many grains of sand make a heap, right? - That's right, that's right. - But at some point, it's no longer individual grains of sand, it's a heap. - [Sheila] Or the straw and the camel. - The straw on the camel's back. - That's really what that means. But you know what? Talking as I wanted to come back to about the California case, there was a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court because the state of California gave health benefits to its workers. And they gave men all the health benefits they needed, and they gave women all the health benefits that men needed. (Chris & Phill chuckling) And that was equality, because they treated them exactly the same. So, kind of what came out of Betty Friedan's work were further questions that, okay, women thought at first, I'll just go into the workplace and I'll be happier, I'll be a real person. I'll be treated with respect. I'll even demand to be treated with respect. We'll put shoulder pads in our jackets. We'll take birth control pills so we won't be pregnant people. We'll be non-pregnant workers, just like men, et cetera. But the, so the Supreme Court said that the state of California was not engaging in gender discrimination because even though only women were in the pregnant category, both men and women were in the non-pregnant person's category, and therefore it wasn't sex discrimination and Congress, to their great credit said-- - Excuse me? - Excuse me? (group laughing) And said, no, no, no, if you fire 'em because they're pregnant or you don't give them these, you know, but it led to the discussion about what it means to be equal. - Mm hm. - What does it mean to be treated equally? - Yeah, it's the difference between mathematical equality and social equality. - That's right. - Right. - I mean, in math, yes. You know, one pencil has to be just like another pencil in order to be equal. Two has to equal two. But, for society to think that we have to be the same in order to be equal is a fallacy, right? Mathematical, it's a fallacy. - Worse than that, thinking that treating us the same is treating us equally. (Chris laughing) - [Chris] Right. - And I think that, you know, it's the same, I don't know, I'm sure that there are examples that I'm not thinking of in terms of the way, you know, sort of we are, but it, it goes to assimilation as well. - But it definitely goes to assimilation. And the challenge around, for example, as we currently, you know, are involved in the debate over same-sex marriage and that the opposition that sets as the bar, the measure of a relationship where there's a man and a woman. And so the, your ability to deserve to be treated the same in this area under the law is diminished depending on how far you are from that bar. And it's important to challenge whether or not that bar is a legitimate bar. And for us, I think that it's a mistake to say that we only deserve to be treated fairly, and equally, and justly under the laws of our state, to the degree that we are the same as them. And I would put forward, you know, that, that it doesn't matter if I'm the same. I'm one of those people who actually reject this whole nature versus nurture discussion, because the law should not treat me differently, whether I choose to be this way, or whether I was raised this way, or whether I was born this way. I think it's a false paradigm. - Right. - And that we should be treated the same because that is, you know, what the Constitution is about and that's what a land governed by laws is all about. - Well, and also the, what's the end of that argument? That is, if you were simply straight, you'd be fine. (Chris laughing) You know, if you were a man, you'd be fine. If you weren't a Jew, you'd be fine. - [Phill] If you're White, you'd be fine. - Just across, do it, you know? I mean, so that, that is such a fallacious argument, in addition to the fact that religion is a chosen thing, and you shouldn't be able to discriminate against people who choose one religion or another, I mean, the whole thing is bad. - And it's also not generative, in the sense that, you know, when I was talking about the ways in which different ideas from different movements and from different groups come in and enrich an understanding, to the extent that you deny difference or try to pretend, you know, try to act as if I am just like my male colleagues, you deny the possibility of that spark. I mean, Audre Lorde was eloquent about the way that difference could be a benefit in any situation, that you could in fact, find new ideas, new ways of thinking, help for our social problems, from the very connect, that very interchange and tension between different things. And to the extent that you recognize that difference and valued it, you could gain those benefits. To the extent that you deny it, keep it out, exclude it, make it dangerous or costly, you deny the generative power of difference. - When we speak, we are afraid our words won't be heard, nor welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it's better to speak. - Right. - You know, that's what Audre said. And so, you're absolutely right. You have to claim it. You have to put it out there, because it goes back to the Betty's, the conversation about both Betty Friedan and Betty Berzon, that whole notion of speaking the truth, even when you are afraid. Audre said that the point is not to not be afraid, (laughs) the point is to speak even when you are afraid. - You know, it's so interesting because the people with disabilities movement is beyond our movements, at this point. And we are not, in my opinion, recognizing some of the issues that they have in the same way as others have failed to recognize our issues. There was a wonderful woman who since passed away, speaking of people who've passed away who are heroes, named Barbara Waxman. - Oh, yes. - Barbara Waxman, you remember her, Chris. - [Chris] When we were on the board together at the California Women's Law Center. - She was, I guess you would say severely disabled. She was in a wheelchair. She had some, you know, control over her movements, not all. She had to breathe through a breathing tube, sort of every three minutes. And yet, she was a solid proponent of the sexuality and sexual nature of people with disabilities. They were always treated as though they were asexual, you know, little blobs and wheelchairs, and she was just not just vocal, but vociferous about it. And she drove a big van, you know, and was all tricked up with all these things. But her work, not only about sexualness, but also about wanting to be whole, wanting to be abled again, people who did shock therapy to their legs so that they could take two steps, people who wanted prosthetic devices, people, I don't know, even hearing aids, I suppose, she wanted to talk about people with disabilities as a true movement of difference and how people should not want to be like other people. And it's very difficult for people, you know, me to, but she was so, it educated me so much to listen to her. - You know, one of the things that, that you can take from this kinds of, you know, thesis antithesis, right, is the synthesis of saying, okay, what are the background conditions under which people are forced to choose between wanting to be like everyone else and not wanting to be. That rather than, I mean, when Barbara and I would talk, you know, rather than to criticize the desire, why don't we think about what are the background conditions under which that desire arises? Because we always notice when you do that kind of analysis, you realize that these desires are not sort of blown, they don't come to one in the womb or anything, right? These desires are against a background of what the society considers valuable, what it decides to reward, what it decides to punish or to exclude. And that if we look at it that way, we actually get an additional purchase on what needs to change to increase the equality and freedom under which we live. And so, when we look at the desire to be more like, for instance, my desire to be more like my male colleagues, that desire maybe because, not because of who they are, but because of how society treats them. I might like it if when I walked into a classroom, I got the automatic respect that a male colleague with gray hair, it gets that a female professor doesn't. That's what is creating that desire. And that means that I can look at that situation and say, "What are the ways in which we could alter the culture of the classroom so that there is respect for the substance of what is going on instead of the form in which it appears?" - Well, that's what I first got from the Black Pride movement. The first time I'd heard the word pride used as a sort of an antidote to discrimination and, you know, the word they used to use denigration, which actually means, interestingly enough, blackening. And it was about you're gonna treat me bad, so I'm gonna say just what you're treating me bad for is the best thing about me. - Right. - And I think in a way, Betty Berzon approached her clients, and I think her writing, from that, from that point of view. - No, absolutely, and you're also absolutely right about the Black Pride movement that, and it was critical. I mean, it was absolutely critical that people had to embrace their own blackness. That's what the Afros were all about. That was kind of the rejecting of the notions around defining beauty, you know, and that, and what it does is it, it disempowered the oppressiveness of the time. And in Betty's work, the whole notion of, if I come to understand my beauty, if I come to understand my brilliance, and I'm willing to talk about it and share that beauty, and share that brilliance, then I am less vulnerable to the hatred that's out there in the world. - Some of these things sort of run off like naughty children from the people that give birth to them though. I think Betty Friedan, for instance, I think saw some of the spiraling way out from what she thought kind of was the point of it. She put together a think tank at SC, and we used to meet for lunch once a month, I think it was, and it was just a bunch of women. I don't even know how she chose them, but all, you know, it was kind of like no topic, let's just come in and talk about what's on our minds for the day. It was so interesting, kind of like this only writ large, you know, and it was, but I could see her, sometimes people would say things and she would think that would go beyond where she would wanna go. She had some trouble with the possibility that if the women's movement was too identified with lesbians, for instance, that it would be thought even worse of, and it was having its problems already. And I think that was sort of the fear of what's gonna happen to my kid, which actually happens to parents with gay kids anyway. But did you, you saw that in her. - There is, yeah, I mean, each of us can see only as far as our own horizon. I mean, one of the wonderful things about both of these Betties is because of them, we can see further. And because of us, our students, our clients, our, you know, our progeny in some biological or non-biologic way, are going to be able to see further than we can. When I recognize, you know, I had, I had some difficulty figuring out what to do around transgender issues because I had always, because what had been useful for me was the notion of, you know, the social construction of gender carving the world into two, into male and female, and that that was a paradigm for me. Now what do I do when, you know, when one of my students says, "That's not the only way the universe is carved and there is such a thing as transgender, and it is in and of itself generative." And I go, "Whoa." Can I now transcend my own blinders? And I think, you know, to some extent, each one of us has to have those challenges in order to grow. And I mean, it was interesting to watch Betty in those, you know, in that trajectory, go from a sense of, of that we wanted to cause less trouble, to being willing, you know, to being willing to take a stand that put her at odds with many of the folks that she had been connected with in the past that the, for instance, in the Cal Fed case, in which there was different leave provisions for those who were affected by childbirth and pregnancy. A lot of the East Coast national organizations thought, that Betty had been connected with intimately for years, thought that that was a violation of that same equal treatment. And Betty was willing to step up and say, "No, I'm gonna sign the brief that says what we want is equality, not sameness." So that kind of growth, I think only happens when you're willing to struggle with stuff that's a little tough. - And it happens in all movements. You know, it certainly happened in the Black movement. I mean, it's so funny when you look at the revisionist, revisionism of the civil rights movement, and everyone would have you to believe that, you know, the second Martin Luther King arrived on the stage, every Black minister, every Black leader in the country was right behind him, and that wasn't the case at all. Many were absolutely not behind him because they felt that he was a rabble rouser and they were worried about what would happen to the movement. - And they were afraid. - In the LGBT community, you know, the fact that we now refer to it as the LBGT community, and I remember being in lots of rooms where people would say, "Well, we can make the case for lesbians and gay men, but America will be squeamish around bisexuals." And I remember, in fact, owning a discomfort around including bisexuality in the alphabet soup of our movement, as it is today, and feeling like, well, but you're not being discriminated because you're bisexual, you know, you're being discriminated because part of your sexuality is homosexuality, you know, and I remember making that, making that case, you know. And then when we, when the issue came up of including transsexuals, you know, and that whole issue, people just couldn't cope. And most of it was not around the legitimacy of the inclusion, most of it was around being fearful of how it was going to undermine the work that had gone before. And in fact, it is generative, and that as you, if you are consistent in your theory around change and generous in applying it where it's appropriate, it becomes a generative process. - So what do you see as the sort of new, either theoretical or sort of practical aspects of the women's movement and the LGBT movement? I know, I mean, it may not be exemplary, but for instance, a number of people came to testify for, in favor of a bill so that you wouldn't have to check just African American or Latino or whatever, but that you could express what your, the real mixture of your life was racially. Now, racially, it may be it's gaining a foothold because there's just so many of us just like our mixture of Western Europeans, you know? Finally you can identify as Irish, or German, or whatever it was. But what do you see as sort of the new, I don't know, what's happening? (Chris laughing) (Sheila laughing) - Well, theoretically, one of the interesting things that's happening now is a breaking away from the notion that we have to proceed by direct analogy, that we have to find ways in which a situation's just like, or as much like the other situation as possible in order to extend the analysis or to think about how these things fit together. Let me take an example that is right on the edge. How do we think about the welfare of animals in the world? And, because one way to think about it is, well, to the extent that they're mostly like us, we should get rights for animals, but that's not helpful in really thinking through what our relationship is to the other animals on the planet. And what might be more helpful is to say let's look at the ways in which we are different as well, but in a generative way, in a way that tells us something about how we might act toward the world of other animals, that would be less oppressive and, but would not depend on a notion that, you know, animals should have rights like people, or that animals should be just like people in order to be treated without excessive cruelty. - Well, there's a closer example and that's children. I mean, we make a lot of different laws because people are younger than, some laws 18, some laws 16, some laws 14, which make a lot of sense to us because we characterize children the way we used to frankly characterize women and slaves, which is they can't think anyway, it's okay for us to do their thinking for them. Now, I don't know, it's probably heretical to suggest that there's a similarity there, but you know, and what you're saying is maybe it's not same as. - [Chris] Right. - Or maybe it can't be same as, but-- - But it still can be, we can still talk about a version of justice and freedom that would not depend on the sameness argument. In fact, one of my students right now is working on an independent study project, thinking about rethinking how the family law system might have an incomplete picture of childhood by thinking that all children do not know their own interests. - And to belong to somebody and have someone else decide. - Have someone else decide. - Well, you know, even in the family law arena, the domestic partner law, and this actually goes back to the, what you were saying about marriage, Phill, because there have been some people in the community that have said, you know, as long as we get all those rights and everything, we don't care what they call it. And yet, what they call it has a lot to do with whether we're seen to be human, or a little less than human. But the there's a joke, my sister's a judge, and she said this, you know, they have only bad jokes on judges, but she said there's a joke that is: The question is where are judges buried? And the answer is under the domestic partnership law, (group laughing) because suddenly, you know, all those cases have to be decided. And the question of whether we're same as or different comes right into that, because all we did in California was say, "Here's all the marriage law, it applies to domestic partners. Thank you, go home." And no one knows, you know, whether that's the case or not. - [Chris] (laughs) What does that mean? - In terms of being able to be a stepparent, because you're a domestic partner and, you know, kind of stuff we were talking about kind of in the family show that we did. - Absolutely, absolutely. It is interesting and it is important to be able to think of these things in different paradigms. And I think the marriage debate is an extremely intriguing debate on what is that about. There's a part of me that wonders if this is about our need to be the same, and then there's a part of me that is very, very clear, and it is the part of me that says that if our government is involved, it cannot treat us differently. You know? And so I think that it is a place to have some very, very thoughtful conversations. I'm not sure if we're having a lot of those. I think it's so emotional for all of us that is difficult to have kind of rich, thoughtful conversations on this subject. But if we get there, I think it will be useful to us in a whole bunch of ways. - Well, I have to tell you, Chris, do you have a last thought? Because suddenly there's only like a minute left in the show. - [Chris] (laughs) Uh oh. - The hour goes by so fast for me, but please. - Well, this is generative too. In fact, I think we're opening, in opening ourselves to new ways of thinking, and to having two ideas at once even, that we can model what it needs to be like for all of us, and those debates that need to occur, not only within our particular movements, but also across them. - Well, thank you both so much. Thank you, Phill. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for being with us. - [Chris] A great opportunity. - With honor to Betty Friedan and Betty Berzon, and you know, we're the same, we're different. We're different, we're the same. Get used to it. (Chris laughs) (funky upbeat jazz music)