(00:00:00) I had been writing for 20 years before the women's room was published rather unsuccessfully. I wrote serious novels that I suppose they were political but they were very muted very subtle. There was nothing on the surface below. Of course, there wasn't any way you could put anything on the surface in those days. There was no such thing as the women's movement and even my close friends thought I was crazy, but I was always writing about the same things. And I Grew Older and I saw what happened to a lot of my friends as I would happen to my own life and I got really angry. And so I decided I would try one more time with these two finished novels and at least five unfinished sitting in the drawer. And this time I was going to come straight out because I decided that there is no way you can challenge the major ideology of your period subtly because that is what so many authors had done and if it was subtle enough it got published. It wasn't quite subtle enough it simply confused people and I thought there was just no hope for that method and at the way I had to do it this time was straight on I had no sense of Market or the book world. I really am an academic and even for an academic I'm a very Isolated person. I mean, I live in my head a lot of the time I have friends but they don't know what's going on. You know the book World either. I know now. She loved it. It was the right time for me. That's all and I had no real faith that it would be published either. It's just that I felt it had to be done and that's how that came to be written. No, I don't think that there's any difference in one you're talking about life through the mate J of literature through the filter of someone else's writing in the other you're talking about life through the filter of your own imagination and experience but The totally different modes. I mean there are some things that I I'm kind of my mind is constantly coming up with ideas. And I've just got this automatic file cabinet that is appropriate to be used in nonfiction in that is appropriate to be used in fiction. There's some things you just can't put in one or the other. But I feel as though the vision that I have is the same no matter what I'm doing. And in fact, it's a great relief to me to have the the scholarly work to do because I am not a novice to can turn out a novel a year. I get ideas. They sit I start something. I don't like it. It doesn't grab me in the gut and then I do get one but I have to wait for it to grow like being pregnant. So I let it melt that's what I call it take notes, but them in a folder until it until it really gives me birth pangs labor pain and when it gives me labor pains, I write a first draft. And then I let it sit again for a long time until I had a nice cold clear critical eye to go back and revise. The first parts of the women's room. I first wrote a 1956 I wrote quite an extensive manuscript at that time. I don't know how long but say a hundred and fifty pages and I couldn't finish it. It was just too depressing a story that there was no way out for any of us it seemed there was and I found a way out but most for most people it didn't seem possible. And I don't know that it would have been possible for me either if the world hadn't changed somewhat. But I don't remember how long I left it bleeding heart. I wrote very fast in a fury came back from England after a really horrible promotional trip for women's room. If I get a lot of flak in this country I get 10 times as much there. And wrote this really angry manuscript, which I knew was angry too. Angry. I mean anger is important and I respect it and I like anger but it is it has to be a ceiling on it a control inte and I didn't touch that again for six months when I did revise it my son read both versions and he said I liked the first one better. I mean, you took all the real political stuff out. I thought compared to what other people think that was quite a an odd opinion for him to have Well everything from calling me really vicious four letter word just before the camera gets turned on or calling me pretty bad things right on radio that's happened to me too to just simply insult after insult accusations ranging from 00. All you're trying to do is make money from the women's movement too if it weren't for you essentially is it what that what lies underneath if it weren't for you women would lie down and be quiet and things would be the way they used to be. We wouldn't have these problems which of course is crazy thinking. I am not the women's movement by any means at all. But that is the kind of thing that have it son thinking it's irrational. It's It's quite vicious. (00:05:16) How do you respond? (00:05:17) It depends on who it is and the mode they choose. I mean, I think it really upsets me more when I get it from women. A lot of times. I'll go and 200 submittal western town like this and the newspaper editor doesn't really want to deal with me, but he knows he's got to so he sends this girl and she's 22 and she's got died here and seven-inch heels and her nails at this long and red and she says well, I don't know why you have any problem with men. I mean, everybody says you hate me and I don't have any trouble with mineral and I just I just want to say get out because what am I going to say? Wait? Because that is the only answer just (00:05:59) wait (00:06:00) it will happen to you too. I mean it will happen to her no matter what she does if she gets married and has children. She will have that problem if she happens to have a brain underneath that all that hair. She may succeed and when she gets just to a certain level in whatever she's doing she will be impeded by the male establishment there or in any case no matter what she does she will grow older and older women are you know, simply they don't exist in this country. There's no way for a woman to escape the hatred of men. It's very old and our culture. It's very old and Western culture. It goes all the way back to the very first writings. One of the earliest things we have in Greek is he ziod the works and Days full of anti-female will hate. And if you mail stuff it's everywhere. No woman can escape it. She can only blind yourself to it with men. I know what I'm dealing with their fear of having to look at themselves as human beings, but that's what they're really afraid of and what I'm encountering with women. Is there fear of the loss of a moment of privilege and they don't want to let themselves know that that moment may pass that youth may pass that the the silliness in the flakiness that may endear her to her male bosses now is not going to endear her to them in 30 years is not going to make her successful. It is not going to give her a full life and she doesn't want to know that everyone is really frightened, but it's not so easy to deal with you and it's a constant barrage of Rage I deal with it but it has I say it makes me not want to do these things too often. What they say is that I write idia logical novels, which I find an absolutely laughable statement as if patriarchy itself and the way we think in everyday life were not an ideologies they call that it illogical which is opposed to the prevailing ideology. That's all and it's an easy way to dismiss. It. Feminism is the most subversive movement on the earth. It really does demand that the world change that men James that moral values change that the total dedication to power and control that is ruining not just our country, but I'm afraid the entire world. Be turned towards more Humane goals. And that means that people can't just go and collecting taxes and building MX missiles and neutron bombs to kill the children that we spend so much effort raising and they don't want to think about that. It's I mean the people in power and that filters down people in power couldn't be in power Unless somehow or other their goals were supported by all of us by the people down here. So you go into a bar and grill and you listen to a bunch of men maybe they're talking about football or the boss, but the values are the same control and power the good things in this business of love and compassion and all of that is just you know for women Suitable for women they want the women to go on doing it because after all if women didn't where would they be? But I think that women are starting to demand that men change their ways not that their demand is being heard. I wouldn't I'd be the last to suggest that it is we have to be a lot stronger than we are now, but as I keep saying, you know something that's going on for 7,000 years isn't going to be changed in two decades and we have to feel that we're working not for changes in our own lives so much as for changes in maybe our great great grandchildren's lives are great great great grand daughters and sons And in that sense, it's a kind of religion. Really. I think it's entered the language, you know, there are a lot of people who have never read Freud would go around talking about ego super-ego libido and so forth and sometimes they know what the words mean. Sometimes they don't they have a general idea. Anyway, Marxism entered the language so that we all know what we're talking about when we talk about the general good and and and labor as capital and so forth. Feminism has entered the language the concept of feminism when I really realized first what was happening was quite a few years ago and it was in Time magazine that Bastion of patriarchy about some women on strike in West, Virginia. Because they've been waitresses and they were being you know pay the usual piddling wages that waitress is getting they want to go down in the mines their fathers had been in the mines. I mean, it's this is not exactly the best way of life, but you can see how bad things were because they could have gotten decent pay and the miners had absolutely no bad luck for a woman just as they always say bad luck for a woman to be on a ship or any place where they were men. And they brought this case and lots of journalists converged upon them. They had no idea what women's lib as it was called was or what feminism was they wanted those jobs. That's all and I thought that's it. That's the go and I do think that's happened very widely. I think that the feminist movement if you can talk about any top to it if there is a top to it, Is in the same condition that perhaps the black movement was in in the late 60s, which is when you reach a certain point of visibility you start to find quarrels among yourselves the major quarrel, I think well for a while the major quarrel was lesbianism or or no, you know, I think that that got ended in the Houston 77 conference, but the major qual the last couple of years has been those women who found the passage of the ER a the most important job putting all of their energy and all of their money into that and resenting women who didn't which I really can't take sides on either. I think that people ought always to do what they want to do what gives them pleasure because I think what gives you pleasure is what you're going to do best and you're going to put your entire being behind and so if you really think that saving the whales is a really important thing to do I think It's absolutely what you should do. But I also agree with the other women that unless we can legislate some of the gains we have made we will lose them because it has happened before over and over and over again in human history. Unless you can institutionalize women's rights in some way. They can be taken away as they are already being taken away under the present Administration. There's a Title Nine that's institutionalized on the books as a title seven on the books, but this Administration is not going to pay attention to those laws. Everything that happens puts women in a double bind that is a function of patriarchy it's built into patriarchy. Let me give you an old-fashioned example. They were times in Europe. There are still places in the world when women could not own property. They could not inherit when they got married middle-class or upper-class women their fathers would pay either a dowry or it was had different names a kind of Dowry to the father of the man. They were marrying in some places it sometimes it was paid directly to the husband in return the woman was given a kind of widows dour so they differ husband spent all her money and all his money which he frequently did. He couldn't leave her completely panelists that there was this little bit of money set aside for her in case he died her and the children she could not inherit from her husband. She could not inherit from her father the the money would pass either only two sons or two only to the oldest son. In various places because families wanted to hold onto their own money. They didn't want to pay this Dowry. They wanted the laws change so women could inherit and they did this thing so women could now inherit from their fathers and they could leave money to their daughters, which is all very nice except at the moment that happened women's rights in the world absolutely were curtailed because now they had money attached to them and so their father totally ruled their lives or their husbands totally rule their lives. This is the double bond situation women are in in any patriarchal culture. You fight one thing. Let's let's give a more modern example. You think that the world must change you think that ABC armaments should not be making nerve gas. So you think that the way to deal with this is to go to work for ABC armaments right and get other women to work with you there and hope to change the focus of their attention. The first thing that will happen is you probably won't get a job. The second that will happen is if your attitude isn't right and the attitude is all important in the business world and that attitude means deference to superiors. The company is Right keeping your emotions and your sexuality completely hidden and all of those things that men have to pay to join you you have to pay to after a while you start to think just like them they're bigger than you and they get you before you get them on the other hand if you don't go to work for for ABC munitions Who is going to raise a critical objection we have to shunt ourselves back and forth between point and point we have to do what we can do, but we have the heart to do what we have the courage to do but it is not something we are going to just change its it's going to take a long time. Well in the first step is always to get your own head into a place where you really challenge the values of the world you live in when you when you really turn off the television set and decide that you are not Alice or Laverne and Shirley or Mary Tyler Moore and your life doesn't bear any resemblance to it that your life is maybe in many ways rotten and that there are perhaps some things you yourself can do in your own attitudes to improve at least the way you feel about yourself. Maybe you can improve your relations with your children. Who knows the second thing to do is to find women friends and gets a mutual support because very few women get support from the men in their lives men are not geared to give it. Emotional support is what I'm talking about mostly but also the kind of honesty that you get in friendships that allows you to challenge your own prejudices to see through your own old offenses your guilts and all of those things. I'm talking about really kind of shrinking each other out but I think we've been friends do this for each other all the time. And the third thing is to find out what matters to you. What seems terribly important to you. Is it battered children that matters to you? Is it political action that matters to you? Is it saving the whales and do what gives you pleasure within that field? I mean, it's I it's crazy to say everyone should go into political action. Everyone isn't geared for it nor is everyone geared for a solitary life. It has to be what Drew what's fun? And by doing this you do several things you sort of pull yourself together. You have a kind of Integrity because your life and your desires and your abilities are one thing. You have work that pleases you that gives you pleasure. I mean I give you very much money in most women don't have very much money. But you know, as long as you have enough to eat, I mean, I'm not in favor of poverty. I hate it but a lot of money isn't necessary for a decent life. It brings you into touch with your own life. You have a kind of Vitality. You will be living your own life in a way that most people don't they live through their lives. They don't live them because they're very busy doing what they think they're supposed to do. I think if half the women in this country could do though, if a quarter of the women in this country could do that we would be winning lots of Victories, but we we don't have the unity. This is a very unusual Revolution. It's not people with black skins against people with white skins. It's not people who speak Algerian against people who speak French. It's people who live together who sleep in the same bed who give birth to male children who have fathers who have brothers. They love who share a class who share a common history. This is not like any Revolution ever waged on this Earth before We're not trying to assimilate as say labor tried to be assimilated within the system as they for instance. One of the most effective small mini revolutions that I can think of is the one in the 50s where the the movement against anti-Semitism which used a whole lot of educating the public, you know, and really I think was enormously successful. I'm not saying there's no anti-Semitism. Of course there still is but I mean a Jew can live anywhere can go to Harvard and enjoy most clubs. I mean everybody has their own little exclusive things, but who cares it's not it's not a detriment I think in this country to be Jewish except maybe once in a while you get your feelings hurt, but I guess everybody does once in a while. It's really been I think a very effective Jews were assimilated into the culture women already are assimilated their assimilated as objects as functions of men as wife mother sister daughter not as people it's a totally different form of Revolution. It's a totally different goal. Our goal isn't to be assimilated into the society. We're already in it. We want to change this Society. We want to change its moral values moral values that have been informing it for 7,000 years. This is very hard. There's absolutely no no nothing in history. That was like it nothing to help us. We're stumbling along. I think I think we're remarkable. I think we've done a lot in 20 years. I think the women I know are extraordinary human beings and I think it's being good for some young men to I think it's helping some young men a great deal letting them be more human. But of course it's slow and of course it's terribly hard. But so is it terribly hard to live in this life as a woman? Who's not a feminist? If you have any Pride. You know, it's not as though I were looking at you and saying oh look what I suffered and you don't have to suffer that because we are in this together you are going to suffer to the battle isn't over. I am grateful that you're a feminist. I'm grateful that you're in it if all the young women just said, well we've got as much as we want and we're happy and we don't want to fight because of course, it's not fun to look at your life and think it's going to be one long battle. And I can understand why they don't want to but still it makes me feel sort of a drift to know that young people are coming up and saying is so much more to be done. And that is that is what gives one heart. That's why when did it in the first place. I mean who imagined that you're going to be able to change all this in 10 or 15 years. I mean anyone would sense knew better. This depends very much on the political climate of this country right at the moment. I'm very pessimistic understandably. I see a whole lot of tendencies in this country towards very strong totalitarian kind of government. I think that the chances of nuclear war and and you may not think I'm an expert but I'm not but I really do know some experts Franklin on the man who got the Nobel Prize said that if up until now the clock ticking down, you know, the time between us and nuclear war was standing at about a quarter of 12. It's not about three minutes of 12:00 the chances of nuclear war seemed to be greater now than at any time in the past. Even if we don't have a nuclear war multinational corporations are taking over the world. They have no concern for human beings whether in this country or any other Fish in the Catskill Mountains are dying from acid rain that comes from over Chicago this we're in trouble and if things get bad enough, we can forget feminism and we can forget anything except survival and maybe we won't even have to worry about that. But I like to operate. I'm an old card player. And I feel that you always play as if you had him and you always play to win because who knows someone could just make a mistake and you and you'll make it you must operate with faith with the assumption that life will continue that we have a chance that the human race is not this evil vicious creature that some religious people. I don't know how they can call themselves religious. But that's in the Bible imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. I think these people really think we deserve Oblivion, but I don't and I'd like to see future generations and I'd like to have some trees for them, you know some flowers and so forth. I'm just going to go on operating in my life as though that was a possibility. I think it's the only way you can function really Men could fit into the feminist movement now if they chose unfortunately, it's very hard again in one generation to unlearn Old modes and what I see young men doing on the whole is one of two things one is they are modeling themselves on their grandmothers and being, you know, totally passive and non-assertive and so forth, which is what we were fighting to get out of I don't know why they want to get into it and on the other hand, they're using feminist rhetoric to disguise the same old egotism and exploitation. That was always there. But it's up to women. Of course, it always is up to women, you know to keep them in line to do not have them get away with it. And you know, women are just people they're not always so smart. They don't always see what people are doing what men are doing they're not always aware and there are still lots of women who would very happily bandage any man just to have one. So as I say, there's no Unity life will just go on it just depends on how many of us there are how eloquent we can be how much courage we had.