Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An activist and writer, she is a world renowned feminist who has spent 45 years thinking, writing, and talking about equality.
On the island
Eight records
Well, you know, this uh Judy Collins' song, My Father, is about her own father, but it's also about my father, and my father was a dreamer, as was hers.
And Naughty Marietta was one of those, and I still remember a little bit of the steps.
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen (Queen of the Night Aria)
So, this is the only thing that I ever recognized.
This is partly because of my favorite voice, Phoebe Snow, just a miraculous voice.
Well, Stevie Wonder, Isn't She Lovely?, is a wonderful song in itself because he's singing to his baby daughter. It's also very danceable, and it symbolizes to me all the songs of the 60s and 70s and 80s, and I love to dance, and this is a symbol of many, many, many danceable songs.
Winter (Allegro from The Four Seasons)
I somehow Vivaldi's four seasons. I don't know why, but I figure if I'm listening to Vivaldi's four seasons, nothing too bad can happen.
When I am Laid in EarthFavourite
Well, this is also because of who it is, Jessie Norman. I mean, she was a little girl, an African-American girl in the American South, but she happened to be able to listen to opera on the radio, and so her imagination soared. She's a a miracle of human possibility, and you hear it in her voice.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:22How much have your early nineteen-seventies hopes and dreams of what feminism could deliver for women come to fruition?
I think my dreams at that point were not big enough. I think I was looking at equality, not transformation. And on the one hand, my dreams and ideas have become bigger. And therefore, I think it's even more important than I did before, to make a society in which the paradigm is the circle, not a pyramid, and we understand we are linked, we are not ranked. On the other hand, I realize what a huge victory it is just to know we're not crazy.
Presenter asks
3:05You're very well known as a public speaker, but I've read you say that actually it's public listening that has taught you much in your life. Tell me more about that – what do you mean?
Well, I was a writer because I wanted to avoid speaking in public. And only when I couldn't get published what I thought was most exciting in the exploding women's movement did I end up going out with a friend who was fearless and becoming a speaker. In retrospect, I'm really, really grateful for that because otherwise I would never have discovered that something magic happens when you're all in a room together. People will stand up and say, in the force field of hundreds or even a couple thousand people. Things they wouldn't say to their family or best friend. It's as if it makes an energy field.
The keepsakes
The book
Alice Walker
I think that I would take the color purple because it's a great novel and it's about survival, which I would need on a desert island. Alice Walker is a dear friend, so I could imagine she was there with me.
Presenter asks
6:07Do you think that contemporary activism, so much of which happens digitally online – which is known as clicktivism in some circles – is a good idea?
I mean, pressing send is not activism. Okay, so what is activism? But it is the fuel for activism because you're learning that other people feel the same as you do, that other people are experiencing the same injustice, and if you get together, you can change it.
Presenter asks
6:37How do you combat – goodness knows you must have come up against it over the years – the sort of person at a dinner party who says 'if you take all the differences away between the sexes, you take all the fun out of life'?
Well, I say, depending on how patient I am that each of us is in fact a unique miracle of heredity and environment combined … And we are all human beings. So to release the uniqueness is the important difference. To divide us into groups by race, by class, by gender, is false. We share 99% of everything as human beings. Why on earth would you put us in a box and give us a different label? It's a deprivation, even if people are in the best box. It's still a deprivation.
Presenter asks
21:26When you started to write publicly about the subject of abortion, personally what sort of response did you get from people?
Relief. Really? I mean, because so many women and men who love women and care about women have experienced this and it was a forbidden subject.
Presenter asks
26:25You don't have children. Was that a decision that you made, or was that just how life ended up being for you?
Well, I think uh I thought everyone had children and was marri I thought you were crazy if you didn't. And it was the advent of of feminism and reading and an understanding that you could live in in different ways that made me realize I was happy. So … Although I occasionally thought that I might adopt a child, every time I imagined it, I imagined that I would come upon an eight or nine or ten or eleven-year-old little girl who needed help and I would adopt her. And finally, even I, who am not very introspective, had to realize that it was about adopting myself, you know, because that's the age at which I was probably in the most trouble. … someone once said there's no more reason for everybody with a womb to have a child than for everyone with vocal cords to be an opera singer. It's a gift.
“I think my dreams at that point were not big enough. I think I was looking at equality, not transformation.”
“Because in the beginning just the idea of equal pay or you know the most basic things were considered to be crazy because they were thought to be dictated by biology.”
“We share 99% of everything as human beings. Why on earth would you put us in a box and give us a different label? It's a deprivation, even if people are in the best box. It's still a deprivation.”
“I'm determined to realize it in a deep sense so that I make good use of my time. I mean, I plan to live to a hundred, mind you, but even so, that's not a very long time.”