hi i'm regina ears and i am one of the hosts for today's premiere episode of a new program here on rogue valley community t v it's called girl talk and my co host is carol voice and so carol would you like to tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to ashland sure i came to ashland because i visited here my vacation was here and i loved it and i realized here in ashland there's a university there's worldwide famous live theater and there's a wonderful wonderful environment to live in and i just said this is where i want to live and so i moved here from the bay area and i'm really happy that i did great let me tell you a little bit about how i got here to ashland i got here about fourteen years ago and i also came from the bay area i retired here and i had a lot of time on my hands so i quickly got involved in community volunteer work and i joined some boards i became a const chairman i met each other in two thousand and four i think working on a campaign and so that's how we got to know each other and then in two thousand and that's our community radio and it's on sundays i'll do a little plug for that that sundays at noon every week so carol why don't you tell us a little bit about how do you think our girl talk program on the television is going to be different than on the radio is the main difference i think is going to be were live were real people so they're the audience is going to be able to see us our face and also become more acquainted with who we are as persons not just our voices the other thing that's really going to be important in our t v show is that we're going to have guests from the community and we're go have issues that are dealing with women's issues that are national as well as local and also even in ashland so i think that's what's going to be unique we're going to go into depth and we're going to discuss some issues that are related to women and girls and i think that's very important for our community you know it's going to be a single topic whereas on the radio we talk about twenty different things i know and so we can really go in depth on a single corner is our guest today and sander and i go back a long ways he teaches did teach at s o u has retired since then she and i work together in university seminar so we know each other well we've been good that she's the perfect person for our first guest because of her background in women's studies and also her academic credentials i think are wonderful so i will let sandra present a little more about who she is thanks carolyn and regina thanks for inviting me to be your inaugural guess i'm very honored to be here and i wish tremendous success for this project you have i came to the road valley twenty years ago to convey to work at s o u continuing my academic career and i was a professor of women's studies which i had been for many years before trying to hear i stayed connected with women's studies at s o u until i retired in two thousand and eight and by that time i met women studies had changed s o u to its new name of g s w s gender sexuality and women's studies reflecting i think some of the important changes we might want to talk about today in what feminism means today especially for younger people who are newer to feminism than we are i'm  a story and so i spent some bunch of time studying still love to read about the history of the women's movement and put today's events into that context to look at all those women who came before us i don't know if we're standing on their shoulders we might be standing on their good heads i don't know i don't know why but they sure did a lot of work they did they certainly did well together a little better idea of the historical perspective we've got a video you start us off with a question to get this discussion going we're going to have a three way discussion some of it about the video we just saw but also just about the state of feminism today so the first question i want to ask is feminism today where did it come from sandra you're probably the best who started out on that would you do that please i think there is value in remembering that for most people feminism means the idea that women and men are equal the idea means it's it's about equal rights so even though many other people have said there are other things going on with them as if we keep the equal rights for a man we we observe several things one is it still alive today there's still a struggle for equal rights with all the progress that was made in the sixty's in the seventy's there is still more progress that has to made just on the area of equal rights for men and women and if we look back to where that came from there's a long history with the video showed a number of pictures from the woman suffrage movement which was probably the biggest struggle that our forces for mothers had to had to fight was to get the vote to get the right to vote took a took a long time first proposed in eight hundred forty eight didn't win until one thousand twenty susan b anthony who said failure is impossible didn't get to vote before she died oregon beat much of the country but still nine hundred twenty is the date for a woman suffrage in the united states that's about equal rights the right to vote other rights the right to work the right to keep your own earnings the right to equality in the in the justice system women started fighting for these things before the civil war and we're still working on some of them now but i think most of the what we think of as feminism today are distinctly modern  issues i would say one of the areas where we are still in trouble is the area of violence against women and girls including everything from harassment on the schoolyard all the way up to sexual assault domestic violence for adult women including senior women and bullying and bullying it's all part of the same continuum and it hasn't stopped and our societies response to this violence against women is still variable  sometimes our society doesn't respond well at all there are still some people who think it doesn't matter she asked for it doesn't matter if girls get bullied that's you know that's what they're there for so we still have a long way to go on that we don't have equal pay for equal work you know how how can this not be true we don't have anywhere near proportional representation in our federal government so there are still a number of areas where where we're looking to have just just equal equal opportunity violence against women is a huge issue today for equal opportunity because if you are subject to bullying violence and the threat of violence you don't have the same opportunity a person who doesn't have to face that and i think the expansion now to talk about talk more more deeply about issues of gender and sexuality as reflected in the name change of the women's studies program to gender sexuality and women's studies and if so you end a nationwide movement to to broaden the to broaden the scope suggests a much deeper conversation that we're having now because we are we are not talking just about being being born male or female we're talking about sexual orientation and we're talking about sexual identity and something that can be ambiguous and i can be changed so we're in a big new world virginia you have a question well i have just read an article greer and she has been told that she will and students at a particular university i believe it's in england are protesting the fact that she's coming to speak because she has made statements about the transgender people that if you haven't lived in a woman's body physically for your life how can you call yourself a woman so there is there's a protest out there from the transgender community so it really is getting more complicated that's the point that you were making much more complicated than we have to we have to work through a lot of these ideas germane greer was always controversial when she was just writing her first couple of books she made a whole lot of  speaks for jermaine grier but i think the controversy that you mentioned is an important one because if you look back at what we were struggling for in the sixty's and in the seventy's we wanted women to be treated like human beings we wanted gender and sexuality not to be such a big deal that women could be president women could be supreme court justice women could be the c e o of women could be engineers women could be television hosts we wanted all these things without having to say it's a woman doing it it's just a person doing it and now we have we have people who young people have thought much more deeply about what their gender identity is but in the end who are way to judge if they're what they say what their gender identity is that for thirty years i was a man and now i'm a woman who are we to say that it makes any difference if this person is applying for a job or is trying to speak and between the that think that's one of your questions carol first generation second generation feminism and you just mentioned that way yes second way but what is that mean i guess i'm not clear my spoke a we will have a course in feminist but it won a big mass movement with people marching in the streets so in the sixty's you start the second wave second wave us we were there we were there i think i've been in there with them as women for almost fifty years now we were there and we call ourselves the second wave because we knew we were different from the first wave the first wave well here's and here's a particularly interesting thing about it one of the things first wave feminists founded the quest on is their idea that women and men are different and they said women should have the vote because women will not vote the same way men do women will be more concerned with the rights of children the rights of family more concerned with peace women will clean up government we won't have so much corruption as was certainly true in american government at the time and the second wave came along with this big emphasis on no it was saying we can do this we want to do all this stuff give us a chance opportunity equal opportunity we're right but also that gender it shouldn't be such a big deal to some extent we there's certainly now a group of women young women who call themselves third wave feminists and i think even some fourth wave feminists and they are as as has happened before they're standing on the shoulders of the women who went before they're taking it deeper there's a how does this relate to our lives and saying we really have to get down to this business of sex sexual orientation sexual identity sexual practice ok i want to move us on to what i have a comment so my daughter who is thirty eight  d my niece who is twenty three now they do not like to be called feminist they feel that it's too confining they feel that they are they want it broader they want to encompass everybody on the analogy that i think about is the black lives matter subject that has come up recently and some people so you know say no it's all lives matter and then of course black people and other people say you know black lives matter and that's what we should be focusing on now so i kind of make that analogy with my daughter and my niece they want it brought or they feel that we should just be focusing on women's equality and now you're saying they would be considered third wave no no no they would be considered non feminist ok that that's what you know what you can be a feminist they can be an anti feminist in which you say women a not equal men are superior human non feminist in which you just concern about other things and the you know they signet salience of the need for women's movement changes as society changes i think it's good i think we're still in a time when we different ok we talk about violence against women and it's still been a major issue that we have to face and usually i want to make a broad generalization but usually that violence is at the hands of a man so i want to ask you this can men be feminists absolutely and if they can how absolutely and that's part of the response to gene genius question which is that  as a woman can say i'm a feminist i'm not a feminist a man can also say i'm a feminist i'm not a feminist feminism as defined by the people who practice feminism is about an idea of the idea of equality and of a movement to change things that are unfair and that are unjust and men can be for equal opportunity men can be against injustice just as much as women can that's what that's what feminism can be  a person says i'm i'm not i'm not anti feminist but i'm not pro feminist either because i'm working on something else say world peace which is pretty darn important right or economic justice which is still pretty important that just means th at the top of their priority case then if if men can claim to be feminists then who who is going to be defining and say what feminism is can men do that as well can they be the primary speakers who actively say i am a feminist and who are actively working to promote what they identify as feminist goals have priority in saying what feminism is ok somebody who says i am not a feminist should be given the time of day when they're trying to define what it what they can say what they are but they are not saying what feminism is feminism is comprised of the people who together make the movement so the people who are the who are feminists should have priority who gets to say what we are and what the words may well what's been most important to me has been gender equity a lot of times i won't say i'm a feminist although i am a feminist but what i want is gender i want that women and i haven't even addressed the transgender question i think more in terms of women and men when are we going to get equity pay equity this is has been going on for ever an equity representation in the legislative process we need to have equity in those numbers or be able to pass bills that are important to women and families well you know where those bills can be passed we have to have women in office who are going to make sure those bills do pass and i think it's going to make a huge difference in two thousand and sixteen who is president and you know it is the house and the senate pass and i think we really have to watch it and make sure the women are running for office and that women are out there voting for them and campaigning for them i think that's critical but before we leave i want to ask one more question sandra so that you can help us in our direction for next show oh what is the state of feminism today oh kero what a questionnaire and i know i and thirty seconds a feminine  is you'll find it focused on specific issues rather than in one big giant all purpose movement like the national organization for women was but you will find feminism today in movements to help women who are victims of violence or survivors of violence you'll find feminism and women who are working to preserve women's health rights including the right to abortion you'll find feminism and people working to get women elected to office you'll find feminism and people working to change the laws of the nation and the state  inviting we all yeah you'll find well we got a new mothers for gun control mothers for gun safety i think it will get safety is what it's called yeah and so way women are going to move it move into whatever issues of the day but the state of feminism today is it's active on specific issues ok and quite a number of them a surprising number of them in which we still need change absolutely lots of them so that gives us good direction for our next segment yeah absolutely step aside you know we're going to be recording another episode and we've had a really lively discussion today and i'm looking forward to having sandra perhaps come and talk with us because i do think that younger women have a different point of view very different and i certainly come with a point of view from the second wave during the sixty's and seventy's but i  would not of call myself a feminist until i divorced and i had to get out there in the work world and i had to support myself and my daughter and that really made me start thinking about gender equity because that was in the seventy's well no that was in the eighty's and there wasn't gender equity it's better now much better but we still got that much in there in the workplace we make seventy eight cents on the and we are guided about being here on road valley community t v and i'll put a put a plug in for k s k q eighty nine point five i want to think we do know who is the producer she did all the work in this along with wanda