Debbie Millman:
Sonia Passi is the founder and CEO of a national organization named FreeFrom. Free from what you might ask? Well free from what our society and the whole world is not very good at talking about. Free from gender-based violence, free from intimate partner violence, and free from violence against women and children. FreeFrom is the organization that has helped tens of thousands of survivors and is also helping to change the conversation about how survivors can heal and thrive. Sonia Passi is a veteran activist who’s been at it since high school, and part of activism is getting the word out, and one way to get the word out is to make a movie. So Sonia recently produced the documentary Survivor Made about women who have turned their pain into possibility. We’re going to talk about the film and a whole lot more in today’s episode. Sonia Passi, welcome to Design Matters.

Sonia Passi:
Thank you for having me, Debbie.

Debbie Millman:
Sonia, I understand that when you were five years old, you started an illustrated bookmark-making business. That is rather entrepreneurial for a very little girl.

Sonia Passi:
Yeah, my parents are entrepreneurs and for as long as I can remember, every year on Diwali and on New Year’s Eve, they would take us on a tour of our hometown, Manchester in England. And the first stop would be the studio apartment in which they both lived with 2 sewing machines that they ran 24 hours a day manufacturing sweaters. And one of them was always awake to make sure that the thread didn’t catch. And then the next place we’d go was the one-bedroom apartment where they had my brother. And then we’d go to the first Cash & Carry they had and then the first warehouse. And so I think at a very, very young age, entrepreneurship was not just told to me, but shown to me. It’s the only explanation I have for my bookmark business at the age of five.

Debbie Millman:
I’m so intrigued by this. First of all, what kinds of illustrations were you making on the bookmarks?

Sonia Passi:
They were pretty exclusively Disney characters. Simba and the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

Debbie Millman:
And how much did you charge? And what do you anticipate doing with your profits?

Sonia Passi:
Well, one of my biggest regrets as an adult is that I would charge more for my bookmarks than my little sister’s because, at five years old, I’d deemed mine to be better and worth more than hers. But we used the money that we made to buy plastic food from our pretend restaurant that we had.

Debbie Millman:
Wonderful.

Sonia Passi:
And so it was very much like a full cycle of, in our little world, we were using the money to live and pay rent and feed ourselves.

Debbie Millman:
But I love the idea that you were using your profits to fund yet another business.

Sonia Passi:
Exactly.

Debbie Millman:
I believe you still have a passion for paper products and collect stationery.

Sonia Passi:
Very, very strong.

Debbie Millman:
Paper. Actual paper. Do you still handwrite letters?

Sonia Passi:
Yeah, I’m still a fountain pen gal.

Debbie Millman:
Oh wow. So OG.

Sonia Passi:
Yeah, fountain pen, the wax seals that you stamp on to seal your envelopes, personalized stationery. I handwrite all my notes. I’m very analog in the way that I think and I work.

Debbie Millman:
You mentioned you were raised in Manchester, England, I believe you were also born there. And aside from your fascination with paper products, what kind of little girl were you?

Sonia Passi:
I was always very confident. The stories I’ve heard from when I was young are that I used to stare intensely for long periods of time at all of my dad’s friends. And these older men would get very nervous by my stare and my dad would always tell them, “She’s trying to figure out if she can trust you.”

Debbie Millman:
Wow.

Sonia Passi:
So I definitely had a capacity at a young age to make grown men feel very nervous.

Debbie Millman:
I did not think you were going there with that statement. Very good.

Sonia Passi:
But I was full of life as a kid. My mom used to describe me as the bubbles of champagne.

Debbie Millman:
Where do you think that early confidence came from? Usually that comes from good parenting, but I’m not sure in your case if that’s accurate.

Sonia Passi:
I think part of it is who I am, and I think part of it is that I have the very good fortune of having gotten the best of both of my parents. My mom really is a force to be reckoned with, a manifesto of all of her dreams. My father is too. And so I got that. I witnessed it and I modeled it. And certainly in my younger years I was very much raised with the idea that I could do and be anything that I wanted to be. And that’s a great blessing as a little girl.

Debbie Millman:
I read that from a very early age you wanted to be a police officer.

Sonia Passi:
I did.

Debbie Millman:
But in a complete about-face by the time you were 16, you created an anti-violence Amnesty International community group in your high school. What inspired your interest in social justice and human rights at such a young age?

Sonia Passi:
When I was a teenager, Tony Blair was the Prime Minister of England and his wife, Cherie Blair was a very famous and successful human rights lawyer. I think it was the first time, it was sort of like the equivalent of Hillary Clinton here in the US, but it was the first time that a Prime Minister’s wife was a powerhouse in her own right. And it was a very public and prominent display of a woman with power and leadership. And so it was a model I think for a lot of young women in the UK at the time. And so 12 years old, I am learning about what a human rights lawyer is and therefore what human rights are. And the through line between wanting to be a police officer, I think it was a police officer, and then it became a teacher, and then it became a pediatrician, and then it became a human rights lawyer was I have known my entire life that my life is in service of others. And so it was just sort of finding what that looked like for me.

Debbie Millman:
You went to the University of Cambridge for your undergrad degree and then went on to get a master’s of philosophy. What made you decide to go back to school to pursue a law degree at UC Berkeley at that time? Was it that realization that yes, I want to be a lawyer? What happened in that timeframe between the master’s of philosophy and then wanting to go on for the law degree?

Sonia Passi:
So at 16 when I started this Amnesty International group, the very first pamphlet that they sent me in the mail was around their campaign that year, which was Global Violence Against Women. And I remember reading, “One in three women globally will experience gender-based violence.” And I was so utterly shocked, not by the statistic, but why this was the first time that I was reading it and the first time I was reading it was on page two of a pamphlet that I sent away for in the mail. Because it was very clear to me that this was a global crisis and should be breaking news every single day, front page of every newspaper. And in that moment without having any consciousnesses to my own experience. But in that moment, it crystallized for me that this was my life’s work. At that age, I started hosting domestic violence awareness weeks at my high school that were intended both to educate people about the issue, but also to raise money for local shelters.

I then went on to do similar work at Cambridge, and by that point I knew this was my life’s work. I had absolutely no idea what contribution I had to make to it. But because it had been introduced to me as a human rights issue, not as a domestic issue, not as a personal issue, but a human rights issue, I felt clear that understanding law and how you create laws and change laws and policy was going to be critical to my future. And so I actually chose to go to law school and I had the good fortune to go to law school and be able to afford to go to law school knowing that I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but there was a certain piece of education that I needed in order to enact the kind of change that I wanted to.

Debbie Millman:
During your studies, you were also a JD Fellow, which meant you were 1 in 12 women law students selected nationally based on leadership potential. You also worked as an intern for the US House of Representatives and were a volunteer for Obama for America before he became President. So at that point, were you considering a career in politics?

Sonia Passi:
I actually was. I had previously interned for a parliamentary member in the UK. At that age, I felt very strongly that politics was a way to create change and certainly that was a different time politically than it is now, and there was a lot more hope and potential when I was younger. And then I spent time in DC interning with the House of Representatives for a member of Congress and volunteering nights and weekends for the Obama campaign in Virginia. And what I learned in that time was that the real innovation, the real systems change doesn’t actually happen in DC. It happens outside of DC. And then I went to California to go to UC Berkeley and I saw some of the most groundbreaking organizing and community work and systems change work happening there. And I understood better that there’s a lot more that I could do with the skill set and the vantage point and perspective that I have outside of DC than in DC.

Debbie Millman:
When did you work at Morgan Stanley? I know you were an associate at Morgan Stanley and I was trying to, as I was doing my research in prep for the show, try to fit in exactly when that was and I was having some difficulty.

Sonia Passi:
Yeah. So, during law school, I started my first non-profit organization in the domestic violence space. It’s called the Family Violence Appellate Project. It’s still a thriving organization out of-

Debbie Millman:
Oh yeah, I want to talk to you about it. I have that. That’s next.

Sonia Passi:
And got really clear in that time period that where my skills and my passion connected was around filling in the gaps in the work that is being done to address gender violence. But when I graduated law school, I was not a citizen and I needed a visa, which meant I needed to work for a big corporation or company of sorts to sponsor that visa. And my options were banking, consulting, or law. And as much as I had loved law school, there was nothing more boring to me than the practice of law.

Debbie Millman:
Why is that? Why is that?

Sonia Passi:
Because at least at a junior level, I have no clue what it’s like at a senior level, but it’s very much research and writing. And one of the hardest things for me in my education and I had a long education was feeling so unhelpful because I was sitting in these halls of higher learning thinking and there was no doing. All this skill and all this talent and no one was doing, everyone was just thinking. And the practice of law as an intern at least felt very much the same.

Debbie Millman:
So the choice to go to Morgan Stanley, did you want to understand money and the business of money better or was it just visa-based?

Sonia Passi:
Yeah, it was two things. It was one thing I learned starting my first nonprofit is that nonprofits are businesses and you need the same business rigor to run them well, to be financially responsible, to have healthy reserves, to understand budgets and forecasting and all the other sides of running a business. And I didn’t have that in my toolbox. And then the other thing that I had learned during law school was gender-based violence is an economic issue.

Debbie Millman:
In what way?

Sonia Passi:
So the Family Violence Appellate Project, what we were doing was we were appealing domestic violence cases. So I was talking to potential clients, all of whom had left the abuse and all of whom had lost custody of their children. And the reason they had lost custody of their children was because they didn’t have the means to support their children. And these were women who were sometimes 3, 4, 5 years out of the abuse, but they were still homeless and they were living in their car or they were living on someone’s couch. And this was a pattern. It wasn’t just a one-off.

And what I was learning through this was gender-based violence is so economically devastating. It is not only extremely expensive, but economic abuse is so insidious and pervasive. Not having access to your own cash, having debt in your name that you don’t know about that destroys your credit score, having your bank account stolen from or monitored, being forced to sign documents that take away your financial autonomy. It became very clear to me that this is an economic issue. It is not something that we are addressing as an economic issue, and I needed to have a better understanding of economics in order to better address it.

Debbie Millman:
The Family Violence Appellate Project was the first nonprofit organization in California to provide pro bono appellate legal services to survivors of domestic violence and worked to overturn dangerous trial court decisions. And it also set legal precedents that protect survivors rights. And you did this at 23 years old. Can you talk a little bit about some of the cases that you worked on at that time?

Sonia Passi:
Yeah, and I should be clear, I was not a lawyer and therefore I never worked on cases. But I hired an extraordinary executive director at the time who had a lot of appellate experience and led that work. And I was supported by my mentor and law professor who had created one of the most rigorous domestic violence law programs at Berkeley Law around the world, one of the first and one of the best. So there were experts around me that were doing the work. I was setting up the infrastructure to be able to do the work, hiring our board, raising the money, crafting our vision and mission and strategy. But these early cases, the thing that started all of this was I was sitting in my domestic violence law class and my professor, her name is Nancy Lemon, said there is a presumption in California codified in law. “There is a presumption that the non-abusive parent gets custody of the children, and yet survivors are more likely to get custody of their children if they do not mention the abuse in court.”

Debbie Millman:
What? What?

Sonia Passi:
And of course you and I know very well Debbie the link between domestic violence and child abuse. And so it was acutely apparent to me what was happening here. Survivors were losing custody of their children. They didn’t have the financial means to appeal those cases because it’s incredibly expensive. And then those children were experiencing ongoing abuse and there was nobody to interrupt it. So my professor said off the cuff, “Would be really great if we could find someone to appeal these cases for free.” So I went up to her at the end of class and I said, “We should appeal those cases for free.” And she said, “Okay.” And I think she had absolutely no idea what she was saying okay to, but I think it was maybe 8 weeks later, we had filed our 501(c)(3) paperwork and we were off to the races. And so in those early cases, we really prioritized cases that would require that this presumption that the non-abusive parent get custody be enforced and it worked.

Debbie Millman:
Good for you. Good for us. Good for everyone. How did that experience shape your approach to supporting survivors of family violence overall?

Sonia Passi:
It helped me see a couple of things. It helped me see first of all, just how you start an organization and that organization was statewide in focus and FreeFrom’s work is national in focus. I think it helped me dream bigger. It helped me see what was possible. It helped me see what I was capable of doing, but it really, really honed me into this massive gap. We think in our society, we think of gender-based violence as beginning at a moment of acute crisis, a moment of life and death and ending shortly thereafter. So all of our resources and support for survivors is short-term, temporary band-aid relief. What I was seeing because I was working with survivors who were many years out of the abuse was this is a lifetime problem and that it has both economic causes and it has economic consequences, but nothing is being done to address those economic consequences, which means survivors are always in that moment of acute crisis. They can never move past it.

Debbie Millman:
4 years later, 2016, you founded FreeFrom, how did the Family Violence Appellate Project lead you or motivate you to start your own nonprofit? And what is your involvement now with Family Violence Appellate Project?

Sonia Passi:
I am an extremely big and fervent champion of the Family Violence Appellate Project, and I am so proud of … You have a vision for something and then it far exceeds your vision and that’s so powerful to witness and we can’t do anything alone. I stepped away from the organization about a year and a half after I started at Morgan Stanley. I continued to do a lot of fundraising for the organization while I was at Morgan Stanley and then I went through my own personal life crisis and something had to give at that time. And at that time it was the Family Violence Appellate Project, but it didn’t need me at that point either. So it wasn’t a detrimental moving on.

But it taught me everything that I needed to know about what existed and what didn’t exist for survivors. And while I was still involved with the Family Violence Appellate Project, I was starting to form FreeFrom in my mind. It was percolating, I was starting to write out what I imagined it could be. Again, I was not a citizen. I couldn’t work on it full-time, but it was there. And when the opportunity arose for me to get it off the ground I did.

Debbie Millman:
FreeFrom is unique in its focus on the intersection of economic justice and intimate partner violence. What led you to address financial security as a core solution?

Sonia Passi:
So, one in three women, one in two trans folks in the US is going to be subjected to gender violence in their lifetime. And the number one obstacle to safety for survivors is economic insecurity. So as I was thinking big and lofty about how we move towards a world in which there is no gender violence, I felt like I couldn’t do that without addressing the number one obstacle to safety. And my initial vision for how FreeFrom would do that was one thing. And now FreeFrom has far expanded beyond that, but I firmly, firmly believe that everything begins with first investing in survivors. All of our solutions require us to first invest in survivors. Prevention work doesn’t work if we don’t invest in survivors. And so FreeFrom takes the approach of one, this is an economic issue that has to be addressed as such. And two, we have to stop thinking about this problem as existing in this short timeframe and understand it as a generational problem, a lifetime problem that requires support and resources at every step of the way.

Debbie Millman:
FreeFrom focuses on creating financial security for survivors of domestic violence. You do this to ensure that they can move forward by being able to thrive on their own.

Sonia Passi:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
Can you talk about the ways in which you do this? How does FreeFrom help support survivors for the rest of their lives essentially in helping them create new pathways of independence?

Sonia Passi:
We do a lot of different things, and this is very intentional because this problem in our society is of such great magnitude that there is no one solution that will fix it. So, taking this economic lens, we work directly with survivors, providing them with emergency cash, and this is no-strings-attached cash. They can spend it how they need it. Most people are spending this money on food, rent and utilities. But to date, we have been able to offer grants to over 9,000 survivors in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. We have a savings matching program where we are matching survivor’s savings dollar for dollar until they get to $1,500 in savings so that they have a cushion, a financial safety net to fall back on. We have our social enterprise gifted by FreeFrom, which is an online store that is both exclusively selling products made by survivor entrepreneurs, but also providing living wage work for survivors to run the store. We have a peer-to-peer resource-sharing network called My Next Steps, where survivors are coming together to build financial confidence and financial autonomy together.

Those are the ways in which we work with survivors directly, but then we’re a systems change organization, so we believe this is a systemic problem. Everyone in our society has a part to play. So we work at a federal level to change laws. We work with financial institutions to do more to support survivors. With employers, to do more to support survivors who they employ. We’ve been able to get a number of big corporations to adopt a paid and protected gender-based violence leave policy so that if survivors are in a life or death situation or they need time off work to relocate or God forbid, need to get a rape kit done or go to the hospital, they’re not going to lose their job because they have to take time off that they don’t have or they don’t have to deplete their sick days to deal with what is not a sickness but a societal problem. A couple of years ago, we categorized the laws of every single state and determined whether they supported or hurt survivors’ economic security, and we graded every state.

Debbie Millman:
Is that the map and scorecard?

Sonia Passi:
That’s the map and scorecard. And what we found was most states are really working against survivors’ economic security, and we gave every state suggestions on how they could do better. And since we launched that map and scorecard 3 years ago, there have been over 600 pieces of legislation introduced across all 50 states that would create more supportive environments for survivors and their finances. So we’re really pushing everyone to do their part. Our states, our federal governments, our local governments, our employers, our banks, credit card companies. At a future date, we want to start to focus on health insurance companies and educational institutions. But everything that we do is to end gender violence and continues by getting every single person to do their part to invest in survivors.

Debbie Millman:
How do you go about getting our system to change policies, whether it be insurance companies or healthcare companies or corporations or the legal system?

Sonia Passi:
In a lot of ways, I think FreeFrom has been so successful in its first eight years because this is an idea that was a long time coming. And so even after eight years, there is still so much low-hanging fruit that we’re picking and there’s still so much momentum there and so much to do there. So I always approach this in two ways. The first is I focus on the lowest hanging fruit.

Debbie Millman:
What’s an example of that? What’s an example of lowest hanging fruit in your field?

Sonia Passi:
Great question. Low-hanging fruit is the employers or the state legislatures that really want to do something about this issue, but they just had no idea that they could. To me, that’s low-hanging fruit and it’s part of why we’ve been so successful is there’s so many people that actually want to do something about this. It’s just that our narrative and our framework wasn’t talking about this as an economic issue. So it wasn’t top of mind. FreeFrom does not have time to convince anybody who doesn’t believe we should be ending gender violence, that we should be ending gender violence. That’s not where we want to put our energy.

But then the other way that I look at this is there’s the low-hanging fruit. There’s the people that really want to do something. And then for the people that can be influenced to do something, what influences them? What are their levers? Is it public pressure? We figure out how to put public pressure on them. Is it government interference? We figure out how to get the government to interfere. Is it FOMO? We figure out how to create FOMO.

So for example, with employers, employers were getting a lot of pressure from women’s resource groups internally or other employee resource groups to do more to address this issue. And they wanted to appease employee desire. They wanted to listen to their employees and do something. And we had the policy written for them to adopt. Or with banks, banks said to us, “We agree with everything asking us to do, but we’re a heavily regulated industry. We need the regulators to tell us what to do.” So we said, okay. And we went to the regulators. With states, so often if a neighboring state passes a policy, they get competitive. New York doesn’t want to not have what New Jersey has if it’s good. And so then we had played to that desire to keep up. So I think not trying to control or change hearts and minds that we can’t, and focusing where we can and truly understanding what motivates and drives people is the way to do it.

Debbie Millman:
You talked about being able to provide a living wage for everybody that is employed by FreeFrom. Talk about how you do that. You are also the CEO of CHANI Inc. which is an extraordinary empire now of an app.

Sonia Passi:
Non-colonial empire. Non-supremacist empire.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. Women-run. Where you’ve helped create a platform for self-awareness through astrology. Several years ago, one of your job descriptions went viral because it was quite a generous opportunity that you then responded and said, “This is what everybody should be able to do.” Talk about both financial models and how you are able to not only provide what is a living wage, but also a very generous package of paid time off and insurance and several other really generous perks.

Sonia Passi:
So CHANI is a for-profit company, and FreeFrom is a non-profit company. They both have the exact same benefits. Both have a salary floor of $80,000 base salary, which means nobody makes less than that as a starting salary. On top of that, we have about $5,000 in stipends that everybody gets, personal and professional development, wealth building. FreeFrom offers eight weeks of office closures a year, which means the entire office is closed for that time period. We have paid and protected gender-based violence leave, we have unlimited menstrual leave and a bunch of other benefits. We cover full medical, dental, vision for you and your family. That medical, dental and vision begins on day one of employment. There is no probation period, and both CHANI and FreeFrom are thriving.

My whole life’s work is basically about power. Gender-based violence is about abuses of power. I hold tremendous power as a CEO, and so I’m in a constant conversation with myself about power and how to hold it wisely. One of the most important lessons I learned early on at FreeFrom was I might be unconscious about my power. I might choose to downplay my power. I might choose to ignore my power. But the fact of the matter is it still exists. And so the wisest thing I can do is hold it with tremendous consciousness. And as employers, we hold an extraordinary amount of power and we have a responsibility to not extract from the people that work from us and to not impede their ability to live well. And it has to be a fair exchange. And I believe also that paying well and having good benefits is good economics. Capitalism is actually bad math.

Debbie Millman:
In what way?

Sonia Passi:
When you underpay, when you treat your employees poorly, when you have to wait 90 days for health insurance, when you don’t get enough time off, a couple of things happen. You burn out. You aren’t actually even in a place physically, mentally, emotionally, structurally to bring your most creative self to work, which means the work isn’t getting the best it could. And then as an employer, you’re either paying people upfront or you’re paying the cost of burnout, turnover, legal fees and everything on the other side of it. And capitalism is paying on the back end. We’re extracting from the earth and then we’re already paying for it as an earth. We extract from humans and then we pay for it in sickness and pandemic and disease and poverty and pain and we are paying for it. We are pretending that we’re not paying for it, but we are paying for it. And we can ignore that as long as we want, but it doesn’t make any sense.

Whereas I don’t pay legal fees, I don’t pay turnover costs. I’m able to build expertise on my team and maintain that expertise over years. I’m able to go to sleep at night knowing that my employees are also able to go to sleep at night and not stay up worrying about my knee. And I am confident that my employees are in a position to bring their best, most creative ideas to the job because they’re not panicked about how they’re going to pay rent or how they’re going to pay a medical bill. That just seems like a better mathematical equation to me than the other way around.

Debbie Millman:
One of the really interesting and provocative things that I read in preparing for today’s show was your opinion that if organizations can only pay their employees minimum wage, they shouldn’t be in business. Talk about how you formed that opinion.

Sonia Passi:
Everybody on this earth deserves a basic standard of living and safety. And in our world, that costs money. And if a job cannot pay you what it costs you to live and it’s a full-time job, then there’s something wrong with the job. And when I made that statement, I am really talking about corporate America. I’m not talking about small businesses that don’t get nearly the subsidies or support that large corporations do. But as a large corporation or a venture-funded endeavor, if you are not paying a living wage, you don’t have a viable business model. I don’t believe that there is a corporation in America that cannot afford to pay a living wage.

Debbie Millman:
You pay your hourly employees that you have about $38 an hour.

Sonia Passi:
$38.46.

Debbie Millman:
How did you come up with that particular number?

Sonia Passi:
We use this incredible resource called the Living Wage Calculator that comes out of MIT and they calculate based on county what are living wage is. And so that is what they calculated a living wage in LA County to be.

Debbie Millman:
Sonia, in the eight years that you have been running FreeFrom, you’ve served over 30,000 survivors, you’ve successfully influenced policies benefiting more than, at last count, 5.3 million survivors across the United States. And now you are on the precipice of releasing your first documentary. Why a documentary?

Sonia Passi:
So, so much of FreeFrom’s work is to get everybody to play their part. But the problem is that gender-based violence is an issue that nobody wants to even look at. It is too painful, it is too traumatizing. One in three women, one in two trans folks, we are all impacted by it, whether that is conscious for us or unconscious, whether it’s immediate or it’s familial, we are all negatively impacted by gender-based violence. And because it is so personal, it is so hard to acknowledge and address and all of our media representations, media and visual representations of gender-based violence are pain and hopelessness and tragedy. This is my life’s work and I don’t want to watch something about the issue because I don’t want to see any more violence. I don’t want to see any more tragedy.

And so as we were sitting there thinking about, well, if we want everyone to play our part, but no one even wants to turn towards the issue, how do we get people to turn towards the issue? And the answer to me lies in showing people how survivors can thrive. Showing people survivors in their joy, showing people the solutions that we need. And to me, a documentary, the documentary that we made, Survivor Made about the survivors who are a part of Gifted, our online store, was such a powerful first step in this narrative change we need in our culture because this is a community of survivors who are thriving and they are thriving because they’re in community with each other and they have the financial means to support themselves and their safety.

Debbie Millman:
How would you describe the narrative arc of your film, which is titled Survivor Made?

Sonia Passi:
It’s the holiday season, the most stressful, busiest time for the team at Gifted. They’ve got a goal. They want to break even this year. They want this to be the year that they prove that their business model paying $38.46 an hour in retail can work and be profitable. And the film begins with them committed to giving it their all. And that’s the arc of the film is the will they, won’t they meet their goal? How are they going to get there? What tricks are they going to pull out of the bag? But it’s a beautiful journey through their individual lives, their growth, their healing, their joy.

Debbie Millman:
Their resilience.

Sonia Passi:
Their resilience.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah.

Sonia Passi:
I have watched this film probably about 85 times now, and still when I’m done watching it, I feel my most human. It’s like it puts me back together. In a world where everything we watch is so startling and alarming, I watch this and I feel like a human being again.

Debbie Millman:
You mentioned that the narrative centers around the efforts of the group that you have working at Gifted to achieve this sales goal. So I have a couple of questions about that. The sales goal is for a marketplace of survivor-made goods that was founded by FreeFrom called Gifted. So tell us more about Gifted.

Sonia Passi:
Yeah. So one of the very first things that FreeFrom ever did was we ran an entrepreneurship program for survivors. And we did this across three different shelters, one in Oakland, one in San Francisco and one in LA. And we supported survivors in starting their own businesses. And we worked with them over about six months, we met with each person once a week and whatever it was that they wanted to work on that week we did, whether it was getting their LLC or working on their logo or product development. And at the end of the six months, everyone has started their businesses, everyone’s businesses were starting to turn a profit and the quality of products they were making was so incredible.

But the biggest hurdle that they had was building an audience. For many of them being publicly online wasn’t safe. And we all know how hard it is to build an audience, how long it takes to build an audience. And they didn’t, quite frankly, have that time. They needed to make money quickly. And we hosted a marketplace in Santa Monica and invited all of these entrepreneurs to sell their products and all of them sold out. And I was like, “Okay, it’s not just me. Other people think these products are great.”

And so I decided to start Gifted. I was like, well FreeFrom can be that buffer. FreeFrom has an incredible community, an incredible audience that is ready to roll up their sleeves and support survivors however they can. We can build the marketplace through which they can sell their products. And again, it’s always important to me to think about how we can have the maximum impact. So I was like, “Okay, I don’t just want a marketplace that’s selling survivors products. It should also be employing survivors and it should be paying survivors well and creating a different way for survivors to build income beyond entrepreneurship.”

And so April, 2017 for Mother’s Day, we launched Gifted. It launched out of my house, what is now my wife’s office used to be the Gifted warehouse. One of the entrepreneurs who makes greeting cards came on as the first employee and we just kind of made it up as we went along and grew the entrepreneur base and grew the employee base. And Gifted is really the very best of humanity. And you’ve seen the film, Debbie, the camaraderie, and the love and the respect that these survivors have for each other. It’s so palpable.

Debbie Millman:
You worked with some extraordinary people making this film. The documentary was directed by Drew Denny, a Sundance fellow, and MacArthur grantee known for her work in the LGBTQ+ community regarding around rights, around climate change. How did you and Drew work to capture the resilience and the diverse experiences of the survivors in the documentary in the way that you did? And I don’t want to give away too much so people can see the movie and feel like there weren’t spoilers from the show today. But I’d love to get a sense of how you worked with the individual stars of the documentary, the survivors of the documentary to create the film that you did.

Sonia Passi:
It is very important to me that everything that we do, everything that we create is done with such a high level of care and intention. And so as we’re making this documentary about survivors, I wanted the film to be made by survivors. I wanted an entirely survivor-made crew. I wanted us to be really intentional about who we brought on board. And so I can only take credit for hiring Drew and letting Drew know my vision. And we were very clear with our producers. We wanted everyone who worked on this film to be paid a living wage as well. We wanted the way this film was made to model all of FreeFrom’s values.
Drew is really the person that deserves all the credit for the way in which this film captured survivors resilience, was not extractive, does not show you pain and trauma and violence and really is groundbreaking I think in its portrayal of survivors. And what I think that comes back to besides her talent and her heart, is her own life experience. And I think this is why it is so important that we have more diversity in who tells stories because it’s the only way that we will get truly diverse stories told.

Debbie Millman:
One of the things that struck me as I was watching the film, it’s how as the women share their personal stories, they don’t focus on the violence they were subjected to, but you are aware of it. And in all the work that I do in trying to eradicate, for example, the rape kit backlog and child abuse, it’s very hard to balance the storytelling and the violence.

Sonia Passi:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
The women in the film share how they made their way out from under the violence as opposed to reliving the violence. Talk about how you were able to achieve that and that narrative choice.

Sonia Passi:
One of FreeFrom’s mottos is trust survivors. And we say it a lot and we ask others to do it, and we are always focused on doing it ourselves. And I think built into this film implicitly was we as the people making the film, Drew as the director, we don’t need to be convinced that violence happened. So we’re not even going to interview you in a way that requires you to demonstrate or prove that violence happened. And I think when I think about so much of our mainstream storytelling around gender violence, it always begins by showing you the violence. No matter what happens next, Hollywood needs to show you the violence. And I’ve thought a lot about why that is. And the only thing I can think is there’s a fear that you might not believe it really happened or that it was bad enough. So the story has to begin by showing you how bad it is.

But as survivors, we don’t need to be convinced. And so nobody who was part of this film, nobody in the cast ever had to explain, justify, corroborate how bad it really was. Everybody believed it, everybody trusted it, and that meant that they could just focus on their journey, their resilience, their decisions, their choices, instead of having to relive this thing over and over again. Tarana Burke once said, she was being asked about … Tarana Burke is the founder of Me Too, and she was asked on stage about why she doesn’t talk about her story as a sexual assault survivor more. And she said, “Everybody only wants to know me for the absolute worst thing that ever happened to me.” That was so resonant. I think of so many survivors’ experience. Everywhere you go for help, you have to tell the story of the violence again and again and again so that people believe you and so that you get what you need. And at FreeFrom we skipped that first step and we just get to what’s needed.

Debbie Millman:
It’s interesting, listening to you talk, it occurred to me nobody really ever questions the believability of somebody having a stomach ache or cancer.

Sonia Passi:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
But yet there’s this underlying suspicion when it comes to gender-based violence. I wonder why that is.

Sonia Passi:
And it’s at the root of so much harm that happens in this world. We believe people who haven’t harmed when they say they haven’t harmed, but we don’t believe survivors when they say they’ve been harmed unless they have more proof than anyone could have because that’s not how abuse works.

Debbie Millman:
Right. And sometimes that isn’t even enough.

Sonia Passi:
Right.

Debbie Millman:
Based on your experiences with making this movie, Survivor Made, and FreeFrom what policies or societal changes do you believe are most urgently needed today and moving forward in what I anticipate is going to be a bumpy couple of years for those of us in this community and those that advocate for change?

Sonia Passi:
I think there’s a couple of norms that need to be reset. The first being we have to understand and believe that we can end gender violence and that it is not something that is so intractable in our society because if we don’t believe we can end it, we will get to futility too quickly. And we have to reorient ourselves to, this won’t take 5 years or 10 years or four presidential terms, or 5, it’s going to take a minimum of 100 years. And so we have to work step by step, day by day, year by year knowing that we will not see the full fruits of our labor in our lifetime. And if we try to, we will shortcut our strategies and it won’t end well.
I think for many of us right now, it’s crystal clear that what we have and must support and treasure and protect is our community. And to understand that that includes supporting survivors in our community and to really understand our responsibility as community members, to not turn away, to not lack the courage to name and address this issue in our communities. That’s imperative. And then we have to be as strategic as the other side. And the other side, that’s whomever you want it to be in this moment. It’s the person causing harm. It’s the governments causing harm. It’s the whoever the other side is. Anyone who is against ending gender violence is the other side. We have to be as strategic as the other side, which means breaking down this problem into a million different pieces and going one by one and starting with the low-hanging fruit.

FreeFrom our strategy is incredibly diverse. So I don’t expect anything to happen at a federal level for the next two to four years.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah.

Sonia Passi:
But I foresee a lot of momentum and exciting progress at a state level. And there are a lot of laws that need to change that are bipartisan and to get really creative and really sneaky and strategic to do what you can do now while working through the frustration about the things that you can’t do now. And then the last thing is we all have to change our orientation to trusting survivors. And if we operate from that place, no matter who holds power in this country, if we operate from a place of trusting survivors, there’s so much we can do. And the worst thing that we can do in this moment is feel powerless because we are not. And in our powerlessness, we will betray each other.

Debbie Millman:
It’s a very necessary thought right now, Sonia. In February of this year, you helped introduce the Survivor Financial Safety and Inclusion Working Group Act to Congress. Tell us more about the act and where things stand.

Sonia Passi:
So what we have learned from survivors is that 58% of survivors have their bank account monitored, stolen from, or controlled. As we know, our bank account is where we keep our money. It’s how we keep our money safe. So that’s 58% of survivors that are either not able to keep their money safe or are not even able to keep their money. The only people that can really act here to do anything about this are banks. And banks in many other countries have done so and have done so successfully. So we went to all of the big banks and small banks and we said, “Here are some guidelines for what you can do to protect survivor customers.” And they pretty much all said, “We need clarity from the regulators on what we can do.” So we said, “Okay, we’ll go to the regulators,” and that is what this bill is.

This bill would do two things. First, it would require all of the federal regulatory agencies to be part of a working group, focused on how do we address survivors economic abuse within banks.
And the second thing it would do is it would require banks to track data on the prevalence of this issue. And so it’s very unexciting when I describe it, but what it is the first and most necessary step to get banks to protect survivors’ bank accounts. It was introduced by two Democrats, Representative Nydia Velázquez in the House, and Senator Tina Smith in the Senate. We have Republicans who are interested in reintroducing the bill next year as the lead authors of it, the lead sponsors of it. And also what I would imagine is that the Trump administration is absolutely uninterested in regulating banks. So I don’t hold out a ton of hope. If there’s a window of opportunity, we’ll take it, but I don’t hold out much hope.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I will try to hold on to some. So I have two last questions for you. In the epilogue of Survivor Made you reveal that you’re working on a credit union for survivors. How is that work going?

Sonia Passi:
One way to do this work is to get the banks to do better. Another way is to build it ourselves.

Debbie Millman:
Yup.

Sonia Passi:
And I am really excited about building the credit union because not only will it actually be something that is supportive of the ways in which survivors need to be able to bank and keep their money safe, so it has the direct benefit to the people who are members, but it also creates a gold standard for how to support survivor customers. What I know is that people don’t believe that survivors are valuable customers. People don’t believe that they will make more money if they protect survivors’ bank accounts. This is seen as charity work, and I cannot wait to disrupt that narrative and I cannot wait-

Debbie Millman:
I can’t wait to see it.

Sonia Passi:
… To disrupt the banking industry because we have so many survivors that are thriving, that have become members of this credit union. So it works on all levels for me. It has the direct and immediate impact, it’s the model, and it’s disrupting misconceptions that are standing in the way of progress.

Debbie Millman:
If anybody can do this, Sonia, it is you. My last question is, you’re giving this film away for free. You’re letting anybody that wants to see it, see it. How can people watch your movie?

Sonia Passi:
The film is available online for anyone to watch. Go to survivormadedoc.com and you can stream the movie there. It’s $12 if you can afford the $12. It’s free if you can’t. There is no judgment either way. We are grateful that people watch it, and we wanted to go direct to audiences with this film, not just because we wanted to make it free and accessible, but it also has a huge privacy benefit for people. No one’s going to see your streaming history and saw that you watched this film, so we wanted to do it in a way that was most supportive to survivors. Please tell everyone you know about the film and watch it yourself and share any feedback you have with us. We are really excited to share the film with you and start to change our misconceptions of what a survivor looks like.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. I also want to let our audience know that I am a proud supporter of this film and am doing as much as I possibly can to get the message out. It’s one of the most important films I’ve seen in a very long time. Sonia Passi, thank you so much for making so much work that matters. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Sonia Passi:
Thank you Debbie.

Debbie Millman:
To see Sonia’s film, Survivor Made, go to survivormadedoc.com. To read more about FreeFrom, you can go to freefrom.org. I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Announcer:
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

The post Design Matters: Sonya Passi appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
She’s an award-winning journalist, a New York Times bestselling author, several times over, a co-founder of one of the most significant magazines of the 20th century, and an activist whose work has impacted the place women and girls now have in the world. She’s also co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Action Alliance, and the Women’s Media Center. For over 60 years, she has been in the thick of American cultural and political life, where she has been instrumental in shaping our ideas about feminism, humanity, and equal rights for all people.

She is, of course, the legendary Gloria Steinem, and I have the great honor of interviewing her today in my studio at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Gloria Steinem, welcome to Design Matters.

Gloria Steinem:
Thank you so much. And now listening to your introduction, I’m only worried about living up to it.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, you already have. That’s the great thing. You’ve already done these things. Gloria, I understand that your older sister, Susanne, was actually the person in your family who named you. Is it true you were named after her favorite doll?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, I think so. My parents had had another child, a boy, who was stillborn, between us. And that meant that my sister was almost a decade older than I. So she was another mother in a way, and I looked up to her and followed her around much to her alarm. And yes, she did name me.

Debbie Millman:
I wonder what type of doll we could find now back in the fifties that is named Gloria. I think we’re going to have to do an eBay search to figure that out.

Gloria Steinem:
I think the dolls that I adored, and I did have a collection of dolls, were named after Sonja Henie, who was a great figure skater of the era. I don’t know. They came with names, not mine, but I was in love with dolls.

Debbie Millman:
You were born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. Your father’s mother Pauline Perlmutter Steinem was a suffragist, and the first woman in the state of Ohio to be elected to the national board. This was before women had the right to vote nationally. How did she manage such a victory?

Gloria Steinem:
First of all, I’m so impressed with your research. Thank you for that, because I think Pauline deserves notice and attention. She had come from either Russia or a country close to Russia. We’re not sure, when she was a teenager, then lived in Vienna, I think. Not sure. And my grandfather went there to find a bride, in a very European traditional way.

So she arrived in her late teens as a bride, and she did become a suffragist. Also, she founded the first vocational high school. Otherwise, they were all learning Latin and Greek, whether that was going to be useful in their lives or not in Toledo. And she was greatly admired. I only remember her in a sensory way because I was too little. I remember her kitchen and food, but my mother was definitely in love with her mother-in-law law.

Debbie Millman:
Did her activism even subliminally influence you at all? Did you look back at what she was doing and feel like that was something you also wanted to do at that age?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure. I certainly admired the fact that she had made it possible for women to vote by organizing them to vote in a group. Otherwise, they were harassed and scared away from the voting places by gangs of men and boys who were hostile to women voting. I knew that. I knew about the vocational high school. I knew she was very admired, but I’m not sure. Maybe it made me assume that I could go to college, which my older sister did too. That was possible in my family for women to be educated. But she seemed distant and so honorable, I couldn’t imagine imitating her.

Debbie Millman:
Your parents, Leo and Ruth Steinem, met at the University of Toledo in 1917 while they were working together on their college newspaper. After they graduated, they got married. And you’ve written how your mother married your father because of his refusal to worry. And then as a result, was left to worry alone, on her own. Why didn’t your father worry at all? He seemed to be such a carefree, risk-taking experimenter.

Gloria Steinem:
I can only imagine it had something to do with his family, which was well to do. And he was one of four boys, and he was a kind of devil may care kind of person. Whereas my mother came from a very working class family. Her father was a railroad engineer. So I think my father’s carefree attitude was charming to her, and his great argument for getting married was, “It’ll only take a minute.”

Debbie Millman:
I believe they were married twice. Right? Didn’t they get married privately in a very quick civil ceremony and then have another marriage?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. A private ceremony and then a public one, yes.

Debbie Millman:
Ultimately, I believe that because they were married twice, but only divorced once, I think your mother felt that they were still married for quite a long time.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, because she felt divorce was a shame. And so when pressed, she would say well really, they were still married.

Debbie Millman:
Your father was a man of many trades. He ran a dance pavilion and a summer resort. He was an antique salesman. He tried to write slogans for ad agencies. I loved some of the slogans that you’ve included in some of your writing. He dreamed up a living chess game, with costume teenagers moving across the squares of a dance floor. Very ahead of his time.

He was always looking for the next big deal, and he was often on the road. You were often with him, sometimes working alongside him as a little girl and still in single digits. Can you talk about how you assisted him in his efforts as an antique salesman?

Gloria Steinem:
He used to go to country auctions to buy jewelry, antiques, small antiques, things he could carry around in his car. And then he would sell them to roadside dealers. So this was his winter way of life, when the summer dance pavilion was not going. My job was to pack and unpack these little items of jewelry, or glassware, or China, or whatever, when he went into a roadside shop in order to try to sell them. So I was the packer and the unpacker, which I was in heaven about. I mean, kids love to be necessary, so I felt I was part of the grownup world.

Debbie Millman:
Didn’t he sometimes send you into some of the antique stores to work independently of him as a little girl?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, depending on how little I was, yes. Right? I mean, there was a downside to it, because I always felt a little bit as if we were the gypsies of the highway and looked down upon by whoever it was who owned the shop as we drove up in our dusty car.

Debbie Millman:
When your family was on the road, you never started out with enough money to reach a particular destination. Instead, your dad took a few boxes of China, silver, other small antiques he bought at country auctions, and then used them to sell, and buy, and barter your way through your travels. Did you know what he was doing? Did you feel okay about that? Did you ever feel insecure?

Gloria Steinem:
I knew that it worried my mother, who had grown up in a way less economically secure way, and therefore was more worried. But my father’s slogan was kind of, “If you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, it could be wonderful.” And that’s seductive too. I’m sure I’ve absorbed a lot of that, because I too have never had a proper job.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve written how there were only a few months every year when your dad seemed content with a house dwelling life. Do you know what the motivation was behind his desire to be constantly moving? Did you ever ask him about it?

Gloria Steinem:
No, we never talked about it in those terms. I just accepted who he was, even though it did also cause my parents to separate eventually, because my mother wanted to live in a more secure place. And after my decade older sister was in college, it was possible for my mother and I to move into her old family house in Toledo.

But my father was always present. He never had a bank account, because I think he feared the IRS would attach it. But he used to send me money orders every once in a while,

Debbie Millman:
$50 money orders, which is a lot of money at that time.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, yes. He did his best to be attentive, and he was certainly fun to be with. I don’t remember ever feeling that my parents were not doing their best, whatever it was, either my mother or my father.

Debbie Millman:
From what I understand and what I’ve read, you’ve described yourself as a child who wanted too much to fit in, and have written about how you longed for a home. Much of the time, you were on the road before you were 10 years old. You weren’t going to school. Your sister enrolled in whatever high school was near whatever destination you were going to, but you were young enough to get away with your love of comic books, and horse stories, and Louisa May Alcott. You were essentially teaching yourself. Did you feel that it would’ve been preferable at that time to have one stable place that you lived?

Gloria Steinem:
What I remember emotionally is that as we were driving to Florida or California, we would pass through neighborhoods with conventional houses, with front yards and porches. And I would fantasize living there. I would think, “Wouldn’t it be nice to live there and to go to school like the other kids?” But I was always well-treated. It isn’t as if I wanted to escape. I just had a case of envy for the life I saw in movies.

Debbie Millman:
Every summer, you and your family stayed in a small house your dad had built across the road from a lake in rural Michigan. And there he ran a dance pavilion on a pier over the water. And though there was no ocean within hundreds of miles, he named it Ocean Beach Pier. I kind of love that about him.

On weekends, he booked the big dance bands of the time, and people came from all over to dance to live music, Guy Lombardo, Duke Ellington, the Andrew Sisters. And I understand that during this time, you also fell in love with dancing. And Ruby, the cigarette girl at the resort taught you how to tap dance. And is it true you could tap dance to the Minuet in G in a hoop skirt at six years old?

Gloria Steinem:
Actually, the Minuet was not tap dancing. I had a dance partner who was a girl a little taller than I dressed up as a boy, and we did an old-fashioned Minuet.

Debbie Millman:
Wow.

Gloria Steinem:
But we also tap danced, and I somehow thought I was going to tap dance my way into… I guess I wanted to be a Rockette. I thought that would be the peak of success. And also, there were Hollywood movies that were full of dance scenes, so that was my impractical to put it mildly, imagination of my future life.

Debbie Millman:
Well, I believe you also took ballet lessons. Did you have fantasies about being a professional dancer beyond even a Rockette?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I think I had sense enough to know that I had started ballet too late, and that I was not likely to be a real ballet dancer. But whenever a ballet company stopped in Toledo, I went and fantasized about how I could do it, in spite of the fact that the toe shoes that I wore on each weak ankle were not going to get me there.

But it was the only way I could imagine moving forward in life. My 10 years older sister had gone to college, so I guess I knew that was a possibility. But the only way of not following the script of getting married, and having children, and living in the suburbs, if you’re lucky, was show business for me. Not very practical obviously. I felt like a writer, but I didn’t know you could make a living that way.

Debbie Millman:
So even then, you felt like you wanted to have sort of unconventional life?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. Both because my parents were somewhat unconventional and because I didn’t see happiness much in the conventional neighborhoods around me. The most attractive people in my childhood were the band members for whom my mother cooked, because there were no restaurants in that part of Michigan. So there were often all these band men sitting around the table. And I was the only child, and they were very nice to me. Perhaps they were missing their own children. But everything that seemed attractive was not nine to five. It was some form of show business.

Debbie Millman:
One of my favorite stories about your dad was how he was unable to resist swearing, and your mother asked that he not swear around you and your sister. So he named the family dog Damnit.

Gloria Steinem:
True.

Debbie Millman:
When my brother was a little boy, he was also forbidden to say… For whatever reason, that word was his favorite word to say, “Damn it.” And my parents were like, “You can’t say that.” So he decided to reorganize the way he said that word. He said, Damo and navit. And I think that really tells you almost everything you need to know about him.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. No, that’s very inventive and poetic. And my father also invented a very satisfying, long epithet that was gosh darn cholera [inaudible 00:15:45] the younger the age of the middle age. I don’t know, it just went on and on, which he would rattle off at great speed.

Debbie Millman:
And he also, from what I understand, liked to say that that was dynamite?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, that was his business stationary actually, that showed you who he was. I have a letterhead that’s a big three-inch high red with dropped out, kind of exploding letters in my office framed. It’s dynamite, because it definitely tells you who he was.

Debbie Millman:
I got the sense from everything that you’ve written about him, that he was a happy man. He was a kind man and a happy man. Was there a time where you felt that your parents loved each other?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, I think so. I mean, I could imagine why my devil may care father from a well-to-do Jewish family would appeal to my very, very hardworking, not quite penniless, but that grandfather worked on the railroad. So I think also, they shared a sense of humor. And I could understand why they appealed to each other, even though their interests were so distant.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve written how both your mother and your father paid a high price for lives that were out of balance, and how your father chose his own journey. And how though he never realized his dreams, ultimately, your mother was unable to even pursue hers. And you wrote this about her in your book My Life on the Road. “Long before I was born, she had been a rare and pioneering woman reporter, work that she loved and had done so well, that she was promoted from social reporting to Sunday editor for a major Toledo newspaper. She had stayed on this path for a decade after marrying my father and six years after giving birth to my sister. She was also supporting her husband’s impractical dreams and debts, suffering a miscarriage and then a stillbirth. She experienced so much self-blame and guilt, that she suffered what was then called a nervous breakdown. Once out of the sanatorium, she gave up her job, her friends, and everything she loved, to follow my father.”

And this is when you were born, Gloria. This was the only mother you knew as a little girl. How did you understand her at such a young age, prior to even becoming aware that she’d had this previous life?

Gloria Steinem:
There were always clues. I mean, she loved Edna St. Vincent Millay, and she would share that poetry and various essays. She taught me how to fold a paper in thirds so that it was like a reporter’s notebook, since at that point, there weren’t proper reporter’s notebook, but you could hold it in one hand and make notes on it with the other. So I realized the saddest words probably in the English language, what might’ve been, for her.

Debbie Millman:
Your mother suffered from depression, and addiction, and hallucinations, but you also describe her like your father, kind and loving with flashes of humor and talent, in everything from math to poetry. She had been so ambitious and so capable. How did she lose her confidence? Was that something that women were just expected to give up?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure, because much of it happened before I was born. Because as I was saying, my sister was a decade older. And she was trying to be a mother, a wife to an irresponsible, charming man, and also a journalist all at the same time. Which I believe is why she, or the atmosphere anyway around her, when she had what was then called a nervous breakdown, which meant that she was too depressed to work, and she spent I’m not sure how long, at least a year in a sanitarium. When she emerged, she was also addicted to sodium pentothal, which was the tranquilizer of the era, and especially given to women because it was thought that women didn’t need to be that alert in order to function as homemakers.

Debbie Millman:
Really to keep them in line homemaking.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. I mean, that had happened before I was born. So I did recognize because of her reciting Omar Khayyam to me in the morning when I woke up, or because of her affection for short stories, I did recognize who she might have been. And I wonder how many of us, I hope many fewer of us now, women and some men too, are living out the unlived lives of their mothers. But I realized that I was too. I mean, I would wanted to be a writer anyway. It wasn’t as if I was doing something that I didn’t want to do, but I did understand it was the unlived life of my mother.

Debbie Millman:
As I was reading about your childhood, and your origin stories, and the essays that you’ve written about your mother, to Ruth, which is a gorgeous essay included in one of your earlier books, as well as stories about your dad. It struck me more than anyone I’ve ever read about or interviewed now over 18 years and 500 plus interviews, how the conditions of your origin story really did create the conditions for you to be the activist and the feminist that you are now, and have been for 50 years. It could have crushed someone the way you were grown up. You could have followed in your mother’s footsteps very, very easily.

What do you think it is about who you are that you were able to take the learnings of both your parents, the kindness, the lovingness that they were able to share and show you, to be able to break those patterns and become who you were and are?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I think your phrase, the kindness and the lovingness is the key to it. Because I did experience always kindness and respect for who I was as an individual, and I did always know that I was loved, which I’m not sure was as true for either of my parents. And yet, they somehow managed to create that for me.

So that, plus I lived in books. I mean, I loved Louisa May Alcott. I read everything she ever wrote, not only for young readers, but her much more depressed, older books for older readers. And my father used to sometimes buy a whole house library in order to get a couple of first editions, and then he would dump all the other books in the garage. So I would go out in the garage and end up reading some minute history of World War, I don’t know. I mean, things I had no business reading. If I was hooked on a book, I would just stay up all night until I finished it. I just entered it.

Debbie Millman:
I used to read books over and over. I also believe that books helped save me. I used to sneak copies of The Godfather that my parents had in their library into my room under the covers, and was just titillated by that sex scene at the beginning. I couldn’t believe that people did things like that.

I know at one point, you asked one of your mother’s doctors if her spirit had been broken, and he told you that that was as good a diagnosis as any. And he said it’s hard to mend anything that’s been broken for 20 years. And it reminded me of the mother in Michael Cunningham’s, The Hours, the difference being that your mother stayed. And I was also wondering if that was also part of what gave you the sense of meaning to keep going.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, clearly. I mean, I loved my mother, and I admired her in many ways. But I definitely didn’t want to become her. That was maybe I’m not sure, part of the reason why I didn’t get married, even though I was engaged at least once to a wonderful guy I still know. I mean-

Debbie Millman:
I want to ask you about that in a bit.

Gloria Steinem:
But I didn’t see in front of me besides my mother, many examples of women who had married, had children, and were happy, because there were not that many women in the paid labor force. It was mostly a time of very poor families or suburban families. It must’ve been present somewhere, but I didn’t see it.

Debbie Millman:
Your parents divorced when you were 10. You and your mom then moved to Clark Lake in Amherst in order to be close to your sister who was attending Smith College. You said that that year was the most conventional life you would ever lead. Was it everything you imagined it to be?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. We rented a house. It was in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is very close to Smith College where my sister was going. And we rented an already furnished house, literally the only proper house that I’d ever lived in. And I went to what I guess I think was the sixth grade, and I kind of pretended to be normal.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah, I know what that’s like. Did people believe you?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure. I should go back and find them and see. But I did love having a house that I could invite friends home to.

Debbie Millman:
When your sister began her last year of college, you and your mom moved back to Toledo and into the house where your mom had grown up. There, you shared bunk beds and also lived with rats. I believe at one point you were bitten by a rat. Was that something that scared you, or was it just more adventure?

Gloria Steinem:
No, no, no. It definitely scared me, because I still remember it. And I was thinking, given the current rat crisis in New York City, I should write about it.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely.

Gloria Steinem:
Because it was the summertime and I was sleeping… My hand must’ve been over the side of the bed. And I woke up not because the rat bit me, but just I woke up, and there was a whole pool of blood there. And my mother, even though she was not well, managed to get the two of us to a local emergency room so I could have a tetanus shot.

And memorably when I came back, the pool of blood on the floor had been licked up. Later on, after I had been one of the many writers who started New York Magazine… And I knew that rats were a feature of New York life, especially for poor families. I used to try to get Clay Felker the editor, to let me write about rats, and he would never do it. It was not the image of the magazine he had in mind.

Debbie Millman:
That’s so interesting, Gloria. Recently, New York Magazine won a national magazine award for their coverage of what’s happening right now with rats in Manhattan.

Gloria Steinem:
Really? I didn’t know that.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I was a judge for the cover design-

That’s fascinating. And the cover design won. And I believe the article did as well, but definitely the cover did.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, you see. If only they listened.

Debbie Millman:
Yep. Now, you had a number of different jobs as you were growing up. You worked as a sales girl in a women’s clothing store after school. And on Saturdays you read scripts. You played records at a local radio station. You worked as a magician’s assistant and also a lifeguard. Have you always had a strong work ethic?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I was just trying to make a little extra money. And I was looking for something. I was answering ads in the newspaper much of the time. For instance, the magician’s assistant.

Debbie Millman:
I sort of had this vision of you being on stage in a very sudden, Desperately Seeking Susan kind of environment.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I did stand there while he threw knives at me. I mean, I was standing against a cork board, and the knives were not that sharp, thankfully. But it was a way of making money basically. And I used to also dance at supermarket openings, and the-

Debbie Millman:
Lions Club, I believe-

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, the Lions Club. It was a way of making 10 or $20 for a show, and it was also a way out of everyday life.

Debbie Millman:
When you were 17, your mom sold your Toledo house, so you would have money to pay for college, so that the house money paid for your college education. You went to live with your sister in Washington, DC where she was a jewelry buyer in a department store. And this gave you a carefree senior year of high school. You were elected vice president of the student council and the senior class. What was that experience like for you?

Gloria Steinem:
It was very bizarre for a lot of reasons. One thing was I couldn’t understand for a bit why the student body walking around the halls of that high school looked different. And it took me a while to understand they were all white, that this in the District of Columbia was still a time of racial segregation in public schools.

I was living with my sister because my mother was in a mental hospital. And people would treat me with sympathy saying, “It must be so hard to be away from your parents.” And I would say, “Oh yes,” even though it was the most carefree time I had ever lived in my life, but I didn’t want to betray them, I guess. So it was a time of happiness, but pretense.

Debbie Millman:
As you did visit your mom on the weekend, she started to get better. You slowly began to meet someone you described in your writing as someone you’d never known, and you’ve written that you discovered that you were alike in many ways, something you either hadn’t seen or couldn’t admit out of fear that you would share her fate. What similarities did you see?

Gloria Steinem:
A sense of humor, a love of reading and writing. Some character that was… I mean, it is true that I had some of my father’s adventurousness, but I’m not sure he ever sat down and read a book in his life. So that entire part of my mother’s life I really related to. And it made me sad, because I realized what she had missed.

Debbie Millman:
At the time, you had no inkling that you had become one of the great liberators of our time and how-

Gloria Steinem:
I’m still not so sure about that.

Debbie Millman:
You don’t have to be. Plenty of us are sure.

Gloria Steinem:
But there came to be a women’s movement, which helped us all.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, of course. But you were a big part in helping women all over the world take a stand for their own lives. Do you think that your grief over your mother’s inability to have a life she wanted to, impacted you to do that? I mean, I don’t even know that you realized it at the time, but do you think that ultimately, that fueled what you were doing?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, it was clear to me that I didn’t want to live what was still a conventional life. In the ’50s. Most of my classmates got engaged and or married in college or soon after college. I realized I didn’t want to do that, but I didn’t quite know what else I could do. So I ended up fleeing to India, because there was a one shot atypical fellowship available.

And I ended up living in India for two years, which made a huge difference, because that was close to the independence movement. Obviously Gandhi was a huge force. I was trying to write about Gandhi, so I was going around and interviewing people who had worked with him.

And I remember finally getting to a great woman leader named Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, who listened to me as she rocked on her porch and finally said, “Well, my dear, we taught him everything he knew.” It turned out that it had been the women’s movement that organized the March to the sea to get salt without taxes, and Gandhi had come from living in South Africa and became the external symbol for this internal movement that was mostly women.

Debbie Millman:
I want to talk about your time in India in a moment. I just want to talk about a few things that happened before you went to India. You graduated from high school in 1952. You attended Smith College like your sister. I understand you also applied to Cornell and Stanford, neither of which accepted you, and I hope that they regret that greatly now. But at the time, did you feel rejected? Did you wish that you had been accepted to either of those schools? Would you have gone?

Gloria Steinem:
I don’t know. I wasn’t surprised that I wasn’t accepted, because my background was not typical, and the high school I went to in Toledo, I may have been one of two or three people who went to college from my graduating class. Most everybody, the women got married. The men went to work in the factories. So I can understand why they were not so willing to take a chance, whereas Smith viewed me as a legacy because my sister had gone there.

Debbie Millman:
At Smith, you majored in government. What were you imagining you would do professionally at that point?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure what kind of job I thought I could get, but it was an era in which Senator McCarthy was wrongly accusing people of being a communist. So I had some sense of how important government was and how unjust it could be. I don’t know that I imagined exactly the kind of job I wanted to have, but I thought it was the world I wanted to be active in.

Debbie Millman:
You also took courses at the University of Geneva and earned a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England for a summer. Did you have a sense at that point that you were beginning to take after your father by traveling so much?

Gloria Steinem:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I mean, mainly I had been in Geneva at the university there. And in the summer, I just didn’t want to go home. So I managed to get to Oxford and take a summer course there.

Debbie Millman:
You returned to Smith College for your senior year, where you met Blair Chotzinoff, who you already mentioned. Was it love at first sight?

Gloria Steinem:
I think so. I mean, he was the friend of a man who was the fiance of a friend of mine in the same dormitory at Smith. And we went to the same country house for a weekend. There was a big storm and a flood, which meant that we couldn’t get out, so we ended up staying there.

Debbie Millman:
How Biblical.

Gloria Steinem:
Right, right. And he was very handsome, and funny, and unconventional. He looked sort of like a Kashmiri prince. He had a little bit dark skin and green eyes. And so, I mean, he was only Jewish, but he looked kind of amazing. He, of course, had never gone to college, and he was working as a so-called leg man for a Broadway columnist at the time.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, wow.

Gloria Steinem:
So he was welcome in all the nightclubs, and restaurants, and so on.

Debbie Millman:
I understand he took you for rides and he had a little plane. He would take you-

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. He loved to fly. And so when he came to visit me at Smith College, he would fly from New York, from a New York airport, to a tiny airport near North Hampton.

Debbie Millman:
Is it true that he once wrote your name Gloria in the Sky?

Gloria Steinem:
He may have. I don’t remember seeing it. Maybe he was trying to do that. I don’t know.

Debbie Millman:
I was trying to find a picture of that.

Gloria Steinem:
But I just remember that my house mother at that era at Smith… If you lived in a dormitory, there was a woman who was looking after you. And my house mother was kind of in love with him too.

Debbie Millman:
Sounds like he was pretty gorgeous.

Gloria Steinem:
Right.

Debbie Millman:
So he proposed. He proposed marriage. Initially, you said yes. Did you want to marry him?

Gloria Steinem:
I did and I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine not being with him. I was trying to get a job as a researcher. Women were then only hired as researchers with Time, or Newsweek, or the New York Times. I wanted to continue working, but I was not sure I could support myself. All my friends were getting married. It just seemed a kind of stop gap measure to get engaged, and he had given me the engagement ring that belonged to his mother.

Debbie Millman:
How hard was it to break off the engagement, and what made you decide to do that?

Gloria Steinem:
I felt if I got married, it was the last choice I would have. Life would be over, because I didn’t see people, women around me who were continuing to change after acquiring an identity through their husbands. Maybe that was wrong, but I just didn’t see it.

So it felt more like an end than a beginning. And since I had the opportunity to go to India on a very slender scholarship, I did that. And I did it in a not very kind way. I mean, I just left and left him a note.

Debbie Millman:
Just a don’t hate me.

Gloria Steinem:
Just trying to explain. Right.

Debbie Millman:
What gave you the courage to do something so unconventional in 1956, to go to India by yourself?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I’m not sure it was courage. I mean, it was desperation in the sense of not wanting to get married when I viewed marriage as not my first choice, but my last choice in leading someone else’s life.

I knew about India and cared about India, because both my mother and her mother-in-law, even though they came from very different families, had been theosophists. Which is literally God knowledge, but a form of philosophy that I think was very popular in those years, and leaned heavily towards the east. And was mostly populated by women, perhaps women who were striving to find some religion that was not as patriarchal, as the churches and temples around them.

Debbie Millman:
En route to India, you stopped in the UK and at the time discovered that you were pregnant. What was your reaction?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I had feared that I was pregnant, and hoped that I was not, and had all kinds of fantasies about riding horses in the park-

Debbie Millman:
You write about that.

Gloria Steinem:
Throwing myself downstairs and all the about that, all the impractical things. In the local phone directory, I had found a doctor who was near where I was staying with a college classmate and her husband in London. So he confirmed that I was pregnant, and said that he would send me to a woman gynecologist who would do an abortion. At that point, I think legally, you had to have the signatures of two physicians in order to have a legal abortion.

And he said, “I will do this, but you must promise me two things. One, you will never tell anyone my name. And two, you’ll do what you want to do with your life.” And later on, I dedicated a book to him, because that was so pivotal and so important.

Debbie Millman:
You didn’t tell anyone for many, many years. Not the person that you were living with, not the man who you had been with, until the women’s movement came along and women began to tell the truth about our lives. Did you feel ashamed or guilty?

Gloria Steinem:
I didn’t feel guilty. It wasn’t a decision I would ever have changed. But it was not a subject that was talked about in public. And it wasn’t until we started New York Magazine, and I had a column there, that I went to cover an early women’s liberation meeting in a church someplace downtown in the village, I think. And there, I heard women standing up and talking about the dangers of illegal abortion in public. I had never seen women telling the truth in public before. So I went home and wrote a column about it, and began to talk about it for the first time.

Debbie Millman:
I am 61 years old, and have had a lot of experiences in my life that I feel very ashamed of, and it’s taken me years to talk about them. One of the biggest being the sexual abuse that I was affected by as a child. And yet, I’ve been able to talk about that more easily than my abortion. In fact, I’ve never talked about it on the air ever. And I really thought about it a lot over the last couple of days reading about your experiences. Why is there so much shame, especially when people are admitting it on Twitter or on social media, just to be able to really communicate how prevalent this is and how necessary it is? And my life would never have been the same. Never, never, never, never, never had been the same, had I had a child when I was pregnant, yet I still feel guilt, and I still feel shame, which is why I was asking you about how you felt.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, do you think… I mean, you’re much younger than I am, but still, you may be in a generation that was still wrongly shamed for that, whereas younger women are not.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, that’s very possible. I was 11 years old when the US Supreme Court gave women the right to reproductive freedom. And because I was an avid reader of the newspaper as I was growing up, that was one of the things that saved me, that suddenly allowed me to consider that if anything happened while I was being sexually abused by my stepfather, that I might not have to kill myself. That somehow, I might be able to get help.

Gloria Steinem:
But that so, to be in the same household with someone who is sexually abusing you, and to feel you’re not credible, you can’t be rescued. I mean, that’s way beyond anything I ever experienced, and that you survived and triumphed is huge.

Debbie Millman:
Well, thank you. I mean, that’s why I think I’m so fascinated by people’s origin stories. I look at what you went through, and somebody like Oprah Winfrey, what she’s gone through. And how women like you, like Oprah, have been able to change so much for so many.

Gloria Steinem:
And you.

Debbie Millman:
Well I mean, I’m not going to go there but-

Gloria Steinem:
No, but really, because it feels to me as if you went through something that was more of a trial than I did.

Debbie Millman:
Well, thank you, Gloria. That means a lot to me. What do you make of the makeup of the Supreme Court at the moment, and what are your thoughts on what we need to do to win back our reproductive freedom? I mean, what’s happening now is terrifying. It’s just terrifying.

And it’s especially terrifying when I think about young girls in my situation that I was in at 10, 11 years old, actually were thinking at one point that I might’ve been pregnant, and thinking I had no choice but to kill myself. What do we do for these young girls whose lives are at such risk?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, we have a pretty strong, not strong enough, but a pretty strong multiracial women’s movement. It is possible to get an abortion that’s legal and safe in many states. The problem is getting people from unfriendly states into supportive ones. So I think the dialogue has changed. Not enough, of course, but quite a lot.

There are still religions that are wrongly shaming women for making this choice, and families, and cultures. So it’s helpful to do what you just did, which is to talk about it.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Yeah. You’ve written about how you didn’t begin your life as an active feminist until you went to an abortion speak out in a church basement in the village in 1969. You were already in your mid-thirties, and you were there covering in. And you were sitting on the windowsill on the side, still being a reporter. What activated your activism?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I heard women standing up and telling the truth about their experience of needing and having an abortion. And I suddenly thought, “Okay, if so many millions of us have had this experience, why are we still silent about it?” And that’s when I went back and wrote a column. And also, because the women’s movement was beginning and I was getting invitations to speak, which was very scary to me… I mean, I became a writer so I didn’t have to talk in public. And I asked first Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and then Flo Kennedy, and friends to travel and lecture with me. So it was clear to me that we needed to break the silence, and that I needed to help do that.

Debbie Millman:
Working as a freelance writer required learning to live with a lot of financial insecurity. And you said you don’t know that you would’ve had the courage to become a freelance writer with no guaranteed source of income, if you hadn’t been brought up that way. Do you view it the same way now?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. It’s hard to think what if. But if I had grown up in a family with a father working for a salary, I might not have had the same… Not exactly courage, but sense that you could live another way. No, I feel lucky.

Debbie Millman:
As you were beginning to start writing with activism in mind, you found yourself wanting to report on a view of the world as if, in your words, everyone mattered. And this was still the 1960s, and even your most open-minded editor told you that if you published an article saying women were equal, he would have to publish one next to it saying women were not, in order to be objective. And I just find this astonishing, astonishing that this was the way people were thinking.

Gloria Steinem:
I don’t know how to express it, but it was. I mean, I think even when The Feminine Mystique and Betty Friedan’s work was first published, that there was a feeling that there needed to be an opposite view about how happy women were as housewives, which of course many were. But the whole point is diverse choice for everybody.

Debbie Millman:
In 1968, Clay Felker hired you to be a political columnist and features writer for the newly launched New York Magazine. Clay gave you a platform to write about equality, civil rights, women’s rights. What was that like for you at that time?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, it was wonderful to be in a group of… I mean, Milton Glaser and Clay Felker, who were inventing a city magazine, which didn’t exist, I don’t think any place in the rest of the country before that.

So it was great fun to be part of it. There weren’t equal numbers of women by any means, but they were open to other ideas. Jimmy Breslin is a great writer about the city of New York, which he deeply loved. Editorial meetings were great fun. No, it was the first time that I remember being excited about working in a group.

Debbie Millman:
What was it like to work with Milton Glaser?

Gloria Steinem:
Oh, gosh, how can I describe it? He was kind of a paterfamilias. He had a kind of gravitas, which I guess came from the fact that he listened and only suggested something that he had considered. I worried about his wife, Shirley, because she was a great artist. And I can’t speak for her, but I don’t know if she felt that her career was as important as Milton’s.

Debbie Millman:
Well, certainly not in the way Lee Krasner’s career became almost as important as Jackson Pollock’s. They did write a few books together, children’s books. But no, she never reached the level of notoriety, and fame, and respect that he did, although she’s been wonderfully generous in helping to create the Milton Glaser archives and the various exhibits that have occurred since he died.

Gloria Steinem:
I remember going to some event, some all day benefit in a church basement or something. I don’t know what it was. And Shirley and I were standing in line for a fortune teller. And he said whatever he did to her after looking at her palm. And when I came up, he said, “You must help the woman who just came before you. She’s a great artist and she doesn’t know it.”

Debbie Millman:
Oh, wow.

Gloria Steinem:
It was very touching.

Debbie Millman:
I’m going to have to speak to Steven Heller about this, because Steven Heller and Beth Kleber, the archivist here at SVA who’s managing Milton’s archives, we need to investigate this. Thank you for telling me that. Who came up with the idea for creating a magazine for women that wasn’t about beauty, and clothes, and makeup, and marriage, but it was about politics, and societal issues, and questioning norms and rules and laws?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, there were a number of us women writers who had worked for the existing women’s magazines. Glamour, the Ladies’ Home Journal, Mademoiselle. And within those pages, there would be one essay that was not about clothes, and makeup, and traditional subjects.

So there was a little bit of a place, but we did realize that there was not an entire magazine. Clay allowed us to introduce a section that was women’s magazine to come, Ms. Magazine. And I had no idea. I mean, Jane O’Reilly was part of it. Lots of other writers were part of it.

And then he sent me off to do publicity for it, just traveling all the way to California doing free radio shows and whatever. And when I got to California, someone called into the radio show, a woman, and said, “I can’t find it.” So I called Clay in a panic and said, “It never got here. It never got here.” And we discovered that it had sold out in just a week.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. The magazine, you founded it in 1971. It was originally included as a special section of New York Magazine. The issue came out at the very end of 1971, but you cover dated it Spring 1972, because you were afraid it was not going to sell and become an embarrassment to the movement.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. We feared that it would lie like a lox, as we said.

Debbie Millman:
It sold out in less than a week.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, yes.

Debbie Millman:
Before you settled on the name Ms. for the magazine, you considered the name Sojourner after Sojourner Truth. But in your research, you discovered people thought it was a travel magazine. Sisters was another, but then people thought it was about Catholic nuns, a definite need for a magazine. At the time, the word Ms., M-S., was only used in secretarial handbooks from the 1950s, where it was recommended as a way of dealing with the unfortunate situation in which you didn’t know the marital status of the woman you were writing to. How did you determine Ms. was the name to go with?

Gloria Steinem:
It was a mix really, of just what you said, because it was a way of saying that someone was a female without saying marital status. And it was used that way in some situations in England. And also, it was short, and a magazine logo is helpful if short, because then you have more space on the cover. So we called it Ms., much to the confusion of a lot of people who called it M-S or-

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I read that the New York Times took 15 years, 15 years to get the term Ms. Accepted in the newspaper. You wrote letters, you petitioned, demonstrated. They changed Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. They changed all the pronouns of transsexual. They changed everything before they changed Ms. They even referred to you as Ms. Steinem of Ms. Magazine for 15 years. What got them to finally change it?

Gloria Steinem:
I guess, I mean we picketed the newspaper, and we wrote to the editors, and we did everything we could. But actually the most frustrating thing was that after they finally changed and began to use Ms., we took roses to Abe Rosenthal, who actually had been a corresponded in India when I was in India. So I knew him, which nobody could believe because he didn’t seem conducive to-

Debbie Millman:
Right.

Gloria Steinem:
Right. So we took roses to him, and he said the most annoying thing, which was, Well if I’d known it mattered so much to you, I would’ve done it earlier.” You just wanted to kill him.

Debbie Millman:
Wow. Gloria, I wanted to share with you a story from my childhood. My mother was a seamstress growing up. She had her own business. She advertised in the Penny Saver to get seamstress business. She mostly made clothes for people that couldn’t find conventional clothes to fit them in department stores. And the name of her company as I was growing up was The Artistic Tailor, because she was an artist, but also a seamstress. So she was The Artistic Tailor. After Ms. Magazine came out, she changed the name of her business to Ms. Artistic Tailor.

Gloria Steinem:
Oh, that’s so touching.

Debbie Millman:
I wanted you to know that.

Gloria Steinem:
That’s great.

Debbie Millman:
Ms. just celebrated its 50th anniversary. It’s still a vibrant magazine. It’s still a paper magazine, in addition to a website, has a robust social media presence. How has the magazine been able to survive on the shoestring it’s had all this time? All this time.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, at a certain point in our life, even before, while we were still in our conventional form, we realized that we could not raise money as we needed to unless we were a foundation. So we did become a 501(c)(3).

Debbie Millman:

The Ms. Foundation for Women?

Gloria Steinem:
Yeah, instead of a for-profit incorporation. And therefore, we could run full page ads saying, “Buy a subscription for a friend you don’t know.” Especially women in prison, for instance. I mean, the reading materials in prisons are often very slender, to put it mildly. And we wanted to be able to send the magazine into women in prison, and so asked for contributions for that.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve written about how there are events that divide our lives into before and after. And despite all you’ve accomplished at this point point in your life, you described that moment back then as an event most people may never have heard of, the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston. What happened there to create this line before and after for you?

Gloria Steinem:
First of all, that conference was the first and I guess last big National Women’s Conference that was financed… I mean in a slender way, but anyway, by federal funds that had come from a congressional resolution that was put forth by Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Patsy Mink, who were all members of Congress then. And that was purposefully representative.

We did our best in each state to see that it represented from a racial and economic point of view who lived there. It didn’t always work, but it mostly worked, so that it became in this huge hall in Houston, the single most representative meeting for women that has ever existed. And after that meeting, its chapters state by state, especially in Minnesota, and a lot, continued to represent that. But by now, there are all kinds of women’s groups gathered around different issues. But then, it made a huge difference to have a dedicated group city by city, state by state.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve stated that this is when you learn the difference between protesting other people’s rules and making one’s zone, between asking and doing. How did you learn that?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, we were kind of in charge of ourselves there in this massive meeting. And preparing for it, carrying it on, and so on. So trying to be as representative as we could. And there were caucuses. There was a Black women’s caucus, a Latina women’s… There were lots of different caucuses, and I was the messenger going from caucus to caucus, asking them what changes they wanted in the overall statement.

So it was just an incredibly moving experience. And I remember after it was over thousands of people in this massive hall, and there was empty chairs and empty amphitheater. And I was standing there thinking, “Who will remember this meeting, who will?” And three Native American women came up to me and gave me a red shawl, a Native American prayer shawl, and said, “Wear this when you need support and need help.”

And somehow they, Native Americans have gone through more deprivation, and injustice, and theft of their land, perhaps than any other group here, that they had that kind of kindness, and confidence, and sense of history. Gave me a sense of comfort in history.

Debbie Millman:
Didn’t they also give you a necklace that you wore until it fell apart?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, absolutely. I still have the beads in a bowl somewhere.

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Gloria Steinem:
It is, right.

Debbie Millman:
I want to talk to you a little bit about anger. In all of your activism, you discovered an endemic among women, an inability to show anger. And you discovered that anger is supposed to be unfeminine, so we suppress it until it overflows, and you now feel that harnessing anger for change is a good thing. And though it took you a long time to know what to say when people called you a bitch, you learned to simply say thank you. How did you get to that place?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, that’s not so hard to say thank you. It took me a while. But I don’t know. Anger, I think overflows in a way, and it heads into our fear of lack of control. The other thing is that I think for many women, that lack of control means that when we get angry, we cry.

And I remember talking to a woman who was an executive in a big office and had decision-making power over people, both men and women. And she said to me, she said, “I know that I cry when I get angry, so I just get angry and cry, and say to the group I’m angry with or talking to, ‘You may think I am sad because I am crying. No, I’m crying because I’m angry.'” I thought that’s genius.

Debbie Millman:
Genius, genius. I’ve gotten to a point now… Because I think that anger is really just a cover for sadness and grief. That if you allow yourself to cry, you actually are able to metabolize the feeling, and then use it for good.

Gloria Steinem:
No, I agree. We shouldn’t be shamed, and we shouldn’t shame ourselves, which we were often doing, I think. Because crying when we’re angry, maybe some men experience this too, but I think not as much.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I find it’s much easier to calibrate my emotions if I allow myself to cry, as opposed to flip out and get angry. How can we best harness our anger right now? Between the backtracking of so many of our rights, reproductive freedom, freedom of speech, the rampant book banning, how do we best face the future?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I don’t think there’s any one way, but I do think that anger is an energy cell that we can use. Because righteous anger, anger at injustice, unfairness, pain, cruelty, is an energy cell. And if we look at it that way, this is a gift. This is energy I can use. Then we can, I hope, begin to feel less at fault or less disempowered by being angry.

Debbie Millman:
What do you see in this generation of women that you haven’t seen in generations past?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, so much. I mean, obviously it depends where and who. But I think first of all, there’s just an assumption that marriage is supposed to be equal, that men can take care of babies as women take care of babies, that it’s not a punishment for men. On the contrary, that it’s a big reward. That if you are arriving at a place of work, whether it’s in a factory, or an office, or the government, or whatever it is, if the people there don’t look something like the country, there’s probably something undemocratic going on. So the burden of proof of caring has shifted in a big way, from what’s wrong with me, to what’s wrong with society, and how can I help to fix it?

Debbie Millman:
Is it possible to feel optimism looking at what we’re facing?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, no, absolutely. Because optimism is a form of planning. So if we don’t imagine something positive that is possible, it’s way less likely to happen. It may be difficult when looking at Trump in the White House, something I never thought could possibly happen. But he’s no longer there and-

Debbie Millman:
Let’s hope he stays out

Gloria Steinem:
I think just remembering that we have to imagine change in order to have an idea of what we want and be able to plan is very, very helpful.

Debbie Millman:
Gloria, the last thing I want to talk to you about is age. You’ve been very open about your age. I remember back when you turned 40, a reporter said, “Wow, you look great for 40.” And you said, “This is what 40 looks like.” And you said it again when you turned 80.

Gloria Steinem:
And I think I also said, “We’ve been lying so long. Who would know?”

Debbie Millman:
Exactly.

Gloria Steinem:
Right, right.

Debbie Millman:
You were very open again about it when you turned 80. Next year, you’re going to be 90. You’ve said that you seriously love aging, and have recently discovered yourself thinking things like, “I don’t want anything I don’t have.”

Gloria Steinem:
That’s true.

Debbie Millman:
That’s a pretty remarkable thing.

Gloria Steinem:
That’s true, except that I haven’t written enough. That’s the one thing that I regret and hope to still remedy, even if I have to… I researched to find the oldest woman in the world, and I found a woman in the Himalayas who’s 130.

Debbie Millman:
So there’s plenty of time.

Gloria Steinem:
Plenty of time. No, I know that’s not overwhelmingly practical.

Debbie Millman:
Well, I know you plan to live past 100. You’ve said that many times. What do you want most for this next decade?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, speaking for myself, I hope that I write more, because writers will do lots of things in order not to write. And I had so much activist temptation, that I’m afraid I overdid it. So I would like to do that. I’m content where I’m living in a house where I’ve been forever, or an apartment in a house. I am not so good at saying no. I could use a course in saying no, because I need to at least mark off days and say, “Okay. I’m saying no on this day.” I’m saying this now in the hope that I actually do it. But am surrounded by chosen family who are my friends, and I’m healthy enough. So I feel very, very lucky to have lived through what I have, and to see a possible future, which is a luxury in this world.

Debbie Millman:
Gloria, my last question is this one. I’ve read that when you turn 100, you want to have a diner, and you’ve described it like this. “A little diner with blue gingham curtains by the side of the road, because diners are the most democratic places. Everyone goes, truck drivers go, people from the neighborhood, people in their tuxes after parties go. and they’re cheerful and cozy, and you get just the kind of reward food that you want. They’re truly populist places. And in the back room, we could have a little revolutionary meeting from time to time, and you would serve brand muffins.” So I have a two part question. Is this still an ambition? Is the first part.

Gloria Steinem:
First of all, I love you for knowing that. I don’t know where you found that, but it’s quite true that I’ve always loved diners as the kind of ultimate democracy. But I recognize that it’s impractical for me to be running a diner. I still have a great feeling about them, but I think I’m content to be in my apartment with a guest room, where friends can stay, with a living room where we can have talking circles. I think I’m content to be there.

Debbie Millman:
Well, the second part of my question was if indeed you do ever do that, can I become a server there? But we’ll wait and see if it happens, and we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.

Gloria Steinem:
Okay. You and I can be serving bran muffins there-

Debbie Millman:
Let’s call it Steinamites. Gloria Steinem, thank you. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters. Thank you for being one of the people in the world that have made a difference in how we live in the world. It has been an honor and a thrill to have an opportunity to talk with you today.

Gloria Steinem:
And thank you for your incredible generosity and spending the time that you have to know everything. When I’m losing my memory, I’m calling you up.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely, anytime. Anytime. For more information about Gloria Steinem, all her work, her books, her writing, and her activism, you can go to her website at gloriasteinem.com.

This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Gloria Steinem appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
She’s an award-winning journalist, a New York Times bestselling author, several times over, a co-founder of one of the most significant magazines of the 20th century, and an activist whose work has impacted the place women and girls now have in the world. She’s also co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Action Alliance, and the Women’s Media Center. For over 60 years, she has been in the thick of American cultural and political life, where she has been instrumental in shaping our ideas about feminism, humanity, and equal rights for all people.

She is, of course, the legendary Gloria Steinem, and I have the great honor of interviewing her today in my studio at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Gloria Steinem, welcome to Design Matters.

Gloria Steinem:
Thank you so much. And now listening to your introduction, I’m only worried about living up to it.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, you already have. That’s the great thing. You’ve already done these things. Gloria, I understand that your older sister, Susanne, was actually the person in your family who named you. Is it true you were named after her favorite doll?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, I think so. My parents had had another child, a boy, who was stillborn, between us. And that meant that my sister was almost a decade older than I. So she was another mother in a way, and I looked up to her and followed her around much to her alarm. And yes, she did name me.

Debbie Millman:
I wonder what type of doll we could find now back in the fifties that is named Gloria. I think we’re going to have to do an eBay search to figure that out.

Gloria Steinem:
I think the dolls that I adored, and I did have a collection of dolls, were named after Sonja Henie, who was a great figure skater of the era. I don’t know. They came with names, not mine, but I was in love with dolls.

Debbie Millman:
You were born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. Your father’s mother Pauline Perlmutter Steinem was a suffragist, and the first woman in the state of Ohio to be elected to the national board. This was before women had the right to vote nationally. How did she manage such a victory?

Gloria Steinem:
First of all, I’m so impressed with your research. Thank you for that, because I think Pauline deserves notice and attention. She had come from either Russia or a country close to Russia. We’re not sure, when she was a teenager, then lived in Vienna, I think. Not sure. And my grandfather went there to find a bride, in a very European traditional way.

So she arrived in her late teens as a bride, and she did become a suffragist. Also, she founded the first vocational high school. Otherwise, they were all learning Latin and Greek, whether that was going to be useful in their lives or not in Toledo. And she was greatly admired. I only remember her in a sensory way because I was too little. I remember her kitchen and food, but my mother was definitely in love with her mother-in-law law.

Debbie Millman:
Did her activism even subliminally influence you at all? Did you look back at what she was doing and feel like that was something you also wanted to do at that age?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure. I certainly admired the fact that she had made it possible for women to vote by organizing them to vote in a group. Otherwise, they were harassed and scared away from the voting places by gangs of men and boys who were hostile to women voting. I knew that. I knew about the vocational high school. I knew she was very admired, but I’m not sure. Maybe it made me assume that I could go to college, which my older sister did too. That was possible in my family for women to be educated. But she seemed distant and so honorable, I couldn’t imagine imitating her.

Debbie Millman:
Your parents, Leo and Ruth Steinem, met at the University of Toledo in 1917 while they were working together on their college newspaper. After they graduated, they got married. And you’ve written how your mother married your father because of his refusal to worry. And then as a result, was left to worry alone, on her own. Why didn’t your father worry at all? He seemed to be such a carefree, risk-taking experimenter.

Gloria Steinem:
I can only imagine it had something to do with his family, which was well to do. And he was one of four boys, and he was a kind of devil may care kind of person. Whereas my mother came from a very working class family. Her father was a railroad engineer. So I think my father’s carefree attitude was charming to her, and his great argument for getting married was, “It’ll only take a minute.”

Debbie Millman:
I believe they were married twice. Right? Didn’t they get married privately in a very quick civil ceremony and then have another marriage?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. A private ceremony and then a public one, yes.

Debbie Millman:
Ultimately, I believe that because they were married twice, but only divorced once, I think your mother felt that they were still married for quite a long time.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, because she felt divorce was a shame. And so when pressed, she would say well really, they were still married.

Debbie Millman:
Your father was a man of many trades. He ran a dance pavilion and a summer resort. He was an antique salesman. He tried to write slogans for ad agencies. I loved some of the slogans that you’ve included in some of your writing. He dreamed up a living chess game, with costume teenagers moving across the squares of a dance floor. Very ahead of his time.

He was always looking for the next big deal, and he was often on the road. You were often with him, sometimes working alongside him as a little girl and still in single digits. Can you talk about how you assisted him in his efforts as an antique salesman?

Gloria Steinem:
He used to go to country auctions to buy jewelry, antiques, small antiques, things he could carry around in his car. And then he would sell them to roadside dealers. So this was his winter way of life, when the summer dance pavilion was not going. My job was to pack and unpack these little items of jewelry, or glassware, or China, or whatever, when he went into a roadside shop in order to try to sell them. So I was the packer and the unpacker, which I was in heaven about. I mean, kids love to be necessary, so I felt I was part of the grownup world.

Debbie Millman:
Didn’t he sometimes send you into some of the antique stores to work independently of him as a little girl?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, depending on how little I was, yes. Right? I mean, there was a downside to it, because I always felt a little bit as if we were the gypsies of the highway and looked down upon by whoever it was who owned the shop as we drove up in our dusty car.

Debbie Millman:
When your family was on the road, you never started out with enough money to reach a particular destination. Instead, your dad took a few boxes of China, silver, other small antiques he bought at country auctions, and then used them to sell, and buy, and barter your way through your travels. Did you know what he was doing? Did you feel okay about that? Did you ever feel insecure?

Gloria Steinem:
I knew that it worried my mother, who had grown up in a way less economically secure way, and therefore was more worried. But my father’s slogan was kind of, “If you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, it could be wonderful.” And that’s seductive too. I’m sure I’ve absorbed a lot of that, because I too have never had a proper job.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve written how there were only a few months every year when your dad seemed content with a house dwelling life. Do you know what the motivation was behind his desire to be constantly moving? Did you ever ask him about it?

Gloria Steinem:
No, we never talked about it in those terms. I just accepted who he was, even though it did also cause my parents to separate eventually, because my mother wanted to live in a more secure place. And after my decade older sister was in college, it was possible for my mother and I to move into her old family house in Toledo.

But my father was always present. He never had a bank account, because I think he feared the IRS would attach it. But he used to send me money orders every once in a while,

Debbie Millman:
$50 money orders, which is a lot of money at that time.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, yes. He did his best to be attentive, and he was certainly fun to be with. I don’t remember ever feeling that my parents were not doing their best, whatever it was, either my mother or my father.

Debbie Millman:
From what I understand and what I’ve read, you’ve described yourself as a child who wanted too much to fit in, and have written about how you longed for a home. Much of the time, you were on the road before you were 10 years old. You weren’t going to school. Your sister enrolled in whatever high school was near whatever destination you were going to, but you were young enough to get away with your love of comic books, and horse stories, and Louisa May Alcott. You were essentially teaching yourself. Did you feel that it would’ve been preferable at that time to have one stable place that you lived?

Gloria Steinem:
What I remember emotionally is that as we were driving to Florida or California, we would pass through neighborhoods with conventional houses, with front yards and porches. And I would fantasize living there. I would think, “Wouldn’t it be nice to live there and to go to school like the other kids?” But I was always well-treated. It isn’t as if I wanted to escape. I just had a case of envy for the life I saw in movies.

Debbie Millman:
Every summer, you and your family stayed in a small house your dad had built across the road from a lake in rural Michigan. And there he ran a dance pavilion on a pier over the water. And though there was no ocean within hundreds of miles, he named it Ocean Beach Pier. I kind of love that about him.

On weekends, he booked the big dance bands of the time, and people came from all over to dance to live music, Guy Lombardo, Duke Ellington, the Andrew Sisters. And I understand that during this time, you also fell in love with dancing. And Ruby, the cigarette girl at the resort taught you how to tap dance. And is it true you could tap dance to the Minuet in G in a hoop skirt at six years old?

Gloria Steinem:
Actually, the Minuet was not tap dancing. I had a dance partner who was a girl a little taller than I dressed up as a boy, and we did an old-fashioned Minuet.

Debbie Millman:
Wow.

Gloria Steinem:
But we also tap danced, and I somehow thought I was going to tap dance my way into… I guess I wanted to be a Rockette. I thought that would be the peak of success. And also, there were Hollywood movies that were full of dance scenes, so that was my impractical to put it mildly, imagination of my future life.

Debbie Millman:
Well, I believe you also took ballet lessons. Did you have fantasies about being a professional dancer beyond even a Rockette?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I think I had sense enough to know that I had started ballet too late, and that I was not likely to be a real ballet dancer. But whenever a ballet company stopped in Toledo, I went and fantasized about how I could do it, in spite of the fact that the toe shoes that I wore on each weak ankle were not going to get me there.

But it was the only way I could imagine moving forward in life. My 10 years older sister had gone to college, so I guess I knew that was a possibility. But the only way of not following the script of getting married, and having children, and living in the suburbs, if you’re lucky, was show business for me. Not very practical obviously. I felt like a writer, but I didn’t know you could make a living that way.

Debbie Millman:
So even then, you felt like you wanted to have sort of unconventional life?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. Both because my parents were somewhat unconventional and because I didn’t see happiness much in the conventional neighborhoods around me. The most attractive people in my childhood were the band members for whom my mother cooked, because there were no restaurants in that part of Michigan. So there were often all these band men sitting around the table. And I was the only child, and they were very nice to me. Perhaps they were missing their own children. But everything that seemed attractive was not nine to five. It was some form of show business.

Debbie Millman:
One of my favorite stories about your dad was how he was unable to resist swearing, and your mother asked that he not swear around you and your sister. So he named the family dog Damnit.

Gloria Steinem:
True.

Debbie Millman:
When my brother was a little boy, he was also forbidden to say… For whatever reason, that word was his favorite word to say, “Damn it.” And my parents were like, “You can’t say that.” So he decided to reorganize the way he said that word. He said, Damo and navit. And I think that really tells you almost everything you need to know about him.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. No, that’s very inventive and poetic. And my father also invented a very satisfying, long epithet that was gosh darn cholera [inaudible 00:15:45] the younger the age of the middle age. I don’t know, it just went on and on, which he would rattle off at great speed.

Debbie Millman:
And he also, from what I understand, liked to say that that was dynamite?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, that was his business stationary actually, that showed you who he was. I have a letterhead that’s a big three-inch high red with dropped out, kind of exploding letters in my office framed. It’s dynamite, because it definitely tells you who he was.

Debbie Millman:
I got the sense from everything that you’ve written about him, that he was a happy man. He was a kind man and a happy man. Was there a time where you felt that your parents loved each other?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, I think so. I mean, I could imagine why my devil may care father from a well-to-do Jewish family would appeal to my very, very hardworking, not quite penniless, but that grandfather worked on the railroad. So I think also, they shared a sense of humor. And I could understand why they appealed to each other, even though their interests were so distant.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve written how both your mother and your father paid a high price for lives that were out of balance, and how your father chose his own journey. And how though he never realized his dreams, ultimately, your mother was unable to even pursue hers. And you wrote this about her in your book My Life on the Road. “Long before I was born, she had been a rare and pioneering woman reporter, work that she loved and had done so well, that she was promoted from social reporting to Sunday editor for a major Toledo newspaper. She had stayed on this path for a decade after marrying my father and six years after giving birth to my sister. She was also supporting her husband’s impractical dreams and debts, suffering a miscarriage and then a stillbirth. She experienced so much self-blame and guilt, that she suffered what was then called a nervous breakdown. Once out of the sanatorium, she gave up her job, her friends, and everything she loved, to follow my father.”

And this is when you were born, Gloria. This was the only mother you knew as a little girl. How did you understand her at such a young age, prior to even becoming aware that she’d had this previous life?

Gloria Steinem:
There were always clues. I mean, she loved Edna St. Vincent Millay, and she would share that poetry and various essays. She taught me how to fold a paper in thirds so that it was like a reporter’s notebook, since at that point, there weren’t proper reporter’s notebook, but you could hold it in one hand and make notes on it with the other. So I realized the saddest words probably in the English language, what might’ve been, for her.

Debbie Millman:
Your mother suffered from depression, and addiction, and hallucinations, but you also describe her like your father, kind and loving with flashes of humor and talent, in everything from math to poetry. She had been so ambitious and so capable. How did she lose her confidence? Was that something that women were just expected to give up?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure, because much of it happened before I was born. Because as I was saying, my sister was a decade older. And she was trying to be a mother, a wife to an irresponsible, charming man, and also a journalist all at the same time. Which I believe is why she, or the atmosphere anyway around her, when she had what was then called a nervous breakdown, which meant that she was too depressed to work, and she spent I’m not sure how long, at least a year in a sanitarium. When she emerged, she was also addicted to sodium pentothal, which was the tranquilizer of the era, and especially given to women because it was thought that women didn’t need to be that alert in order to function as homemakers.

Debbie Millman:
Really to keep them in line homemaking.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. I mean, that had happened before I was born. So I did recognize because of her reciting Omar Khayyam to me in the morning when I woke up, or because of her affection for short stories, I did recognize who she might have been. And I wonder how many of us, I hope many fewer of us now, women and some men too, are living out the unlived lives of their mothers. But I realized that I was too. I mean, I would wanted to be a writer anyway. It wasn’t as if I was doing something that I didn’t want to do, but I did understand it was the unlived life of my mother.

Debbie Millman:
As I was reading about your childhood, and your origin stories, and the essays that you’ve written about your mother, to Ruth, which is a gorgeous essay included in one of your earlier books, as well as stories about your dad. It struck me more than anyone I’ve ever read about or interviewed now over 18 years and 500 plus interviews, how the conditions of your origin story really did create the conditions for you to be the activist and the feminist that you are now, and have been for 50 years. It could have crushed someone the way you were grown up. You could have followed in your mother’s footsteps very, very easily.

What do you think it is about who you are that you were able to take the learnings of both your parents, the kindness, the lovingness that they were able to share and show you, to be able to break those patterns and become who you were and are?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I think your phrase, the kindness and the lovingness is the key to it. Because I did experience always kindness and respect for who I was as an individual, and I did always know that I was loved, which I’m not sure was as true for either of my parents. And yet, they somehow managed to create that for me.

So that, plus I lived in books. I mean, I loved Louisa May Alcott. I read everything she ever wrote, not only for young readers, but her much more depressed, older books for older readers. And my father used to sometimes buy a whole house library in order to get a couple of first editions, and then he would dump all the other books in the garage. So I would go out in the garage and end up reading some minute history of World War, I don’t know. I mean, things I had no business reading. If I was hooked on a book, I would just stay up all night until I finished it. I just entered it.

Debbie Millman:
I used to read books over and over. I also believe that books helped save me. I used to sneak copies of The Godfather that my parents had in their library into my room under the covers, and was just titillated by that sex scene at the beginning. I couldn’t believe that people did things like that.

I know at one point, you asked one of your mother’s doctors if her spirit had been broken, and he told you that that was as good a diagnosis as any. And he said it’s hard to mend anything that’s been broken for 20 years. And it reminded me of the mother in Michael Cunningham’s, The Hours, the difference being that your mother stayed. And I was also wondering if that was also part of what gave you the sense of meaning to keep going.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, clearly. I mean, I loved my mother, and I admired her in many ways. But I definitely didn’t want to become her. That was maybe I’m not sure, part of the reason why I didn’t get married, even though I was engaged at least once to a wonderful guy I still know. I mean-

Debbie Millman:
I want to ask you about that in a bit.

Gloria Steinem:
But I didn’t see in front of me besides my mother, many examples of women who had married, had children, and were happy, because there were not that many women in the paid labor force. It was mostly a time of very poor families or suburban families. It must’ve been present somewhere, but I didn’t see it.

Debbie Millman:
Your parents divorced when you were 10. You and your mom then moved to Clark Lake in Amherst in order to be close to your sister who was attending Smith College. You said that that year was the most conventional life you would ever lead. Was it everything you imagined it to be?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. We rented a house. It was in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is very close to Smith College where my sister was going. And we rented an already furnished house, literally the only proper house that I’d ever lived in. And I went to what I guess I think was the sixth grade, and I kind of pretended to be normal.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah, I know what that’s like. Did people believe you?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure. I should go back and find them and see. But I did love having a house that I could invite friends home to.

Debbie Millman:
When your sister began her last year of college, you and your mom moved back to Toledo and into the house where your mom had grown up. There, you shared bunk beds and also lived with rats. I believe at one point you were bitten by a rat. Was that something that scared you, or was it just more adventure?

Gloria Steinem:
No, no, no. It definitely scared me, because I still remember it. And I was thinking, given the current rat crisis in New York City, I should write about it.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely.

Gloria Steinem:
Because it was the summertime and I was sleeping… My hand must’ve been over the side of the bed. And I woke up not because the rat bit me, but just I woke up, and there was a whole pool of blood there. And my mother, even though she was not well, managed to get the two of us to a local emergency room so I could have a tetanus shot.

And memorably when I came back, the pool of blood on the floor had been licked up. Later on, after I had been one of the many writers who started New York Magazine… And I knew that rats were a feature of New York life, especially for poor families. I used to try to get Clay Felker the editor, to let me write about rats, and he would never do it. It was not the image of the magazine he had in mind.

Debbie Millman:
That’s so interesting, Gloria. Recently, New York Magazine won a national magazine award for their coverage of what’s happening right now with rats in Manhattan.

Gloria Steinem:
Really? I didn’t know that.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I was a judge for the cover design-That’s fascinating. And the cover design won. And I believe the article did as well, but definitely the cover did.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, you see. If only they listened.

Debbie Millman:
Yep. Now, you had a number of different jobs as you were growing up. You worked as a sales girl in a women’s clothing store after school. And on Saturdays you read scripts. You played records at a local radio station. You worked as a magician’s assistant and also a lifeguard. Have you always had a strong work ethic?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I was just trying to make a little extra money. And I was looking for something. I was answering ads in the newspaper much of the time. For instance, the magician’s assistant.

Debbie Millman:
I sort of had this vision of you being on stage in a very sudden, Desperately Seeking Susan kind of environment.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I did stand there while he threw knives at me. I mean, I was standing against a cork board, and the knives were not that sharp, thankfully. But it was a way of making money basically. And I used to also dance at supermarket openings, and the-

Debbie Millman:
Lions Club, I believe-

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, the Lions Club. It was a way of making 10 or $20 for a show, and it was also a way out of everyday life.

Debbie Millman:
When you were 17, your mom sold your Toledo house, so you would have money to pay for college, so that the house money paid for your college education. You went to live with your sister in Washington, DC where she was a jewelry buyer in a department store. And this gave you a carefree senior year of high school. You were elected vice president of the student council and the senior class. What was that experience like for you?

Gloria Steinem:
It was very bizarre for a lot of reasons. One thing was I couldn’t understand for a bit why the student body walking around the halls of that high school looked different. And it took me a while to understand they were all white, that this in the District of Columbia was still a time of racial segregation in public schools.

I was living with my sister because my mother was in a mental hospital. And people would treat me with sympathy saying, “It must be so hard to be away from your parents.” And I would say, “Oh yes,” even though it was the most carefree time I had ever lived in my life, but I didn’t want to betray them, I guess. So it was a time of happiness, but pretense.

Debbie Millman:
As you did visit your mom on the weekend, she started to get better. You slowly began to meet someone you described in your writing as someone you’d never known, and you’ve written that you discovered that you were alike in many ways, something you either hadn’t seen or couldn’t admit out of fear that you would share her fate. What similarities did you see?

Gloria Steinem:
A sense of humor, a love of reading and writing. Some character that was… I mean, it is true that I had some of my father’s adventurousness, but I’m not sure he ever sat down and read a book in his life. So that entire part of my mother’s life I really related to. And it made me sad, because I realized what she had missed.

Debbie Millman:
At the time, you had no inkling that you had become one of the great liberators of our time and how-

Gloria Steinem:
I’m still not so sure about that.

Debbie Millman:
You don’t have to be. Plenty of us are sure.

Gloria Steinem:
But there came to be a women’s movement, which helped us all.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, of course. But you were a big part in helping women all over the world take a stand for their own lives. Do you think that your grief over your mother’s inability to have a life she wanted to, impacted you to do that? I mean, I don’t even know that you realized it at the time, but do you think that ultimately, that fueled what you were doing?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, it was clear to me that I didn’t want to live what was still a conventional life. In the ’50s. Most of my classmates got engaged and or married in college or soon after college. I realized I didn’t want to do that, but I didn’t quite know what else I could do. So I ended up fleeing to India, because there was a one shot atypical fellowship available.

And I ended up living in India for two years, which made a huge difference, because that was close to the independence movement. Obviously Gandhi was a huge force. I was trying to write about Gandhi, so I was going around and interviewing people who had worked with him.

And I remember finally getting to a great woman leader named Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, who listened to me as she rocked on her porch and finally said, “Well, my dear, we taught him everything he knew.” It turned out that it had been the women’s movement that organized the March to the sea to get salt without taxes, and Gandhi had come from living in South Africa and became the external symbol for this internal movement that was mostly women.

Debbie Millman:
I want to talk about your time in India in a moment. I just want to talk about a few things that happened before you went to India. You graduated from high school in 1952. You attended Smith College like your sister. I understand you also applied to Cornell and Stanford, neither of which accepted you, and I hope that they regret that greatly now. But at the time, did you feel rejected? Did you wish that you had been accepted to either of those schools? Would you have gone?

Gloria Steinem:
I don’t know. I wasn’t surprised that I wasn’t accepted, because my background was not typical, and the high school I went to in Toledo, I may have been one of two or three people who went to college from my graduating class. Most everybody, the women got married. The men went to work in the factories. So I can understand why they were not so willing to take a chance, whereas Smith viewed me as a legacy because my sister had gone there.

Debbie Millman:
At Smith, you majored in government. What were you imagining you would do professionally at that point?

Gloria Steinem:
I’m not sure what kind of job I thought I could get, but it was an era in which Senator McCarthy was wrongly accusing people of being a communist. So I had some sense of how important government was and how unjust it could be. I don’t know that I imagined exactly the kind of job I wanted to have, but I thought it was the world I wanted to be active in.

Debbie Millman:
You also took courses at the University of Geneva and earned a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England for a summer. Did you have a sense at that point that you were beginning to take after your father by traveling so much?

Gloria Steinem:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I mean, mainly I had been in Geneva at the university there. And in the summer, I just didn’t want to go home. So I managed to get to Oxford and take a summer course there.

Debbie Millman:
You returned to Smith College for your senior year, where you met Blair Chotzinoff, who you already mentioned. Was it love at first sight?

Gloria Steinem:
I think so. I mean, he was the friend of a man who was the fiance of a friend of mine in the same dormitory at Smith. And we went to the same country house for a weekend. There was a big storm and a flood, which meant that we couldn’t get out, so we ended up staying there.

Debbie Millman:
How Biblical.

Gloria Steinem:
Right, right. And he was very handsome, and funny, and unconventional. He looked sort of like a Kashmiri prince. He had a little bit dark skin and green eyes. And so, I mean, he was only Jewish, but he looked kind of amazing. He, of course, had never gone to college, and he was working as a so-called leg man for a Broadway columnist at the time.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, wow.

Gloria Steinem:
So he was welcome in all the nightclubs, and restaurants, and so on.

Debbie Millman:
I understand he took you for rides and he had a little plane. He would take you-

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. He loved to fly. And so when he came to visit me at Smith College, he would fly from New York, from a New York airport, to a tiny airport near North Hampton.

Debbie Millman:
Is it true that he once wrote your name Gloria in the Sky?

Gloria Steinem:
He may have. I don’t remember seeing it. Maybe he was trying to do that. I don’t know.

Debbie Millman:
I was trying to find a picture of that.

Gloria Steinem:
But I just remember that my house mother at that era at Smith… If you lived in a dormitory, there was a woman who was looking after you. And my house mother was kind of in love with him too.

Debbie Millman:
Sounds like he was pretty gorgeous.

Gloria Steinem:
Right.

Debbie Millman:
So he proposed. He proposed marriage. Initially, you said yes. Did you want to marry him?

Gloria Steinem:
I didn’t and I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine not being with him. I was trying to get a job as a researcher. Women were then only hired as researchers with Time, or Newsweek, or the New York Times. I wanted to continue working, but I was not sure I could support myself. All my friends were getting married. It just seemed a kind of stop gap measure to get engaged, and he had given me the engagement ring that belonged to his mother.

Debbie Millman:
How hard was it to break off the engagement, and what made you decide to do that?

Gloria Steinem:
I felt if I got married, it was the last choice I would have. Life would be over, because I didn’t see people, women around me who were continuing to change after acquiring an identity through their husbands. Maybe that was wrong, but I just didn’t see it.

So it felt more like an end than a beginning. And since I had the opportunity to go to India on a very slender scholarship, I did that. And I did it in a not very kind way. I mean, I just left and left him a note.

Debbie Millman:
Just a don’t hate me.

Gloria Steinem:
Just trying to explain. Right.

Debbie Millman:
What gave you the courage to do something so unconventional in 1956, to go to India by yourself?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I’m not sure it was courage. I mean, it was desperation in the sense of not wanting to get married when I viewed marriage as not my first choice, but my last choice in leading someone else’s life.
I knew about India and cared about India, because both my mother and her mother-in-law, even though they came from very different families, had been theosophists. Which is literally God knowledge, but a form of philosophy that I think was very popular in those years, and leaned heavily towards the east. And was mostly populated by women, perhaps women who were striving to find some religion that was not as patriarchal, as the churches and temples around them.

Debbie Millman:
En route to India, you stopped in the UK and at the time discovered that you were pregnant. What was your reaction?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I had feared that I was pregnant, and hoped that I was not, and had all kinds of fantasies about riding horses in the park-

Debbie Millman:
You write about that.

Gloria Steinem:
Throwing myself downstairs and all the about that, all the impractical things. In the local phone directory, I had found a doctor who was near where I was staying with a college classmate and her husband in London. So he confirmed that I was pregnant, and said that he would send me to a woman gynecologist who would do an abortion. At that point, I think legally, you had to have the signatures of two physicians in order to have a legal abortion.

And he said, “I will do this, but you must promise me two things. One, you will never tell anyone my name. And two, you’ll do what you want to do with your life.” And later on, I dedicated a book to him, because that was so pivotal and so important.

Debbie Millman:
You didn’t tell anyone for many, many years. Not the person that you were living with, not the man who you had been with, until the women’s movement came along and women began to tell the truth about our lives. Did you feel ashamed or guilty?

Gloria Steinem:
I didn’t feel guilty. It wasn’t a decision I would ever have changed. But it was not a subject that was talked about in public. And it wasn’t until we started New York Magazine, and I had a column there, that I went to cover an early women’s liberation meeting in a church someplace downtown in the village, I think. And there, I heard women standing up and talking about the dangers of illegal abortion in public. I had never seen women telling the truth in public before. So I went home and wrote a column about it, and began to talk about it for the first time.

Debbie Millman:
I am 61 years old, and have had a lot of experiences in my life that I feel very ashamed of, and it’s taken me years to talk about them. One of the biggest being the sexual abuse that I was affected by as a child. And yet, I’ve been able to talk about that more easily than my abortion. In fact, I’ve never talked about it on the air ever. And I really thought about it a lot over the last couple of days reading about your experiences. Why is there so much shame, especially when people are admitting it on Twitter or on social media, just to be able to really communicate how prevalent this is and how necessary it is? And my life would never have been the same. Never, never, never, never, never had been the same, had I had a child when I was pregnant, yet I still feel guilt, and I still feel shame, which is why I was asking you about how you felt.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, do you think… I mean, you’re much younger than I am, but still, you may be in a generation that was still wrongly shamed for that, whereas younger women are not.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, that’s very possible. I was 11 years old when the US Supreme Court gave women the right to reproductive freedom. And because I was an avid reader of the newspaper as I was growing up, that was one of the things that saved me, that suddenly allowed me to consider that if anything happened while I was being sexually abused by my stepfather, that I might not have to kill myself. That somehow, I might be able to get help.

Gloria Steinem:
But that so, to be in the same household with someone who is sexually abusing you, and to feel you’re not credible, you can’t be rescued. I mean, that’s way beyond anything I ever experienced, and that you survived and triumphed is huge.

Debbie Millman:
Well, thank you. I mean, that’s why I think I’m so fascinated by people’s origin stories. I look at what you went through, and somebody like Oprah Winfrey, what she’s gone through. And how women like you, like Oprah, have been able to change so much for so many.

Gloria Steinem:
And you.

Debbie Millman:
Well I mean, I’m not going to go there but-

Gloria Steinem:
No, but really, because it feels to me as if you went through something that was more of a trial than I did.

Debbie Millman:
Well, thank you, Gloria. That means a lot to me. What do you make of the makeup of the Supreme Court at the moment, and what are your thoughts on what we need to do to win back our reproductive freedom? I mean, what’s happening now is terrifying. It’s just terrifying.

And it’s especially terrifying when I think about young girls in my situation that I was in at 10, 11 years old, actually were thinking at one point that I might’ve been pregnant, and thinking I had no choice but to kill myself. What do we do for these young girls whose lives are at such risk?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, we have a pretty strong, not strong enough, but a pretty strong multiracial women’s movement. It is possible to get an abortion that’s legal and safe in many states. The problem is getting people from unfriendly states into supportive ones. So I think the dialogue has changed. Not enough, of course, but quite a lot.

There are still religions that are wrongly shaming women for making this choice, and families, and cultures. So it’s helpful to do what you just did, which is to talk about it.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Yeah. You’ve written about how you didn’t begin your life as an active feminist until you went to an abortion speak out in a church basement in the village in 1969. You were already in your mid-thirties, and you were there covering in. And you were sitting on the windowsill on the side, still being a reporter. What activated your activism?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I heard women standing up and telling the truth about their experience of needing and having an abortion. And I suddenly thought, “Okay, if so many millions of us have had this experience, why are we still silent about it?” And that’s when I went back and wrote a column. And also, because the women’s movement was beginning and I was getting invitations to speak, which was very scary to me… I mean, I became a writer so I didn’t have to talk in public. And I asked first Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and then Flo Kennedy, and friends to travel and lecture with me. So it was clear to me that we needed to break the silence, and that I needed to help do that.

Debbie Millman:
Working as a freelance writer required learning to live with a lot of financial insecurity. And you said you don’t know that you would’ve had the courage to become a freelance writer with no guaranteed source of income, if you hadn’t been brought up that way. Do you view it the same way now?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. It’s hard to think what if. But if I had grown up in a family with a father working for a salary, I might not have had the same… Not exactly courage, but sense that you could live another way. No, I feel lucky.

Debbie Millman:
As you were beginning to start writing with activism in mind, you found yourself wanting to report on a view of the world as if, in your words, everyone mattered. And this was still the 1960s, and even your most open-minded editor told you that if you published an article saying women were equal, he would have to publish one next to it saying women were not, in order to be objective. And I just find this astonishing, astonishing that this was the way people were thinking.

Gloria Steinem:
I don’t know how to express it, but it was. I mean, I think even when The Feminine Mystique and Betty Friedan’s work was first published, that there was a feeling that there needed to be an opposite view about how happy women were as housewives, which of course many were. But the whole point is diverse choice for everybody.

Debbie Millman:
In 1968, Clay Felker hired you to be a political columnist and features writer for the newly launched New York Magazine. Clay gave you a platform to write about equality, civil rights, women’s rights. What was that like for you at that time?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, it was wonderful to be in a group of… I mean, Milton Glaser and Clay Felker, who were inventing a city magazine, which didn’t exist, I don’t think any place in the rest of the country before that.
So it was great fun to be part of it. There weren’t equal numbers of women by any means, but they were open to other ideas. Jimmy Breslin is a great writer about the city of New York, which he deeply loved. Editorial meetings were great fun. No, it was the first time that I remember being excited about working in a group.

Debbie Millman:
What was it like to work with Milton Glaser?

Gloria Steinem:
Oh, gosh, how can I describe it? He was kind of a paterfamilias. He had a kind of gravitas, which I guess came from the fact that he listened and only suggested something that he had considered. I worried about his wife, Shirley, because she was a great artist. And I can’t speak for her, but I don’t know if she felt that her career was as important as Milton’s.

Debbie Millman:
Well, certainly not in the way Lee Krasner’s career became almost as important as Jackson Pollock’s. They did write a few books together, children’s books. But no, she never reached the level of notoriety, and fame, and respect that he did, although she’s been wonderfully generous in helping to create the Milton Glaser archives and the various exhibits that have occurred since he died.

Gloria Steinem:
I remember going to some event, some all day benefit in a church basement or something. I don’t know what it was. And Shirley and I were standing in line for a fortune teller. And he said whatever he did to her after looking at her palm. And when I came up, he said, “You must help the woman who just came before you. She’s a great artist and she doesn’t know it.”

Debbie Millman:
Oh, wow.

Gloria Steinem:
It was very touching.

Debbie Millman:
I’m going to have to speak to Steven Heller about this, because Steven Heller and Beth Kleber, the archivist here at SVA who’s managing Milton’s archives, we need to investigate this. Thank you for telling me that. Who came up with the idea for creating a magazine for women that wasn’t about beauty, and clothes, and makeup, and marriage, but it was about politics, and societal issues, and questioning norms and rules and laws?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, there were a number of us women writers who had worked for the existing women’s magazines. Glamour, the Ladies’ Home Journal, Mademoiselle. And within those pages, there would be one essay that was not about clothes, and makeup, and traditional subjects.
So there was a little bit of a place, but we did realize that there was not an entire magazine. Clay allowed us to introduce a section that was women’s magazine to come, Ms. Magazine. And I had no idea. I mean, Jane O’Reilly was part of it. Lots of other writers were part of it.
And then he sent me off to do publicity for it, just traveling all the way to California doing free radio shows and whatever. And when I got to California, someone called into the radio show, a woman, and said, “I can’t find it.” So I called Clay in a panic and said, “It never got here. It never got here.” And we discovered that it had sold out in just a week.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. The magazine, you founded it in 1971. It was originally included as a special section of New York Magazine. The issue came out at the very end of 1971, but you cover dated it Spring 1972, because you were afraid it was not going to sell and become an embarrassment to the movement.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes. We feared that it would lie like a lox, as we said.

Debbie Millman:
It sold out in less than a week.

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, yes.

Debbie Millman:
Before you settled on the name Ms. for the magazine, you considered the name Sojourner after Sojourner Truth. But in your research, you discovered people thought it was a travel magazine. Sisters was another, but then people thought it was about Catholic nuns, a definite need for a magazine. At the time, the word Ms., M-S., was only used in secretarial handbooks from the 1950s, where it was recommended as a way of dealing with the unfortunate situation in which you didn’t know the marital status of the woman you were writing to. How did you determine Ms. was the name to go with?

Gloria Steinem:
It was a mix really, of just what you said, because it was a way of saying that someone was a female without saying marital status. And it was used that way in some situations in England. And also, it was short, and a magazine logo is helpful if short, because then you have more space on the cover. So we called it Ms., much to the confusion of a lot of people who called it M-S or-

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I read that the New York Times took 15 years, 15 years to get the term Ms. Accepted in the newspaper. You wrote letters, you petitioned, demonstrated. They changed Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. They changed all the pronouns of transsexual. They changed everything before they changed Ms. They even referred to you as Ms. Steinem of Ms. Magazine for 15 years. What got them to finally change it?

Gloria Steinem:
I guess, I mean we picketed the newspaper, and we wrote to the editors, and we did everything we could. But actually the most frustrating thing was that after they finally changed and began to use Ms., we took roses to Abe Rosenthal, who actually had been a corresponded in India when I was in India. So I knew him, which nobody could believe because he didn’t seem conducive to-

Debbie Millman:
Right.

Gloria Steinem:
Right. So we took roses to him, and he said the most annoying thing, which was, Well if I’d known it mattered so much to you, I would’ve done it earlier.” You just wanted to kill him.

Debbie Millman:
Wow. Gloria, I wanted to share with you a story from my childhood. My mother was a seamstress growing up. She had her own business. She advertised in the Penny Saver to get seamstress business. She mostly made clothes for people that couldn’t find conventional clothes to fit them in department stores. And the name of her company as I was growing up was The Artistic Tailor, because she was an artist, but also a seamstress. So she was The Artistic Tailor. After Ms. Magazine came out, she changed the name of her business to Ms. Artistic Tailor.

Gloria Steinem:
Oh, that’s so touching.

Debbie Millman:
I wanted you to know that.

Gloria Steinem:
That’s great.

Debbie Millman:
Ms. just celebrated its 50th anniversary. It’s still a vibrant magazine. It’s still a paper magazine, in addition to a website, has a robust social media presence. How has the magazine been able to survive on the shoestring it’s had all this time? All this time.

Gloria Steinem:
Well, at a certain point in our life, even before, while we were still in our conventional form, we realized that we could not raise money as we needed to unless we were a foundation. So we did become a 501(c)(3).

Debbie Millman:
The Ms. Foundation for Women?

Gloria Steinem:
Yeah, instead of a for-profit incorporation. And therefore, we could run full page ads saying, “Buy a subscription for a friend you don’t know.” Especially women in prison, for instance. I mean, the reading materials in prisons are often very slender, to put it mildly. And we wanted to be able to send the magazine into women in prison, and so asked for contributions for that.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve written about how there are events that divide our lives into before and after. And despite all you’ve accomplished at this point point in your life, you described that moment back then as an event most people may never have heard of, the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston. What happened there to create this line before and after for you?

Gloria Steinem:
First of all, that conference was the first and I guess last big National Women’s Conference that was financed… I mean in a slender way, but anyway, by federal funds that had come from a congressional resolution that was put forth by Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Patsy Mink, who were all members of Congress then. And that was purposefully representative.
We did our best in each state to see that it represented from a racial and economic point of view who lived there. It didn’t always work, but it mostly worked, so that it became in this huge hall in Houston, the single most representative meeting for women that has ever existed. And after that meeting, its chapters state by state, especially in Minnesota, and a lot, continued to represent that. But by now, there are all kinds of women’s groups gathered around different issues. But then, it made a huge difference to have a dedicated group city by city, state by state.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve stated that this is when you learn the difference between protesting other people’s rules and making one’s zone, between asking and doing. How did you learn that?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, we were kind of in charge of ourselves there in this massive meeting. And preparing for it, carrying it on, and so on. So trying to be as representative as we could. And there were caucuses. There was a Black women’s caucus, a Latina women’s… There were lots of different caucuses, and I was the messenger going from caucus to caucus, asking them what changes they wanted in the overall statement.
So it was just an incredibly moving experience. And I remember after it was over thousands of people in this massive hall, and there was empty chairs and empty amphitheater. And I was standing there thinking, “Who will remember this meeting, who will?” And three Native American women came up to me and gave me a red shawl, a Native American prayer shawl, and said, “Wear this when you need support and need help.”
And somehow they, Native Americans have gone through more deprivation, and injustice, and theft of their land, perhaps than any other group here, that they had that kind of kindness, and confidence, and sense of history. Gave me a sense of comfort in history.

Debbie Millman:
Didn’t they also give you a necklace that you wore until it fell apart?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, absolutely. I still have the beads in a bowl somewhere.

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Gloria Steinem:
It is, right.

Debbie Millman:
I want to talk to you a little bit about anger. In all of your activism, you discovered an endemic among women, an inability to show anger. And you discovered that anger is supposed to be unfeminine, so we suppress it until it overflows, and you now feel that harnessing anger for change is a good thing. And though it took you a long time to know what to say when people called you a bitch, you learned to simply say thank you. How did you get to that place?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, that’s not so hard to say thank you. It took me a while. But I don’t know. Anger, I think overflows in a way, and it heads into our fear of lack of control. The other thing is that I think for many women, that lack of control means that when we get angry, we cry.
And I remember talking to a woman who was an executive in a big office and had decision-making power over people, both men and women. And she said to me, she said, “I know that I cry when I get angry, so I just get angry and cry, and say to the group I’m angry with or talking to, ‘You may think I am sad because I am crying. No, I’m crying because I’m angry.'” I thought that’s genius.

Debbie Millman:
Genius, genius. I’ve gotten to a point now… Because I think that anger is really just a cover for sadness and grief. That if you allow yourself to cry, you actually are able to metabolize the feeling, and then use it for good.

Gloria Steinem:
No, I agree. We shouldn’t be shamed, and we shouldn’t shame ourselves, which we were often doing, I think. Because crying when we’re angry, maybe some men experience this too, but I think not as much.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I find it’s much easier to calibrate my emotions if I allow myself to cry, as opposed to flip out and get angry. How can we best harness our anger right now? Between the backtracking of so many of our rights, reproductive freedom, freedom of speech, the rampant book banning, how do we best face the future?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, I don’t think there’s any one way, but I do think that anger is an energy cell that we can use. Because righteous anger, anger at injustice, unfairness, pain, cruelty, is an energy cell. And if we look at it that way, this is a gift. This is energy I can use. Then we can, I hope, begin to feel less at fault or less disempowered by being angry.

Debbie Millman:
What do you see in this generation of women that you haven’t seen in generations past?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, so much. I mean, obviously it depends where and who. But I think first of all, there’s just an assumption that marriage is supposed to be equal, that men can take care of babies as women take care of babies, that it’s not a punishment for men. On the contrary, that it’s a big reward. That if you are arriving at a place of work, whether it’s in a factory, or an office, or the government, or whatever it is, if the people there don’t look something like the country, there’s probably something undemocratic going on. So the burden of proof of caring has shifted in a big way, from what’s wrong with me, to what’s wrong with society, and how can I help to fix it?

Debbie Millman:
Is it possible to feel optimism looking at what we’re facing?

Gloria Steinem:
Yes, no, absolutely. Because optimism is a form of planning. So if we don’t imagine something positive that is possible, it’s way less likely to happen. It may be difficult when looking at Trump in the White House, something I never thought could possibly happen. But he’s no longer there and-

Debbie Millman:
Let’s hope he stays out

Gloria Steinem:
I think just remembering that we have to imagine change in order to have an idea of what we want and be able to plan is very, very helpful.

Debbie Millman:
Gloria, the last thing I want to talk to you about is age. You’ve been very open about your age. I remember back when you turned 40, a reporter said, “Wow, you look great for 40.” And you said, “This is what 40 looks like.” And you said it again when you turned 80.

Gloria Steinem:
And I think I also said, “We’ve been lying so long. Who would know?”

Debbie Millman:
Exactly.

Gloria Steinem:
Right, right.

Debbie Millman:
You were very open again about it when you turned 80. Next year, you’re going to be 90. You’ve said that you seriously love aging, and have recently discovered yourself thinking things like, “I don’t want anything I don’t have.”

Gloria Steinem:
That’s true.

Debbie Millman:
That’s a pretty remarkable thing.

Gloria Steinem:
That’s true, except that I haven’t written enough. That’s the one thing that I regret and hope to still remedy, even if I have to… I researched to find the oldest woman in the world, and I found a woman in the Himalayas who’s 130.

Debbie Millman:
So there’s plenty of time.

Gloria Steinem:
Plenty of time. No, I know that’s not overwhelmingly practical.

Debbie Millman:
Well, I know you plan to live past 100. You’ve said that many times. What do you want most for this next decade?

Gloria Steinem:
Well, speaking for myself, I hope that I write more, because writers will do lots of things in order not to write. And I had so much activist temptation, that I’m afraid I overdid it. So I would like to do that. I’m content where I’m living in a house where I’ve been forever, or an apartment in a house. I am not so good at saying no. I could use a course in saying no, because I need to at least mark off days and say, “Okay. I’m saying no on this day.” I’m saying this now in the hope that I actually do it. But am surrounded by chosen family who are my friends, and I’m healthy enough. So I feel very, very lucky to have lived through what I have, and to see a possible future, which is a luxury in this world.

Debbie Millman:
Gloria, my last question is this one. I’ve read that when you turn 100, you want to have a diner, and you’ve described it like this. “A little diner with blue gingham curtains by the side of the road, because diners are the most democratic places. Everyone goes, truck drivers go, people from the neighborhood, people in their tuxes after parties go. and they’re cheerful and cozy, and you get just the kind of reward food that you want. They’re truly populist places. And in the back room, we could have a little revolutionary meeting from time to time, and you would serve brand muffins.” So I have a two part question. Is this still an ambition? Is the first part.

Gloria Steinem:
First of all, I love you for knowing that. I don’t know where you found that, but it’s quite true that I’ve always loved diners as the kind of ultimate democracy. But I recognize that it’s impractical for me to be running a diner. I still have a great feeling about them, but I think I’m content to be in my apartment with a guest room, where friends can stay, with a living room where we can have talking circles. I think I’m content to be there.

Debbie Millman:
Well, the second part of my question was if indeed you do ever do that, can I become a server there? But we’ll wait and see if it happens, and we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.

Gloria Steinem:
Okay. You and I can be serving bran muffins there-

Debbie Millman:
Let’s call it Steinamites. Gloria Steinem, thank you. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters. Thank you for being one of the people in the world that have made a difference in how we live in the world. It has been an honor and a thrill to have an opportunity to talk with you today.

Gloria Steinem:
And thank you for your incredible generosity and spending the time that you have to know everything. When I’m losing my memory, I’m calling you up.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely, anytime. Anytime. For more information about Gloria Steinem, all her work, her books, her writing, and her activism, you can go to her website at gloriasteinem.com.

This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Gloria Steinem appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Black women are front and center in the work of Mickalene Thomas. They’re lying on couches, sitting on chairs, sometimes nude, other times clothed and brilliant patterns or glittering with rhinestones. And they’re almost always looking right at us eye-to-eye demanding to know if we are worth a glance or acknowledgement. Mickalene Thomas is one of the most important artists working today. Her paintings, photographs, films, and installations can be found in the permanent collections of museums all over the world. She joins me today to talk about her powerful art and her extraordinary career. Mickalene Thomas, welcome to Design Matters.

Mickalene Thomas:

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Debbie Millman:

Mickalene, in your monograph Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Roxane Gay states in the introduction that you have big dick energy. Would you agree?

Mickalene Thomas:

Yes. It’s interesting because when I first read that, I got really shy just of the notion of having big dick energy and what that means. I often think so, but to hear it from someone else is to validate me, but it also made me realize it was okay to have my shoulders back and my head held high. You know what I mean? It was like she saw me, but not only did she see me in a physical sense, she saw my energy and recognize that enough to put it in writing. Especially coming from someone that I see that has big dick energy. So for her to welcome me to the club, wow, I felt like I was part of the club suddenly. So it’s just like whether the big dick energy is seen by many, I don’t really care, I’m just glad that it was seen by Roxane Gay.

Debbie Millman:

It’s interesting, many, many years ago, decades ago, Eric Bogosian wrote a short story about a man who had a big dick and this innate quality that he had about his life and that it didn’t matter whatever he did, because he had this big dick and he carried around this big dick energy. I don’t even know that it’s something that you have to live up to, I think that part of what it is something so innate that it creates this inner swagger that is inevitable.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah. Oftentimes my friends would joke around that I had a swagger, but I think it’s also just self-awareness and just reminding myself that, “You are a badass.” Because sometimes there are days when I forget about who I am and my greatness and what I’m just doing for myself, my daughter, or just when I get up in the morning. To be quite honest, I had a really tough time on Saturday. This last week was really difficult.

Debbie Millman:

Why?

Mickalene Thomas:

Well, my mother’s birthday is October 27th. She died 10 years ago, so celebrating the 10th anniversary of her transition just really hit hard. I’m thinking about her and some of the accomplishments that are happening and just wish that she could and a physical sense, a hug and say how proud she was of me. You know what I mean? So it was just a real tough day and that carried on because then my grandmother’s birthday is November 5th, and so there was just a combination of great women in my life who aren’t here to see how I’m evolving.

Debbie Millman:

Well, your mom, I mean, aside from being your muse for many decades when you were little in an effort to get you to see and do things that you weren’t otherwise exposed to, she enrolled you and your brother in afterschool programs at the Newark Museum, the Henry Street Settlement to New York City. What kinds of things were you both making so early on in your lives?

Mickalene Thomas:

Oh my gosh. You know what kids make in afterschool programs, papier-mâché, animals and face mask and houses and characters of whatever you could think of, crazy little trinkets of flowers and things, anything with papier-mâché. I remember a lot of papier-mâché. That was fun. A lot of self-portraits, a lot portraits of other kids in a class, a lot of ceramics. I had a great experience with art at a younger age but didn’t really understand or was exposed to working artists. It wasn’t something that was a way out. Art wasn’t looked as a career as a way out from the life in which you lived, and particular urban communities. We didn’t grow up dirt-poor, but my mother was a single parent. We had financial struggles and then we had more when she became an addict, and I lived with my grandmother. But my mother always provided the best for my brother and I and exposed us to as much as she could.

She was a practicing Buddhist up until she died. And I think that was that faith for her and the community really provided stability in her life and also provided a sense of spirituality for me at a young age and a community of diversity of different groups of people. I grew up with a group of really incredible Asian women that came to the US in the late ’40s and ’50s and lived in New Jersey and they were incredible and they became like parental figures in my life, and so I grew up with a lot of community of creative people, and the Buddhist group, at the time was called Nichiren Shoshu of America. And so they had a kids group, which was a fife and drum group, and so, I was able to learn how to play the fife and be around community of other little Black and brown and white kids at a very young age and coming to New York to Union Square 14th Street to the Cultural Center.

So that was a huge part of my foundation and stability and just learning about different types of people and different cultures and ethnicity and people and different financial status. So even though we didn’t have that, I was exposed to it at a very young age. And so, even with the hardships that I was dealing with, I knew that there were other things in life because of the exposure.

Debbie Millman:

Tell me about your nickname. You had a very specific nickname growing up.

Mickalene Thomas:

So Quanikah. Yes. So when I would go down to South Jersey where most of my family lived and still lives and Camden, New Jersey because we were one of the only family members who had moved out of Camden, New Jersey. And my mother, after she escaped from my father and divorced him, she and her girlfriend moved to East Orange, but all of her family were still in Camden or Camden area. So we would go and visit family members quite often, holidays, summer breaks, weekends, family reunions, birthdays, all of that stuff. My cousin Robin and her siblings were really interested in, some of them were becoming Muslim and the whole idea of not associating yourself with a slave name. And so, they gave me the name of Quanikah. And so, a lot of my family members still call me that when I go to South Jersey. They call me Quani or Nikah or Anikah or something of that sort.

I liked it then. But there was a period in my life that I didn’t because it was very heavy and I didn’t really understand the notions that they were taken on like theories of Marcus Garveyism and just really empowering themselves, no longer straightening their hair and just wearing their hair natural. It was really sort of this Black power movement. And so I really started identifying with that, not until I went to graduate school. When I started photographing my mother and looking at other images and I think I saw something on the back was where I signed, “Love, Quanikah,” and I was like, “Oh yes.” And it triggered in this memory of my childhood, how we were really interested in black is beautiful and just all things celebrating the great life of Black excellence and the Black experience. And whether it was through Jet magazine or Ebony, it was really exciting moment for us as kids.

And so, it was a name that I kept and used within my body of work as this other sense of who I am and defining a part of my life that comes through as a conduit do in the work or extension of who I am when I do my portraiture. It’s often time how I see myself, but then I don’t. So it becomes this mirror image and the redefining of this notion of who I was in the community, of my cousins and their siblings and my family and how we would have these associations of empowerment. And sometimes didn’t always understand the full scope of what they meant, but we were just a part of the movement and excited to just adapt to it in any way that we could, even so much to change your name.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about your formative years before we start talking about your work. I know that when you were 17 years old, you dropped out of high school and followed your then girlfriend to Portland, Oregon. And you had met while working at a restaurant, I think you bus tables and she was the hostess. What made you decide to up and go like that to another part of the country?

Mickalene Thomas:

We worked at this hotel in New Jersey and there was a restaurant called The Jockey’s Club, and I was the bus person, she was the hostess and we became friends. She was older than me and we fell in love. And at that time, I was living with my grandmother and I was going through a lot. That was a phase when I wasn’t as close to my mother. I had some boyfriends and I always had feelings towards women. I remember like crushing out on my classmates or my teacher or something like that, and I had a huge effectuation with Whitney Houston.

Debbie Millman:

Who didn’t.

Mickalene Thomas:

My locker was plastered with her images. I even tried to look like her at some point. And I started modeling a little because I thought, oh, I can be some attachment and closeness to my mother because she modeled and tried to really have her be a part of who I am, because I felt like I was growing apart from her and didn’t understand what she was going through in her own personal struggles. And I was just really looking for a way out. Not that where I was living with my grandmother was bad, I just knew I was different, I just knew that I wanted more, and I just knew, at a very young age, I used to always say to my family, when I grow up, I’m going to move to Europe.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I read that.

Mickalene Thomas:

And they would just go, “She keeps talking about moving to Europe.” Anyhow they dismiss you, and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, she’s talking about some Europe, she don’t know nobody in Europe. She never even been, she doesn’t even know anyone who went.” But I had this fascination with television and movies and watching Mahogany and Diner Ross and all of these, just the fantasy.

Debbie Millman:

Yes. Remember that yellow dress she draws on the train.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah. It’s like just going somewhere. It was just the fact that people were going other places and I recognized that very young that what I was growing up around, that there were other worlds within worlds around me that was doing things. I didn’t know what they were, I knew I had a great sense of community. It was a really great way for me to go, “Oh, I can leave here.” And also I was a very different kid, I was a very quirky kid. I stayed under my grandmother a lot. I loved listening to her stories. I stayed home a lot. My cousins and my aunts would always try to get me out. I was really into punk music. The kids I hung out were listening to the Dead Milkmen and The Cure and all of that. I wore Doc Martin’s. I shaved the side of my head similar to I have now looking like Grace Jones.

I was fascinated with Grace Jones. I loved Depeche Mode, it was just all of this. So while I was listening to that, my cousins and I were listening to Kris Kross and hip hop and Sugar Hill and stuff like that. And I listened to that, but there wasn’t like what I was really interested in. And I think because I was queer, but I didn’t know I was queer. You know what I mean? I was really trying to express myself through this other music and other identities because I had this infatuation with women, but I didn’t know how to do it because I didn’t have any role models. I didn’t see it. So I isolated myself from my family and just wanted out.

So when I met this woman, she’s Filipina, and when she said she was moving back to Portland to care for her mother, I was in love and I was like, “Well, I’m going with you.” And I remember going back to my grandmother and telling her that I wanted to leave, that I really needed to leave, I needed to leave or I just remember saying that. And it wasn’t like anything happen in my life, but I remember being suffocated and said, “If I don’t leave, I’m going to die.” That’s how I felt. And when I moved to Portland, one of the first experiences I had was at the Oregon Country Fair.

Debbie Millman:

What happened there?

Mickalene Thomas:

Oh my gosh. It was like what didn’t happen? The description of it was kind of like Oregon’s Woodstock or something, but it was like the freedom of seeing just all these people just being themselves, queer people and straight people. And then I’d started hanging out with a lot of artists when I was living there. I didn’t stay in a relationship long with the woman I moved with, we end up moving with her family, we weren’t out. Eventually they realized that we were a couple and they asked us to leave, so we did. I did get my high school diploma from Marshall High School in Portland and then immediately applied to college.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I read that after high school you were actually thinking about pursuing a career in law and that you actually worked part-time at the law firm, Davis Wright in Tremaine for several years.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yes, I did. I did. I started out as a file clerk, worked my way up to a document clerk and then became a paralegal’s assistant. I worked there for a long time and I just worked my way up. Just worked. That was my job. So when I went to Portland PSU, I was in theater arts and pre-law was my sort of major/minor.

Debbie Millman:

And you really wanted to be a lawyer

Mickalene Thomas:

I did. I mean, I was thinking of security. I was thinking of stability. It was something that was always in my purview, I guess, as a kid in my mind as thinking about success. And oftentimes in Black communities we’re conforming and looking to this respectability politics of what we think is we should be doing. And creativity and being an artist was not on that top of the list. If I said I wanted to be in sports… Because also in junior high school, I did track and cross country. And so I did have the opportunity with partial scholarships to go to HBC schools. I didn’t because it was, I didn’t want to be in sports.

Debbie Millman:

I think you also worked at a Starbucks. You started hanging out with a circle of friends that included the artist Patrick Abbey, and I believe it was he who recommended that you attend an art therapy workshop.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah. Portland was incredible during that time. It’s like the early ’90s, there was a lot to unpack with me leaving. But once I got there, as a young adult living and working on my own, the independence and sense of self, the community, a lot of people say Portland isn’t diverse, but I found a real incredible diverse group of people. One of the jobs that I had before working at Starbucks that I actually worked as a receptionist in North Portland with this midwifery organization that had doulas and midwives and training for them, and it was a Black woman who ran it. It was incredible. So that was my exposure to the Black community in Portland, Oregon. And so I was in all these different worlds. I was in a Black community, in a Black women world, I was in the gay world, I was in the artist world.

And so, when I got a job at Starbucks, it was at the Square, it’s very different now. There was Thomas Lauderdale who is with the Pink Martinis would never come the Starbucks, he would go right across the street from Starbucks, was Nordstrom’s. And my friend Chris Stark worked at the outdoor cafe at Nordstrom’s. I would sit out on my break and roll my cigarettes and I would watch. I had a great my view. I would watch from the Square in Starbucks, Chris Stark, who was this cutie with this sort of curly poppy hair as he would serve people and just full of life talk to this guy, this kid with blonde hair, and who would scoot around. I’ve never seen anyone on a scooter. I mean, now scooters are pretty popular. He was doing it well before scooters were popular. He was always ahead of his time.

He would scoot around and he would never come into Starbucks. And I was like, why doesn’t he come to Starbucks? And so, one day I just walked over to them and started talking with them. And then I discovered that Thomas was this incredible genius and talent of a piano player, classical pianist, trained since he was like four. And he had just returned home after graduating from Harvard. And so, I just started hanging out with them. He would have parties and group of artists and that’s how I met Patrick Abbey, who was an artist.

Debbie Millman:

And they all encouraged you to be an artist, they saw something in you and felt that you should. I mean, I think it was Patrick Abbey who saw some of the work you were doing in your art therapy workshops and encouraged you to have a show.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah, I did this art therapy workshop with Chris Stark and all this stuff came, but it was shortly after I saw the Carrie Mae Weems show.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, that was actually going to be my next question. I wasn’t sure if it was right before or right after.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah, it was after. And I had already seen the show. I had purchased all these postcards and took them with me. I think I took the postcards, I took some oil pastels and I took William H. Johnson book that I got from Powell’s bookstore. It was a really great experience, even though Chris and I were like the youngest people at this artist retreat. There was one point we looked around and we’re like, “Why are we here? Should we be?” And I just remember, I was just laughing, but sharing and present, but laughing but also feeling out of sorts and thinking like, “Okay, this is way over us, but we’re going to do it.” But what it did for me was allowed me to tap into a space that I didn’t realize I had, which was this creative space, this creative voice. And so, after I left that, I immediately went to the art supply store, purchased more oil pastels and paper, and just all this stuff poured out.

Patrick and I, we all lived in Northwest Portland and my friend Dan McCall, who’s incredible young man, and he was a fashion designer, he exposed me early on to designers like [inaudible 00:23:56] and Yves Saint-Laurent and Issey Miyake, and he was always wearing Japanese designers and just would go to Paris and come back and tell these stories about fashion and what he was doing. So even though we were in our early 20s, we were doing things, they were doing things. And Portland at that time, they would have what was called the Art Walk where all the galleries would open up and it was just like you would just go from gallery to gallery looking at and going to the art shows. So, that was my first real exposure to an art market. I didn’t know what art market was. I didn’t call it that back then, I just knew.

I was hanging out with all these artists and musicians and writers who were doing and making things and having great shows. And I was really shy about what I was working on, I was partying a lot. And Patrick was like, “You should have me come see it.” And I did. And at this point, I had stopped working at the law firm because I just couldn’t. The lifestyle was living I was like hanging out with my friends, I was going to work late. I didn’t get fired, but I just knew I had to quit. And so, I got a job at this cafe called The Green Room Cafe. I was always cooking anyway, but it was a cafe that was ran by all women and we always cooked sort of this amazing black bean soup. It was a vegetarian cafe, black bean soup.

And just like everything was cooked fair. And so, I was cooking and serving and waiting and they always threw art and wall. And so Patrick, he’s like, “You should put your art up at the Green Room Cafe.” And I was like, “I’m not going to put it up there.” And I did. And that’s when I got a good response from it. And my friend saw that I was doing something, but it was Patrick who encouraged me, and then he also was talking about different schools. And then my friend, Chris Stark, who was a photographer, had decided that he wanted to go to school for photography. So he was looking into San Francisco Art Institute and encouraged me to go to the portfolio day with him. So I dragged my drawings on paper oil pastel drawings down with me and show them to some of the schools that were at the portfolio day, San Francisco Art Institute, I went there because that’s where he went, and I got a really positive response.

But once I went to San Francisco Art Institute to visit, it was in a campus and I freaked out and I wasn’t ready to go, so I deferred. That’s when Patrick said there’s the school in Brooklyn called Pratt. And I never heard of Pratt. Pratt wasn’t present at the portfolio day. He’s like, “I was just in New York and couple of friends lived around there and it seemed like a really good school.” He said, “I don’t know, it’s kind of in a sketchy neighborhood, but it might be good.” And he had just finished his summer program.

At the time, didn’t know the importance of Scout Hagan, but we threw him a big party because we were very excited that he went to Scout Hagan, wasn’t later that I really knew what Scout Hagan was. But very excited that he got into Scout Hagan. And so, after Scout Hagan, he had came to New York and so he was in somewhat of a art scene here for a little bit, but he would come back to Portland and report and he was really good about sharing what was happening here. And at that time, I knew, I was about 24 going on 25, that I was ready to leave Portland.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You returned back to Brooklyn and did go to Pratt?

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah. I was here for Stonewall 25 with Thomas Lauderdale and Chris Stark. We came and I brought some of my work and I went up to Pratt and applied with the work. But it was wild, it was an amazing experience to be in New York for Stonewall 25. It was beautiful just to walk down the street and be for me queer and to be out and be with my friends and something that was historical, was like, “I want to be here.” I was probably more politically active thin than I am in my adult life here. I am, but in a different way. Not as vocal about my sort of social political viewpoints.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, but it’s embedded in your work.

Mickalene Thomas:

It’s embedded in my work. And I remember even then during AIDS, I had a lot of friends who died of AIDS. So going to Stonewall was great.

Debbie Millman:

After school, after Pratt, you thought you were going to teach, but the faculty at Pratt encouraged you to attend a summer residency for undergrads at Yale. And there, you met a whole slew of faculty that really influenced what you were thinking about what you wanted to do next. Can you talk about that transition from Pratt and thinking about teaching to Yale and really embodying your future becoming an artist?

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah. Peggy Cyphers was teaching at Pratt at the time and she was my teacher. She’s an incredible artist. And being at Pratt, I was an older student, so I was really working with a lot of young artists who most of them had just come out of high school and I had lived this life. I was like, I lived on my own and paid rent and knew how doing all this stuff when I was 17, and most of them were just going into school at 18, 19. So I was just like, okay. I was in the studio every day and Peggy Cyphers saw that I was a hard worker and she told me about Yale School of Art summer program and that she encouraged that I apply. And so, I did and I got in, and I was the first one to get in that program from Pratt in many years, because I think it was probably like a 10 to 12 year period before anyone had gotten into that program.

It was a summer program for undergraduates similar to Scout Hagan. You were there for six weeks for an intensive studio practice and mentorship program. It was phenomenal. I had Laura Letinsky as a photo instructor. You had all of these incredible artists, Valerie Hammond as printmaking instructor, and then you had all incredible visiting artists coming to visit you to talk about your work. And we did workshops and constantly critique, it prepared me for a graduate school for sure. I even still then after doing the residency, I was still trying to figure out, because while I was at Pratt, I did painting and then interior design, but then that dual degree stopped after my second or third year. So I had to pick another minor, my minor is art education. So I graduated with a minor in art ed and art history with painting as my major. Because I still thought even then I need to make sure I have a job, I need to look at being financially stable and didn’t think of art as something that I would ever live off of financially.

Debbie Millman:

Isn’t it incredible now to think how possible it’s become?

Mickalene Thomas:

It is, but I still think of like I need to get a job. Because first of all, I enjoy teaching even though it takes up a lot of time. I like knowing that I have a different stability other than just this being the only thing that I make money from. It just seems strange. Also, I like to encourage and mentor and be around students. And I feel like as an artist, it helps you grow and gives you a great outlook on life, and it keeps you involved with conversations of what’s happening, world changes, people change, ideas change. And so you have to maintain a youthful spirit. And I think one way of doing that for me is immersing myself around education and working with artists. So right now, I’m looking and thinking about other institutions to work at, not just as a visiting artist, but as faculty.

Debbie Millman:

You entered Yale as an abstract painter inspired by Australian Aboriginal art and late 19th century French pointillism, but started to create representational paintings using found objects, textiles, glitter, rhinestones. Did your photography classes inspire this transition?

Mickalene Thomas:

Yes. My photography class with David Hilliard. When I entered Yale, I was convinced I was going to be an abstract conceptual painter. I was not interested in the figure at all. So never say never. So, I go to Yale and take this photo class and that’s when the transition happened. I photographed my mother. She was the first one that I photographed.

Debbie Millman:

I believe one of your photography professors suggested that you do you that. What gave him the impetus to figure out that that would be something meaningful for you?

Mickalene Thomas:

Well, I think what the impetus was David Hilliard, from his own conceptual photography and narrative in which he works, he photographs himself and his father, and it’s a way of healing and conversation and discourses that he, as a gay man, realize as a lens of healing and conversation with photography was a way to have conversation with his father about who he was as a queer man. He encouraged us to photograph at the time the one person we were having challenges with or difficulty with.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, wow.

Mickalene Thomas:

I was having some challenges with my mother, and so, she was the first one that I asked to photograph.

Debbie Millman:

I read that the first time you felt truly comfortable photographing nudity in your work was when you started to photograph her. How did she give you that permission?

Mickalene Thomas:

I don’t know, provided a sense of agency and validation, I guess, because I never wanted to be the type of artist or photographer that felt or put women in a position that I wouldn’t put myself. And I never wanted to come off as exploitative with my work. And so, I stayed away from photographing except at the time myself and my partner, Maya. Any woman in the nude, I was just really not interested in it. But when my mother was so comfortable with herself and her own body and wanting to display herself in that way, that sense of agency and awareness really solidified for me beauty and sexuality and erotica, Black erotica in a way of being a conversation for celebration of Black women.

And I love that it came through her and I love that it came through her as her being her own person, but also my mother and me being my own person and her daughter and on this journey and experiencing that together for what I gave her through my creativity, which I didn’t realize until I did a documentary Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman of what my work and what the platform I was creating for her did for her sense of self. I didn’t recognize that until much later.

Debbie Millman:

Well, she became your muse, but she also became the model of the art world, which she was nearly the first African American supermodel. Iman got that role, but she was really a contender.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah, she was a contender. She really was. And that is what ate at her. She became self-destructive because of that feeling of knowing that I don’t know what it what it could be like. And I think because she was like that, I became who I was, like I’ve never looked at other people and covet that or wanted that. I’ve always like, “Okay, this is what I want.” Because I’ve seen what it could do to someone. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen how that destroys someone. When you look outside of yourself at other people of what they have or what they’re doing, and you feel a sense of loss or a place that that was an opportunity for you.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, unfulfilled potential. After you graduated Yale, you got residency at the Studio Museum and worked very closely with Thelma Golden and began to have conversations with curators and writers and museum people, yet your gallery debut took place at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago. And I’m wondering, did you have this sense of pacing yourself or of taking your time up the mountain in the way that you debuted your artwork?

Mickalene Thomas:

I think so. I mean, I imagine myself like Faith Ringgold and Alison Saar and Pat Steir and Louise Bourgeois, I want to be in my 80s and my 90s still making art. I’m in this for the long run. So I’m fortunate that what I’ve done and what I’m doing has provided me some success. But I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have success. So for me, it was no rush up the mountain. I still see myself as an emerging artist because there’s still things I want to be doing.

Debbie Millman:

Well, especially if you want to be working in your 80s, there’s a long road in front of you.

Mickalene Thomas:

There’s a long road and journey. And so, there are women in the arts that I look to as mentors, whether I know them personally, some I do, Carrie Mae Weems, mentioned Faith Ringgold, Pat Steir, like these are women who are still working.

Debbie Millman:

And making the best work of their life. It’s not like they’ve peaked and are still just riding the wave, they’re making the best work of their life.

Mickalene Thomas:

Exactly. Lorraine O’Grady, like all of these women that I look at, Nona Hendryx, these are women that, for me, personify who I want to be in the world.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve created work that very intentionally redirects the body politics in old master paintings. Certainly, your first show back in 2012 at the Brooklyn Museum, the title of the show was a riff on Gustave Courbet’s scandalous 1866 painting The Origin of the World, which was a closeup study of a model’s crotch. And you used your own body as the model for your interpretation, which became the origin of the universe, and I love that expansion. But your painting Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires as a reprise of Courbet’s 1866 sleep, but you replace the white heterosexual sleepers with two powerful Black women who are lovers. You use the images from Picasso’s Guernica, your take on Édouard Manet’s 1863 painting the Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe, The Luncheon on the Grass, which is to formally dressed men sitting in a park with a nude woman, just as we all do. You’ve remade as Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: les trois femmes noires, the three black women. What do you make of the conversation around this historical relationship now that seems to be positioned as Matisse, Manet and Mickalene?

Mickalene Thomas:

I mean, I think it’s radical and powerful, you know what I mean? That’s what excites me. For a young girl when they’re Googling something like Matisse, my name comes up. There’s this discovery. For me, to assert myself within that Western canon is to really try to dismantle and deconstruct the notions that persist, so that way when young girls and boys who look and think like me, and they’re doing these search, that it’s not all of these white faces that come up through history, it’s very important. And that’s a strategic thing that I thought about. It’s like how do you align yourself within this conversation? And then, if more people do it enough, then they become minuscule and our images become the algorithm of that changes.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I want to talk about the use of gaze in your work. The subjects in your paintings and your work are almost always looking directly at the viewer. They’re gazes, unapologetic, proud. I would describe it as kind of fierce. How would you describe it?

Mickalene Thomas:

I guess I would say my work conveys that Black women’s existence in this world is revolutionary, radical, innovative, and unapologetic, and her gaze is powerful. Whether I’m incorporating new techniques and bringing Western canon ideas and these dimensions, I like to think that that concept is a thread that runs through, that that’s what I’m thinking about like, “Okay, is this radical? Am I be an innovative? Because that’s how I see Black women. At first, the gaze for me really is more about love, love for myself, love for Black women, love for women and love as a queer woman who loves women. And it’s not always about that, it’s about all of that, it’s about all of who I am. You know what I mean? My relationships with my friends, my mother, my lovers, all of that, it’s about love.

And how do you convey that? How do you share that? How do you celebrate that, and how am I doing that? And also love about images that I grew up with, when you think of celebrity and mentorship and printed matter images and how these images shape me as a Black woman, how Jet magazine has shaped me, how looking at the beauty of the week and the beauty of the month, how that gave me a sense of self as a young kid and seeing those images and printed matter matters. I’m interested in my work not necessarily being about trauma.

Debbie Millman:

Although I think traumatized people feel a lot of comfort in your work.

Mickalene Thomas:

Exactly. And that’s what I want. Believe me, I had a lot of trauma in my life and there’s a lot of stuff that it’s not that I don’t share or talk about, it’s just like I don’t allow it to anchor me in that way. I don’t allow it to guide me. For so long, the reason why I did the documentary of my mother, because the only way I knew how to show who I was or to share that part of me was not to talk about it in antidotes with friends or podcasts or when I’m doing lectures, it was through my art. I wasn’t going to share it with people in a way where it’s just like, “Okay. You know, girlfriend.” “Oh yeah, I’ve been through that. Oh yeah.” That’s not who I am. That’s not how I express myself. That’s not how I learn to express myself. So for me, I’m not one of those people that have allowed my obstacles and circumstances and the limitations in which I grew up, I don’t let them lead me.

Debbie Millman:

But you include them. I think that’s sort of the interesting concept about how you use the muse in your work, you include your viewer with their own gaze to participate somehow in that dynamic. And I was really curious, you’ve had three significant muses in your work, your ex-girlfriend, Maya, she was your first serious muse, and then your mom more recently, Raquel Chevremont. And you said that a lot of the women that you use in your work have contributed or have attributes rather that personify a particular prowess that you relate to and you want to put forth into the world. How would you…

Mickalene Thomas:

Yeah. Because all of those women, I see a little myself in, whether it’s the strength, the femininity, the sexuality, just the sense of confidence and the sense of self. I don’t always feel like that’s portrayed in my daily life, although Roxane saw my big dick energy, become full circle with that. But there’s a beauty and the women that I look to that I go, “I see myself in that. I see me and you in some way.” And I’m trying to using that space of what I’m seeing in them, in myself, of that energy in between to convey creatively in the work.

I think I believe that all artists that do portraits and self-portraits really convey sense of themselves. You look at all of the paintings they do, some of the famous paintings of women, they look like men to me like Modigliani and even some [ANGs], a lot of them, they just look like men because they’re painting a sense of themselves. Look at John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage and Kehinde Wiley, all of these artists are portraying a sense of who they are themselves and extension. Frida Kahlo talks a lot about that.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. Yeah. I love when somebody asked you if you were ever going to paint men and you replied, “Well, how do you know that I haven’t?” I love that.

Mickalene Thomas:

I have. It’s not something that I put forth. And I was really looking to notions of beauty through the lens of transgender women before it became a more topic of awareness and conversation. In 2009, my first show, She Comes Undone, was about transgendered women, how they saw themselves and other women, who they are as women. And one of the reasons for that specific show that I didn’t even use the terms of transgendered or transitioning or trans, all of any of those terms because I looked at them as women. And for me, I don’t even care if people know that that’s who they are, because to me they are women.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely.

Mickalene Thomas:

That’s how they identify. So that’s why even in the press release, I made them take all of that out. I did not want them seen and any other way than what they see themselves. To me, that’s the power. That was a conscientious decision. And also to put my mother at the center, why? Because most of men and women who are transition, they’re connecting and they see themselves within their own parental family, whether it’s a male or female. And so, how I looked at my mother and so using my mother as this anchor of the show for them.

Debbie Millman:

How did this notion of the muse shift to using archival photos of women sourced from vintage jet pinup calendars? And so much of your previous work includes women as muses or women you admired, whether it be your mother, your ex-lovers, celebrities like Diahann Carroll, Eartha Kitt. Suddenly it seemed like you were centering women that for most people would feel more anonymous.

Mickalene Thomas:

Yes. And I think it had more to do after great success of my Aspen show, my AGL show: Mentor, Muses and Celebrities. A lot of that work was archival images. I started really thinking about how I was working when I was in graduate school. I worked mostly, even though I was creating my own photographs, a lot of the images that I was working from was archival images. I really wanted to revisit that. It was very important for me. And I think mostly because of the lockdown, there was a lot of things that were coming to the surface for all of us in various ways because of restriction and limitations. But to me, when you have restriction and limitations, it opens room to new possibilities. I can’t do this, but what can I do? So because I didn’t have full access to all of my tools and my studio, I had to revisit and look at things that I was thinking about looking through old sketchbooks and ideas, and I was already making that work without knowing I was making the work.

I had a stack of my Jet magazines that I was collecting from Material Life in New Orleans, Carla Williams store, collecting calendars. I was doing that, but it was just kind of stacking up. But it took the pandemic and a lot down for me to go, “Okay, what are you doing with this stuff?” And I had started it when I was in graduate school with me as a beauty of a week. I had to photograph myself as a beauty of a week.

I went just full circle, I just came back to it, those ideas. And I was like, “Let me revisit this idea.” So because of my limitations, I just started going through all my archive, going through other archive, thinking about what these images meant, thinking of how they really defined me as a young Black queer person. Because being a queer person and seeing these Black women, that did some weird, crazy mind fuck because I’m like, “I’m queer, but I don’t think those women are queer.” You know what I mean? And maybe there was a sense of desire, and the reason why I liked that beauty of the week was more than because I saw myself, but there was this sense of sexual desire too to it. You know what I mean?

And so really revisiting all of that and that was the impetus for it, just really, it was time and space. And I was really excited about that new way of looking and thinking of the gaze through these anonymous women and given them a sense of power because the women of the Beauty of the Week, how they were identified through their attributes, through their desires, through their dreams and things that they wanted in life. And their name, The Beauty of the Month was just identified as a month. You knew nothing about them.

Debbie Millman:

Back in 2011, you participated in an artist residency at Monet’s home in Giverny, France. And most recently you returned to France to mount your first major museum show in France at the Musée de l’Orangerie. And for this exhibit, you created three new large gal collages, a monumental painting, an immersive site specific installation. And that installation features your 2016 video sculpture Me as Muse, which includes you. And I’m wondering what made you decide to include that specific piece.

Mickalene Thomas:

I guess it was just thinking about the threshold of the private and public space and that as a gesture. Me as Muse, it’s a very me in a vulnerable state, but I wanted to also re-contextualize that because I had shown it at the New Museum. I’ve shown it at the AGO and I’ve shown it in Aspen. And each time, they were very site specific to those particular spaces. I’m interested right now in this body of work of the body in the landscape. And so it gave me this opportunity to transform this particular video to present a different context, being inspired by some of the rebellion of my predecessors like these white men thinking of, “Okay, what is my rebellion in this?”

With these 12 monitors stacked in this kind of faux landscape, as you kind of walk up on this elevated sort of garden that was quite intimate with birds chirping from Monet with this narrative voice of Eartha Kitt talking about the abuse and discrimination that she endured as a youth but also as an adult and describing that about her own black body using that as a statement, a proclamation, and providing these juxtapositions for the viewer of life as being complex. The nuance of that, some people may just take away that chirping sound like this sort of peaceful, tranquil, utopias sound of birds, reminds them, triggering sort of Monet. But then you hear the voice of Eartha Kitt talking about being tied to a tree and being abused and being used as a work mule.

Thinking about what that means to me as an artist, sometimes I feel like a work mule. Sometimes I think in the state of Black artists today of being used and all of these situations, what does that mean, and in my body? Because earlier I talked about trauma, not wanting to depict that, Eartha Kitt talks about trauma, but it’s her confidence in the banter of her voice when she’s speaking of things that are so horrific, but it’s so clear with confidence that she could be just saying anything. And then me thinking about the notion of in terms of I see my work creating celebration and Black joy and all of this, thinking of the notion of luxuriating. What does it really mean to recline? What does it really mean to be able to be in such state of relaxation? The desire to do that as a Black woman, the desire to be in a state of rest and then be portrayed in a beautiful way, that is a state of privilege.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it’s also, I think, there’s a foundation of safety required for that too.

Mickalene Thomas:

Safety and a space that is given to you and not often accepted or expected of you. And I’m really interested in that dichotomy of seeing ourselves an elevated positions that we are often told that we shouldn’t see ourselves or that we shouldn’t desire that as well. You know what I mean? Because we see ourselves in so many other positions that we rarely see ourselves. And when you think of artists, just to mention Derrick Adams, because he’s so close to me of just the notion of Black people swimming. Or you think of Tyler Mitchell’s the notion of Black boys just lounging. Or you think of Nina Chanel Abney’s work, just the notion of Black people fishing. These states aren’t often what we known and see ourselves in images, and that’s so powerful about when you think of what Jet magazine was doing because it had all of that, and at all of those narratives in it, it had that and then it had on the cover Emmett Till. That giving you the life of Black America.

And so for me, it’s really important to show these kind of elevated states and juxtaposition to the art historical canon of these classical images that we are towed in through history and school, that these are the ones we should be learning about. And I’m always like, “Well, where am I at?” We’re lounging, and no, we’re not being lazy. We’re enjoying ourselves as well, and we see each other with desire and beauty and eroticism. Why aren’t those images portrayed? Often time, even today, just the grotesqueness for people wanting to see Black bodies abused all the time publicly, that’s damaging. If that’s all you see of yourself, that you expect that you’re supposed to be abused. And so for me, I’m really interested, and I have images that are about resistance, my resistance series, and I get that out about the civil rights movement and portraying those images and trying to make sense of what’s happening to us today. But it’s really important for me to really have my work be about celebration.

Debbie Millman:

The work in your current show has been described as representative of the breath of the visual language that you’ve developed over the last 20 years, while also revisiting the time you spent as the artist and residence at Claude Monet’s home in 2011. So looking back on the last decade from then until now, what is the biggest difference you see in the evolution of your work?

Mickalene Thomas:

That I don’t need permission to make what I want to make. That it’s okay, just like those artists, Monet, Manet, Courbet. If I want to do a landscape, I got them landscape. If I want to paint flowers, I’m going to paint flowers in the same space I’m going to paint about Black women, in the same space I’m going to paint about resistance or the same place if I just want to do self-portraits, that I can paint whatever the fuck I want to paint. My only thing for me that I want is that it creates some impact. And what I love about showing at the l’Orangerie is that they allowed the platform for me to put Me as Muse in that space. It’s the first time they’ve done something like that.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Mickalene Thomas:

I’m honored and I feel very fortunate to be able to do this. And that’s why I don’t take what I do for granted, and that’s why I love what I do, even though it has its challenges and sometimes it’s setbacks and stuff. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m very fortunate because if I think about who I am, this girl from Camden, New Jersey, when I have family who are still there, some of them who have never been out of Camden, New Jersey. Have you been to Camden, New Jersey lately?

Debbie Millman:

No.

Mickalene Thomas:

It’s heavy, but it’s also changing. It’s also beautiful. It’s also complex. It’s also incredible people. There’s geniuses, there’s talent, there’s so much going on there. But what’s perceived is always the trauma. But when you go there, there’s all of that. But being from that, I’m very really fortunate and I have a really incredible group of friends who are from there as well, who are also amazing. I really thank my mother and I’m very thankful for her, for bringing Buddhism in my life, for taking me to the Newark Museum, for taking me to the Henry Solomon School, for doing all of these things to expose me to a diversity group of people and loving me for being a queer woman. I was afraid to come out to her. And when I did, she was never, ever, I was very fortunate to have the kind of parent that I did who embraced me. And the one thing that she said when she hugged me, she cried and said she was sorry because had she knew the signs of raising a queer child, she would’ve done better.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I can’t imagine that she could possibly be any prouder of what you’ve made and created in the world being exactly who you are.

Mickalene Thomas, thank you so much for making so much work that matters and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters. You can find out more about Mickalene Thomas at mickalenethomas.com. Her current show is at the Musée de l’Orangerie in France. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Mickalene Thomas appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and animal behaviorist, and she has had a profound effect on how humanely livestock in this country are treated. She’s also had a huge effect on the way we understand people on the autism spectrum. Drawing on her own experience as an autistic person, she has written or co-written many groundbreaking books exploring autism and celebrating neurodiversity.

Her first book, Emergence, was published in 1986, and it changed the way the world views autism. Her most recent book, Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions is changing the way people think about thinking. She’s been recognized on the list of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the world. She’s the subject of an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning biographical film, and she owns numerous patents for her original designs. There is truly nobody quite like her.

Dr. Grandin, welcome to Design Matters.

Temple Grandin:

It’s really, really good to be here today.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you. Dr. Grandin, is it true that you believe if they were alive today, Albert Einstein, Mozart, and Nikola Tesla would probably be diagnosed as autistic?

Temple Grandin:

Yes, definitely. Because Einstein had delayed speech. Today, and especially with the way that the people get services, to get services, he’d have to be put in an autism class. You can argue over whether or not he’s autistic, but he’d end up in an autism class today because that’s where most speech delayed kids are going. Also in my work on designing equipment in the meat industry, I worked with brilliant people that owned metal working shops, people that had maybe 20 patents, and one guy that built very important equipment for me, oh, he was definitely autistic. But he had grown up working on cars. So, then he discovered that mechanical things were interesting. But the problem I’m seeing today is kids getting locked into the label, and they’re growing up, they’ve never used tools. They don’t get a chance to work on cars. We have all kinds of need today for people that can do mechanical things like fix elevators, build equipment for factories.

Debbie Millman:

I experience that firsthand. The elevator in the college that I work in is perpetually broken and there seems to be nobody in New York City that can fix it. And you’d think New York City, elevators? That would be a rough thing to believe.

Temple Grandin:

And we need those skills. We got water systems falling apart, wires falling off electrical towers. You need these people that can fix things and design things. Engineering’s not all mathematics. There’s the visual, thinking part of engineering, and then there is the mathematical part. You need to have both. And my kind of minds get screened out because we can’t do algebra.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, I know. I was so heartened when I read that because my nephew, my 14-year… Well, now he’s 15. When he was 14 and in 9th grade, he had just a terrible time with algebra, just an absolutely terrible time. Everybody’s sort of been pulling their hair out, how do we get him to be more interested in math? And I’m going to give them a copy of your new book.

Temple Grandin:

Well, what we need to be doing is when a kid ends up with a label, he might be an extreme object visualizer like me. Or there’s another kid is an extreme mathematician and does it in his head and the verbal people are forcing him to do step by step. It’s not how they think. Then a lot of people are mixtures of different kinds of thinking.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, I love the test in your book.

Temple Grandin:

You’re not going to find an extreme object visualizer like me and an extreme mathematician in the same person.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I want to go back in history just a little bit before we talk about your book. Your full name is Mary Temple Grandin. When did you begin to use Temple as your first name?

Temple Grandin:

Used Temple ever since I was a child. For years, nobody knew my first name was Mary. It was only on my passport. And then TSA forced me to put it on my plane tickets.

Debbie Millman:

By the time you were three months old, you’ve written about how you began to stiffen in your mother’s arms and she realized you didn’t want to be cuddled. You’ve written that as you got older, you began to chew up puzzles and spit the cardboard mush out on the floor. You developed a violent temper, screamed continually, and by the time you were three, you weren’t speaking at all. Your mom took you to the world’s leading special needs researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital. What did the doctors think at the time?

Temple Grandin:

Well, you got to remember, this is 1949. I was born in 1947. She actually took me to a top neurologist who immediately checked me to make sure I didn’t have epilepsy and he made sure I wasn’t deaf. Referred me to a little speech therapy school that two teachers taught out of the basement of their house. There was some down syndrome kids in that and they just said, “Well, this teacher’s just really good at working with these kids.” And I can remember some of those speech therapy lessons and it’s very similar to the things that they were doing now: always encouraging me to use my words, slowing down, because when the people talked fast, it sounded like gibberish. There was also a lot of emphasis on turn taking, learning how to wait and take turns, really, really important. Then by four, I was verbal; and by five I was mainstreamed in a normal kindergarten in a small school.

Debbie Millman:

Didn’t doctors originally think that you should be institutionalized?

Temple Grandin:

Well, actually, yeah, that was kind of what was done with kids that had my problems in the ’50s. See, the thing is, now what’s known is kids with autism, you look very severe when they’re very young and you don’t know how they’re going to come out. You got to work with them and do your early intervention.

Debbie Millman:

In the glorious HBO movie about your life, your mother is portrayed as your fiercest advocate.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

Someone who never stopped fighting for you. As you were growing up, did you feel her belief in you?

Temple Grandin:

Well, she always encouraged me. I was good at art. She always encouraged my ability at art and of course, art’s the basis of my design work. I would just draw the same horse head over and over again and she would say, “Let’s draw the whole horse. Let’s draw the stable.” She’d take my art ability and expand it. She suggested using other media like watercolors and pastel paints and pencils and draw different things. I actually got given a book on perspective drawing. I also, very early on, was learning to shop, learning table manners. This is where ’50s upbringing actually was helpful, much more structured.

Debbie Millman:

I read somewhere that you met an older student who had never used a pair of scissors.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right. In my book, Visual Thinking, I describe a conversation I had with a doctor who was pulling his hair out trying to teach interns how to sew up cuts and they had never used scissors. I had a girl in my class who had never used a ruler or tape measure to measure anything. We’ve got kids growing up totally removed from the practical world. Now, my kind of mind is an object visualizer. I grew up using tools. I would spend hours and hours and hours tinkering to make things like parachutes and bird kites. Did the adults make them for me? No, they just let me tinker.

Debbie Millman:

By the time you were in the fourth grade, you began to be bullied in school, and the kids called you chatter box because of what you’ve said was constant conversation on a particular topic.

Temple Grandin:

Well, yeah, I ask constant questions. My grandfather, when we visit with him, he was co-inventor of the autopilot for airplanes. We would just sit. We’d go in the other room, and while he’s smoking his pipe and eating some cheese and having a beer. He’d explain to me why the sky was blue. Why was grass green. So he liked telling me that stuff, and I’d ask him why tides go in and out. Why’s the moon have phases? And he would explain that stuff.

Debbie Millman:

How did you manage this dual world of family, your grandfather, your mother, your aunt being so supportive and loving, and yet the sort of bullying and really quite terrible behavior you experienced at school. How did you manage both of those at the same time?

Temple Grandin:

Fortunately, I didn’t have bullying in elementary school because Mrs. Deech, the third grade teacher, who was the head teacher for elementary school, explained to the other kids that I had a disability that was not visible, like leg braces. A lot of kids in the ’50s had polio and they had leg braces. It wasn’t something you could see. They explained to the other kids the need to help me.

High school was a disaster of bullying and teasing. I got kicked out of a regular high school for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. Then mother had worked as a reporter on doing public TV shows on mostly disturbed children. She’d actually researched all the special schools in New England. So, she picked out three of them and she let me pick a school. I picked the one that had horses and a farm. I didn’t care about studying.

You know what the school did? They put me to work running a horse barn. Now they said, let me get through my adolescence. Well, mother wasn’t too happy about backing off on academics. But what I’m saying now with a lot of these kids is they work really hard on the academics, no life skills. I’ve learned how to work. I was in charge of a horse barn, nine stalls every day to clean, put them in and out, feed them. I was responsible for it. Make sure the feed box is closed. I was responsible for that. I learned how to work. That was really important.

The other thing is the only place I was not bullied was friends through shared interests, like horseback riding, model rockets, and electronics. Really important. Today it might be robotics, 3D printing. It could be a sport. It could be a band, a choir, something where there’s friends who shared interests.

Debbie Millman:

The year after you were expelled for throwing a book at a girl who was teasing you, your parents got divorced, and several years later your mom remarried. You were able to spend a summer on the Arizona ranch of your stepdad’s sister.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

It was there that you noticed that some of the animals appeared to relax after a cattle squeeze shoot was applied.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right. I was introduced to beef cattle for the first time, and I watched them get vaccinated in a device that squeezed them. It’s called a squeeze shoot. I noticed it kind of calmed them down. So then I built a device where I could squeeze myself, and I eventually got it to operate with air cylinders and that was some of my skilled trades work, built it all by myself.

Debbie Millman:

Did you have a sense at the time about how or why it helped you?

Temple Grandin:

Well, deep pressure’s calming. You see, then in the early seventies, I met an occupational therapist named Lorna King. She was using deep pressure with things like cushions with autistic kids in Arizona to calm them down. Now again, deep pressure doesn’t work on everybody. It only works on some of them. The sensory issues are very variable. But that kind of validated me. I was great friends with Lorna and she and I did some early, early autism talks in the ’70s.

Debbie Millman:

The influence of your squeeze box or hug box can now be seen in things like gravity blankets…

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… and even special pressure shirts to help dogs who experience…

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… severe stress during thunderstorms. It’s called the Thundershirt. So thank you for that. It’s helped my dogs quite a lot.

Temple Grandin:

It did. The Thunderstorm help your dogs, and where it really seems to help is on separation distress, too. It seems to help.

Debbie Millman:

At this point in your life, were you aware that you had autism? Because I understand that you didn’t actually get officially diagnosed until much later in life.

Temple Grandin:

The psychiatrist, by the time I was five and six, yeah, was basically saying I was autistic.

Debbie Millman:

The summer after you developed the squeeze box, you began to attend Hampshire Country School in New Hampshire.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

The school was founded in 1948 by a Boston child psychologist for students of exceptional potential…

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… that have not been successful in a typical setting. It was there that you met William Carlock, a science teacher who had worked for NASA.

Temple Grandin:

Yes. I’d been there for about three years before William Carlock became a science teacher. What he did is he gave me interesting projects. The HBO movie showed all the things I built. The gate you could open from a car, the squeeze machine, optical illusion room that I had made, the dipping vat project. Then he gave me interesting projects. He says, “Well, then you have to study in order to go to graduate school and become a scientist.” I still couldn’t do algebra, but the other classes I was just goofing off. Then when I finally went to college, thank goodness, the introductory math class at that college was not algebra. It was basically called finite math, probability matrices, and statistics. The nice math teacher tutored me in his office. I asked for help right away. I didn’t wait until I had flunked out of the course. I failed the first quiz. I asked for help. Big mistakes students make, not asking for help soon enough. That’s something I did.

Debbie Millman:

Talk about why algebra is so difficult for some students.

Temple Grandin:

Well, I’m what’s called an object visualizer. This is described in the visual thinking book. You have object visualizers who think in photo realistic pictures. Then you got visual spatial, your pattern thinkers, your mathematical students. Then of course you get your verbal thinkers who think in words. The problem I have is algebra has nothing there to visualize. Now, I can remember a specific formula like pi times the radius squared describes a hydraulic cylinder. When I say that, I’m seeing a hydraulic cylinder. You see, that is not abstract. But abstract math I can’t do. You’ve got to understand different thinkers exist, and a lot of people are middle of the road. But that extreme visual thinker works in the shop who can build anything, we need those skills.

Debbie Millman:

In your 1995 book, Thinking in Pictures, you reveal that you thought that all individuals with autism thought the way that you did, in photographic-specific images or as you put it, thinking in pictures. Can you talk about now how your thinking has evolved a bit?

Temple Grandin:

Well, that was wrong. Amazon had just come out and I’ve read reviews. Several people on the spectrum said, “Well, that’s not true.” So then I started now thinking back to all the people I’d met and I started to figure out, yes, there are some that think in words and these tend to be the history lovers that love lists and facts and sports statistics, things like that. Then I was reading a book by Clara Claven Park about her daughter Jesse, and it was called Exiting Nirvana. It’s out of print now, unfortunately. But that was where I got the idea of thinking in patterns rather than pictures.

Debbie Millman:

What does that mean, to think in patterns?

Temple Grandin:

Well, Jesse would paint beautiful pictures of houses where she put all kinds of geometric shapes on a picture of somebody’s house. I’m going, “This is patterns rather than pictures.” Then later on, when I did the Autistic Brain, I was surfing in the middle of the night and I went into the reference list. I didn’t do the citations. A reference list, and I found this paper on two types of visualizers, and I looked up the paper and I go, “Wow, this describes my mind, and then the mathematical mind.” I then got that term off the title of paper. Then I found some other papers.

Debbie Millman:

By the time the expanded edition was published in 2006, you realized it had been wrong to presume that every person with autism processed information in the same way. In the 2006 version, you described three types of specialized thinking.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. There’s three types of thinking, which now the correct names for, which back then I didn’t use the correct names for them because I didn’t know them at that time, was object visualizer. I was calling it photo-realistic visual thinking, is what I was calling it. Then there’s the pattern thinker. I was calling it a pattern thinker, mathematics, and that’s what the scientists called visual spatial. Then, of course, your think verbal thinker who thinks in words.

Then on the visual thinking book, the big thing that’s new in that is the huge skill loss problem we’ve got. I didn’t realize what a big skill loss we had until I went to four places in 2019, right before COVID hit. I went to two state-of-the-art pork plants where all the equipment was imported, mostly from Holland. I went to a state-of-the-art poultry plant, all of the machinery inside, it came from Holland in 100 shipping containers. And I went to the Steve Jobs Theater and the mothership building of Apple, and the structural glass walls are from Italy and Germany, and the carbon fiber roof is from Dubai. I have a picture of me standing in the middle of that, screaming, “We don’t make it anymore.”

Then I’m going, we’ve got a serious problem. 20 years ago, we made two mistakes in education. We took out all the hands on classes at some schools: art, sewing, woodworking, carpentry, auto mechanics, drafting. All those hands on things. So kids are growing up not using tools. The other big mistake that was made in industry, and I know the most about my industry, is shutting down in-house engineering departments. Back in the ’80s and the early ’90s, these companies had big shops where they could invent and patent equipment. Those were phased out, and they found it was cheaper and more economical to contract to work out. Now that’s coming back to bite them, and it’s now turning into a perfect storm on maintaining factories, on maintaining things like electrical towers, water supplies.

Debbie Millman:

You sound pessimistic. Do you think that this is something that could be reversed? How do you…

Temple Grandin:

Oh, absolutely. It could be reversed. What we need to be doing… Well, you got to have kids exposed to tools to get them interested in tools. You got to have them exposed to industrial design. So let’s look at college. You have industrial design. That’s the art side. You have engineering, which is the math side. You need both kinds of thinking. They used to say, “Well, the stupid kids would go to shop class.” I can tell you, the people I work with are not stupid.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I love shop.

Temple Grandin:

Mechanically complicated stuff.

Debbie Millman:

You call your most recent book Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. So my very first question is, for my listeners, can you define what it means to do visual thinking?

Temple Grandin:

All right. There’s actually two types. There’s the object visualizer, like me, who are very good at things like photography, art, animal behavior, and mechanics. Because you just see pictures, and they’ll tell you to take the machine apart and then you just see how it works. That is my kind of mind. I call my kind of mind the clever engineering department. I mean, think packaging machine, think paper feed mechanism in your printer. Those are examples of what I call clever engineering. Those aren’t made by the mathematicians.

Then you have the visual spatial mathematical part of engineering. You’ve got to make sure the roof of the building doesn’t fall down; you have enough electrical power.

Then you have verbal thinkers who think in words. Now, I was shocked when I found out in my late 30s that other people think in words. Let’s say we’re designing something. An engineer, what it looks like and its function just go together. You look at the inside of the Space Station. There’s no aesthetics. Where you look at the stuff that Elon Musk has designed, I mean, the space suits are really cool. He got a costume designer to design them.

Debbie Millman:

So he’s working with a continuum of people.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s right. That’s what he’s doing. Well, first of all, they had a costume designer from a major movie design the space suits. Then they had to have engineers make those space suits work as space suits. So you’ve got both kinds of thinkers here. The object visualizer, the art person made them look cool. Then you had to go to the mathematical engineer to make sure those space suits would actually work. Or, you look at something like we’re using Zoom right now. Visual thinker like me designs the interface and then the mathematician programs it.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, you begin the book with a 1957 quote from the linguist Noam Chomsky. Uou talk about his book Syntactic Structures, wherein he claims that language, specifically grammar, is innate and his ideas have influenced thinkers for over 50 years. Do you agree that grammar is innate for humans?

Temple Grandin:

Well, in one of my earlier books, Animals in Translation, I looked at the research that was done by Sloganov, I’ve probably said that wrong, on prairie dogs and that in their calls they have a noun-like function. Well, is it a coyote? A hawk? That’d be a noun. An urgency function, sort of like an adjective, and the way they hunt: lurker versus going from hole to hole. So that’s kind of a grammar function right there. You’ve got a noun function, urgency function, and does this coyote go from hole to hole or does he lurk? But the other thing on some of this language-based stuff, I remember reading something about uniframes of something. All I could think of is special pallets they put cars on in the car factory, which I know is wrong.

Debbie Millman:

What gave you that visual picture?

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But I think some of the issues about animal thinking, they’re still arguing about consciousness. Now, I get to thinking about, I think it’s difficult for somebody who thinks in words to imagine the dog actually thinks or conscious. The dog is a sensory-based thinker. Smell is very important to dogs. There’s new research that shows that the nose has a direct trunk line to the visual cortex. Ooh, trippy. New Cornell research. It’s not in the book. It just came out on the dog’s smelling in three dimension. Wow. But it is a sensory-based world, not a word-based world. I think some of this, it’s hard. I think it’s hard for some verbal thinkers to imagine thought without words.

Debbie Millman:

Well, there are scientists or neurologists that think that thought creates consciousness.

Temple Grandin:

Well, yeah, I think what creates consciousness is a certain amount of association hubs in the nervous system. All networks form hubs, whether they’re Facebook, whether they are airlines, because I can remember airlines when there were no hubs. But those hubs organically form. Networks form hubs. So in the brain you’ve got hubs where you get memory information, incoming sensory information, signals coming up from the emulsion centers, the frontal cortex trying to sort through it, and all this stuff is all intersecting together in big hub. You have to have a certain amount of centralized hubs, I think, to have consciousness.

Debbie Millman:

You write how language is presumed to transform thought into consciousness, while visual thinking gets erased somewhere along the way.

Temple Grandin:

This has been very tricky for me because in the visual thinking book, this is a really good example of collaboration. Betsy Lerner, my co-author, is a total verbal thinker. What we would do is I’d write the initial drafts and, boy, she would smooth them out and straighten them out and organize them. So, that’s a perfect example of collaboration between a visual thinker and a word thinker. There’s things that she thinks completely differently than I do.

I can remember when she got a dog and I suggested for her to watch everything the dog does and what he smells. Then she started to get some insight into sensory-based thinking in a dog’s world. I see people yanking dogs away from things they want to smell. Well, that’s their life.

Debbie Millman:

There are dogs that have been proven to be able to smell cancer.

Temple Grandin:

Well, there’s a lot of things they can smell and they can be trained to smell and working for all kinds of detection purposes. Their nose is just super powerful. I kind of use what’s the most example maybe a human did? Well, I’ve read about some wine steward that could identify 2,000 wines. Okay. That’s maybe as close as a person ever got to a dog.

Debbie Millman:

You state that visual thinking is not about how we see, but how the brain processes information.

Temple Grandin:

Yes. Because it’s in my imagination. Like, right now, I’ve got to go over and I’m doing a lecture in the introductory animal science class and I’m going, “Ooh, I’m going to have to go to a parking garage and walk over there because I won’t be able to find space in our lot.” Okay. Right now, I’m seeing both places. Then I can start the feel carrying my briefcase and wishing I could have gotten a space by our building. You see that? Just thinking about something that simple. I’m now seeing the parking garage. Now, it’s associative. Now I’m seeing the broken sign where one of our students drove our meat refrigerated truck in there, and it was too high. Okay. You see it’s associative.

Debbie Millman:

Right. It sounds like you have a visual power of association.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. It’s a visual power of association. Give me a keyword and I’ll tell you about how it associated. Give me something kind of creative. Don’t give me car or house or something like that. Think of a kind of a creative keyword and I’ll Google it in my mind for you.

Debbie Millman:

Egg beater.

Temple Grandin:

Egg beater?

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm. Egg beater.

Temple Grandin:

Well, as a child, I can remember beating things with the egg beater. Now I’m seeing the power mixer we had. Now I’m seeing eating cookie dough before we baked the cookies. That was really a yummy thing to do. Okay. Now, I’m seeing a cement mixer. Okay. The association there is egg beaters mix up things, cement mixers mix. Als,o cement mixers are something I’ve had a lot of experience with. So I have lots of images and memory. Now, I’m thinking about my first job and I can see that cement mixer really high in Phoenix. We had to get the steps made on this cattle ramp before that truck got too hot. I remember the engineer going, “We’ve got to get this concrete laid by 10 o’clock.”

Debbie Millman:

It’s like a flip book in your brain.

Temple Grandin:

But you see what I’m getting is a series of associations. But these associations have some logic to them, and that’s how I solve problems because it’s bottom-up thinking. I’ll associate back to things I experienced in the past. “Oh, we’ve tried that in the past. That didn’t work.”

Debbie Millman:

I want to read a paragraph from your book.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

I’m very verbal. In fact, I’ve been told that everything happens up here in my head to a point where the rest of my body doesn’t even exist and it’s so much about language for me.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

I want to read a paragraph about word-based thinking.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

And then talk about it.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

“Word-based thinking is sequential and linear. People who are primarily verbal thinkers tend to comprehend things in order, which is why they often do well in school, where learning is mostly structured sequentially. They’re good at understanding general concepts and have good sense of time, though not necessarily a good sense of direction.

“Verbal thinkers are the kids with perfectly organized binders and the adults whose computer desktops have neat rows of folders for every project. Verbal thinkers are good at explaining the stops they take to arrive at an answer or to make a decision. Verbal thinkers talk to themselves silently, also known as self-talk, to organize their world. Verbal thinkers easily dash off emails and make presentations. They talk early and often.”

Temple Grandin:

Well, I’ve noticed with verbal thinking, like on things like policy, they overgeneralize. They say, “Well, we have to have an inclusive classroom,” or something like that. But how do you do it? They have no specific examples. It’s very overgeneralized, top-down thinking.

Debbie Millman:

What is the difference between bottom-up thinking and top-down thinking?

Temple Grandin:

Okay. The main difference between top-down and bottom-up is bottom-up, concepts are formed with specific examples. Okay. Let’s start a very simple example when I was a child. I had to separate cats, dogs, and horses. So how did I do that? Well, originally I used size, but then our neighbors got a dachshund, so I could no longer sort dogs from cats by size. So then I had to find other features that a dachshund shares with dogs, such as barking, the smell and the shape of their nose. The bottom-up thinker works better. It’s just like an artificial intelligence program.

Let’s say you have an artificial intelligence program that diagnoses melanoma skin cancer. Well, you show it 2,000 melanomas and then 2,000 mosquito bites or whatever, other kinds of rashes, it learns to sort. It takes a lot of information to be a good bottom-up thinker because what you’re doing is taking specific examples and putting them in categories.

Debbie Millman:

So, visual thinkers are bottom-up and verbal thinkers are top-down?

Temple Grandin:

Visual thinkers are bottom-up. Even the mathematicians are much more bottom-up.

Debbie Millman:

You talk about how visual thinkers are really needed now in all kinds of potentially dangerous situations, and outline how some theorists describe the three main components of risk assessment. I want to share that with you, what you’ve shared in the book. The three main components of risk assessment as identifying the potential risk, assessing the potential damage, and figuring out how to reduce it.

Temple Grandin:

All right. Now, that’s very sequential. They’re doing what I do sequentially with words. See, there’s three parts of that. All right. Let’s go to the disaster chapter in visual thinking. The Fukushima accident. Now there’s just one step. They designed the plant, the nuclear plant, perfect to be earthquake proof. It’s shook and it’s shook and it’s shook and it’s shook and everything’s fine. 20 minutes later, the tsunami floods the site. I just see the water coming. As soon as I… Water coming over the sea wall, flooding the site, I said, “Watertight doors would have saved it,” because the electrically-driven emergency cooling pump drowned.

Now, I just see it almost like a movie. It’s just one step. Well, it’s been a shock to me as I’ve learned the mathematical engineer has to go through, or the verbal thinker kind of goes through this more complicated way, engineers calculate risk. Okay. You look at the historical data. There were tsunamis that would’ve breached that in the past, that 10-meter sea wall. I can’t design a nuclear reactor, but maybe I need to be working on the safety systems because that electric pump has to run when I need it, and it’s not going to run underwater. You see, I just see. It’s so obvious the water coming in there, and you see it busting the doors out, and five seconds later the basement’s flooded.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve observed that when engineers discuss risk, they tend to use language that is almost robotic and void of human detail. This was incredible when I read this. A crash is called impact with terrain. Major problems are called anomalies. During a rocket launch, when everything is working smoothly, it is nominal. When it isn’t, there are four levels of failure, which I’ve learned from your book: negligible, marginal, critical, and catastrophic. The Boeing 737 Max tragedy was labeled a common mode failure.

Temple Grandin:

To me, I just see an angle of attack sensor. When I found out what that was, and I looked them up online and my next flight, I’m at the airport checking out angle of attack sensor [inaudible 00:32:13] the different planes and I go, “You wired a computer that controls how this plane flies,” and not the regular autopilot. You wired this computer that the pilots didn’t know about to a single, extremely delicate, fragile sensor that a bird can just bust off the airplane. How did you do that? No one asks the simple question: If a bird snaps off the angle of attack sensor, what will the plane do?

Debbie Millman:

How do we begin to improve how language is used to describe scenarios? How?

Temple Grandin:

Well, I think what we need to be doing is have teams with different kinds of thinkers on the team. The first step is you have to recognize it. Now, I’m saying, well, they didn’t have there at Boeing is a gnarly old shop guy who would’ve walked into the CEO’s office with an angle of attack sensor and slid it down the conference room table and saying, “You can’t wire that computer up to one of these.” Period. You see, I’m kind of visualizing that as kind of a fun scene.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I am too. I am too. It’s like a little movie in my head.

Temple Grandin:

If that had happened, this wouldn’t have happened. The planes would still be up there. Then there were other mistakes made. They wanted to not do simulator training for the pilots, but if they’d wired the computer to two angle of attack sensors and it had the angle of attack disagree function functional on these planes, that tells you one of them was broken. What if the default setting should have been fly normally if it breaks off and return to the airport. When you think about it [inaudible 00:33:50] see how basic that is?

Debbie Millman:

It’s logic. But you’ve stated in the book, and this is something, as somebody who is very verbal, this book really impacted sort of the way I behave. You state that by default, verbal people tend to be the ones who dominate conversations. They’re hyper organized and social. How can verbal thinkers best communicate with visual thinkers and give them the space to even slide that connector down the conference room table?

Temple Grandin:

Well, we need all the different kinds of minds.

Debbie Millman:

So what do we do? How do we create scenarios where visual thinkers, verbal thinkers, any type of neurodiverse thinker can be more collaborative?

Temple Grandin:

I think the first step is we got to realize the different kinds of thinking exist. Combined teams is what we should be doing, recognizing the skills that they bring to the table. They have different specific skills. Let’s take architecture versus engineering. I was just reading an article about a famous architect today, and he wants to make a building that looks like a Jenga tower. Then the engineers have got to make sure that Jenga tower doesn’t fall down, and the engineers are going to, okay, the elevator’s going to work, water systems, power. The architect wants it to look pretty and look nice and not just be a box, but you need both kinds of minds.

Debbie Millman:

I want to ask you about the term neurodiversity. It’s a term that originated in the autism community. It really became a rallying cry for people who had been marginalized because of their difference. Proponents of neurodiversity strive to change the medical model that reduces people to their diagnosis or to their label. And you write that the central idea behind neurodiversity is to find a new paradigm for thinking about neurological disorders.

Temple Grandin:

Well, I tell business people that you meet these different kinds of minds. Now, I’m thinking of the Millennial Tower in San Francisco that’s tilting, that tilts another few inches and the elevators won’t work. I wouldn’t give you 5 cents for an apartment in that building. They were cheap, and they didn’t put the pilings down to bedrock. Well, if you listen to some old concrete foundation worker on the site to put the pilings down to bedrock, it would’ve been my kind of mind that would’ve gone, “Oh, man, those suits are crazy. Why are they doing this?” You need those different kinds of minds.

The other thing is, I worked with a lot of people that probably were autistic. I’m going to estimate that drafting people, designing entire factories, designing equipment, people inventing mechanical things and building it, 20% of them were either autistic, dyslexic, or ADHD. You know, undiagnosed. Now, the way I got ahead in the ’70s, I can tell you being a woman was a bigger barrier than autism. I made sure I was very good at what I did. What I did was I learned to sell my work. I’d show off my drawings, and there’s no way I can show off a drawing on an audio podcast, but I would show people my drawings. I sold Cargill. I designed the front end of every Cargill beef plant because I sent a drawing to the head of Cargill and pictures.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, I want you to tell my listeners how you learned to draw.

Temple Grandin:

Well, my mother teaching me to draw, and then there was a draftsman named Davey who worked at a construction company. I watched how he drew, But before I could learn how to draw from Davey, I had to learn how to read a blueprint. You look at a flat drawing and there might be a little square on the floor plan. Those squares are concrete columns that hold up the roof. I had to learn to read a drawing.

At the Swift plant, they gave me a copy of a beautiful set of hand-done drawings, very detailed. I walked around in that plant for two days until I could relate every single line on that drawing to a door, a window, a piece of equipment, a column, of course the water tower was easy. That was just a great big circle on the drawing. Then after I learned how to read the drawings, then I just copied the way Davey did it. It kind of appeared almost like magic.

I can remember in 1978, I have a drawing of a dipthat system. I remember drawing that and I’m going… I couldn’t believe I had done it because a lot of people thought I was stupid and they didn’t think I’d amount to anything. I remember looking at that drawing and I’m going, “Stupid people wouldn’t draw a drawing like this.”

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely.

Temple Grandin:

That really helped my self-esteem.

Debbie Millman:

Some of your drawings are included in your book, which I love. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about the term neurodiversity was the idea that people talk about neurological disorders, and do you think that we’ll ever dispense with this word disorder and just think about these conditions as different?

Temple Grandin:

There’s a certain amount of variation in brains and behavior. I think it’s just personality variant. When does geeky become autistic? You see, it’s a too continuous trait. So, a certain amount of this is normal variation. Now, obviously, if you’ve never learned to speak, yeah, that’s a disorder. The problem we’ve got with autism is you’re going from Elon Musk and Einstein to somebody who as an adult can’t dress themselves, and we call it the same thing? That’s horrible overgeneralization by the verbal thinkers. All I can say, the business people, we need these different kinds of minds. We need to be putting all the hands-on classes back into schools because we got infrastructure falling apart right now. Bridges falling down, all kinds of stuff.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, my last question is this. You write about how while autistic people may have problems in some areas, they also may have extraordinary and socially valuable powers provided that they are allowed to be themselves. Autistic.

Temple Grandin:

Well, they also have to be able to have access to… Okay. If you have a third grader who’s super good at math and you make him do baby math, he needs that old-fashioned algebra book out of the attic. I don’t need it. I need to have art and be growing up with tools. I got that, because if you’re not exposed to enough different things… Or, I was exposed to musical instruments and I had lessons. I couldn’t play this little flute, but I was exposed to it.

Debbie Millman:

Now, I understand that melodies are the only things you could memorize without a visual image.

Temple Grandin:

Well, you see, I see the flute when I talk about it, and I’m seeing the piano that I had some piano lessons on. See, there’s nothing abstract there.

Debbie Millman:

Interesting. It’s so fascinating.

Temple Grandin:

Seeing myself playing chopsticks on the piano. I got not much further than that. But at least I was exposed. Another kid, you expose them to that flute or a guitar, they’ll just pick it up and play it. How are you going to know you’re good at musical instruments if you’re not exposed? Music and math tend to go together.

Debbie Millman:

Well, music is really based on math in so many ways.

Temple Grandin:

It is.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, I’d like to close the show today with a quote of yours from your 2010 TED Talk. You stated this: “If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the Earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.”

Temple Grandin:

Well, who do you think designed some of the first technology? Not the chit-chatters around the campfire. It would’ve been someone sitting in the back of the cave trying to make a stone spear or something like that, that you see the brain can be more social or the brain can be more interested in what they do. You see, I am what I do. The happiest times in my life is doing really interesting things in my career. Something that works, that improves treatment of animals, real things. How do we make real change and improve something on the ground?

Debbie Millman:

Well, I’m hoping that your book will really show people the important changes that we need to make and ways to think about the world and new ways to make it better.

Temple Grandin:

Okay. Well, it’s been great talking to you.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you, Dr. Grandin. Thank you so much for making the world a better place with your work, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Temple Grandin:

And thank you so much for having me.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. It’s been an absolute honor. Temple Grandin’s latest book is Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. Her website is templegrandin.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. Remember, we can talk about making a difference; we can make a difference; or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Dr. Temple Grandin appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and animal behaviorist, and she has had a profound effect on how humanely livestock in this country are treated. She’s also had a huge effect on the way we understand people on the autism spectrum. Drawing on her own experience as an autistic person, she has written or co-written many groundbreaking books exploring autism and celebrating neurodiversity.

Her first book, Emergence, was published in 1986, and it changed the way the world views autism. Her most recent book, Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions is changing the way people think about thinking. She’s been recognized on the list of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the world. She’s the subject of an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning biographical film, and she owns numerous patents for her original designs. There is truly nobody quite like her.

Dr. Grandin, welcome to Design Matters.

Temple Grandin:

It’s really, really good to be here today.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you. Dr. Grandin, is it true that you believe if they were alive today, Albert Einstein, Mozart, and Nikola Tesla would probably be diagnosed as autistic?

Temple Grandin:

Yes, definitely. Because Einstein had delayed speech. Today, and especially with the way that the people get services, to get services, he’d have to be put in an autism class. You can argue over whether or not he’s autistic, but he’d end up in an autism class today because that’s where most speech delayed kids are going. Also in my work on designing equipment in the meat industry, I worked with brilliant people that owned metal working shops, people that had maybe 20 patents, and one guy that built very important equipment for me, oh, he was definitely autistic. But he had grown up working on cars. So, then he discovered that mechanical things were interesting. But the problem I’m seeing today is kids getting locked into the label, and they’re growing up, they’ve never used tools. They don’t get a chance to work on cars. We have all kinds of need today for people that can do mechanical things like fix elevators, build equipment for factories.

Debbie Millman:

I experience that firsthand. The elevator in the college that I work in is perpetually broken and there seems to be nobody in New York City that can fix it. And you’d think New York City, elevators? That would be a rough thing to believe.

Temple Grandin:

And we need those skills. We got water systems falling apart, wires falling off electrical towers. You need these people that can fix things and design things. Engineering’s not all mathematics. There’s the visual, thinking part of engineering, and then there is the mathematical part. You need to have both. And my kind of minds get screened out because we can’t do algebra.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, I know. I was so heartened when I read that because my nephew, my 14-year… Well, now he’s 15. When he was 14 and in 9th grade, he had just a terrible time with algebra, just an absolutely terrible time. Everybody’s sort of been pulling their hair out, how do we get him to be more interested in math? And I’m going to give them a copy of your new book.

Temple Grandin:

Well, what we need to be doing is when a kid ends up with a label, he might be an extreme object visualizer like me. Or there’s another kid is an extreme mathematician and does it in his head and the verbal people are forcing him to do step by step. It’s not how they think. Then a lot of people are mixtures of different kinds of thinking.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, I love the test in your book.

Temple Grandin:

You’re not going to find an extreme object visualizer like me and an extreme mathematician in the same person.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I want to go back in history just a little bit before we talk about your book. Your full name is Mary Temple Grandin. When did you begin to use Temple as your first name?

Temple Grandin:

Used Temple ever since I was a child. For years, nobody knew my first name was Mary. It was only on my passport. And then TSA forced me to put it on my plane tickets.

Debbie Millman:

By the time you were three months old, you’ve written about how you began to stiffen in your mother’s arms and she realized you didn’t want to be cuddled. You’ve written that as you got older, you began to chew up puzzles and spit the cardboard mush out on the floor. You developed a violent temper, screamed continually, and by the time you were three, you weren’t speaking at all. Your mom took you to the world’s leading special needs researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital. What did the doctors think at the time?

Temple Grandin:

Well, you got to remember, this is 1949. I was born in 1947. She actually took me to a top neurologist who immediately checked me to make sure I didn’t have epilepsy and he made sure I wasn’t deaf. Referred me to a little speech therapy school that two teachers taught out of the basement of their house. There was some down syndrome kids in that and they just said, “Well, this teacher’s just really good at working with these kids.” And I can remember some of those speech therapy lessons and it’s very similar to the things that they were doing now: always encouraging me to use my words, slowing down, because when the people talked fast, it sounded like gibberish. There was also a lot of emphasis on turn taking, learning how to wait and take turns, really, really important. Then by four, I was verbal; and by five I was mainstreamed in a normal kindergarten in a small school.

Debbie Millman:

Didn’t doctors originally think that you should be institutionalized?

Temple Grandin:

Well, actually, yeah, that was kind of what was done with kids that had my problems in the ’50s. See, the thing is, now what’s known is kids with autism, you look very severe when they’re very young and you don’t know how they’re going to come out. You got to work with them and do your early intervention.

Debbie Millman:

In the glorious HBO movie about your life, your mother is portrayed as your fiercest advocate.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

Someone who never stopped fighting for you. As you were growing up, did you feel her belief in you?

Temple Grandin:

Well, she always encouraged me. I was good at art. She always encouraged my ability at art and of course, art’s the basis of my design work. I would just draw the same horse head over and over again and she would say, “Let’s draw the whole horse. Let’s draw the stable.” She’d take my art ability and expand it. She suggested using other media like watercolors and pastel paints and pencils and draw different things. I actually got given a book on perspective drawing. I also, very early on, was learning to shop, learning table manners. This is where ’50s upbringing actually was helpful, much more structured.

Debbie Millman:

I read somewhere that you met an older student who had never used a pair of scissors.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right. In my book, Visual Thinking, I describe a conversation I had with a doctor who was pulling his hair out trying to teach interns how to sew up cuts and they had never used scissors. I had a girl in my class who had never used a ruler or tape measure to measure anything. We’ve got kids growing up totally removed from the practical world. Now, my kind of mind is an object visualizer. I grew up using tools. I would spend hours and hours and hours tinkering to make things like parachutes and bird kites. Did the adults make them for me? No, they just let me tinker.

Debbie Millman:

By the time you were in the fourth grade, you began to be bullied in school, and the kids called you chatter box because of what you’ve said was constant conversation on a particular topic.

Temple Grandin:

Well, yeah, I ask constant questions. My grandfather, when we visit with him, he was co-inventor of the autopilot for airplanes. We would just sit. We’d go in the other room, and while he’s smoking his pipe and eating some cheese and having a beer. He’d explain to me why the sky was blue. Why was grass green. So he liked telling me that stuff, and I’d ask him why tides go in and out. Why’s the moon have phases? And he would explain that stuff.

Debbie Millman:

How did you manage this dual world of family, your grandfather, your mother, your aunt being so supportive and loving, and yet the sort of bullying and really quite terrible behavior you experienced at school. How did you manage both of those at the same time?

Temple Grandin:

Fortunately, I didn’t have bullying in elementary school because Mrs. Deech, the third grade teacher, who was the head teacher for elementary school, explained to the other kids that I had a disability that was not visible, like leg braces. A lot of kids in the ’50s had polio and they had leg braces. It wasn’t something you could see. They explained to the other kids the need to help me.

High school was a disaster of bullying and teasing. I got kicked out of a regular high school for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. Then mother had worked as a reporter on doing public TV shows on mostly disturbed children. She’d actually researched all the special schools in New England. So, she picked out three of them and she let me pick a school. I picked the one that had horses and a farm. I didn’t care about studying.

You know what the school did? They put me to work running a horse barn. Now they said, let me get through my adolescence. Well, mother wasn’t too happy about backing off on academics. But what I’m saying now with a lot of these kids is they work really hard on the academics, no life skills. I’ve learned how to work. I was in charge of a horse barn, nine stalls every day to clean, put them in and out, feed them. I was responsible for it. Make sure the feed box is closed. I was responsible for that. I learned how to work. That was really important.

The other thing is the only place I was not bullied was friends through shared interests, like horseback riding, model rockets, and electronics. Really important. Today it might be robotics, 3D printing. It could be a sport. It could be a band, a choir, something where there’s friends who shared interests.

Debbie Millman:

The year after you were expelled for throwing a book at a girl who was teasing you, your parents got divorced, and several years later your mom remarried. You were able to spend a summer on the Arizona ranch of your stepdad’s sister.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

It was there that you noticed that some of the animals appeared to relax after a cattle squeeze shoot was applied.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right. I was introduced to beef cattle for the first time, and I watched them get vaccinated in a device that squeezed them. It’s called a squeeze shoot. I noticed it kind of calmed them down. So then I built a device where I could squeeze myself, and I eventually got it to operate with air cylinders and that was some of my skilled trades work, built it all by myself.

Debbie Millman:

Did you have a sense at the time about how or why it helped you?

Temple Grandin:

Well, deep pressure’s calming. You see, then in the early seventies, I met an occupational therapist named Lorna King. She was using deep pressure with things like cushions with autistic kids in Arizona to calm them down. Now again, deep pressure doesn’t work on everybody. It only works on some of them. The sensory issues are very variable. But that kind of validated me. I was great friends with Lorna and she and I did some early, early autism talks in the ’70s.

Debbie Millman:

The influence of your squeeze box or hug box can now be seen in things like gravity blankets…

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… and even special pressure shirts to help dogs who experience…

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… severe stress during thunderstorms. It’s called the Thundershirt. So thank you for that. It’s helped my dogs quite a lot.

Temple Grandin:

It did. The Thunderstorm help your dogs, and where it really seems to help is on separation distress, too. It seems to help.

Debbie Millman:

At this point in your life, were you aware that you had autism? Because I understand that you didn’t actually get officially diagnosed until much later in life.

Temple Grandin:

The psychiatrist, by the time I was five and six, yeah, was basically saying I was autistic.

Debbie Millman:

The summer after you developed the squeeze box, you began to attend Hampshire Country School in New Hampshire.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

The school was founded in 1948 by a Boston child psychologist for students of exceptional potential…

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… that have not been successful in a typical setting. It was there that you met William Carlock, a science teacher who had worked for NASA.

Temple Grandin:

Yes. I’d been there for about three years before William Carlock became a science teacher. What he did is he gave me interesting projects. The HBO movie showed all the things I built. The gate you could open from a car, the squeeze machine, optical illusion room that I had made, the dipping vat project. Then he gave me interesting projects. He says, “Well, then you have to study in order to go to graduate school and become a scientist.” I still couldn’t do algebra, but the other classes I was just goofing off. Then when I finally went to college, thank goodness, the introductory math class at that college was not algebra. It was basically called finite math, probability matrices, and statistics. The nice math teacher tutored me in his office. I asked for help right away. I didn’t wait until I had flunked out of the course. I failed the first quiz. I asked for help. Big mistakes students make, not asking for help soon enough. That’s something I did.

Debbie Millman:

Talk about why algebra is so difficult for some students.

Temple Grandin:

Well, I’m what’s called an object visualizer. This is described in the visual thinking book. You have object visualizers who think in photo realistic pictures. Then you got visual spatial, your pattern thinkers, your mathematical students. Then of course you get your verbal thinkers who think in words. The problem I have is algebra has nothing there to visualize. Now, I can remember a specific formula like pi times the radius squared describes a hydraulic cylinder. When I say that, I’m seeing a hydraulic cylinder. You see, that is not abstract. But abstract math I can’t do. You’ve got to understand different thinkers exist, and a lot of people are middle of the road. But that extreme visual thinker works in the shop who can build anything, we need those skills.

Debbie Millman:

In your 1995 book, Thinking in Pictures, you reveal that you thought that all individuals with autism thought the way that you did, in photographic-specific images or as you put it, thinking in pictures. Can you talk about now how your thinking has evolved a bit?

Temple Grandin:

Well, that was wrong. Amazon had just come out and I’ve read reviews. Several people on the spectrum said, “Well, that’s not true.” So then I started now thinking back to all the people I’d met and I started to figure out, yes, there are some that think in words and these tend to be the history lovers that love lists and facts and sports statistics, things like that. Then I was reading a book by Clara Claven Park about her daughter Jesse, and it was called Exiting Nirvana. It’s out of print now, unfortunately. But that was where I got the idea of thinking in patterns rather than pictures.

Debbie Millman:

What does that mean, to think in patterns?

Temple Grandin:

Well, Jesse would paint beautiful pictures of houses where she put all kinds of geometric shapes on a picture of somebody’s house. I’m going, “This is patterns rather than pictures.” Then later on, when I did the Autistic Brain, I was surfing in the middle of the night and I went into the reference list. I didn’t do the citations. A reference list, and I found this paper on two types of visualizers, and I looked up the paper and I go, “Wow, this describes my mind, and then the mathematical mind.” I then got that term off the title of paper. Then I found some other papers.

Debbie Millman:

By the time the expanded edition was published in 2006, you realized it had been wrong to presume that every person with autism processed information in the same way. In the 2006 version, you described three types of specialized thinking.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. There’s three types of thinking, which now the correct names for, which back then I didn’t use the correct names for them because I didn’t know them at that time, was object visualizer. I was calling it photo-realistic visual thinking, is what I was calling it. Then there’s the pattern thinker. I was calling it a pattern thinker, mathematics, and that’s what the scientists called visual spatial. Then, of course, your think verbal thinker who thinks in words.

Then on the visual thinking book, the big thing that’s new in that is the huge skill loss problem we’ve got. I didn’t realize what a big skill loss we had until I went to four places in 2019, right before COVID hit. I went to two state-of-the-art pork plants where all the equipment was imported, mostly from Holland. I went to a state-of-the-art poultry plant, all of the machinery inside, it came from Holland in 100 shipping containers. And I went to the Steve Jobs Theater and the mothership building of Apple, and the structural glass walls are from Italy and Germany, and the carbon fiber roof is from Dubai. I have a picture of me standing in the middle of that, screaming, “We don’t make it anymore.”

Then I’m going, we’ve got a serious problem. 20 years ago, we made two mistakes in education. We took out all the hands on classes at some schools: art, sewing, woodworking, carpentry, auto mechanics, drafting. All those hands on things. So kids are growing up not using tools. The other big mistake that was made in industry, and I know the most about my industry, is shutting down in-house engineering departments. Back in the ’80s and the early ’90s, these companies had big shops where they could invent and patent equipment. Those were phased out, and they found it was cheaper and more economical to contract to work out. Now that’s coming back to bite them, and it’s now turning into a perfect storm on maintaining factories, on maintaining things like electrical towers, water supplies.

Debbie Millman:

You sound pessimistic. Do you think that this is something that could be reversed? How do you…

Temple Grandin:

Oh, absolutely. It could be reversed. What we need to be doing… Well, you got to have kids exposed to tools to get them interested in tools. You got to have them exposed to industrial design. So let’s look at college. You have industrial design. That’s the art side. You have engineering, which is the math side. You need both kinds of thinking. They used to say, “Well, the stupid kids would go to shop class.” I can tell you, the people I work with are not stupid.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I love shop.

Temple Grandin:

Mechanically complicated stuff.

Debbie Millman:

You call your most recent book Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. So my very first question is, for my listeners, can you define what it means to do visual thinking?

Temple Grandin:

All right. There’s actually two types. There’s the object visualizer, like me, who are very good at things like photography, art, animal behavior, and mechanics. Because you just see pictures, and they’ll tell you to take the machine apart and then you just see how it works. That is my kind of mind. I call my kind of mind the clever engineering department. I mean, think packaging machine, think paper feed mechanism in your printer. Those are examples of what I call clever engineering. Those aren’t made by the mathematicians.

Then you have the visual spatial mathematical part of engineering. You’ve got to make sure the roof of the building doesn’t fall down; you have enough electrical power.

Then you have verbal thinkers who think in words. Now, I was shocked when I found out in my late 30s that other people think in words. Let’s say we’re designing something. An engineer, what it looks like and its function just go together. You look at the inside of the Space Station. There’s no aesthetics. Where you look at the stuff that Elon Musk has designed, I mean, the space suits are really cool. He got a costume designer to design them.

Debbie Millman:

So he’s working with a continuum of people.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s right. That’s what he’s doing. Well, first of all, they had a costume designer from a major movie design the space suits. Then they had to have engineers make those space suits work as space suits. So you’ve got both kinds of thinkers here. The object visualizer, the art person made them look cool. Then you had to go to the mathematical engineer to make sure those space suits would actually work. Or, you look at something like we’re using Zoom right now. Visual thinker like me designs the interface and then the mathematician programs it.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, you begin the book with a 1957 quote from the linguist Noam Chomsky. Uou talk about his book Syntactic Structures, wherein he claims that language, specifically grammar, is innate and his ideas have influenced thinkers for over 50 years. Do you agree that grammar is innate for humans?

Temple Grandin:

Well, in one of my earlier books, Animals in Translation, I looked at the research that was done by Sloganov, I’ve probably said that wrong, on prairie dogs and that in their calls they have a noun-like function. Well, is it a coyote? A hawk? That’d be a noun. An urgency function, sort of like an adjective, and the way they hunt: lurker versus going from hole to hole. So that’s kind of a grammar function right there. You’ve got a noun function, urgency function, and does this coyote go from hole to hole or does he lurk? But the other thing on some of this language-based stuff, I remember reading something about uniframes of something. All I could think of is special pallets they put cars on in the car factory, which I know is wrong.

Debbie Millman:

What gave you that visual picture?

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But I think some of the issues about animal thinking, they’re still arguing about consciousness. Now, I get to thinking about, I think it’s difficult for somebody who thinks in words to imagine the dog actually thinks or conscious. The dog is a sensory-based thinker. Smell is very important to dogs. There’s new research that shows that the nose has a direct trunk line to the visual cortex. Ooh, trippy. New Cornell research. It’s not in the book. It just came out on the dog’s smelling in three dimension. Wow. But it is a sensory-based world, not a word-based world. I think some of this, it’s hard. I think it’s hard for some verbal thinkers to imagine thought without words.

Debbie Millman:

Well, there are scientists or neurologists that think that thought creates consciousness.

Temple Grandin:

Well, yeah, I think what creates consciousness is a certain amount of association hubs in the nervous system. All networks form hubs, whether they’re Facebook, whether they are airlines, because I can remember airlines when there were no hubs. But those hubs organically form. Networks form hubs. So in the brain you’ve got hubs where you get memory information, incoming sensory information, signals coming up from the emulsion centers, the frontal cortex trying to sort through it, and all this stuff is all intersecting together in big hub. You have to have a certain amount of centralized hubs, I think, to have consciousness.

Debbie Millman:

You write how language is presumed to transform thought into consciousness, while visual thinking gets erased somewhere along the way.

Temple Grandin:

This has been very tricky for me because in the visual thinking book, this is a really good example of collaboration. Betsy Lerner, my co-author, is a total verbal thinker. What we would do is I’d write the initial drafts and, boy, she would smooth them out and straighten them out and organize them. So, that’s a perfect example of collaboration between a visual thinker and a word thinker. There’s things that she thinks completely differently than I do.

I can remember when she got a dog and I suggested for her to watch everything the dog does and what he smells. Then she started to get some insight into sensory-based thinking in a dog’s world. I see people yanking dogs away from things they want to smell. Well, that’s their life.

Debbie Millman:

There are dogs that have been proven to be able to smell cancer.

Temple Grandin:

Well, there’s a lot of things they can smell and they can be trained to smell and working for all kinds of detection purposes. Their nose is just super powerful. I kind of use what’s the most example maybe a human did? Well, I’ve read about some wine steward that could identify 2,000 wines. Okay. That’s maybe as close as a person ever got to a dog.

Debbie Millman:

You state that visual thinking is not about how we see, but how the brain processes information.

Temple Grandin:

Yes. Because it’s in my imagination. Like, right now, I’ve got to go over and I’m doing a lecture in the introductory animal science class and I’m going, “Ooh, I’m going to have to go to a parking garage and walk over there because I won’t be able to find space in our lot.” Okay. Right now, I’m seeing both places. Then I can start the feel carrying my briefcase and wishing I could have gotten a space by our building. You see that? Just thinking about something that simple. I’m now seeing the parking garage. Now, it’s associative. Now I’m seeing the broken sign where one of our students drove our meat refrigerated truck in there, and it was too high. Okay. You see it’s associative.

Debbie Millman:

Right. It sounds like you have a visual power of association.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. It’s a visual power of association. Give me a keyword and I’ll tell you about how it associated. Give me something kind of creative. Don’t give me car or house or something like that. Think of a kind of a creative keyword and I’ll Google it in my mind for you.

Debbie Millman:

Egg beater.

Temple Grandin:

Egg beater?

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm. Egg beater.

Temple Grandin:

Well, as a child, I can remember beating things with the egg beater. Now I’m seeing the power mixer we had. Now I’m seeing eating cookie dough before we baked the cookies. That was really a yummy thing to do. Okay. Now, I’m seeing a cement mixer. Okay. The association there is egg beaters mix up things, cement mixers mix. Als,o cement mixers are something I’ve had a lot of experience with. So I have lots of images and memory. Now, I’m thinking about my first job and I can see that cement mixer really high in Phoenix. We had to get the steps made on this cattle ramp before that truck got too hot. I remember the engineer going, “We’ve got to get this concrete laid by 10 o’clock.”

Debbie Millman:

It’s like a flip book in your brain.

Temple Grandin:

But you see what I’m getting is a series of associations. But these associations have some logic to them, and that’s how I solve problems because it’s bottom-up thinking. I’ll associate back to things I experienced in the past. “Oh, we’ve tried that in the past. That didn’t work.”

Debbie Millman:

I want to read a paragraph from your book.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

I’m very verbal. In fact, I’ve been told that everything happens up here in my head to a point where the rest of my body doesn’t even exist and it’s so much about language for me.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

I want to read a paragraph about word-based thinking.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

And then talk about it.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

“Word-based thinking is sequential and linear. People who are primarily verbal thinkers tend to comprehend things in order, which is why they often do well in school, where learning is mostly structured sequentially. They’re good at understanding general concepts and have good sense of time, though not necessarily a good sense of direction.

“Verbal thinkers are the kids with perfectly organized binders and the adults whose computer desktops have neat rows of folders for every project. Verbal thinkers are good at explaining the stops they take to arrive at an answer or to make a decision. Verbal thinkers talk to themselves silently, also known as self-talk, to organize their world. Verbal thinkers easily dash off emails and make presentations. They talk early and often.”

Temple Grandin:

Well, I’ve noticed with verbal thinking, like on things like policy, they overgeneralize. They say, “Well, we have to have an inclusive classroom,” or something like that. But how do you do it? They have no specific examples. It’s very overgeneralized, top-down thinking.

Debbie Millman:

What is the difference between bottom-up thinking and top-down thinking?

Temple Grandin:

Okay. The main difference between top-down and bottom-up is bottom-up, concepts are formed with specific examples. Okay. Let’s start a very simple example when I was a child. I had to separate cats, dogs, and horses. So how did I do that? Well, originally I used size, but then our neighbors got a dachshund, so I could no longer sort dogs from cats by size. So then I had to find other features that a dachshund shares with dogs, such as barking, the smell and the shape of their nose. The bottom-up thinker works better. It’s just like an artificial intelligence program.

Let’s say you have an artificial intelligence program that diagnoses melanoma skin cancer. Well, you show it 2,000 melanomas and then 2,000 mosquito bites or whatever, other kinds of rashes, it learns to sort. It takes a lot of information to be a good bottom-up thinker because what you’re doing is taking specific examples and putting them in categories.

Debbie Millman:

So, visual thinkers are bottom-up and verbal thinkers are top-down?

Temple Grandin:

Visual thinkers are bottom-up. Even the mathematicians are much more bottom-up.

Debbie Millman:

You talk about how visual thinkers are really needed now in all kinds of potentially dangerous situations, and outline how some theorists describe the three main components of risk assessment. I want to share that with you, what you’ve shared in the book. The three main components of risk assessment as identifying the potential risk, assessing the potential damage, and figuring out how to reduce it.

Temple Grandin:

All right. Now, that’s very sequential. They’re doing what I do sequentially with words. See, there’s three parts of that. All right. Let’s go to the disaster chapter in visual thinking. The Fukushima accident. Now there’s just one step. They designed the plant, the nuclear plant, perfect to be earthquake proof. It’s shook and it’s shook and it’s shook and it’s shook and everything’s fine. 20 minutes later, the tsunami floods the site. I just see the water coming. As soon as I… Water coming over the sea wall, flooding the site, I said, “Watertight doors would have saved it,” because the electrically-driven emergency cooling pump drowned.

Now, I just see it almost like a movie. It’s just one step. Well, it’s been a shock to me as I’ve learned the mathematical engineer has to go through, or the verbal thinker kind of goes through this more complicated way, engineers calculate risk. Okay. You look at the historical data. There were tsunamis that would’ve breached that in the past, that 10-meter sea wall. I can’t design a nuclear reactor, but maybe I need to be working on the safety systems because that electric pump has to run when I need it, and it’s not going to run underwater. You see, I just see. It’s so obvious the water coming in there, and you see it busting the doors out, and five seconds later the basement’s flooded.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve observed that when engineers discuss risk, they tend to use language that is almost robotic and void of human detail. This was incredible when I read this. A crash is called impact with terrain. Major problems are called anomalies. During a rocket launch, when everything is working smoothly, it is nominal. When it isn’t, there are four levels of failure, which I’ve learned from your book: negligible, marginal, critical, and catastrophic. The Boeing 737 Max tragedy was labeled a common mode failure.

Temple Grandin:

To me, I just see an angle of attack sensor. When I found out what that was, and I looked them up online and my next flight, I’m at the airport checking out angle of attack sensor [inaudible 00:32:13] the different planes and I go, “You wired a computer that controls how this plane flies,” and not the regular autopilot. You wired this computer that the pilots didn’t know about to a single, extremely delicate, fragile sensor that a bird can just bust off the airplane. How did you do that? No one asks the simple question: If a bird snaps off the angle of attack sensor, what will the plane do?

Debbie Millman:

How do we begin to improve how language is used to describe scenarios? How?

Temple Grandin:

Well, I think what we need to be doing is have teams with different kinds of thinkers on the team. The first step is you have to recognize it. Now, I’m saying, well, they didn’t have there at Boeing is a gnarly old shop guy who would’ve walked into the CEO’s office with an angle of attack sensor and slid it down the conference room table and saying, “You can’t wire that computer up to one of these.” Period. You see, I’m kind of visualizing that as kind of a fun scene.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I am too. I am too. It’s like a little movie in my head.

Temple Grandin:

If that had happened, this wouldn’t have happened. The planes would still be up there. Then there were other mistakes made. They wanted to not do simulator training for the pilots, but if they’d wired the computer to two angle of attack sensors and it had the angle of attack disagree function functional on these planes, that tells you one of them was broken. What if the default setting should have been fly normally if it breaks off and return to the airport. When you think about it [inaudible 00:33:50] see how basic that is?

Debbie Millman:

It’s logic. But you’ve stated in the book, and this is something, as somebody who is very verbal, this book really impacted sort of the way I behave. You state that by default, verbal people tend to be the ones who dominate conversations. They’re hyper organized and social. How can verbal thinkers best communicate with visual thinkers and give them the space to even slide that connector down the conference room table?

Temple Grandin:

Well, we need all the different kinds of minds.

Debbie Millman:

So what do we do? How do we create scenarios where visual thinkers, verbal thinkers, any type of neurodiverse thinker can be more collaborative?

Temple Grandin:

I think the first step is we got to realize the different kinds of thinking exist. Combined teams is what we should be doing, recognizing the skills that they bring to the table. They have different specific skills. Let’s take architecture versus engineering. I was just reading an article about a famous architect today, and he wants to make a building that looks like a Jenga tower. Then the engineers have got to make sure that Jenga tower doesn’t fall down, and the engineers are going to, okay, the elevator’s going to work, water systems, power. The architect wants it to look pretty and look nice and not just be a box, but you need both kinds of minds.

Debbie Millman:

I want to ask you about the term neurodiversity. It’s a term that originated in the autism community. It really became a rallying cry for people who had been marginalized because of their difference. Proponents of neurodiversity strive to change the medical model that reduces people to their diagnosis or to their label. And you write that the central idea behind neurodiversity is to find a new paradigm for thinking about neurological disorders.

Temple Grandin:

Well, I tell business people that you meet these different kinds of minds. Now, I’m thinking of the Millennial Tower in San Francisco that’s tilting, that tilts another few inches and the elevators won’t work. I wouldn’t give you 5 cents for an apartment in that building. They were cheap, and they didn’t put the pilings down to bedrock. Well, if you listen to some old concrete foundation worker on the site to put the pilings down to bedrock, it would’ve been my kind of mind that would’ve gone, “Oh, man, those suits are crazy. Why are they doing this?” You need those different kinds of minds.

The other thing is, I worked with a lot of people that probably were autistic. I’m going to estimate that drafting people, designing entire factories, designing equipment, people inventing mechanical things and building it, 20% of them were either autistic, dyslexic, or ADHD. You know, undiagnosed. Now, the way I got ahead in the ’70s, I can tell you being a woman was a bigger barrier than autism. I made sure I was very good at what I did. What I did was I learned to sell my work. I’d show off my drawings, and there’s no way I can show off a drawing on an audio podcast, but I would show people my drawings. I sold Cargill. I designed the front end of every Cargill beef plant because I sent a drawing to the head of Cargill and pictures.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, I want you to tell my listeners how you learned to draw.

Temple Grandin:

Well, my mother teaching me to draw, and then there was a draftsman named Davey who worked at a construction company. I watched how he drew, But before I could learn how to draw from Davey, I had to learn how to read a blueprint. You look at a flat drawing and there might be a little square on the floor plan. Those squares are concrete columns that hold up the roof. I had to learn to read a drawing.

At the Swift plant, they gave me a copy of a beautiful set of hand-done drawings, very detailed. I walked around in that plant for two days until I could relate every single line on that drawing to a door, a window, a piece of equipment, a column, of course the water tower was easy. That was just a great big circle on the drawing. Then after I learned how to read the drawings, then I just copied the way Davey did it. It kind of appeared almost like magic.

I can remember in 1978, I have a drawing of a dipthat system. I remember drawing that and I’m going… I couldn’t believe I had done it because a lot of people thought I was stupid and they didn’t think I’d amount to anything. I remember looking at that drawing and I’m going, “Stupid people wouldn’t draw a drawing like this.”

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely.

Temple Grandin:

That really helped my self-esteem.

Debbie Millman:

Some of your drawings are included in your book, which I love. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about the term neurodiversity was the idea that people talk about neurological disorders, and do you think that we’ll ever dispense with this word disorder and just think about these conditions as different?

Temple Grandin:

There’s a certain amount of variation in brains and behavior. I think it’s just personality variant. When does geeky become autistic? You see, it’s a too continuous trait. So, a certain amount of this is normal variation. Now, obviously, if you’ve never learned to speak, yeah, that’s a disorder. The problem we’ve got with autism is you’re going from Elon Musk and Einstein to somebody who as an adult can’t dress themselves, and we call it the same thing? That’s horrible overgeneralization by the verbal thinkers. All I can say, the business people, we need these different kinds of minds. We need to be putting all the hands-on classes back into schools because we got infrastructure falling apart right now. Bridges falling down, all kinds of stuff.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, my last question is this. You write about how while autistic people may have problems in some areas, they also may have extraordinary and socially valuable powers provided that they are allowed to be themselves. Autistic.

Temple Grandin:

Well, they also have to be able to have access to… Okay. If you have a third grader who’s super good at math and you make him do baby math, he needs that old-fashioned algebra book out of the attic. I don’t need it. I need to have art and be growing up with tools. I got that, because if you’re not exposed to enough different things… Or, I was exposed to musical instruments and I had lessons. I couldn’t play this little flute, but I was exposed to it.

Debbie Millman:

Now, I understand that melodies are the only things you could memorize without a visual image.

Temple Grandin:

Well, you see, I see the flute when I talk about it, and I’m seeing the piano that I had some piano lessons on. See, there’s nothing abstract there.

Debbie Millman:

Interesting. It’s so fascinating.

Temple Grandin:

Seeing myself playing chopsticks on the piano. I got not much further than that. But at least I was exposed. Another kid, you expose them to that flute or a guitar, they’ll just pick it up and play it. How are you going to know you’re good at musical instruments if you’re not exposed? Music and math tend to go together.

Debbie Millman:

Well, music is really based on math in so many ways.

Temple Grandin:

It is.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, I’d like to close the show today with a quote of yours from your 2010 TED Talk. You stated this: “If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the Earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.”

Temple Grandin:

Well, who do you think designed some of the first technology? Not the chit-chatters around the campfire. It would’ve been someone sitting in the back of the cave trying to make a stone spear or something like that, that you see the brain can be more social or the brain can be more interested in what they do. You see, I am what I do. The happiest times in my life is doing really interesting things in my career. Something that works, that improves treatment of animals, real things. How do we make real change and improve something on the ground?

Debbie Millman:

Well, I’m hoping that your book will really show people the important changes that we need to make and ways to think about the world and new ways to make it better.

Temple Grandin:

Okay. Well, it’s been great talking to you.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you, Dr. Grandin. Thank you so much for making the world a better place with your work, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Temple Grandin:

And thank you so much for having me.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. It’s been an absolute honor. Temple Grandin’s latest book is Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. Her website is templegrandin.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. Remember, we can talk about making a difference; we can make a difference; or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Dr. Temple Grandin appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

30 years ago, Anita hill became a household name and a hero for many women when she told the world about how Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her at work. In the years, since she has had a fruitful career as a law professor and as an author. Her latest book is resonating with a lot of people just as her testimony in front of the Senate did in 1991. The book is titled Believing: Our 30 Year Journey to End Gender Violence and we are going to talk about that and her extraordinary life here today. Professor Anita hill, welcome to Design Matters.

Anita Hill:

Oh, it’s a pleasure to be with you,

Debbie Millman:

Anita, is it true that the DC chapter of the women’s club The Wing has a phone booth dedicated to you in their space?

Anita Hill:

Well, I don’t know that it’s true, but I mean, if you say so. I’m flattered to get a wing.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. I saw photos of it and people are talking about it and clamoring to get into the booth to make their phone calls. I’m hoping now that you’ll be able to find that.

Anita Hill:

Yes, I’d like to go down and check it out myself.

Debbie Millman:

Anita, you were born on a farm in Oklahoma and are the youngest of 13 children but your family was originally from Arkansas and only went west because your grandfather was threatened with a lynching. He left his farm, took his family, and headed to what is now Wewoka, Oklahoma. How was he able to remake his entire life when he settled there?

Anita Hill:

Yes, that was my maternal grandfather: the story of their leaving with a large number of children of their own. My uncle tells a story of that day when they left Arkansas and says it was the first time that he’d ever seen his father or cry because that had been a place where he was born: a place where his mother raised him. His mother was a freed slave. He was born actually in 1865, so really on the cusp of slavery. And they lived and owned property there, my grandparents. So they were being completely uprooted in part cause of the threat of violence but also I later learned because of a lot of debt that they had accumulated that probably occurred because of his race or their race. And so they started all over, as people do when they run out of options or feel that they’ve run out of options.

Anita Hill:

My uncle George also says that my grandfather just said that he didn’t want to raise his children in that place where he had seen so much hardship, financial hardship, as well as racism. So they moved to Oklahoma and set up there. He was instructed to go to Wewoka because he was told that there would be work there for him. And so that’s where they landed and they did just what they had to do to make it and to improve the lives of their children.

Debbie Millman:

Your parents were also farmers and you’ve written that your childhood was one of a lot of hard work and not much money, but one of solid family affection. Your family farm was a subsistence farm. What does that mean exactly?

Anita Hill:

Well, that means that we were never going to get rich: that we would be lucky from year to year to be able to cover expenses, to feed ourselves, and to maybe bring in enough money to farm again the next year. But, interestingly, even with the large number of children in the household… and not all 13 of us lived together at once. Some of my siblings had already grown up and left home when I was born. But, you know, it was ongoing that we had to feed, at least, and house and clothe at least seven or eight children in a household. Interestingly enough, even though we were not making a lot of money my mother decided that she wanted her children to go to college. So starting with my oldest sister, who is now 94 years old, she managed to save enough money for tuition at Langston University, which was a historically, or is, a historically black university in the state of Oklahoma. She was able to send my sister off to college with the money that we were making doing farm work on our own farm and then at other times farming on other farms.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve written about how it was a rarity where you were growing up for any female to go to college and that your mother was really a visionary in her insistence that you all do that. How else did she influence you? I know that she was very, very important in terms of helping you become who you are.

Anita Hill:

Absolutely, and in ways I don’t think that I knew at the time that she was shaping us. I mean, one of the things that my mother always said was she insisted that we think about everything that we were doing: to think about the consequences of what we were doing. She was… She had only been able to go to school through the sixth grade but she was always curious and she was reading whatever she had available, whether it was her bible or the local Wewoka Daily Times or Readers Digest or whatever she could get her hands on. She was curious about what was going on in the world and really wanted us to have that same curiosity, but not only the curiosity but the ability to fulfill that. But she was a thinking person and I sometimes think what she could have done had she grown up in a different time and had she not had 13 children even growing up in the time that she did. But I think she was quite remarkable.

Anita Hill:

She became a model for me for discipline, for being thoughtful, and also for being generous. She had raised 10 children who graduated from segregated schools, so she experienced segregation. She also had the youngest three who graduated from integrated schools. And I think at every phase, from my oldest sibling to me, and as the youngest, she had a vision that the world was changing, would continue to change, and that she wanted us to be prepared for it.

Debbie Millman:

You had quite a range, as you were growing up, in terms of interests. You had a principal who was white and a family friend, even before you knew him at school, and decided that your school should have a black cheerleader. So he chose you to be a backup for the cheerleaders who’d been selected by popular vote. But you also were shouted for being queer, for doing that by a white kid in your class. Were you bullied a lot as you were growing up?

Anita Hill:

You know, I wasn’t bullied a lot. In addition to being a cheerleader I was vice president of my senior class. I graduated first in my class and I think in some ways that effort and my ability to just really engage in just about every activity that was available protected me to a large extent. The good grades protected me from some bullying. You know, I developed some kind of shield to shield me away from it but that one incident of being called queer I think was probably because there was… I was still a threat: that I was a threat and I had to be othered in ways that might not have been obvious, like my race or my gender. There had to be something else to be attached to my identity that would have made a person who was making the comment more comfortable with himself.

Debbie Millman:

As you mentioned, you graduated first from your high school, number one, and you went on to Oklahoma State University where you got a degree in psychology. Did you want to become a professional psychologist at that point?

Anita Hill:

Well, I had to choose between being a psychologist and being a lawyer and I didn’t choose very scientifically, but initially I wanted to be a scientist. When I got to college I had a freshman advisor who, even though I had high grades and I had high board scores in science and math, this advisor said that he wasn’t sure that I could make it as a scientist. And thinking about it, this was 1973. It was the year after Title IX had passed. He’d grown up in a world where you could legally discriminate against women in education. I mean, you could tell girls that, “No, you can’t take science. You can’t major in science.” That’s not to excuse that.

Anita Hill:

I often think back on what I would have wanted to happen, or what would I want to happen today, so that I could be a scientist if I chose that: if I that was the course that I wanted to take. I wish that I had had an advisor who said, “You know, I understand…” science, biology, was my interest… “is a challenging field and we’re going to do everything that we can to make sure you’re successful.” But instead he said, “You know, don’t do this. Take something easier.” And I guess eventually I decided I would take something which was not so much easier, but which would allow me to be fulfilled and that was to get a law degree. I had the choice to be…

Debbie Millman:

A law degree from Yale would be easier.

Anita Hill:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You showed him.

Anita Hill:

So I didn’t do exactly as I was instructed entirely. I got a bachelor of science in psychology, so that was one concession. Then I went on to law school, which I like to think that in doing so I figured out how to make sure that maybe another generation of young black girls would not be kept out of the sciences.

Debbie Millman:

Were you the first person in your family to go to an Ivy League school?

Anita Hill:

I was, and that was hard not because the lessons were hard… because law school is hard… but because I had never been so far away from my family. I mean, Oklahoma and Connecticut are really-

Debbie Millman:

Different planets.

Anita Hill:

More than the physical distance, they’re very different places. And being in New Haven, an urban area, when I had grown up on this farm in pretty much isolation, it was quite a strain in the first year. But I adapted and I have… Some of those people that I’ve met are still my close friends.

Debbie Millman:

You became a practicing lawyer with the DC firm Ward, [Hardraker 00:12:35], and Ross, which at the time was a famous law firm known for dropping a tobacco company as a client as well as hiring and mentoring women and minorities. What kind of work were you doing there?

Anita Hill:

I was doing banking law, which was… it was interesting. I don’t know that I thought I was going to do banking but it was sort of a general… The time that I was there, they were trying to rotate us through different parts of the law firm: different sections. It was all corporate law. The interesting part to me was how it fit in society. Even then I was thinking about who’s benefiting from these rules that are protecting corporations, mainly, who’s not benefiting from them, and how can you reconcile this in a just society.

Debbie Millman:

In 1981, you were introduced to Judge Clarence Thomas by a mutual friend and when he was appointed assistant secretary of education for civil rights he invited you to become his assistant and you accepted that position. What kind of projects were you working on at that time?

Anita Hill:

There were general education projects. He was in the Office for Civil Rights. He was the assistant secretary for civil rights. So there were a number of race discrimination cases that we were working on: primarily race discrimination at the time. There were some higher ed race cases having to deal with historically black colleges and universities and that was of interest to me because I grew up in a state and my siblings had gone to a historically black college and we were dealing with the underfunding of those colleges that were run by states that just, frankly, were giving much more money to the historically white institutions in their states. But it was exciting work for me. Even though in some ways I enjoyed the work, the corporate work, it just felt personally much more fulfilling to be in an agency where you felt like you were on the right side. That understanding of how the law was protecting some people and not others could be leveled in an agency of the government if we paid the right attention to it and we did it in the right way.

Debbie Millman:

Initially working with Judge Thomas was positive and you had a good deal of responsibility and independence, but after about three months he asked you out on a date. You’ve written about how you believe then, as you do now, that having a social relationship with a person who’s supervising your work is just not a good idea and you declined the date. But he continued to pursue you. One thing that I’ve been wondering about as I’ve been reading your books and watching the various documentaries about this particular time; why do you think he would take no for an answer?

Anita Hill:

You know, I don’t know. I say to people all the time: I hadn’t figured out, or was at the point of where I was trying to figure out, how I was just going to survive Thomas’s behavior. And I don’t mean that in terms of my life but I do mean that in terms of my livelihood and my career and my wellbeing, because it was very stressful to be in that space and being pressured to do something that you knew you were not going to do and you were just trying to figure out a way out. But I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what was in his head. I said at this point that’s somebody else’s job. I’ve gotten away from it. I’m happy to have done that: escaped it. I think there are plenty of other people who can figure it out and some people who’ve actually written about it. There have been books written, including a book by Jane Meyer and Jill [Abramson 00:17:00]. I’ll leave it to them.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. That is an extraordinary book.

Anita Hill:

But let me just say, in general, in terms of these issues there are many ways, I think many reasons, that people don’t take no for an answer in those situations involving sexual harassment, I think because there’s this feeling of entitlement to harass, entitlement for an individual who is an underling to be submissive to just about any kind of request that a more powerful person has. I think one of the things that people don’t understand about those situations is that we’re not just talking about an injury to the individual, like myself, who is the direct target, but those situations are really harmful to other people who might witness it and experience it and have to work in that kind of environment where they are under the impression that the way to get ahead in a job is to provide sexual favors for the powerful people.

Anita Hill:

I think that there are any… We could speculate about what was going on with Clarence Thomas, but I think the important thing for us to do is to kind of step back and not personalize every experience but try to learn what those experiences mean to all of us: potential employees, the existing employees in an environment. It gives you a sense of what the environment values, what the environment stands for. Is it fairness and justice? And for our organization that’s entirely what it was supposed to be about. Or is it an environment that really just plays lip service to those things is just about power?

Debbie Millman:

And the abuse of power.

Anita Hill:

And bullying of a certain kind and domination of those who are not in those higher positions.

Debbie Millman:

His behavior continued when he was made chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and in the spring of 1983 you accepted an opportunity to teach at Oral Roberts University largely in part because you needed to escape the pressures that you felt working for Judge Thomas. You’ve written about how men aren’t asked why they don’t just leave work situations they detest and before you pointed this out I hadn’t considered that double standard. I couldn’t believe that I’d never considered that, as if it’s the responsibility of the person being abused to figure out a way to stop being abused as opposed to the abuser stopping the abuse. As somebody who has experienced quite a lot of different forms of abuse as a young person, I think that the onus always feels like it’s on the abused to figure out a way out of a situation as opposed to preventing abuse in the first place.

Anita Hill:

Absolutely. I mean, so much of what we put in place to address abuse of any kind. Whether it’s discrimination based on sexual identity or race or gender or harassment or any number of forms of bias and abuse and discrimination that we go have going on, we put in place these structures that put almost the entire burden on the person who is being victimized and we relieve even the abuser from accountability through these structures and we relieve organizations that have put these structures in place of the responsibility of addressing the problems and preventing it to start with.

Anita Hill:

Recently, there was a march this past weekend in France, a women’s march, against what they just call sexist and sexual violence. What they’re asking is for the federal government to raise the amount of money that’s paid to support shelters for women who experience violence and put… add that money and put money and interest and weight behind preventing the problem of sexual violence. That’s what is, in many cases, missing. One, we have to deal with the structures, but really what we… the whole thinking about how to address the problem shouldn’t be one of “Let’s hold people accountable once it happens.” Let’s figure out why it’s happening and try our best to keep it from happening. The solution should be upfront. How do we stop this behavior?

Debbie Millman:

I have a question that I want to ask you just about the time right before the Senate hearings and then I want to talk a bit about the hearings. You joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1986 where you taught commercial law and contracts and you became the first tenured African American professor at OU. But at that time were you also considering going to medical school?

Anita Hill:

Yeah. That goes back to that time when I was this freshman in college and I thought I might go into biology, major in biology, and I just loved science. I thought, “Well, is it too late?” YI was considering… and I had talked, actually, to the dean of the law school about what would it take for me to be able to stay on as teaching in law school, or maybe take a leave to take a couple of years to get geared up to becoming a physician. So it was a serious consideration but my life changed shortly thereafter and I never pursued it.

Debbie Millman:

Your life changed in 1991. Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court and as part of the nomination there’s a thorough background check on every candidate. You knew you were going to be a call about your experience working with him and felt it was both a professional duty as a lawyer as well as your ethical responsibility to come forward in the most effective way possible. You responded with a statement in your own words, thinking it would be confidential and that the senators would take it seriously. They ignored it until the letter was leaked to the press. As a result, you were called to give testimony. Do you know how the letter was leaked?

Anita Hill:

No.

Debbie Millman:

But before the hearing, talking about sexual harassment was not the norm at all. Were you worried about what people would think?

Anita Hill:

My worry was, “Am I going to be heard? Will I have a fair opportunity to say what happened to me without being accused of doing something wrong myself by even coming forward?” At the time, what I had said to myself was, “Your job is to say it as clearly as possible what happened to you and why it mattered. It was their job to figure out whether they were going to do something about it”. As long as I kept thinking about that, what my responsibility as a lawyer, as a person who was teaching law students, a person who had taught them to really respect and understand the power of the law and the significance of the Supreme Court… That was my responsibility: to give information about the character and fitness of a person who was about to be appointed for a lifetime position on the country’s highest court.

Debbie Millman:

Aside from sexual harassment, before the hearing sharing any experiences of any gender-based violence was taboo. I was told when I was 11 years old that nobody would believe me if I told anybody and that my… the person who abused me would kill me if I told anyone and I believed him. I believed him and that power structure has stayed in my psyche for decades. You were treated as if you were on trial. At that time, you were accused of lying, you received death threats. You still managed to keep your composure in a way that I’ve never seen anybody be able to do other than maybe Christine Blasey Ford. In many ways, it feels like your testimony was a wake up call for the country. You educated the world, really, about sexual harassment and I want to thank you for that. I think that you saved a lot of people from a lot of harm in the process of doing that.

Anita Hill:

Well, thank you. I mean, I do look back on that time, and there’s so many things that you’ve said that just continue to haunt me. I think about the fact that so many people are still told, “Don’t you dare talk. Don’t you say anything because you will be hurt even more, or your family’s going to be hurt, or your community’s going to be hurt.” So there is this silencing that goes on. There’s a blaming that still goes on where you are told, “If you hadn’t allowed this to happen, it wouldn’t have happened.” Even for children, they’re blamed. Then there’s another form of denial which tells you to think of the pain that you’re experiencing as insignificant.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. Walk it off.

Anita Hill:

It’s not that bad.

Debbie Millman:

Exactly.

Anita Hill:

Yeah. Walk it off, shrug it get off or don’t make a big deal out of it. Or even these things like, “I’m sure they were just joking,” or, “Can’t you take a joke? you need to lighten up.” All of these things which say that you have to suffer from your own abuse and your suffering isn’t important to the rest of us. What’s important is protecting the abuser. Those are the kinds of things that we grow up with and I don’t even think we’re cognizant of, and that when we’re telling children, “That’s not so bad,” or we’re telling girls that, “Boys just do that because they like you…”

Debbie Millman:

Right. We’re told in second and third grade, “If he pulls your hair it means he likes you.”

Anita Hill:

How could that be?

Debbie Millman:

What is that? We’re socializing sexual violence in second grade. But I don’t think people fully understand the culture at the time before 1991. When I experienced my abuse I didn’t realize… It was so foreign to me. The whole concept of it was so unbelievable to me that I thought I was the only one in the world that it was happening to. Like, this just didn’t even seem possible. It wasn’t until I saw a letter in Dear Anne [Landers 00:29:49] in the newspaper that I saw that it could happen to other people and cut out the letter and put it under my bed as comfort. But what you did was so important to the lives of so many people. It’s hard to believe that despite your testimony on October 15, 1991, the Senate voted to confirm Clarence Thomas as an associate justice of the Supreme Court by a 52/48 vote. And he is still, 30 years later, on the court today.

Debbie Millman:

One thing that I read about what you would do after was that you thought you’d made a deal with yourself that you would go out and talk about sexual harassment for two years, after which the issue would be fixed and you could go back to teaching. Wondering how that deal with yourself worked out.

Anita Hill:

Well, it’s been 30 years now and I’m still talking about it, so I guess that deal got extended, let’s just say. But one of the things that… and I talk about the hearings from 1991 and all of the things that you have brought up, all of the different tactics of isolating me… I was made to feel that my experience was really absurd and isolated instead of part of our social fabric. I was made to feel my… specifically by Arlan Spectre… problem, what I was talking about, wasn’t that bad. I mean, all of those tactics that we now know are ways to silence and deny people’s experience were full blown during the hearings. They were right there for the public to see and I think that’s why people had this moment where they thought, “This is a real issue. This is something that has been happening in my life that I didn’t even have a name for.”

Anita Hill:

I had an email from an organization that represents girls and they were… the email was about the need for Title IX protecting girls against sexual harassment and assault in schools. This one little girl wrote that she had been assaulted: sexually assaulted. Her first experience was when she was in the first grade and she told the teacher about it. What happened was the teacher ended up suspending her recess privileges because the teacher told the little girl that she was being inappropriate in what she was saying about what had happened to her. So we still have these things going on. That two year deal that I made with myself, I honestly thought that if we have the right number of people coming forward that the laws were going to be sufficient to protect them and that just is not the truth. It’s just not true. There are so many impediments, even to people coming forward, and then even when they do there are more and more impediments to them actually getting justice.

Debbie Millman:

You outline this in extraordinary detail in your new book Believing: Our 30 Year Journey to End Gender Violence. Anita, why the title believing?

Anita Hill:

There’s so many [inaudible 00:33:19] in which it sounds naive now but I went to Washington believing that what I had to say was important and that the Senate should consider it in deciding who was going to be on the Supreme Court. I’ve spent the rest of my life believing that we had systems in place that could fix it. I’ve been disappointed, as you can see, in both cases. But mostly what’s important is that we keep believing that we can do better, that we deserve better, that the things that we have been told about our pain and our experiences, we need to stop believing though those things and to believe in the integrity of our own bodies and our right to be safe and secure wherever we are, whether it’s in our schools or on the streets or in our homes or in our workplaces.

Debbie Millman:

I did a bit of research to prepare for our talk today and I found that the National Crime Victimization Survey… this is a survey that was taken in 2017, so it’s four years old, but I think it’s still really revealing… it found that 77 percent of incidents of rape and sexual assault in the United States were not reported to the police, with fear of not being believed the number one reason. Yet criminologists and social scientists have determined that false allegations of rape are between 2% and 8%, which is in line or less than false allegations of other crimes. Why is it so hard to believe victims of sexual violence? It’s unthinkable to me.

Anita Hill:

Something like you’ve experienced a break in your home and you call the police and say, “My computer was stolen… The officer isn’t trained to say, “I’m not sure we believe you. You’ve got to go through a gauntlet to show…” And even then even then 77% aren’t reported, but that’s just part of the number. The ones that are reported, the police must then determine whether or not they’re going to take action, then the district attorney or prosecutors have to decide whether they’re going to file, go to the court with us. Then they have to determine whether there’s going to be a jury that will hear it. I mean, at every step more and more people fall out of the criminal justice system. Then what we now have come to understand is that it takes multiple victims, sometimes scores of victims. If you look at some of the most egregious cases out there, it took scores of victims for any kind of accountability.

Anita Hill:

We have systems that really are more effective at turning people away who have experienced violence than finding some justice for them. And that’s unexplainable but it’s inexcusable. That’s what I think. We have to move from saying, “I just don’t understand it,” but we shouldn’t stop at that. We should say, “Even if I don’t understand it, there’s no excuse for it. We’ve got to do something about this.”

Debbie Millman:

Why is there this sort of enshrined notion that victims of sexual assault can’t be trusted?

Anita Hill:

It’s cultural. It’s cultural. It goes back to those things that we have been told: that these things don’t matter or we’re making too much of out of it. Therefore the deck’s stacked against us from the beginning, culturally. It’s part of why we create these myths about “You’re just not the right victim. Maybe you should not have been out, or maybe you were drinking, or maybe what would you expect if you were wearing that particular skirt,” or all of these things that we build around our culture that says basically we don’t value women’s voice. And we’re not just talking about people who were assigned that gender at birth. We’re not just… We are talking about people who are trans people who are gender non-binary. We are talking about people who identify as male who may not be seen as tough enough. I mean, if you look at what’s going on in sports… Think about the recent allegations about the National Hockey League and the sexual assault there. What we have is a society and a culture that’s anti-woman, that is anti-things that can be associated with being female, and we have this way that we glorify masculinity, hyper-masculinity, to the point where we say, “That’s just what men do.”

Debbie Millman:

Boys will be boys.

Anita Hill:

We excuse it. So if you think about those two reactions to the feminine and to the masculine and you put them in the context of especially sexual assault but any kind of violence then what you have is a deck stacked in favor of protecting me and those who would be abusers specifically and really abandoning the victims, whatever their gender is.

Debbie Millman:

You write in your book that the more you understood sexual harassment the more you understood how that was just part of the problem of gender and racial inequality. I think that’s also what you’re talking about here. Can you talk a bit about how they are intertwined?

Anita Hill:

Race really is a compounding factor. If you look at the numbers just in terms of who experiences violence, sexual violence included, typically speaking the rates will be higher for women of color. One in every four women generally experience sexual assault and then if you look at native women, that one in every two women experience… Then you understand that there’s a racial factor that has to be considered so that if you do deal with the issues of misogyny that’s only part of the problem that is causing that high rate of abuse of native women. The majority of the abuse and violence against native women come at the hand of nonnative men. That’s an undeniable racial dimension that we cannot neglect or deny, especially if we want to deal with the issue and find solutions.

Debbie Millman:

You write how you see gender violence as a public crisis and that we, as a culture, as a society, haven’t done enough to measure the impact. How can we find ways to measure the impact?

Anita Hill:

First of all, we need to measure the cost to victims. 50 percent of the women who experience sexual harassment will leave their job or their college or wherever they are. They will just leave. I left mine and there’s a cost there. There’s an economic cost there. There are career costs. There are psychological and social costs there that haven’t been calculated. There were four senators, all female, who asked for an accounting for the cost of sexual harassment in our workplaces in the US. They got a letter back acknowledging that there is a cost and they said part of the cost is a health cost. There is a cost in terms of lost productivity, lost wages, leaving jobs, and relocating. There are all these costs. But they also said that none of this has been actually fully calculated. Even the cost to our nationally economy hasn’t been calculated.

Anita Hill:

Why? Why isn’t it calculated? If I had to answer it myself I’d have to say it’s because we haven’t decided that we care enough about it. If we want to solve this problem, if we care enough, if we see how huge and absurdly dangerous it is for us as a society to allow this to go on, if we see that we will measure what it’s costing us because measuring is the only way to get to understanding what we need to do to resolve that. And we always measure what we care about. We need to care more because there’s so much at stake and another generation going through what we know is happening today. Read in the papers every day what is happening.

Debbie Millman:

Oh yeah. Look at what happened with Larry Nassar and the Olympians, the hundreds of women, that he assaulted.

Anita Hill:

You can’t pick up the paper without seeing a story. It was this weekend, there was an obituary: a woman who died at the hand of a partner, and it was put in the obituary to tell the world. I think that’s where people are going now. They’re saying, “The world needs to know that this person died at the hand of someone who had probably at some point professed to love her.” We are there now. That’s why I think the important thing for me now is, at the timing of writing this book, believing that we can do better, believing that we deserve to do better by people, that another generation deserves more. I think now we are at this point where we’ve never been before in terms of awareness of the behaviors that are literally killing folks because of their identity.

Debbie Millman:

I want to talk about the Violence Against Women Act. On September 13, 1984, the Violence Against Women Act was signed by then-President Bill Clinton and the bill was originally sponsored by current President Joe Biden. However, with two recent decisions, the Supreme Court has essentially gutted the Violence Against Women Act and limited the role that government can have in protecting victims and survivors. I have two questions, one more philosophical. Why do you think this happened? And do you think that the Violence Against Women Act can be reinvigorated?

Anita Hill:

I think it can. I think it’s going to take a long time for us to build up to that but the evidence is there. There was contra-evidence and the decision really turned on an interpretation of the law and the facts that said that basically government couldn’t be… federal government had no place providing protections against violence against women because there wasn’t a showing that this violence impacted our country, our economy, our interstate economy. There were mounds of evidence then. The evidence continues to mount and still yet we have this decision out there that doesn’t fit with the law and doesn’t fit with the facts.

Anita Hill:

I think that there really needs to be a more aggressive approach taken by the federal government. All of social change requires lots of work, and there are always grassroots efforts, but ultimately the real change happens when leadership and those efforts come together, act together in concert, to address a problem. We’ve seen our government act in ways to address crises: something like smoking. We’ve seen our government act.

Debbie Millman:

Seat belts.

Anita Hill:

Yeah, seat belts. And of course the pandemic. So we know that at some point what has to happen is that leadership has to respond, and I’m not just talking about government response in terms of leadership. I’m talking about leadership in our different organizations. What is going on in a college that allows someone like Larry Nasser to continue abusing scores of children? That’s the question we have to be asking ourselves. Why isn’t leadership acting? Because we’ve seen the grassroots movements. We’ve seen people taking to the streets around these issues. We’ve seen people going into court systems with very little chance of success but nevertheless doing it themselves. We’ve seen people file complaints with their employers: in many cases, being denied. What we need really is for our institutions to step up and recognize their responsibility to address these issues.

Debbie Millman:

With two justices on the Supreme Court who have been accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault, do you really feel that it’s possible for something like the Violence Against Women Act to be reinvigorated in a way that makes it fair for the citizens of this country?

Anita Hill:

I think that’s where a strategy… There has to be a legal strategy to get there. There has to be a policy strategy to get the act worded in a way that it needs to be. I guess part of what my sense of whether change is possible comes from where we started this conversation. I’ve lived in a family that has experienced change, dramatic change, from thinking about my mother being born in 1911 when there were just so few opportunities for her, but yet when she passed on in a world that was very different and we, her children, continue that legacy of change and making the most of it. So I believe change is possible. It doesn’t happen overnight. Doesn’t happen with one person. But it can’t happen, but it only can happen if we dedicate and commit ourselves to it. Even if at times we feel disappointed and discouraged, we keep up the struggle. We keep up the fight.

Debbie Millman:

Anita, I have two last questions for you but before I ask you the things that I am wanting to close the show with, I’d love to know about some of the things that you’re currently doing. I understand you might have a podcast coming.

Anita Hill:

Yeah. Of course, I’m currently talking about the book, Believing, and sharing those ideas and getting really some interesting conversations going. That sort of leads into the podcast that I’m going to be launching in 2022. We’re calling it Getting Even.

Debbie Millman:

Oh my god that sounds god.

Anita Hill:

It’s not just a revenge podcast. It is actually about how do we balance the scales. How do we get to equity and equality? It’s about solutions. I’m really, really excited to be doing it.

Debbie Millman:

Oh my God, I am too.

Anita Hill:

I feel a bit old and late to the game, but hey, I’m ready.

Debbie Millman:

This is an original idea. I can’t wait to listen to it. Thank you so much for doing that. I have to tell you, I have lots of revenge fantasies that I’ll never act on but… Sort of the way [Michaela Cole 00:51:05] did in the last episode I May Destroy You: sort of that fantasy about different ways outcomes could be different and the ways that you can wrestle back control. I can’t wait to hear what you’re doing.

Anita Hill:

And that’s what it’s about: how can outcomes be different for more than just one or two?

Debbie Millman:

Oh, brava. I can’t wait to hear about it.

Anita Hill:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

Okay, and my two last questions. The first is, you write in your book that when you first spoke publicly about your experience of being sexually harassed at 35 years old you were young and patient and when it comes to ending violence and the inequality that it spawns you are no longer patient. You go on to state that gender violence will continue to exist until we change the culture that supports it and the structures that enshrine it. What would you recommend be the first structures we start to look at and change?

Anita Hill:

I think we’ve got to look at… Certainly because I’m a lawyer, I’d say we need to look at the laws that we have in our country, whether they’re the civil rights laws to protect against violence or whether they’re the criminal justice system, both of which in my eyes are failing: failing so many people. There’s plenty of evidence of that. Look at the backlog of rape kits.

Debbie Millman:

Rape kits.

Anita Hill:

That’s a statement in and of itself. But I think the laws need to be challenged and revamped and the protections need to be put in place. I also think, though, that as a culture, I think the way we respond as individuals to people who have been victimized… The skepticism that that defies the reality of what we know to be happening the world… Those 19 million tweets in MeToo meant something. They were telling us something was going on and if you talk to any of your friends you know that they’ve experienced much of what was coming out in social media I think we as a culture need to question ourselves and as individuals in terms of how we personally react and what we tolerate in our schools. Then I think the leadership… Leadership, at this point, if they are not taking robust measures, are part of the problem. We know from these very, very well publicized instances, like the Larry Nasser case, which not involve leadership in terms of the university, but also the FBI in failing to follow up on complaints that were given to them, which enable scores more to be violated.

Debbie Millman:

Just as an aside, I read that the FBI disclosed that it had received more than 4,500 tips about Brett Kavanaugh as he was being considered but only interviewed 10 people after the allegations against him emerged. I think this is another piece of proof that these systems are not working.

Debbie Millman:

Anita, my last question for you is one that I’m hoping will help a lot of women that might be listening. Actually let me rephrase that: helping all people that might be listening. Knowing what you know now, how are ways to show people who have experienced sexual violence that you believe them?

Anita Hill:

First of all, I think we do believe many of those people, we’re just not willing to do something about it. But one of the things that I think we need to do is first we need to listen. We often ask people how they feel and I think that’s important to know how people feel when they’ve been violated, but we also need to engage people who are survivors, who are victims in solutions. That’s the way we show that we really value them: that we don’t just their statements and then go on and make choices based on what we think should happen. We engage them in finding the solutions to their problems and not just putting all of the burden of the solutions to them. I think a real engagement and respect for victims and survivors is what we need to do to show people not only that we believe but that we’re willing to stand up and try to make things right for them.

Debbie Millman:

Anita Hill, thank you for making the world a better place, a more just place, with your work. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Anita Hill:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

Anita Hill is a university professor of social policy, law, and women’s gender and sexuality studies at Brandis University. Her latest book is titled Believing: Our 30 Year Journey to End Gender Violence.

Debbie Millman:

This is the 17th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Anita Hill appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

TW: Sexual assault, abuse

Debbie Millman:

Eve Ensler is no more. After she finished her latest book, The Apology, written from the point of view of her father, who physically and sexually abused her when she was a child, she changed her name. Eve Ensler is now simply V. She joins me from her home in Upstate New York to talk about The Apology, and about her extraordinary career as an activist and playwright. V is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which first appeared off Broadway, off-off Broadway, in 1996, and has been performed around the world ever since.

Just some of her additional books and plays include The Good Body, I Am An Emotional Creature, The Treatment, Necessary Targets, as well as the remarkable memoir—which was also a one-woman show—titled In the Body of the World. V, welcome to Design Matters.

V:

Oh, I’m so happy to be here with you, Debbie. I love your show, and I’m so excited to have a conversation.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, thank you. I’m so honored that you’re here. V, I understand that you have a singing street dog from Tijuana named Pablo. What does he sing?

V:

Love that you know that.

Debbie Millman:

What does he sing?

V:

Well, he sings just about everything, but his favorite song is “Happy Birthday,” without a doubt. There is never a moment that anyone sings “Happy Birthday” that he doesn’t join in. He’s quite astonishing. He’s an empath. He’s really one of the most special creatures I’ve ever met. It comes from deep, deep within him, and he fully commits himself to every song with the greatest passion, and it wipes him out afterwards. He gets really tired.

Debbie Millman:

Where did you find him? Did you find him in Tijuana or did he come from Tijuana?

V:

A person, a really lovely woman who is devoted to rescuing animals, was here. I was really hungering for a dog. I hadn’t had one in a few years because of traveling, and I just didn’t feel like it was fair, but when I moved to the woods, it was time. She showed me this picture of this dog that she was maybe going to give her sister, and I was like, “No. That’s my dog. I know that’s my dog.”

She was so kind because I was performing In the Body of the World at the time, so she and my son, they had the dog trained for me, and then the day after the show closed, they brought Pablo as my present. Oh, my God! He is such a special, special, special being.

Debbie Millman:

Dogs really do have the ability to transform how a person loves. I had two dogs for quite a long time, and I credit them with opening my heart.

V:

I really think it’s true. I mean, there’s a generosity, there’s a devotion. I’m actually working on this piece that it’s now in his voice. It’s going to be his book.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, interesting.

V:

Yeah, and he has friends from all over the world. One of his friend’s adventures, he talks about devotion and how people don’t understand devotion, and they always misinterpret it. They say, “Oh, you’re acting like a dog,” in this kind of condemning and undermining way. When in fact devotion is a high level of intimacy and emotional achievement. I think he teaches me so much about devotion, and what devotion to anyone or anything really means. It’s so beautiful.

Debbie Millman:

I can’t wait to read it. V, ordinarily I start my interviews with my guest’s origin story, and journey along into their education and career, obstacles and triumphs. There is, for the most part, a narrative arc that I follow usually in the interviews with my guest’s most recent work. In order to really do your life story justice in the best way I can in an hour or so, I decided to start with your most recent book and then go back to the beginning, and then move ahead into your future.

Last year, you published a memoir titled The Apology, where you imagined what your now-deceased father would say to you if he were able to apologize for the sexual and physical abuse he inflicted on you as you were growing up. You begin the memoir with a simple dedication for every woman still waiting for an apology. Why that dedication?

V:

Well, I think after working now for over 20-some odd years in violence against all women and girls, and touring the world, literally, I’ve been to probably close to 80 countries sitting with women in refugee camps and town hall meetings and in places where women have suffered the greatest violence. And listening to story after story after story, what just hits me and has hit me over and over is how few, if any, women I’ve ever met have ever received an apology from their perpetrator, and the impact of that—the long-term impact of never ever hearing the person who devastated your life take responsibility or make amends for it, own it, step into it.

I think there is a longing, there is a yearning in so many women for that apology, for that reparation, in the same way that if we look at what’s happening with Black Lives Matter right now, there is a longing for apology, for acknowledgment, for reckoning, for reparations. And the same with indigenous people who were here at the beginning of this country. I think what really hit me as I’ve listened to women is there’s not even the expectation of that apology, right?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

V:

There’s not even the belief that that’s even remotely possible in any realm. That feels outrageous to me.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I read that you’ve been disappointed by these self-pitying public apologies over the last two years by men accused of abusing women, and stated that you haven’t seen a single man reckon with what he’s done. Do you think it’s too much to ask that abusers could use your book as a blueprint for an apology done right?

V:

Well, there’s this wonderful journalist named Decca Aitkenhead, who did a wonderful piece on the book when it first came out in London. She said she suggests that every survivor send this anonymously to their perpetrator, which I thought was a genius idea. It’s been really an interesting journey with this book, and it’s really been surprising because what’s been surprising is how many men have responded to it, how many letters I’ve gotten from men, how many male journalists or male reviewers seem to understand it, and how many men it seems to me are looking for a way to come to terms with what they’ve done, with bad behavior, with a history that is plaguing them, but don’t have the means, don’t have the method.

I’m more optimistic since writing the book that there could actually be a time when we begin to move into a time of reckoning. I mean, I think that’s happening in terms of racial justice right now, that we are moving into an all-out uprising reckoning. I think Me Too was the beginning perhaps of the next stage of a reckoning around sexual and physical abuse, but I think it’s going to require a lot to get there. I feel that without that reckoning, I don’t really know how we go forward. I don’t know how real change happens.

Debbie Millman:

I was watching the TED Talk that you gave back in December at TED Women, and I don’t know if you have read the comments on your talk that’s currently up at TED.com, but there’s a man that comments who wrote in and both disclosed that he had been abused and then also that he was an abuser. I thought that was a remarkable result of someone hearing you talk and then having their own reckoning. It’s a really remarkable comment.

V:

I’ve gotten a bunch of those letters, really deep, deep letters from men who have done things that they’re really ashamed of and feel bad about, and need help with. My dream, and I was building toward this before COVID happened, is to do a group with men and follow the four stages that I wrote about and talked about in the TED Talk, and film it, so that we have a model of a group that men could look at, and then begin to do in their communities in their own way.

I think this is really such an exciting idea to me because I think one of the things I have learned about this whole process of apology is that it’s for you. It’s for you, the perpetrator, in so many ways, more profound than it even is for your victim, because all of us walk around with the residue and the guilt and the shame and the pain and the remnants of harm we have caused in other people.

There are shards of it. It’s in our makeup. It’s in our being, and it impacts our daily interactions with people. I think if we could create processes and groups and ways that men could begin to do these reckonings without being totally shamed, without being totally judged, without being [inaudible], but a really deep, profound reckoning process that went on for some time. I think it is the way forward.

Debbie Millman:

This is a reparative type of justice that occurs when something like that can happen.

V:

I think at this point in time that the only justice that really is going to move us forward is reparative justice, right? I think everybody is born into races, patriarchy, right? Everyone is born into this programming, into this DNA. As a result of that, we are all either consciously or unconsciously accidentally, or because we’ve done something that we meant to do, we’re all part of that story, and I think we’ve got to stop dismantling and unraveling it.

I think the way we do that is to begin to go deeply into ourselves and look at the roots of it. When did it begin in us? What made us the kind of man who was capable, like my father, of raping me, of beating me, of abusing me, of destroying me? Then really looking at what did he do, what are the actual detailed accountings of what he did, because so many men who even have pretended to take responsibility—“Well, I’m sorry if I hurt you,” or, “I’m sorry if I abused you”—that doesn’t mean anything.

It’s really looking at the details of what you’ve done, the actualities of what you’ve done, and then looking at what are the impacts of that, what feeling, what your victim felt going inside and sitting with the suffering you’ve caused, and then making amends.

I think that process is deep and it takes time, but it’s also so cleansing and so liberating, and allows one to begin a whole other kind of life.

Debbie Millman:

I want to talk a little bit about your upbringing. You were born in New York City, but were raised in the northern suburb of Scarsdale, New York. You described how your father looked like Cary Grant. Your mother looked like Doris Day. And you’ve said you were a dead ringer for Anne Frank. In The Apology, you write that your parents didn’t think of you and your siblings as anything more than props for their evolving lifestyle. Can you elaborate a little bit?

V:

I’ve never really been able to watch “Mad Men” because it gave me such anxiety.

Debbie Millman:

Me too.

V:

Really?

Debbie Millman:

Me too. Yes.

V:

I just couldn’t do it.

Debbie Millman:

I’ve watched one episode. I couldn’t handle it.

V:

Me too. I just couldn’t do it. I just wanted to throw up. I think it was a time when people were having children as things, right? They were these things. I don’t know that my mother went, “Wow! I really want to have children that I’ll love, and nurture, and get to know, and develop.” It was what you did.

To be honest, that whole thing—you are meant to be seen and not heard, you are meant to disappear at cocktail hour—I never really saw myself as a subject, as a person in the reality. It was just something that got brought out in certain moments. There were pictures that got taken. You know what I mean? There were holidays that you fit into the holiday image of a tree, even though we were Jewish but we weren’t. I don’t know. I never felt real. I never felt like a real person to them, which is in some ways very objectifying and it makes it much easier to hurt that person because they’re not real in some fundamental way.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it seemed very much like your father didn’t think you were real. You were more an extension of him—

V:

Exactly.

Debbie Millman:

… to do with what he wanted. The first five years of your life seemed rather typical. You were a bright, engaging, spirited, highly creative child. You were deeply ethical. You described how you shared everything with your siblings. You never told on your brother or sister even if it could benefit you. You had an implicit and demanding sense of loyalty. You described how it was very important for you to be good. Where did that need for goodness come from?

V:

Such a good question. I mean, I know where it came from after all the very bad stuff started, because I think once my father incested me, and once he sexually abused me, and then once he started to beat me, I was being called bad all the time, all the time, all the time. I was soiled.

So, I think the quest, the desire to be good, became the only thing that mattered to me in my life, really the only thing that mattered because I think he had told me so consistently and so often, with such intensity and such rage and such violence, that I was bad, that I felt bad. I felt bad. I just wanted to die all the time from that feeling of badness.

So, so much of my life up to a certain point was … when you believe you’re bad, you get involved with the wrong kind of people, and the reason you’re involved with people is to prove that you’re good and to get them to agree that you’re good, but you often pick people who aren’t capable of doing that, right?

Debbie Millman:

Right. Also, you become an endless pool of need. You can’t really get somebody to get you to feel that way. It’s super hard to put that on someone else.

V:

It’s impossible, and it’s not their job, right? It’s your job to decide you’re good, and it’s your job to determine your worth and your value. Yet it takes so long to figure that out. Oh my God! So long.

Debbie Millman:

I’m still working on it, 59.

V:

Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, once you get into your 60s, something happens, I promise you.

Debbie Millman:

That’s what I’ve been hearing. I’m close, not quite, but close. Your father started to abuse you when you were 5, which is just unthinkable. It continued until you were 10, all the years of your brain forming. When he stopped abusing you sexually at 10, he began beating you physically, and this went on daily. You described the transformation from bright young child to abused 10-year-old girl in The Apology, and how your father worked daily to destroy your character and break your will. Though I know it’s difficult, I was wondering if you might read a short excerpt of what that transformation was like.

V:

OK. “You moved like a ghost. You rarely lifted your head and hardly spoke. You never washed your hair, and it was always stringy and dirty. You were unable to concentrate in school and did poorly in class. You could not pass an exam. You seemed unable to remember or contain anything at all. You were becoming stupid. You were demoted to the lower ranks and lost your closest friends. Other children could smell your desperation, and avoided you like the plague or teased and taunted you. I despised you for your sweetness, but how could I admit that I was responsible for your decline? How could I tolerate the visible outcome of my brutality? Instead, I humiliated you further, and made you feel your badness had made this happen, that my sweetie pie had through her assertion and rejection become a dirty, shameful girl.”

Debbie Millman:

You outlined how you were taunted by other children, and when you were 10 years old, you were assaulted by some boys in your class. They stripped you and called you seaweed hair because your hair was stringy. Did no one help you? No one?

V:

No. On the contrary, I became hysterical after they stripped me and they pulled my underpants down in front of the whole school. My parents were called in. My father immediately began to say and demand what I had done, what slutty, horrible thing I had done to get them to do this to me. I wasn’t believed. I was wrong, and I was the reason that happened. Then for weeks after, we’d go into the cafeteria and they’d call me slut, and they would call me dirty stringy hair.

It was horrible, but I think what we know, those of us who have been abused sexually particularly, is we start to radiate this strange desperate energy that really begins to attract more abuse. Whether it was working in prison for eight years or working in homeless shelters, I cannot tell you how often I hear the story of a girl being abused by her father or uncle or somebody in her family, and then that just the summation of self, and then how it begins to attract rapes and abuse from all kinds of other people.

It’s almost like a pheromone. It’s something you’re sending out—

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. Absolutely.

V:

… that says you’re broken, that says you’ve been destroyed, you’re worthless, and you can be taken.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I remember many, many, many years ago I used to for business have to rent a car quite frequently, and I would go to the same car rental place, and there was a work person there who I decided reminded me very much of my very, very first boyfriend in high school, who was very awful to me and abusive. Then one day, I walked into the Hertz Rental, and it was at the Hertz Rental, and I realized that that very same man looked exactly like my stepfather who had caused me quite a lot of harm.

I thought, Oh, my God! I just went from one abuser to another just seamlessly without even knowing it.

I do think that there is this antenna that people that have experienced this type of extreme, extreme behavior rewire themselves to try to either overcome it or redo it somehow in a way that you become the victor or some way to be able to understand it.

V:

I think that’s one part of it, and I think there’s another weird part of it, which is it’s very suicidal. It’s already happened. You’ve lost any agency over yourself. So, you might as well, the world might as well, just do it to you.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

V:

There was a part of me that had given up on myself, right? That just assumed that’s what was coming my way, that’s what I deserved, right? That’s how bad I was.

Debbie Millman:

You write about how you learned to separate from your shame and terror by constructing an alternative persona that developed the capacity to feel nothing, and you learned how to disappear. Do you have any sense of how you did that, or was it just subliminal and happened organically because of what was happening?

V:

I think it began when I was being incested that I left my body, and I just think I left and I was above myself, and I floated out of myself because it was too much. Everything about it was too much for my nervous system, for my developing sexuality, for my cells, for my consciousness, for my understanding. So I began to learn how to go away. I learned how to shut down. I learned how to be dead, and then I can remember when my father … my father was always so angry because he drank, and alcohol, and you just listen to the footsteps. You could begin to sense what was happening.

I remember he would call me down and scream at me, and I would go and look in the mirror and I would look at myself, and I would be like, “You will go away. You will not feel this. You will not be touched by this. You will not let any …”

I would literally talk myself out of myself, right? It worked. He couldn’t touch me, but there’s a huge price to pay for that, which is that you begin to split, right?

Debbie Millman:

Right. You’ve written about how you turned off your valves of empathy, because to feel anyone else’s pain would have meant to feel your own, and you couldn’t do that. As I was reading both In the Body of the World and The Apology, I was struck by even your moments of generosity even in that … one of the experiences I related to in your writing was when you tried to organize all the unpopular girls in your high school to form their own group, and to “take back” the power. I think you were even trying in your own way to create some type of mutuality. What happened when you did that?

V:

It was like the test case for activism or anything. It was highly unsuccessful because of pores. All the girls who were in the unpopular tribe were antisocial. So, they had no desire to be part of anything like an unpopular girls club.

Debbie Millman:

How many people from your high school have reached out to you on Facebook or social media to connect over the years?

V:

A bunch have. I’ve had a really great story that really, really moved me. When I wrote The Vagina Monologues, I interviewed hundreds of people, but all the monologues are literary fictitious pieces, right? They’re themes, they’re ideas, and they’re characters, but when I wrote The Flood, there was this character of this woman who had gone on the state, and she had a humiliating experience.

Now, nobody told me the particular story of this woman who had a flood. I just made that up. I used this name for the piece, which was Andy Lefpo. It was the combination of the two boys who had stripped me in my school. It was my just little way of saying, “OK, writing is the best revenge,” right?

So, I got an email one day from one of the boys who had seen the play. He said, “I believe you were writing about me because of the horrible thing I did to you, and that’s great. I have never forgotten it. I have really never forgiven myself for it. I’m really writing to ask for your forgiveness.”

Debbie Millman:

Wow. Good for him.

V:

It was mind-blowing. Then, recently, on this tour, his wife came to a reading of The Apology just to say how sorry she was. So, that was amazing. That was amazing.

Debbie Millman:

That’s extraordinary.

As you were growing up, you said that drugs and booze saved your life until they started to destroy it. You did heroin the night before your French SATs and were still so stoned the next day, you drew a huge black ‘X’ through the entire exam. How did you end up going to Middlebury College in Vermont after that?

V:

Well, it wasn’t my first college. By the time high school was ending, I was a complete, I mean, I was just a complete drug addict and alcoholic by then, but my father had somehow applied, I don’t even know, probably participated at this school called Beaver College in Glenside, PA. I actually went there for a year. Something had happened at the end of my high school where these two wonderful teachers had confronted me and said, “We don’t believe you’re stupid. We don’t believe you’re any of these things. We think you’re really smart, and we want to work with you.”

They had helped me to the point where I passed this AP honors history class, which was the only time my brain had ever been able to think in all those years, right? My brain was so tortured. I had no memory. I had no ability to concentrate. That was the beginning of something. Then when I got to the school, I suddenly started to achieve academically. I started to do really, really well. I transferred after the first year to Middlebury.

Debbie Millman:

What did you think you wanted to do professionally at that point in your life?

V:

I think from the time I was young, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I wrote because I had to write. It was like creating this alternative persona that lived in my journals, that lived where I wrote. It was like I could create language and I could create stories, and I could create another world where I could live, I could be free, I could survive, right?

I didn’t think, Oh, I want to be a writer. I just knew I had to write, right? I knew I had to write, and it’s still the same now. I have to write every day. That’s what I have to do. It’s how I survive, to be honest with you, and how I keep sane.

I think I started to do really well at Middlebury in terms of writing. So, when I came to New York, I was writing poetry, but in those days, you certainly couldn’t make a living being a poet. So, I thought maybe I’ll direct theater. Then all of a sudden, it merged like, “Oh, I could write plays,” like the coming together of poetry and directing. So, that’s how that evolved. It never occurred to me, to be honest with you, that I would be anything else.

Debbie Millman:

Well, there was actually quite a lot of things that you did before you found yourself. You gave the commencement speech at your graduation from Middlebury in 1975, and spoke out against racism and sexism, and have described how you then sat down in your seat in your cap and gown and drank a bottle of Jack Daniels that was passed to you in a brown paper bag. I’m wondering if you could read another excerpt about that time and what happened next?

V:

Yes, that wonderful Jack Daniels. OK. “I love my thesis on suicide in contemporary American poetry as I bartended and got laid on the pool table in the back. I was a caretaker in a Chelsea House for schizophrenics, and a group leader in a homeless shelter on 30th Street. I followed Jonah Bark’s route around France and took the train to Rome at midnight, and wore a spiky high heels for an Italian leather dyke. I took acid for three days on the train from Montreal to Vancouver, where I had a one night stand with the famous Muslim jazz player who seduced me with his saxophone and prayerful calling.

“I found my way into rape refugee camps in Bosnia, where [inaudible] into the Taliban’s Afghanistan, drove espresso pumps through landmine roads in Kosovo. I had to see it, know it, touch it, find it. Maybe I was playing out my badness or searching for my goodness or getting closer and closer to the deepest inhumanity to try to understand how to survive the very worst we are capable of.”

Debbie Millman:

This part of your story is so incredibly heartbreaking. One of the places, one of the many places I cried in The Apology, was how you described how you were accepted to a very prestigious graduate school, but because you didn’t have any money and your father wouldn’t help you, you couldn’t go. Where were you accepted? You don’t ever reveal that. I’m just wondering if you would mind saying.

V:

I was accepted into Yale. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Wow. Wow.

V:

Yeah. It was really one of the most devastating moments. If I look back, it took me on a whole other journey. It took me on a whole other journey. I don’t regret it one tiny bit. I had to survive. I had to make a living. I had to find a way to … I had no money. I had no support. I had nothing. I had years where I had to struggle and struggle and struggle and struggle. Those years made me. They created my character. They made me much, much more connected to working people, to people in struggle, to people in suffering, than I ever would have been had I gone to Yale.

So, I lost the connections. I lost the network. I lost the pipeline to success, right? In a way, it opened my soul. It took me on a journey to the most amazing places in the world. I never would have written The Vagina Monologues had I gone to Yale. Never.

Debbie Millman:

Really? Really? You don’t think so?

V:

Nope. I don’t think so. I think I would have been carved into a much more traditional path. Do you know what I mean? I would have learned what the limitations were, and how to be careful of them, but because there was no one supporting me, and there were … there were people, actually, that came along who supported me. I just invented my life because I had to, right?

There’s something about that that it’s very, very hard, but I highly recommend it because you end up as yourself.

Debbie Millman:

well, three years later, you married Richard McDermott, a 34-year-old bartender who convinced you to enter rehab, and you said that putting down the bottle and the drugs was the hardest thing you ever did. And at 23, you were sober, totally broke, and with nothing with which to self-medicate. You lived in the fourth floor walk-up on Christopher Street. I lived in the fourth floor walk-up on 16th Street, by the way.

V:

Really?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You sold Avon to drag queens in the neighborhood and taught writing in Harlem at a school for pregnant girls. Then you got pregnant, but you had a miscarriage. How were you managing? How were you living day to day?

V:

I was the most anxious, crazy person. Fortunately, there was a 12-step program. I meagerly put my money together, and I had a therapist, but I was so anxious. I’ll tell you, one of the things that happened shortly after that is that my ex-husband’s son came into my life.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, Mark Anthony McDermott.

V:

He was 15. He was the most precious, just extraordinary being. I related to him so deeply because he had also been through the most challenging, the most devastating and abusive childhood. He had witnessed his own mother be murdered in front of him when he was 5 and carried out, and then not for a year that she was dead. So, he had not lived with his father.

When I met him, I just knew that he had to be part of my life, and that if we were all … If I was going to move him with his father, he was part of that deal. I have no idea why I knew that at 23, why I insisted he had to be with us, but if I could love him, I might figure out how to save myself by loving him.

In many ways, that’s what happened. I had to grow up for him. I had to be not crazy for him. I had to be not anxious for him. I had to take care of him. I just loved him so much. He was so dear and so talented.

I said two things to him: “You have to go to therapy and you have to go to acting school,” and it was like, “What is that?” He went to both. He became a really, really extraordinary person. Look, his struggle’s been a deep, deep, deep, deep struggle. Nobody who witnesses a mother be murdered … that’s a big one in the psyche. That’s powerful stuff. It’s a lot to overcome.

Debbie Millman:

After your miscarriage, Mark changed his name to the name you were planning for your own baby, Dylan. Dylan ultimately did go to therapy and did go to acting school, and he became a really famous actor.

V:

He did.

Debbie Millman:

In the 1980s, he introduced you to his acting teaching at Manhattan’s Neighborhood Playhouse, who happened to be the Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Joanne Woodward. In 1987, Joanne directed Shirley Knight in a production of your play The Depot. What was that like for you?

V:

Oh, God! It was amazing. I just want to say Shirley died last month, and it’s been really hard, really hard. She was so brilliant. You know what it was like? It was like being raised by the two greatest divas in American theater. That’s what it was like. It was this unbelievable fortune that came to me. Joanne was the most nurturing, but she was also strict. She was also rigorous.

I remember I handed in the first draft of the play, and I was so terrified. I was so nauseous. She called me, and then she said, “The character is good, the setting is good. You’ve got the dialog, but it’s not funny. It has to be funny. I want it funny.”

I was like, “It’s a play about nuclear war.”

She said, “You’re funny. Make it funny.”

It was such a teaching because I did make it funny. By the time we finished touring that play all around America, at the Kennedy Center, everywhere, it was a comedy, but the message of working to build towards nuclear disarmament and stopping the arms race and reversing our course was coming through that. So, people were getting the message without me banging them over the head. The tourism just taught me so much. That was my training ground. That was my beginning. They stood by me, and they pushed me, and they loved me into being a playwright.

Debbie Millman:

At that point in your life, you’ve written that you had no reference point for your body. As a result, this is when you began to ask other women about their bodies, and in particular, their vaginas, as you sensed that vaginas were important. This led you to writing The Vagina Monologues, which was first performed in the basement of the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village in 1996.

What made you think at the time that that topic was a worthy subject at a play? As an aside, I do wonder if you had gone to Yale, what they would have thought of you writing a play with that topic?

V:

Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think it would have been like, “Oh, goody!”

Debbie Millman:

“Vaginas. Yay!”

V:

It’s like people always say, “What country did you go to that they were happy about the play?”

I was like, “There’s never been a country that the play went to where they were like, ‘Oh, yummy! The vaginas are here,’ and it’s never happened.” Never. I was interested. One of the things I’ve always believed is that if you follow your own curiosity, if you follow your own bliss, if you follow what interests you, what you care about, you will write the best thing. So, I was interested in what women thought about their vaginas, and everything that women said to me was so surprising, so startling, so amazing, so shocking, so funny.

I remember the first woman I ever talked to, I said, “Well, do you ever talk it?”

She said, “Well, my mother used to tell me, ‘Don’t wear underpants underneath your pajamas. You need to air out your pussycat.’”

I thought, Oh my God! Oh my God!

It was like that. Every person had something wild like that to say, and I thought, This is amazing. I feel like Pandora’s box, literally, we’re opening it up, and these stories that no one had told anyone before … and what was particularly amazing is when I first started doing this show here downtown, women would line up after the show, literally line up to tell me their stories. Like, they had to tell me.

It got to the point that literally I was inviting women over to my apartment. I felt like Dr. Ruth. Hours of the day, women were … part of it was I just wanted to give women an opportunity to tell someone their story, because they needed to tell their story, and a lot of it, unfortunately, was about sexual abuse. A lot of it.

Debbie Millman:

Yes. For anybody that’s seen The Vagina Monologues, you also then begin to have a story about saying “The Vagina Monologues.” It’s a bit meta, but I think it’s really universal. Since 1996, the play has been translated into 48 languages. It’s been performed in over 140 countries, including sold-out runs at Broadway’s West Side Theater and London’s West End. You won a Tony, you won an Obie. The play ran for over 10 years in the UK, Mexico and France.

In 2006, The New York Times called The Vagina Monologues the most important piece of political theater of the last decade. Celebrities who have starred in it include Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Idina Menzel, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Cyndi Lauper, Sandra Oh, Oprah Winfrey, Gillian Anderson, many others. I’ve seen the show twice, once with you performing the piece in its entirety, and one starring Alanis Morissette. What was it like at that time for you to become suddenly so successful?

V:

It was shocking. It was just shocking. I mean, first of all, if you had said “what would be the piece that will bring you success?” it would never have been in my wildest imagination The Vagina Monologues. But what was really, really exciting about it was the beginning of the building of this amazing movement and community of women.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

V:

That was so wildly exciting. The first V Day we ever did, which was at the Hammerstein Ballroom, which seats 2,500 people, I had invited all these amazing actors to perform it, and no one had done it at that point. Marisa Tomei had come to see me perform it with Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, if you can imagine.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

V:

OK. I went to her first because she had seen it, and she said “Yes.” Once I had Marisa, then I could go to the next person and say, “But Marisa Tomei is doing it,” and they’re like, “Really? All right. I’ll do it.” Then I’d say, “But Marisa Tomei and Whoopi Goldberg are doing it,” and it grew and grew and grew.

The night we performed it, OK, it was totally … just imagine this in the ’90s. Totally packed, 2,500 people. Boy George was there. It was just like the wildest scene you’ve ever seen. None of those women had ever said vagina publicly, had ever done anything like that. So, everyone was like vomiting, and just completely freaked out backstage. Every time one woman would go out and do her monologue, everyone would be watching on this monitor. They all hold hands. They’d all scream and yell, and they’d … it was the most beautiful sisterhood of support, of love.

I’ll never forget Glenn, who I love so much. I had asked her to do the “reclaiming cunt” piece because it was really about taking that word back. Of course, she was like, “What? Are you crazy? My mother will never talk to me.” She hung up the phone and she called me back two weeks later and she said, “I really get it.”

I said, “I just want you to go out there with little glasses being all WASPy, and by the end of it, I just want you to …” She did.

Debbie Millman:

She did.

V:

When she nipped open that word, and by the end, the entire 2,500 people were screaming, “God!” It was like the roof of that theater blew off that night. It blew off. To me, it was the beginning of the movement to end violence against women and girls. Now, there had been many women, of course, working on it before me, and we’re always in a line and a chain of sister after sister supporting sister, right?

Our movement goes back to African American women who were fighting slavery, right? It goes back to that’s when that movement began, and then there’s each stage of our movement, and now we’ve moved into Me Too, but to be in that movement for that chunk of year doing the play, spreading the play, getting women to share their stories, talk about their stories, break the silence … it was glorious. It was beyond the dream. I don’t even know that I could have had that dream.

Debbie Millman:

You founded your nonprofit. You mentioned V Day after The Vagina Monologues debuted. This effort, as well as your subsequent effort with One Billion Rising, you’re building the City of Joy in the Congo. It’s been a force in the global fight against gender violence. Yes, there have been other movements, and we hope that there’ll be a time when we don’t need these movements, but you have done more than most. You’ve raised over $100 million to help eradicate sexual violence. You’ve helped lead the conversation and educate millions of people about this topics. You’ve empowered women all over the world. What made you decide to go to the Congo?

V:

Well, I had been in Bosnia. I had been in Kosovo. I’ve been in Haiti. I’ve been in Afghanistan. I’ve been in war zones where women were being systematically raped as a tactic of war. I was really obsessed with it, to be honest with you, because I could see the pattern spreading as a tactic to destroy women all over the world.

What happened was the UN, someone from the UN called me, and asked me if I would interview Dr. Denis Mukwege. I was so shocked that anyone from the UN was calling me. I actually didn’t want to do it because we were already working in Afghanistan, in Bosnia and Haiti, and all these places. We just didn’t have the bandwidth.

Then I read his résumé, and I was so moved by what he was doing as a gynecologist, what the fight he was in the midst of, that I agreed to interview him. It turned out to be this amazing interview at New York Law School for 500 people. When you meet someone and you feel like they are on some level of transcendent radiance, and the work they’re doing is so mind-blowing … I mean, his eyes were literally bloodshot from all the horrors he had been seeing.

He just said to me at the end of the interview, “Would you come? Would you help us? You’re the only person I know who’s talking about vaginas, and I’m trying to talk about what’s happening to the vaginas of women in Congo. If you could come, if you could be with us, maybe you could help bring the word out. Just could you come?”

So, I did. I have to say that trip to the Congo, the trip to Panzi Hospital, what I saw there was, it was just the most devastating, shocking intersectional reality of racism, colonialism, capitalism, sexism merging in this horrifying caldron, and all of it was being enacted on the bodies of women.

There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women in the hospital, all of whom had been raped. All of whom were leaking. All of whose bodies were destroyed from rape. He was there by himself trying to figure out what to do. I don’t know. I can honestly say I think my brain was shattered. There was a shattering. It was a beginning of another whole, I would say, stage of my life.

I mean, Dr. Mukwege has gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and Christine Schuler Deschryver, who is the most extraordinary activist leader woman who I met when I went there, we all became, three of us became, very, very close, and decided that we would create this place called the City of Joy. It’s been one of the most beautiful, beautiful experiences of my life. It’s truly turning pain to power. It’s a place of radiance.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that inside the stories of the unspeakable violence, inside the women of the Congo, was a determination and a life force you had never witnessed. For our listeners that might not be aware, can you talk a little bit about City of Joy and what it is, and how it came to be?

V:

Well, the City of Joy is in Bukavu, which is Eastern Congo, where most of the conflict has been. We opened it 10 years ago. Christine and I spent weeks and weeks going everywhere asking the women what they wanted. What they wanted was a place where they could heal, where they could transform, where they could learn, where they could become leaders. So, it became our desire to build a place called City of Joy, where the women could literally turn their pain to power, and it hosts 90 women for six months at a time. Everything is paid for—their food, their comfort, their healing. They go through an incredible program of therapy through art, through theater, through dance, through music and through basic therapy, but it’s all group therapy because all healing is done in community.

They learn their rights. They learn permaculture. They learn self-defense. They go from being victims to survivors to leaders over the course of those six months. We were able to get this amazing land. So, we have 350 hectares called V World Farm, where women then go afterwards to become permacultural farmers, and they learn how to really be the best kind of farmers in their own communities. Some stay at the farm. Many go back to their communities, where we help them buy and purchase land, where they then begin their own collectives in their communities with other women who graduate from City of Joy.

They then begin to create these farming communities and they become leaders in their community where they bring the skills and the teachings that they’ve learned at City of Joy, and where they vet other women who they can send to City of Joy. So, it’s this very, very eco-friendly system of people who graduate bringing other people in who bring other people in, and it’s sisterhood passing on to sisterhood.

We’ve now graduated, I think, 1,400 women, and it’s unbelievable. The women are just doing so well. They’ve become leaders. They run collectives. They’ve become nurses. They’ve become doctors. They’ve become … what I’m most proud of is City of Joy is owned by the Congo leads. It’s run by the Congo leads. There are no outsiders who work there. They have professionalized an entire staff. It’s theirs. It’s completely theirs.

Our work on this side of the water is to find the money to keep them going, but it’s been one of the most beautiful, beautiful, beautiful projects. I think now, after these years, we’re ready to start to see whether we can start developing more City of Joys in other parts of the world.

Debbie Millman:

V, I mean, talk about a purpose in life. What have the women of the Congo and the work that you’ve done there taught you?

V:

Wow. Well, first of all, they saved my life, OK? Because when we were opening the City of Joy, right around the time we were supposed to open it, I got diagnosed with Stage 3/4 uterine cancer. I came very close to dying. I had seven organs removed. My body rearranged. I went through nine months of utter upheaval, chemo and infections. I had made a promise that we would open City of Joy.

So, Christine and I, literally, we joke about this all the time. She was having nightmares in the Congo because there’s no water, there’s no electricity, there’s no road, there’s no infrastructure. I was dying, but we would get on the phone and I would say, “Everything’s great. Money is coming along.”

She would get on the phone and she would say, “Everything’s great.” We would just lie to each other. Literally, our lies kept us going. But what have they taught me? There’s a woman at City of Joy that I want to talk about because she is my Bodhisattva. She teaches me everything I need to know about life. She has blessed me with being able to tell her story. She wants me to tell her story. Her name is Jane. She changed her name, too.

She had suffered unbelievable pain in the Congo. She had been taken. She had been raped very, very badly multiple times. She went to Panzi Hospital. She was there for years, where they did many, many surgeries. She went back, and then she was re-re-raped.

Debbie Millman:

Oh my God!

V:

The second time she was raped, they tied her to a tree for a month. Basically, she had a baby in that time. The baby died inside her. Her body was destroyed. Her story is in the film City of Joy. By the time she was brought to City of Joy Hospital, her body was in a basket. It was completely poisoned. It was destroyed. Dr. Mukwege always says, “There’s just no reason she lived except that her spirit is on such a high level of consciousness.” And she was one of the people who guided us in saying that they wanted a City of Joy.

She was in the first class of City of Joy and has become one of the greatest leaders at City of Joy. Her spirit and her brilliance and her vision and her intensity and her force of love that pours out of that woman is one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen in my life.

What she’s taught me is that there is a grace that can come, there is a vitality that can come from our suffering when we turn it towards love, when we turn it towards nurturing, when we turn it towards lifting up our sisters.

If you walk through City of Joy at any time of day, you will hear the most beautiful drumming, the most beautiful singing, the beautiful dancing. There’s this spirit there that it just feels holy. It feels from some other dimension, and it’s healing, it’s healing. Whatever that energy is, it’s the force of women who have turned their suffering into medicine. They’ve taught me that it’s possible.

Debbie Millman:

It helps make one’s life make sense.

V:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

In 2004, you published The Good Body, which you’ve described as an account of your own tortured relationship with your body. You declared that the pattern of the perfect body has been programmed into women since birth, and go on to state that what is far more frightening than narcissism is the zeal for self-mutilation that is spreading and infecting the world. I’m wondering if you could read a short excerpt from the book about this.

V:

OK. “I have been to more than 40 countries in the last six years. I’ve seen the rampant and insidious poisoning skin-lightening creams sell as fast as toothpaste in Africa and Asia. The mothers of 8-year-olds in America removed their daughter’s ribs so they will not have to worry about dieting. 5-year-olds in Manhattan do strict [inaudible] so they won’t embarrass their parents in public by being chubby. Girls vomit and starve themselves in China and Fiji and everywhere. Korean women removed Asia from their eyelids. The list goes on and on.”

Debbie Millman:

It’s really quite extraordinary what’s happening on a global basis. I was in China last year and saw that women were not only trying to remove Asia from their eyelids, but they’re now also trying to change their noses and build bridges on their nose to have a more Westernized nose, and as well change their lips with all sorts of fillers, and it’s rather rampant and terrifying.

You wrote and performed this in 2004. As I was going through your work, I realized that in 2010, you published the book I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, which is a collection of original monologues about and for girls, inspiring them to take agency over their minds, their bodies, their hearts, their curiosities. It was a New York Times bestseller.

After The Good Body, I feel that it paints a much more optimistic future about the emotional strength of what today’s young women could be, and it’s the last excerpt I’m going to ask you to read if you wouldn’t mind. And it’s something that really made me hopeful, and I haven’t been feeling very hopeful lately. So, I wanted to share it with my listeners. It is an excerpt from I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World.

V:

“Dear emotional creature, you know who you are. I wrote this book because I believe in you. I believe in your authenticity, your uniqueness, your intensity, your wildness. I love the way you dye your hair purple or high cup your short skirt or blare your music while you lip sync every single memorized lyric. I love your restlessness and your hunger. You’re one of our greatest natural resources. You possess a necessary agency and energy that, if unleashed, could transform, inspir, and heal the world.

“I know we make you feel stupid, as if being a teenager meant you were temporarily deranged. We’ve come accustomed to muting you, judging you, discounting you, asking you, sometimes even forcing you to betray what you see and know and feel. You scare us. You remind us of what we’ve been forced to shut down or abandon in ourselves in order to fit. You ask us by your being to question, to wake up, to reperceive. Sometimes I think we tell you we are protecting you when really we are protecting ourselves from own feelings of self-betrayal and loss.

“Everyone seems to have a certain way they want you to be—your mother, father, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, boyfriends, fashion gurus, celebrities, girlfriends. In researching this book, I came upon a very disturbing statistic. 74% of you say you are under pressure to please everyone. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what it means to please, to please, to please, to embody the will of somebody other than yourself. To please the fashion setters, we starve ourselves. To please boys, we push ourselves when we aren’t ready. To please the popular girls, we end up acting mean to our best friends. To please our parents, we become insane overachievers.

“If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs? How do you even know what your own needs are? What do you have to cut off in yourself in order to please others? I think the act of pleasing makes everything murky. We lose track of ourselves. We stop uttering declaratory sentences. We stop directing our lives. We wait to be rescued. We forget what we know. We make everything OK rather than real. They teach you how to make yourselves less so everyone feels more comfortable. They teach you not to stand out. They get you to behave.

“I am older now. I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respect. It has taken me so many years to be OK with being different, with being this alive, this intense. I just don’t want you to have to wait that long.”

Debbie Millman:

Thank you so much, V. Thank you so much. I love that piece of that book so much. 2010 was a very intense year for you. This is when this book came out. This was the year you’re working on the construction of City of Joy in the Congo. You were scheduled to open in May of 2010, but on March 17, 2010, you discovered you had a huge tumor in your uterus. Given that you had been talking about vaginas for your entire career and the actress Kathy Najimy declared that you had the world’s biggest breast ovaries, this particular disease feels really unfair, and not to in any way make light of it, but ironic.

You were diagnosed with Stage 3/4 uterine cancer, and went through nine months of brutal surgeries, illness, chemotherapy. You’ve said that in this time you touched death and it was the most powerful transformation of your life. I’m wondering if you can talk about how so.

V:

Well, I think up until this point in my life, even though there were moments during The Vagina Monologues where I felt I came into my vagina, and I felt … I don’t know that I was fully inhabiting my body. I think what happened when I woke up from that surgery, it was amazing. I had tubes coming out of every part of my body. I had bags. I was hooked up to machines. I had a scar down my entire torso, but it was the first time in my life that I was a body, that it was fully a body. I was totally a body.

That really began this nine-month journey with that disease of everyday dropping more into myself. To be honest with you, when you sit in a room and the doctor looks over at you and tells you basically that you have Stage 3/4 cancer, you die in that moment, right? There is a death that happens in your body.

I feel that even though I went through that whole process, you don’t know if you’re going to live. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You know what the odds are, and they’re not good. I think you touch into death in a way where you stop being afraid of it. You’re there. Then what begins to happen is you realize how much you want to be alive, and how beautiful life is, and how you want to actually live in your body and live fully in your life force, which has been muted, cut out, drained, destroyed by patriarchy, by violence, by all the things that have gone on in your lifetime to try to undermine and destroy you.

I actually feel that cancer was the spiritual alchemy that turned my life where it was meant to go. I don’t know that I could have done it without it because it had to level me in my body so that I finally just became body, if that makes sense, where I was no more than body.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. Sometimes I think I’m just a head.

V:

Yes. No. Exactly.

Debbie Millman:

I totally get it.

V:

I had a therapist who used to say to me, “You’ve been coming here for four years. I never realized you had a body,” because everything is in your head, and it was like I wasn’t in my head. Everything was about my body, whether it was an infection where I lost 30 pounds, whether it was chemo where I had to deal with the heat, whether … it was just body, body, body. It was a transcendental experience. It was a shamanic experience. Chemo was an experience where I started to merge and become part of trees and part of the world in a way where I had never ever been a part of.

It opened the door to a whole … I mean, I moved to the woods. Me, who had lived in the city for 40 years, I moved to the woods. I had to be with trees. I had to be with river. I had to be with birds. I had to be with sky. I knew that something had been born in me that was different. I was a city girl who wore black and made jokes about woods.

Debbie Millman:

You sound like you’re describing me. Now, it took a while for you to really evolve to this place. You published a remarkable memoir about the experience, which is titled In the Body of the World. You published it in 2013. You said in the initial response to your illness that there was something not only passive, but somewhat downright suicidal about your early response to your cancer—resignation as if you were in a strange voyeur noting your body from a great distance. How did that change to being fully in your body occur? How did that happen?

V:

Well, I think most of that disembodied part was before I got diagnosed. I had been sick for quite some time before I actually went to check on it. I had all the signs of something very wrong with me. As a matter of fact, I mean, I’ll tell you this very funny thing. It’s not so funny with me in retrospect. I had been through menopause and I hadn’t bled for years. The night that Obama got nominated, I bled. The night he got elected, I bled.

So, I thought it was just some amazing connection to the transformation of what was going on in America. In fact, those were all the signs of uterine cancer. I didn’t treat it. I knew something was wrong in my gut that I was swollen. I didn’t treat it. I just looked at it from the distance because I had that kind of detachment from my body, right? I had this passive resignation about my body. I didn’t fight for my body.

It wasn’t until I got sick that that changed, that I came into this body. Now, I can tell you when something’s wrong. I know instantly because I lived in this body. I can feel, “Oh, I shouldn’t have eaten that,” or “That doesn’t work for me,” or “I’m too tired.” I never knew when I was tired. I was always driving myself. I was always pushing myself. I was always achieving, proving I wasn’t bad, proving I was good, proving … I was proving, proving, proving, proving.

It’s a surefire way to destroy your body. So, to land in your body, you go much slower, right? You have to pay attention. It’s a whole different rhythm. I have to say I love it.

Debbie Millman:

You stated that until that moment in your life you had never been brave enough to allow yourself to be afraid. Did that impact how you felt about needing to prove yourself?

V:

Oh, definitely. You know that tough veneer that we put up, that drive that we put up that doesn’t let us feel our fear, that even when we’re failing, we just keep pushing forward, that doesn’t take in. It’s an invulnerability, even though underneath it we’re horribly vulnerable.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

V:

Now, what I feel is that I’m vulnerable. We’re all vulnerable. We’re human beings in this planet Earth. We have no idea what we’re doing here.

Debbie Millman:

Now more than ever.

V:

Now more than ever. We look up at the stars and we’re in wonder, but we’re also, “Wow! What is this?” If we’re really open, if we’re really awake, if we’re really present, we’re vulnerable. I think that is the greatest joy right now of just living in that vulnerability, and not masking it, and not … it’s different than insecurity. It’s different than insecurity.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I am really working hard in trying to understand self-worth separate from productivity or achievement or that same notion of proving, proving, proving, proving. Roxane, my fiancé, has told me that every time I try to prove myself, I just raise the bar, so that I have to keep doing it again and again and again. It’s been an interesting realization.

V:

The question is who are we proving ourselves to. One of the things living so deeply now with the Earth and the mother—because I really see the Earth now as my mother, my real, true mother—I’m just overwhelmed by her generosity, just her overflowing generosity. All of the things that she’s making and creating every minute, every hour … the new flowers that come up. Today is orange tiger lilies. Yesterday, it was white daisies. The day before was peonies, these creations.

What I realized, it’s such a different model to live not in proving oneself but to live in generosity, to live in what can we give, what can we show up with, what can we offer, what can we create, what we can make better? As opposed to, “Look at me. Look at me. Aren’t I doing it? Aren’t I proving it? Aren’t I making it?” Because that’s what these capitalist patriarchs have indoctrinated into us, and it’s made us all sick, and it’s pushed us past ourselves and it’s revving up our engine to the point where we’re burning ourselves out.

I want to live in the generous model. I want to live in the how can we nurture, how can we create, how can we take care of, how can we lift each other up, how can we make sure we all have what we need? That to me is much more interesting and it feels so much better than driving, the driving.

Debbie Millman:

Yes. Well, you’re now cancer-free. You’ve also performed In the Body of the World as a one-woman show. Here we are now, one year after publishing your most recent book, The Apology, which we talked about at the top of the show. I read that after completing the book, you stopped feeling any bitterness towards your father, and I’m wondering if a year later you still feel that way.

V:

I do. I do. I think the book was a true exorcism of sorts. At the end of the book, there’s a line where my father, or I, or my father and I, say together, “Old man be gone.” At that moment, it was like the end of Peter Pan when Tinkerbell just goes into the aethers. My father, same thing. He went and he has not been back.

I feel I have no anger, I have no bitterness. I got clean. I got clean with him. What was really clear to me is that I also didn’t want his name and I didn’t want the name that he would give me or that he gave me. I wanted my name. I wanted the rest of my life to be in my energy, to be with my own trajectory and not clouded or undermined by his story. It’s really funny. I make a joke like, I’m down to a letter and soon I’ll be nothing.

Debbie Millman:

No.

V:

It’s how I feel. I feel so much of what I learned during the cancer time or what I’m learning is how do we keep moving towards that radiant nothing, right? That radiant thing where we are just molecules that pass through us, and where we’re off service, where we’re off love, but we don’t get ourselves caught in the middle there. It just feels great to be V. It’s traveling light. I feel I don’t need a suitcase.

Debbie Millman:

What made you decide to choose the letter ‘V’ as opposed to ‘E’ or any other?

V:

I just love ‘V’s. I love everything about them. I love the shape of them, first of all, because they feel like conduits. They’re openings, and they’re invitations, right? I feel, obviously, vaginas, vonis, vulnerable, voluptuous, vulva, virtuous. I just love words that begin with ‘V’s, but I also feel that there is something so deeply archaically feminine about ‘V’s, that they are about compassion, they are about connection, they are about openings, they’re about the strength of vulnerability, the strength of vulnerability, the power of vulnerability. I think it’s an aspiration, right? V is an aspiration. It’s who I want to be. I like the idea that my name is calling me to be better.

Debbie Millman:

The last thing I want to ask you about is love, which also has a V in it. You said that you find that you are much more loving when you have not made arrangements about how you will love. I’m wondering if we can talk a little bit more about that. It’s almost like you figured out how to love.

V:

Such a good question, and no one ever asked me about it, Deb, so I appreciate it. I think if I’m anything, I’m pansexual. I have always loved women. I’ve always loved men. I can never really decide which. I never was made for monogamy. Just was never right for me. It was a system that just canceled me out, and I could never be faithful to it because my sexuality was what it was.

I don’t think I do that well. I mean, all people who do really well in relationships, right? I love my aloneness. I love my solitude. I love my privacy. I love visits, another ‘V’ word.

When I was recovering from my cancer, I went to Carola and I went to an Ayurvedic retreat. I worked with this amazing doctor who really helped me heal with the oils. At the end of it, he told me, he said, “Do not be in a relationship again in your life.”

Debbie Millman:

Interesting.

V:

“You need to now just evolve and go to the next layer of consciousness. Have paramores, have visits, have wonderful lovers, but keep your freedom. Your freedom is crucial to where you need to go now in your life.”

When he said it, there was both this complete liberation and a little bit of heartbreak because I knew it was true. Do you know what I mean?

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

V:

That’s where I am now. I closed the door on nothing, but the years of my life when I’ve been in this state have been the happiest years of my life. I also am a huge believer in friendship, and I have the most amazing women friends on the planet. Those women friends for me are the great loves of my life. I’ve had those friends for years, and I think we don’t make enough of the friendship between women.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

V:

How those friendships save our life, lift our life, make our life. I’m so happy I have time for those relationships now.

Debbie Millman:

V, I want to end the show with a quote from In the Body of the World. The reason I want to read it is because I really want to dedicate it to anyone that has ever been robbed of their dignity or their agency or their body. So, these are words written by V from In the Body of the World.

“Those of you who can be naked without a bank account, a known future or even a place to call home, those of you who can live without and find your meaning here, here, wherever here is, knowing the only destination is change, the only port is where we are going. The second wind may take what you think you need or want the most, and what you lost, and how you lost it will determine if you survive.”

V, thank you for being such a brilliant, badass agent of change, force of nature. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

V:

Oh, thank you, Deb. This has been a wonderful talk. I just so appreciate the depth and care and consideration and love you put into everything you do. Really amazing.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you. Oh, thank you.

V:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

That means so much to me. Thank you. Goosebumps. V’s latest book is called The Apology, and you can see more about all of V’s work on her website at eveensler.org. This is the 16th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. Remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, and we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters From the Archive: V (Formerly Eve Ensler) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

In recent years, New York State has seen several of its top politicians accused of predatory behavior. There was Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after it was discovered he patronized a prostitution ring. Then there was Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who also resigned after four women accused him of physical abuse. One of those women was Tanya Selvaratnam, author of Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence. It’s a harrowing account of the dynamics of domestic abuse. But Tanya Selvaratnam is so much more than a woman on the receiving end of one man’s physical and emotional brutality. She’s not only a writer, she’s also a performer, a producer and an activist. She’s in the middle of a rich and productive career. And we’re going to talk about as much of it as we can. Tanya, welcome to Design Matters.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Thank you, Debbie.

Debbie Millman:

Tanya, is it true that you used to live in a loft at a former Ex-Lax factory in Brooklyn?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It’s true. The Ex-Lax building, it’s still there.

Debbie Millman:

As in the chocolate laxative?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was indeed the old Ex-Lax factory, a great loft on Atlantic Avenue that I lived in until 2006.

Debbie Millman:

And was there any signage in the building? Did it have any remnants of its former glory?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, there was an original painting of the factory as soon as we entered the building. It was beautiful because my brother and then my sister-in-law also lived in the building. So it felt very familial. My brother lived on the top floor and there was a kind of an exterior room, like a greenhouse, that they said was where the monkeys used to be kept to test the Ex-Lax.

Debbie Millman:

Oh no, no.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Yes. So we would hear stories about the ghosts of monkeys crying. It was terrible.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, I’m glad that it’s no longer being used in that manner. Tanya, you were born in Ceylon, which one year later became Sri Lanka. When you were a baby, you and your mother moved to Long Beach, California, where your dad had already set up a home for you. What made them decide to come to the United States in the first place?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

My father had left Sri Lanka soon after independence. He came in the late ’50s. We are minorities in Sri Lanka. We are Tamils. And he as a Tamil man had very limited opportunities for upward mobility. And so there was an exodus of very talented, largely male, Sri Lankan minorities who left. And my father always wanted to come to America. He had a pen pal through his church who lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He had a love of country music, and I grew up, in fact, listening to country music. Just on Saturday, it was my birthday, March 20th, and I started the day listening to Dolly Parton. So he always wanted to live in America and he felt that California would be a place where the climate was somewhat akin to Sri Lanka, not too cold. And so that’s how we ended up there.

Debbie Millman:

Given how young you were when you moved to Long Beach, did you have any sense of how different your birth country was from your U.S. home, or did that come later when you were visiting your grandparents in Sri Lanka?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It came later because I was four months old when I came.

Debbie Millman:

You were a really tiny baby.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Yes. My mother had actually moved to California before having me, and then she went back when she was pregnant with me to have me in Sri Lanka so that she could be surrounded by her family there.

Debbie Millman:

From the time you were a child you loved experiencing and making art. What kind of things were you making when you were a little girl?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

My first memory of performing was in a kindergarten or first grade production of Snow White. And I really wanted to be Snow White, but there was a white girl named Jenny who got the part. And so I played a singing tree and I threw my everything into playing that tree. Then I also started writing when I was very young, and I wrote a story when I was in, I think, third grade, that won an award in my class for a most memorable character.

Debbie Millman:

And what was the character?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was actually a pretty dark story. From the time I was a child, I was fascinated by horror movies. My father used to take me to any horror movie I wanted to see. I loved the experience of jumping in my seat, of coming home and wanting to sleep with the light on. And so the first story that I remember writing was about a woman who accidentally kills somebody in a car accident. And it’s about her inner torment about having done that.

Debbie Millman:

Tanya, third grade. I remember reading a comment that you had shared about your father thinking that your interest in horror was rather macabre, and now I kind of understand why. That’s so sophisticated for such a young age.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I guess. Well, for me, it wasn’t just horror, it was like science fiction/fantasy. It was anything that allowed me to escape from the material world and visualize myself in those other places. I love science fiction. I was a total nerd. When I was in seventh grade, I was one of like maybe six people in the Science Fiction/Fantasy Club.

Debbie Millman:

In thinking about you not getting the role of Snow White, you’ve written about how when you were playing a supporting role as a bag lady in an eighth grade production, the director pulled you aside and told you that you have talent and to stick with drama, and told you what an expressive face you have. And you were flattered, but wondered why he cast you as a bag lady if you had that much talent. Did you experience a lot of discrimination as you were growing up?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Yes. And it’s discrimination that is not widely talked about because it happens in these very kind of like microaggressive ways. I was the only Sri Lankan in my class. I was picked on by both the white girls and the Black girls. I feel bad even saying that. They would both make fun of me. And the comments that I experienced was this mean girl, a white girl who said I had Black lips, and children of all stripes calling me Pocahontas because I was Sri Lankan and they didn’t know the difference between a Sri Lankan and Indian. And
they didn’t know the difference between an Indian and a native person. So my nickname was Pocahontas. And because I was a quiet child, I was shy, I was very introverted, I never fought back. I always kind of comforted myself by saying, “I’m glad I’m not that mean.”

Debbie Millman:

You are—from what I can understand knowing so much more that we’ll be talking about over the course of our conversation today—a really forgiving person. There’s a real generosity spirit that you have. Where do you think that comes from?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I mean, do you believe in past lives?

Debbie Millman:

I kind of tend to. It’s funny that you ask. I’ve been doing a series on PRINT magazine about what matters to people, and one of my questions is “do you believe in an afterlife,” because I’m so interested in what people think. As I’m getting much older now, I kind of want to think that there is, just so that life continues in some form, but I don’t know. I’m assuming that you do based on that question.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, a vivid memory from childhood—I remember being with my mother and my brother and my aunt and we were in downtown Los Angeles, and a white couple from across the street shouted at us and said to my brother, “Don’t stand so close to our car.”

Debbie Millman:

Wow.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And we were so shocked by the anger, and they called my aunt a communist slut. And then we just were quiet and walked away, went to an appointment. And then when we came back, our car had been scratched and we knew exactly who had scratched it. And that was an eye-opening moment for me that people will target you just because of what you look like. I was very young at the time, and when I was preparing to read my own audiobook, I listened to First Lady Michelle Obama’s, and I started shaking when I heard her describe the story of how her family car had been scratched when they were in a white neighborhood. And it’s moments like those that are vivid.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

We remember those traumatic moments more, but as far as like what made me calm, I’ve always felt that anger doesn’t serve me. And so it helps me deal with situations that are difficult. And also talking about past lives—so I read Laura Lynne Jackson’s The Light Between Us, about her mediumship, and that book had a profound impact on me. And for my birthday, I gave myself a past life regression. I had never done it before. I had never been hypnotized before. I went with an open mind and I found a missing puzzle piece of my life.

Debbie Millman:

Tell me everything.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Have you been hypnotized before?

Debbie Millman:

I have, and I did a past life regression. When I was about … I want to say 15 or so, my mother was really into a lot of the woo-hoo things, and I sort of came along for the ride in a lot of her experiments and, yes, I did have one, believe it or not.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Wow. I’m so curious to know what Debbie Millman’s past lives were.

Debbie Millman:

You go first.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

OK. So the hypnotist took me through various years in this life, and then brought me into the womb. And what happened at each of those stages, I’d describe the scenes and the words that came into my head. And at all those points, I was calm. I was quiet. I was often alone and I was curious and protective. And then when she took me out of the womb into the in-between space, which was like this white space, and then guided me into a past life. And she asked me to let her know when I landed in another body. I was in the body of an 8-year-old child. And we were surrounded by a lot of children, and all the adults had gone away. And the story is much longer because like I went there at 1:30 p.m., when I came out of it, it was almost 4:30 p.m. And she was like, “you were in it for a long, long time.”

Debbie Millman:

Wow.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

But there was one scene when I’ve progressed where I was 11 years old and I was in a one-room shack and I was preparing toolkits with little tools for the other children to take care of themselves. And the hypnotist asked me to remember when I last saw an adult, and I vividly saw my mother, and she asked me, “what was the pact that you made with my mother?” And I said the pact was that she would come back. And she asked if the mother was my mother in my current life, and I said, no, it’s not. And I tried to name who it might be in my current life because in past lives they say that there are sometimes people who are in your current life that are in your past lives. And it became very clear all of a sudden who it was because it was a woman who was tall. And it was a friend of mine from high school, Elizabeth, who had died in a car crash. And I have a picture of Elizabeth by my bed.

Debbie Millman:

Your story as a young child about the car crash and somebody dying. I wonder if that’s connected.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I didn’t even put that together until you just said that right now, because I wrote that story obviously years before my friend died in a car crash. And in the scene from my past life, the adults were going into the forest. So I was not Sri Lankan, but I wasn’t white. I was a pale brown. I was wearing a course sack-like dress but it wasn’t itchy. I was dirty, but not filthy. We were in maybe a rainforest. And what I remember is the adults were going into the forest to bring something back, but they never came back. So the children were all left alone. And so then I was at 11 years old trying to prepare the children to take care of ourselves. And then when I progressed further, I was 18 years old. I was alone. I didn’t know where everybody had gone and I was saying to myself, “What comes next?”

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And then the hypnotist tried to get me to progress further and I said, “There is no further. I see myself dying, but I don’t die painfully, I die quietly. I just lie down.” And she asked how old am, I said I’m 19. And when I first started going into the hypnosis, I couldn’t tell if I was projecting my own memories and visuals onto what was manifesting, but then once I got into the body of the past life, it was very clear that there were things going on that I simply can’t explain in English. But then an incredible thing happened as she was bringing me out of the hypnosis, which is that she brought me further and further back into my body, into the room, feeling the chair, and then she asked, “Is there anything else?”

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And all of a sudden, and this was not me projecting, all of a sudden, my father who has already crossed about 27 years ago, appeared. And she said, “What’s he doing?” And I said, “He’s holding my hand.” And she said, “Anyt
hing else?” He says, “Good job.” She asked, “What else do you remember?” “His hands are soft.” And I remember when my father died, I was with him in the hospital room, I remembered how soft his skin was, softer than it had ever been my entire life. And it felt like he was giving me the validation in this hypnosis that I had been longing for, and that was how my experience ended.

Debbie Millman:

Tanya, you speak about your dad very lovingly. He was a very successful psychiatrist and you lived in a big, beautiful Los Angeles home, but you’ve also written about how well your parents tried their best. They had an incredibly unhappy marriage and you witnessed extreme physical domestic violence. Would it be OK to talk about some of what you witnessed?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Yes. You can ask me anything.

Debbie Millman:

You stood up to your father and stood between him and your mother when he was beating her. And given your dad’s profession as a psychiatrist, do you think he had any sense of how wrong what he was doing was?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

He definitely knew that what he was doing was wrong, but I also feel like he is the product of the conditioning of the patriarchy that normalizes violence, and particularly the violence towards intimate partners. And also he, like so many abusers, are bifurcated individuals. My father was beloved by so many—by his patients, by his community—and yet he inflicted painful, violent, bloody harm on my mother. And we were conditioned not to talk about it. We had to keep that secret, and it made me furious. It also made me strong-willed as a child in the home to stand up to violence.

Debbie Millman:

I’ve witnessed a lot of domestic violence as well and never felt like I had the power to intervene. That takes a lot of bravery. You’ve written about how your dad was wonderful to you. He didn’t abuse anyone else and you’ve just mentioned that he was beloved. Somehow you always knew he wouldn’t hit you. What gave you that confidence though—you were witnessing this horrific violence to your mother—that you wouldn’t be impacted physically by it? Did he have any sense of how, emotionally, as well, that was impacting you?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

His inability to control his violent impulses towards my mother meant that he obfuscated the psychological and emotional impact that witnessing that violence would have on me. It’s the Jekyll and Hyde thing. I knew that he would never hit me because he and I were friends. We would talk to each other. When he would come home from work, he would sit in the living room, and he’d always had a hard day because of the work that he did as a psychiatrist, and we would talk.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

My father was an intellectual. He was a very brilliant man. And there were many things I admired him for because he came with nothing. He came on the SS Hope, literally. It was called the SS Hope. I still have a postcard. I’ve saved a bunch of his old letters, postcard from the SS Hope. And he really was the American dream. He worked, I think, seven jobs at one time, to put himself through school. And I was very proud of what he had made of himself. He went to Vanderbilt for medical school, which allowed him to also realize more of his love of country music. He really wanted to be in Nashville.

Debbie Millman:

Wow.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

So I admired him in many ways.

Debbie Millman:

I know that you were urging your mother to get a divorce during that time. What kept her from leaving your dad?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Lack of support from her community, lack of financial resources. So many women stay in abusive relationships because they are financially disempowered. Where would she go? And also, I love my family, but many of them forced her to stay with him. It’s like her happiness and her physical safety were less important than keeping the family unit together and saving face.

Debbie Millman:

Were you scared of your dad at all? How did you view your father at that time?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I was not scared of him, I was scared of what he was doing to my mother. And I wanted to protect her, and I wanted to get her out, and I felt painfully powerless that I couldn’t get her out and that I couldn’t protect her. But I was never, ever scared of him. I knew in some ways that I had power over him.

Debbie Millman:

In what way?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I was like a mirror for him because I called him out on what he was doing. I would try and reason with him, although it’s very hard to reason with an abusive person. And also I would stand up to him, I would talk back to him. And I vividly remember one time calling him a bastard to his face, and it hurt him deeply that I did that. And it’s one of those moments I regret. I don’t fondly remember calling him a bastard to his face, and I remember one day him just coming into my room—my brother and I shared a room in the home—and my father came to my side of the bed and just put his head on my shoulder and started crying.

Debbie Millman:

Wow. How do you view him now so many decades later after he’s passed away?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I feel … can we get a little cosmic now?

Debbie Millman:

Sure, absolutely. Always.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I think he wants me to tell the truth about his life because it helps him understand why he was so fearful when he was on earth. I also feel that he was very much the product of the conditioning I spoke of of male violence, of this power over culture to power over women. I also feel that because of the discrimination he experienced, he’s like so many disenfranchised immigrants that have so much anger and fear of being otherized in the countries that they immigrate to. … The resentment that they feel having been discriminated against in their own countries and discriminated in their host countries. So I have empathy while still acknowledging that his behavior was absolutely wrong towards my mother.

Debbie Millman:

You left home and got both your undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University. You majored in East Asian languages and civilizations and did your master’s thesis on women’s organizations in a post-Tiananmen China. What did you think you were going to do professionally at that point?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, I had always been discouraged from pursuing the arts, even though I loved theater, I loved writing, but I never saw it as a vocation. Also as a Sri Lankan and as an Asian, we’re all supposed to become doctors or accountants. And in fact, I come from a long line of accountants on my mother’s side and professionals on my father’s side, engineers and doctors.
At that time, when I was in undergrad and graduate school, I was always doing a lot of theater and a lot of writing on the side, but I thought that I was on a path to becoming an academic or a diplomat. And I started working very early on with different international organizations—the Women’s Conference in China, I was on the organizing committee that had a profound impact on me and still has today, but I never ever thought that I would become an artist.

Debbie Millman:

Your career in the arts and social justice intersected and began when you were hired to assist a legendary performance artist, writer and actor, Anna Deavere Smith, on the development of one of her pieces: Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which was about the human toll of the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King beating by policemen. How did you first meet Anna Deavere Smith, and what kind of work were you doing with her?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I first met Anna when I was a student at Harvard and she was a Bunting Fellow. And there was a small luncheon that had been organized for women in the arts, and Anna was one of the guests of honor, and we’re seated very close to each other. So that was the first moment that I encountered Anna. And then after I moved to New York in between undergrad and graduate school, I was actually working at Columbia Law School. I was the program coordinator for the Center for Chinese Legal Studies, which was part of my academic path, and Anna was doing a lecture at Barnard right across the street. And so I went to that lecture and afterwards, I saw her on the street and I had an impulse to tell her if she needed help with anything to let me know. And she called me, which stunned me and delighted me, and said—actually, she had not had an assistant before—and she said, “Actually, I’m working on the show.” At that time it was being workshopped at the Public Theater, and she needed an assistant.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I just thought, this has come from the universe. This is somebody I admire so much. And it was a magical time. I mean, it was the early ’90s in New York, the Public Theater was hopping. I felt so grateful to be in a room with George C. Wolfe, who was the director, Tony Kushner, who was the dramaturg. It was extraordinary the people that I encountered then. And that, along with the Women’s Conference in China, really shaped the rest of my life and the decisions I made. And also I learned so much from Anna with regard to how to see a story from multiple points of view.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. Yeah. She is a master at presenting perspective. Did she help you see that a life in the arts fueled by activism and generosity was really possible? Was that when you first considered or reconsidered what you might want to do for the rest of your life?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, actually, after working for Anna, I went back to graduate school. I still had not made that leap, but then what happened … I mean, and Anna and I stayed in close contact. I have these vivid memories of sitting in the front row at the Public Theater so I would help Anna learn her lines because part of her practice is speaking the words of the people she interviews verbatim, like every “uh,” “um,” and I would sit in the front row and I would mouth the words along with her, and she and I still joke about how she would sometimes just look at me in the front row and I’d be still parroting the words.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

But after I went to graduate school, what happened is that my father passed away, and that opened doors for me in my mind. But life is short and we should follow our hearts. And academia stopped speaking to me. To be honest, I had gone and worked on the Women’s Conference in China in 1995. I got a real up-close look at diplomacy, or the failure of diplomacy, and I believe that we’re all humans. And because I spoke Chinese, I was often asked to be in between the non-Chinese organizers and the Chinese organizers.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I just realized how much of it was because people weren’t able to communicate with each other in their own languages. And also I was becoming disillusioned with the changes that I saw happening in China because I had first gone there in 1987. I was amongst the early wave of students who had gone to China, and had gone there three times since then. And by the time I went in 1995, things have changed so drastically and evolved in a way that I found disturbing with regard to just the increasing disparity, economic disparity, the pollution was already getting horrible. And I just felt like this was not the path for me anymore.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And then what happened is I was back in New York working on follow-up from the Women’s Conference in China. And so I was spending a lot of time up at the UN, and that was a very formative experience. And I was staying in Tribeca, and the Wooster Group was right near there. And I had seen the Wooster Group on PBS, on David Burns’ show “Alive From Off Center.” And I had seen a short film that they had made, Flaubert Dreams of Travel But the Illness of His Mother Prevents It. And I vividly remembered seeing the Wooster Group’s work on television. So when I was walking by, I would take a different route to kind of walk uptown. I love walking and I love taking a different path because you never know what you’re going to stumble upon. And I saw the sign for the performing garage and kind of like when I gave a note to Anna Deavere Smith, I slipped a note under the door saying, “I’m in town for a couple of months. I love your work. If you need help with anything, let me know.”

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was like a very casual note. And I got a call that day and met with them. And the Wooster Group had been around for a long time, but had not quite reached the stratosphere that it then reached. And I started out as an intern and very soon thereafter, Liz LeCompte just asked if I would show up on a Saturday, which I thought was unusual. And she just asked me to get on stage. And that’s how I started being part of the development of what would become houselights based on Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, and the B-movie Olga’s House of Shame.

Debbie Millman:

You moved to New York and spent 12 years mostly on the road with the Wooster Group. That must have been such a creatively fulfilling time for you.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was creatively fulfilling. It was also very unsettling because when you’re on the road that much, it’s very hard to orient yourself in what is home. I was frequently in a different country every month. I was touring with the Wooster Group and then also with the Builders Association. I think I toured to 62 cities or something like that. It was wild, but I got to see the world. It was amazing. I got to visit Bogota. I got to visit Perth, Australia, places I would have never gone and that are firmly etched in my memory. And that kind of world exposure with a purpose like that—I was there to entertain people—really helped me also get to know people there. It’s why I feel like we are all human.

Debbie Millman:

In an effort to make some money, you also worked as a waitress, a cook, an office manager, a
transcriber. When did you begin to also work as a producer in addition to a performer?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

A friend of mine from college, we had made theater together in college, I was in a production of Dracula that he—

Debbie Millman:

The range. I know you also played Susan Sontag. I love that you went from playing Dracula to Susan Sontag. That really shows your diversity.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, and I played Christian Amanpour, too.

Debbie Millman:

That’s great.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

That was one of my favorite ones. I do a really good Christian Amanpour voice. So he and I had taken very different paths after making theater together in college. He had gone into the Hollywood studio system, had been very successful there and he decided that he wanted to make an independent film. He wanted to get out of the studio system and he just had this instinct to reach out to me and say, “Would you like to develop a movie with me?” And that was in 1997. Because it came so out of the blue and because I love him so much, I said yes. And that film, which is called Online, got into Sundance, which as a first-time producer was a dream come true. And then after that film, people thought I could produce movies.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Now I had always been producing events. When I started producing that film, I was actually at the Ms. Foundation as the special projects coordinator, but I had never produced movies before. And it was wonderful to learn so much from Jed Weintrob and to be surrounded by so many professionals. Josh Hamilton was in that movie, Harold Perrineau. It was an incredibly life-changing experience and incredibly hard experience. I made no money at all, but because I put in a lot of my labor into it and it was successful—it got into Sundance and Berlin and people were talking about it—then other opportunities started coming to me, because when your film is at Sundance, people are like, “Oh, she can produce movies.”

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And it’s been ongoing and I love that. And especially in the tragedy of the pandemic where live performance has been nearly impossible, I’ve been fortunate that I can continue to produce movies because so much of the content I produce is digital. So I have been able to continue working, and my heart goes out to my friends who run theaters, who work in the live arts. And I’m just really looking forward to when we can all be safely together in person again.

Debbie Millman:

Yes. Tanya, by the time you were 37, you had gotten married. You decided to start a family. And for the next three years, you tried to conceive naturally, but had two more miscarriages. You stated that one miscarriage felt like a disappointment, but three felt like a curse. And you began to consider the mistakes you’d made in your life that resulted in your not being able to carry a baby to term. So you were blaming yourself for three miscarriages.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I was not prepared for the fertility rollercoaster. And it’s what so many women do. We blame ourselves. We blame ourselves for the abuse we experience. We blame ourselves for our shortcomings in our careers. We blame ourselves for not standing up for ourselves. And so yes, I was blaming myself for the miscarriages. Is there something I could have done differently? Should I have done more to educate myself about fertility? And I was winging it. I was winging it. I got pregnant very easily but then each of those miscarriages highlighted for me like maybe I should have been more intentional.

Debbie Millman:

You wrote about how the years of failing to become a mother gave you time to think hard about what you wanted, and sparked an intense desire for success at having a child that increased to a point where you felt you would be destroyed if it didn’t work out. And at 39, I tried and also was able to get pregnant, but was not able to stay being pregnant, and ended up having two miscarriages. And then I gave up. I couldn’t go through it anymore. And at the time I remember getting really caught up in the “I have to be successful at this. I’m only going to be a full person if this is successful.” And ultimately it wasn’t and I just couldn’t go through the heartbreak. And also what I was putting my body through at that time was just so brutal. How did you ultimately come to understand that it wasn’t about you and what you had done, but about biology and about science and about age and about evolution?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

When I decided to pursue fertility treatments after the three miscarriages, I started to do research into the issue and realized how common my story was. So I knew that I was not alone and also sharing stories with my friends and realizing how people I had known for decades had had miscarriages and we just had never talked about it. And my husband at the time after I started having my miscarriages, he found out from his own mother that she had had a miscarriage that he had never known about. So it was recognizing that my story was one of many, and that we need to take the shame and stigma out of miscarriage and infertility. And also realizing that so much of our brainwashing around having a child is because of societal pressure and popular culture and misinformation. There’s just so much misinformation that continues to be perpetuated. And I think it’s in large part perpetuated because we live in an aspirational society where we present only the positive spin and not the hardships that we go through.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I think people really kind of break the dam when they do share their hard stories about miscarriages and infertility. And I think about people like Chrissy Teigen talking about her miscarriage last year, I think those are all very important. And also there are too many people who are profiting on keeping women and people in general in the dark about what goes into our biologies and our fertility spans. When we are given sex education … when I was having sex education, it was completely about preventing STDs and preventing pregnancy. We weren’t talked about sexual pleasure. We weren’t talked about fertility awareness. It’s kind of mind-blowing that that hasn’t been overhauled completely.

Debbie Millman:

You ultimately turned to IVF, but while preparing for the procedure, your doctors discovered you had two cancers, a thymoma and a gastrointestinal stromal tumor. Tanya, I really am so sorry that you’ve had to go through all of this in your life. It’s interesting that the title of your book is Assume Nothing because it’s so much more when looking at your life to see that you’ve just gone through so much and have been able to overcome so much. And at the time you stated that you felt like you skipped a midlife crisis and went to straight to an end-of-life crisis. How did you manage? How did you manage?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

First of all, my having gone through so much—being from Sri Lanka, where people have gone through natural disasters, tsunami, decades of civil war, and so many people around the world—for me, I say I feel very fortunate to have a home, t
o have friends, to have a job. So I’m able to put that in perspective. But in terms of what’s happened in my own life, I feel like I’ve kept my spirit guides working overtime. And I am actually grateful that the tumors were found. I feel like the universe intended for me to be pursuing fertility treatment, even though I couldn’t follow through with it because on the day that I went for the baseline ultrasound, the day that I was supposed to start taking the fertility drugs—they had all been delivered to my house—and I had had a dozen ultrasounds over the previous year-plus because of the miscarriage, and also because I was preparing to start fertility treatment.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

But on that day of the baseline ultrasound, they suddenly noticed a growth and they were like, “we need to find out what this is before you start the drugs.” I was like, “OK.” And at that point, it was a complete rollercoaster for many, many, many weeks because it took them a long time to figure out what it was because it was so unusual. And then I had an amazing doctor at Mass General, who said, “Let’s just do a full-body scan and see what else is going on inside you.” And it was when they did the full-body scan that they noticed another growth, and this time it was right in front of my heart. That was the first time when I felt the blood rush out of my veins. And I had faith in my doctors.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I submitted myself to science and I just said, “OK, now I really just have to be in the moment and appreciate every second because I have no idea how this is going to unfold.” But fortunately, because the tumors were caught so early, I was able to save my life. Thanks to the doctors who were looking out for me and my spirit guides. And now I go for a CAT scan every year. I had my last one at the end of 2020 and so far so good. It’s been eight-plus years since they were first detected. Both tumors were incredibly rare. The gastrointestinal stromal tumor about not that long before I was diagnosed with it, they didn’t even have a treatment for it. People usually died of it. And with the tumors I had, my doctors made it very, very clear that if they had not been found when they were, that I would have gotten very sick and might have died. And in fact, I have a distant cousin who died a few years ago of a similar tumor with the one in the chest area, and she died when she was 29.

Debbie Millman:

Oh Tanya, life is so crazy. I mean, the infertility in many ways saved your life, right?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Yes. Instead of making a new life, I had to save my own.

Debbie Millman:

In the fall of 2012, after successful cancer treatment and ready to move ahead with IVF, you were in France on tour with a show that your husband was directing, and that you had produced and also appeared, and your husband told you he wanted to separate. What happened?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was a complete shutdown. I have moved so far away from that experience because I was very focused on not being bitter or angry. And also that moment was so painful for me that it took me many years to dig myself out of that hole. But I think it was—and I don’t want to analyze him, but it was, I think, fear.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You said you could have crumbled, and you did, but you also wrote a book, which is very Tanya-esque way of, I think, making lemonade out of lemons. You called the book The Big Lie, which was a deeply personal journey through pregnancy, miscarriage, infertility and the myths and misconceptions that surround female fertility and delaying motherhood. It’s a really good book. I think it’s a really necessary book. What made you decide to write it at that time?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

So I actually decided to write the book while I was still married, and before I started fertility treatments. And the book came the way much of my writing comes to me, which is I’m an intrepid note-taker. I have been from the time I was a child, because I was shy and introverted. I was always journaling. I was writing things out. I was working things out through my writing, and I had been taking notes the whole time that I was going through the miscarriages. And after talking with many friends and doing research about what information was out there with regard to fertility, I was like, “we need to be talking about this, and I want to write a book that sparks discussion about it and also gives them resources.” Like, one of the chapters I’m proudest of is “What the Experts Wish You Knew,” where I went around and interviewed experts all over the country, fertility consultants, the head of the International Society of Fertility Preservation, who’s remained a friend.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I wanted to take the hard experiences I’ve had and turn them into tools for other people, which is what I feel my soul’s purpose is, but I could not prepare myself for the twists and turns that my life would take after I started writing the book. And the twists and turns were the cancer, the surgery and the divorce. I didn’t tell my editor about all that was going on. When I turned in the manuscript, he called and he’s like, “What?”

Debbie Millman:

I was going to say, wow. Yeah. Why didn’t you tell him? I mean, I’ve gone through experiences where I never told anybody at the office I was working in at the time about my two miscarriages. I didn’t tell them about my divorce when I was first going through it because I didn’t want anybody to think that my performance was going to be impacted in any way, and so they couldn’t blame anything on a divorce or a miscarriage. Was that the same for you?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Part of it was I wanted to surprise him. That was actually deliberate. And also because my story was unfolding in real time and I didn’t know where it was going to land by the time the manuscript was due. I also didn’t know at the time how things were going to unfold with my now ex-husband, because the way the book ends is we’ve separated and he’s asked for space. So it ends before we actually got divorced.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. OK. I wish that your book had been written when I went through all of my infertility rows, which were quite some time ago, 1999 and 2000. What advice would you give young people today that might be listening, about fertility?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Everyone is different, and know your own fertility and be your own advocate. And don’t wait for the information to be given to you, seek it out and seek out accurate information through books like mine, through experts. And also to be very wary of the medical industrial complex that tries to push fertility information onto you. There are very corrupt private clinics out there that are trying to get women to freeze their eggs at early ages and to engage in very invasive procedures without adequately preparing them for the side effects.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I would just say, be your own advocate, educate yourself, have conversations with friends and plan for your fertility future. We are trained in schools how to become successful in our careers, but we are not
trained about how to treat each other and how to live our best lives. And I hope that that is a change that happens in education because too many people suffer because of misinformation or lack of information while they’re growing up. And these behaviors become ingrained from the time we are young. It’s the same with intimate partner violence, where millions of people experience it before they turn 18.

Debbie Millman:

Yep. Absolutely. Well, that brings us to our next topic. In a video interview I watched about your journey writing The Big Lie several years ago, you stated that we have to strip away the guilt that we feel at so many junctures in our lives. I was really struck by that sentence because you said it years before what ultimately became another juncture, an important juncture. And I think that that line could also apply more recently to the relationship that you had with Eric Schneiderman, and you write about it at length and with great poignancy in your new book, Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence, which came out last month. Thank you for writing this important book as well, Tanya. And I’d also like to ask you if it would be OK to ask you some questions about it. I know you said I could ask you anything, but this is particularly sensitive, both for you and for our listeners. And I want to make sure you’re OK with it.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Yes. Again, you can ask me anything.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you. Thank you for being so open. You met New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman at the Democratic National Convention. You were working on the Democratic National Convention in 2016. What was that first meeting like?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was like a fairy tale. It was this magic moment where I was not even supposed to be at the convention that night, but a friend gave me an extra pass he had. And so I quickly got my way over to the convention center and a friend whisked me into Governor Ed Rendell’s box. I was perched on a stool taking notes. I was wearing this blue Liz Collins dress with stars all over it, and a white vest and red shoes. And I was like, I thought, well, I look like an American flag.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I felt this man glancing at me and we exchanged glances. And then he came over to me. And he was amazed that I was taking notes, like actually writing in a book, which I still do—that I wasn’t typing into a phone or on a laptop. And then he struck up a conversation that was very charming. It was very kind, curious about me and my work. We discovered that we had both gone to Harvard and that we had both studied Chinese and that we were both interested in spirituality and meditation. And that was how it began. I felt curious about him. I was also impressed that he was a politician who meditated.

Debbie Millman:

Initially it seemed like his values aligned with yours. You didn’t really rush into things, though. From the way you described the early days of his courtship, you really moved quite slowly toward having a relationship with him. Was that something that, looking back on it now, you feel was your own sort of inner warning system, or was it just your style of moving into a relationship?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was more that I had not been in a long relationship since my divorce, which had just been finalized less than two years before. And I was trying to protect myself, but also there was a natural obstacle to progressing too quickly, which is that a few days after we met, we met again, we had lunch in Manhattan after we were both back in the city, and he was going to a meditation retreat that night and I was going to Portland, Oregon, where I lived part-time, for a few weeks. So that was a natural obstacle to moving too quickly.

Debbie Millman:

You write about how his outward-facing spirituality was a mask for the torment beneath his surface and how his outward-facing feminism was a mask for his misogyny. Through public events, he perpetuated a narrative of himself as an agent of change and transformation. Many people you trusted depicted him as a hero, and he positioned himself as standing up for many causes that we both believe in, and yet it was all a big lie. When did you first start seeing that bifurcation in him than the persona that he was presenting publicly?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

It was a drip, drip, drip after we started actually seeing each other. And there were hints of it early on because of him being a politician and the narcissism of politicians—not all, but many. And how he would preach this language of transformational politics, transformational activism, but I was witnessing behind the scenes how transactional he actually was. So that was one sign just on a kind of macro level. Then on a micro level between us, I noticed shifts in his behavior towards me, which progressed from being very adoring and supportive and curious about my work and really complimenting me a lot, to starting to take digs both subtle and overt at me about the way I dressed, about my hair. And at first when they started happening, I would let them slide because they would happen in the moment. They were not ones that deeply impacted me at the time, but then they became more insidious. The way he started attacking my scars that run down my torso—really like the scars are a running theme in the book.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

The scars that we bear on our bodies and the scars that we conceal on the inside. And he would at first look at my scars and refer to them as a badge of courage that I had overcome adversity, but then as the months went by, he wanted me to get plastic surgery to remove my scars. Then there was also the racism that emerged in the bedroom. Warning in advance because some of this is disturbing. But he would start slapping me in the bedroom and asking me to call him master and refer to me as his slave.

Debbie Millman:

Brown slave.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And when it started happening, it was in the flash of an eye. I was naked, it was dark, it was disorienting. I felt like I had vertigo, and it didn’t last long. And then I would go to sleep and I’d wake up, and I’d wake up like I had had a weird dream the night before, and he would be not that person that he was at night. So again, it was this like drip, drip, drip of manifestations of abuse with the demeaning, belittling, controlling behavior, the coercive control, and then escalating to the physical violence. And also just recognizing that violence is not just physical, but it is emotional and verbal and psychological as well.

Debbie Millman:

I mean, while you’re supposedly making love, he starts to beat you and to choke you and to demean you. He even threatened to kill you at one point. Did you think it was possible that this was an anomaly, that he was ever going to change?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, by the time I got entangled in the abusive relationship, I had been so broken down that it was hard to see outside of it.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Which is—

Debbie Millman:

I understand that.

Tanya Selvaratnam:
A victim looks like all of us. And I have been stunned by the number of people who’ve reached out to me sharing their own stories of similar abuse with the choking and the spitting and the slapping. I feel like these guys are all watching the same bad porn that somehow condones physical violence against women without their consent. And they do it in the context of the bedroom because they think they can get away with it. It’s easier to get away with it in the bedroom in the sexual context than if he had hit me in the living room or the kitchen. And I did think that he could change. It was very much after the election in 2016, and then especially after the inauguration when things started taking very dark, dark pivots, and his drinking was increasing, his consumption of prescription drugs was increasing. And I felt like he’s depressed. There’s so much pressure on him.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

He was also in the national spotlight more than ever before. Like I had never heard of him before, but suddenly he was everywhere because was seen as the bulwark against the now, we can say, former president. I wanted to help him. And he said that he would get help. I tried to get him to speak to a therapist. He said he was going to get counseling, go to meditation retreats, but it was all just talk because even if he would go away and get help, he would come back and the pattern would repeat itself.

Debbie Millman:

You provide some terrifying statistics in Assume Nothing. You share that intimate partner violence is a pattern of abusive behavior used to maintain power and control over a partner. The abuse can be physical, emotional, verbal, sexual or financial, just to name a few. Intimate partner violence can occur in any kind of intimate relationship. And then there’s this statistic about one in four women, and nearly one in 10 men, have experienced sexual violence, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime. Tanya, why hasn’t this topic come to our attention until now? Is this a different kind of shame?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

There’s a whole ecosystem that perpetuates this type of violence. And I blame it on popular culture, which has not paid attention to this issue, or has done the opposite and glorified the violence. And we’ve seen so much of that with what happened around police brutality last year, how much popular culture played into that. We’re seeing that now with hate crimes against Asian American Pacific Islanders, how much popular culture plays into that. Intimate partner violence also has been the by-product of a popular culture conditioning. It’s also because of problems with our education that we aren’t prepared for how to protect ourselves if someone decides to target us. I wasn’t prepared for my path to intersect with an abuser. I wasn’t prepared for the grooming and gaslighting and manipulation. And I wanted to show that even fierce women get abused. Another big problem is resources that are allocated at a federal level to organizations that address intimate partner violence and provide legal services, shelter and mental health counseling services.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

You take, for instance, with law enforcement, the No. 1 reason for calls to 911 is domestic violence, but domestic violence is a fraction of the budget for law enforcement. And I feel in the same way that there’s now more racial bias training in law enforcement, there also needs to be domestic violence training so that law enforcement is better equipped to handle these cases. And also there needs to be a more victim-centered approach because not everyone feels comfortable getting entangled in the legal system. And it is especially fraught for women of color who have been already targeted by law enforcement.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

The other statistics I cite in the book are the devastating ones around the majority of women in prison are survivors. The majority of homeless women are survivors. I mean, these are terrifying statistics, but I feel like we have an opportunity now with the pandemic having heightened the urgency of addressing the domestic violence crisis because victims have been in lockdown with their abusers, and the alarming rises in domestic violence around the world, we see more clearly how we have to address it. And there’s been amazing work done by Rachel Louise Snyder, the author of No Visible Bruises, where she cites the studies about the economic impact of violence against women, how much it costs to treat these cases, the medical injuries and how much productivity of women is hampered because they are victims and survivors.

Debbie Millman:

In your book, you state that women get blamed for staying in abusive relationships. They get blamed for fighting back. They get blamed for getting into the relationship in the first place. Why do you think that so much blame is placed on the women when they’re the victims?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

The patriarchy.

Debbie Millman:

You write in Assume Nothing that before your story of intimate violence became public, you’d been known for your work, your advocacy, your art, your performance. When you wrote The Big Lie, you were largely in control of the narrative, but here the story and your character were being spun by outlet after outlet in a way over which you had no control. And as a matter of fact, I found out about it on Twitter when The New Yorker tweeted one of the quotes that you stated in the article that they wrote about you when this first came out. How did you manage through that? I mean, I even remember being worried about writing you about it because I didn’t want to interfere, and I’m a friend. But how did you feel about the whole world sort of participating in your life at that moment?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, I am very good at hiding, and this is where the shy introvert in me comes in handy. As a producer, I am forced to be more public, but as a writer, I’m able to be more private. And I had made very careful plans in the weeks before the story would come out to leave my apartment, delete my name from my buzzer on my apartment, and deleted all my social media accounts. And I moved into a friend’s place. And I was in a cocoon over there, so that when the story came out, nobody would be able to find me.

Debbie Millman:

You had to escape from your own life.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Yes. And I also know that in this fast-paced media culture that the new cycle would pass and eventually nobody would care anymore. So I just thought, I’m going to ride this out. I was worried about my career and reputation. I was worried before the story came out about my physical safety as well, because if the story did not land in such a way that resulted in his resignation, he would have still been in power and I had no idea what kind of resources he might be able to deploy to destroy me.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I believe as a producer in envisioning possible outcomes
, and so there was an outcome that was positive, where everything would be OK. But then there was an outcome where I would be in grave danger. And I think it is important to be aware that you can’t anticipate how much someone will snap when they feel everything’s slipping away from them. And I have so many friends who’ve been in relationships with very powerful people, or who’ve been in work relationships with very powerful people, women or men who will go to extreme lengths to intimidate them.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I did a private security training with a team from Gavin de Becker’s office, and that was mind-blowing and very helpful. I carried pepper spray in my bag, and I also left the country for a while. And thankfully, the story landed like a surgical strike because the reporting by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow was so airtight. I mean, I trusted them. I trusted David Remnick, but I had no idea how the story was going to land. But when David Remnick gave me a heads-up, saying he’s going to resign and this is unprecedented, I knew. I suddenly felt my shoulders go down, and I was like, I think I’ll be OK. I’ll have to go away for a while, but eventually I’ll be OK.

Debbie Millman:

Well, he resigned three hours after publication of the article in The New Yorker, and District Attorney Madeline Singas ultimately proposed a new state law to protect victims of sexually motivated violence by making it illegal to hit, shove, slap or kick someone without their consent for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification. That’s a start. You helped make that difference, Tanya, thank you.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I’m grateful to D.A. Singas.

Debbie Millman:

You said that you used to avoid discussing the memories of your childhood not because they were painful, but because you felt they tainted you. Do you still feel that way?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

No.

Debbie Millman:

Good. Now that the book is out, now that there is this new law proposed, how do you look back on the experience? How do you see your own growth and evolution and power in this chapter of your life?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I’m grateful that I’m a writer so that I could write my way out of the darkness, because I had gone from getting out of the relationship with Eric Schneiderman, to wanting to get on with my life, to recognizing that I was part of a pattern and realizing that I had to come forward because my conscience wouldn’t let me not. So I went into survival mode, and then it was many months of survival mode and preparing for the story to become public. And then it was in hiding mode. And so when I could stop hiding—because for a long time after the story came out, I was not comfortable being visible. I didn’t want to be seen. However, I had to keep showing up because I started a new job within a month of that story coming out. And I was very grateful that my boss at the new job said “we’re still on” the day after the story came out.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

So I had to show up to work and I was very grateful for that work. And I decided to write the book because I had so many people who were reaching out to me in those months after sharing their own stories. And when I was searching for books about intimate violence, specifically in the sexual context, I was hungry for resources and hungry for a narrative that would draw people in. So I thought, I want to write this book for all the people that are reaching out to me. And also I wanted to write my way out of the darkness and hope that it helps others find their light too. And I’ve been so gratified by the notes that I’ve been receiving since the book came out, with people saying that it’s released memories that they had suppressed, that it’s allowed them to talk to their children, to their family, to their spouses about what they experienced when they were younger, and also to understand the domestic violence that they witnessed as children between their parents more.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

And I’m very grateful for those notes to show that the book is landing in such a way that it’s providing healing for people and also providing resources to help prevent intimate partner violence, because I wasn’t prepared for the stages I went through. And by walking the reader through those stages, I’m hoping that it really does help other people. And by getting to the end of writing the book, I feel that I became my strongest self ever and emerged with more gratitude and more love for the people and colleagues in my life, and people like you who’ve been so supportive. I’m really looking forward to when I can really relax and take in how the book has landed. And I’m excited for the next stage of the book too, because I think I’ve told you that it’s being turned into a series.

Debbie Millman:

Yes. Over the course of your life, you’ve said that activism is the throughline of everything that you do. And there’s no question that Assume Nothing advocates for a more safer, for a more just world. And so I’m hopeful that this series will continue to do that work, but it’s not the only activism that you’re part of. And I’m very conscious that the other work that you do is also really significant. So two last questions for you. First, can you share some of the other efforts that you’re part of these days, because they’re significant?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I was so proud to work on Joy to the Polls around the general election, and then because of the Georgia Senate runoffs, it continued. It was a beautiful project with a beautiful team that sought to make voting a celebration and deescalate tensions. It was a nonpartisan effort. We just brought flatbed trucks with flowers and dancers and DJs to polling centers. And it was fun working on the Spotify playlist series with contributions from President Barack Obama and Marissa Domain, I mean, so many amazing people. It was a beautiful experience and that work has now evolved into the work I’ve done with this amazing company Invisible Hand. I produced and directed a series of videos to highlight The Black Church Series hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on PBS and is still available to stream.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

So I got to make videos with gospel singers Tasha Cobbs Leonard, and Erica Campbell and Fred Hammond and John Legend, and getting to listen to gospel music every day has also brought me joy. So I’m just trying to surround myself with as many joyful projects as possible. And then I recently became the senior advisor for gender justice narratives for the Pop Culture Collaborative, and I’m working very closely with Tracy Van Slyke of the Pop Culture Collaborative and hoping to get that off the ground so that we can change the narrative waters around gender justice and really dig deep into why popular culture is lagging behind. Because as a friend told me, when you change culture, you change culture.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, absolutely. Seth Godin said government doesn’t change, culture changes government. And I love that. I really love that. Tanya, the last thing I want to ask you about is the power of making art. You’ve stated that art can help shape consciousn
ess through creativity. I love that. What advice do you have for artists who doubt that art can make a difference in the world?

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Well, I think of the work of Leonard Shlain, the father of our dear friend Tiffany Shlain, and his book Art and Physics, which shows how many advances in science were predated by what artists saw. Over the past many years, I’ve been working on organizing and producing coalitions of artists around particular issues. So the work that I did on Planned Parenthood, which you hosted the launch event for, with the Unstoppable Campaign, the work that I’ve done with Four Freedoms, the coalition of artists and institutions around the country and in DC and Puerto Rico to catalyze civic discourse through art. And the work that I did with the Federation with Laurie Anderson and Laura Michael Shushan to keep cultural borders open and show how art unites us.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

I believe that art can convey messages in ways that stir emotions that might cause people to take action in ways that speeches and politics might not. So I think the linkages between art and activism and art and politics are crucial if we’re going to bring people together, because art does have that power to bring people together and help them see multiple perspectives. Like, going back to our conversation about Anna Deavere Smith, the way Anna does.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. The last thing I want to share with our listeners is a quote I found of yours online. And you state that when life throws you lemons, make art. Tanya, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody that’s been thrown so many lemons and has created such important art for our culture. Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing that. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Tanya Selvaratnam:

Thank you so much, Debbie. I’m glad you dug up that old quote from me.

Debbie Millman:

Tanya Selvaratnam’s latest book is Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence. You can see more of Tanya’s work at tanyaturnsup.com. This is the 17th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

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If there’s a theme that has resided just below the surface of this season of Design Matters, an undercurrent pulsing with life, it’s this: feeling.

Many of the artists, designers, musicians and authors featured this year have focused on the art of eliciting a response, be it emotional, cathartic or contemplative. Their reasons? Some stated and some unstated; perhaps it comes down to the fact that in the cycle of perpetual distraction that is the modern era, feeling, really feeling, can often feel like a lost art.

Feeling, it turns out, is exactly musician Erin McKeown’s focus. Maybe it’s because of the role that music played in her early life: She has said that growing up, she indulged in music that made her feel more than she was capable of on her own—happier. Angrier. More vulnerable. As she channeled her favorite artists’ emotions, she’d envision herself performing on a stage—but figured she’d become a scientist when she grew up. Raised in Fredericksburg, Virginia, McKeown’s parents enrolled her in piano lessons at a young age, and she didn’t really take to it in a cathartic or meaningful way, as some musicians do. Rather, her creativity manifested in the form of stories that she would write, and ironically it was science that eventually led her down the winding path to her craft. Around the age of 12, she got hold of a guitar. While attending a science summer camp, McKeown’s counselors were going to protest a new river dam that was slated to be built. She felt they needed an anthem, a rallying cry—so she combined her writing abilities with her newfound instrument, and penned her first song: “My River.” While it never went beyond the ears of those within protesting range of her counselors, it was the inception of a career.

Her early tunes as a teenager followed the lines of classic rock. But then she discovered the likes of Ani DiFranco, and her mind expanded with possibility. Still, there was the matter of becoming a scientist. McKeown attended Brown, where she majored in ornithology—before changing course and sliding a bit closer to her passion by studying ethnomusicology. As she worked toward her degree, her music began to spill over into her life in a more pronounced way: She took a gig as artist-in-residence at the nonprofit Providence arts center AS220.

At Brown, she focused, presciently, on such arts as Vaudeville. In its inception in France, what would evolve into Vaudeville emerged as a bit of a rebellious means of getting around the theatrical monopoly of the dominating Comédie-Française. Similarly, McKeown released her first album, the folk collection Monday Morning Cold, on her own label, TVP, while she was still a student in 1999, music industry be damned.

Her first studio album, Distillation, followed shortly in 2000, and in 2003 McKeown released Grand—replete with a medley of varied sounds, from rock to electronica. It was perhaps with this album that critics (and everyone writing about McKeown since) began pointing out her incredible versatility, and the vast arena of styles that she plays in. This has led to a delightful array of surprising releases: We Will Become Like Birds (2005); a collection of standards, Sing You Sinners (2007); Hundreds of Lions (2009, released on DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records); the hilarious F*ck That! Erin McKeown’s Anti-Holiday Album (2011).

In an industry that thrives on delivering polished branded identities and the predictably (and lucratively) safe, McKeown bucks all of it. Moreover, she does it with a sense of ease—her varied styles and approaches never feel contrived or invented for the sake of invention; rather, as a listener, you get the sense that she’s doing the rare act of purely playing whatever she wants to at that moment in time.

It’s unsurprising (and well along the Vaudeville lines) that she left labels behind and sought to crowdfund her album Manifestra in 2013. It reached its goal in a mere six days. She followed it with According to Us (2016) and Mirrors Break Back (2017), both released on her own label. In her journey through the music industry, she arrived back at the place where she started—a place of her own creation, and her own control.

After seven years of work with Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Quiara Alegría Hudes, she formally expanded her output even further and premiered the musical Miss You Like Hell, a pressingly relevant story of an undocumented mother and her daughter.

Feeling. McKeown infuses it and embodies it. And she delivers it.

She sees music as utilitarian—like design, its natural setting isn’t in a museum, but in use, in real time, serving a purpose in the real world. Music, she has said, is about how it’s used—and she derives no greater joy than hearing that a song of hers was useful to a listener. Further, she believes that a record store should be organized by the emotions each album conveys and the situation it is best suited for—there should be a road trip section. A funerary section. A sunny day section. A break-up section.

Reflecting on her career, she seems at peace in her journey, with her early victories and celebrity giving way to the person she is today.

As she said in an interview with The Interval, she maneuvers her career on a couple simple criteria: Do I like the person that I’m working with? And does this bring me an opportunity that feels creatively challenging? “And that’s what I make my choices from. Because I’ve lived with and without money, and I have lived with and without recognition of what I’m doing, and I’m fine.”

As for what the future holds for her output, it’s likely what it seems to have been all along: McKeown playing whatever she wants to at that moment in time. And that is an infinitely thrilling premise.

—Zachary Petit, Design Matters Media Editor-in-Chief

Albums by Erin McKeown:
Mirrors Break Back
According to Us
Manifestra
F*ck That! Erin McKeown’s Anti-Holiday Album
Hundreds of Lions
Sing You Sinners
We Will Become Like Birds
Grand
Distillation
Monday Morning Cold

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