She's Beautiful When She's Angry

1

(crowd shouting, chattering)

WOMAN:
Women's health care is

being tossed around like a football.

The argument has been over

for a very long time...

to have the right to choose.

We should be mad. Are you mad?

(cheering)

WOMAN:
You're not allowed to

retire from women's issues.

You still have to pay attention,

'cause somebody is gonna try to

yank the rug out from under you.

And that's what's happening now.

WOMAN:
Don't mess with Texas women!

- (cheering)

- Don't mess with them!

(electric guitar)

WOMAN:
Save me

Somebody save me

WOMAN #2:
It's really hard

for people to understand now

what it was like before

the feminist movement.

The wedding was the big thing.

The marriage was success.

WOMAN #3:
You couldn't

have career aspirations.

You couldn't decide not to have a child.

(continues)

WOMAN #4:
The most beautiful woman

was never satisfied with how she looked.

You could look like Miss America

and you still thought something

was wrong with how you looked.

WOMAN #2:
Let's not even talk

about birth control and abortion.

The horror, the fear of pregnancy

loomed over anything one did.

WOMAN #3:
If you were raped,

people wouldn't believe you.

If you were battered,

no one would believe you.

WOMAN #4:
It was feminists who brought

up these issues and put them on the table.

WOMAN #5:
We had a sense of momentum.

You know, that was the sense of

momentum that came from the '60s.

WOMAN #6:
It was like all this energy

had been pent up in these

women for all these years,

and it just exploded.

(continues)

Are you gonna save

Save me?

Yeah, boy

Save me

Whoo, ohh, save me

(fades)

(applause)

MODERATOR:
The topic for

discussion this evening

is a dialogue on women's liberation.

- Mr. Mailer.

- (applause)

Let's really get hip about

this little matter and recognize

that the whole question of women's liberation

is the deepest question that faces us,

and we're going to go

right into the center of it.

Let me introduce first

Ms. Jacqueline Ceballos,

president of the New York Chapter of

NOW, the National Organization for Women.

- Ms. Ceballos.

- (applause)

I represent that large

middle-class group of women

who could have all the comforts

and conveniences of life.

In fact, I did.

But I opted out.

Instead, I decided to devote my time

to fight for equality of women.

CEBALLOS:
I just had these feelings...

something's wrong, something's wrong.

Then a friend handed me The Feminine

Mystique, Betty Friedan's book.

I could cry even today.

It just hit me. It was where

it was. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I read it that night.

And I just knew, it wasn't him,

it wasn't me... it was society.

Well, The Feminine Mystique,

it defines women solely in terms

of her sexual relation to a man

as a man's sex object,

as wife, mother, homemaker,

and never in human terms,

as an individual person,

as a human being herself.

WOMAN:
When Betty Friedan published

The Feminine Mystique,

everyone was buzzing about women

and their talents being neglected.

Every time we'd been told,

I'm sorry we don't hire women,

we thought, you know, isn't it too bad

there isn't an organization

that can fight against that?

In 1966, when they were founding NOW,

Betty Friedan asked me if I

would do the public relations,

and I said sure.

We knew we were making history.

We had no doubt that this

was a historic occasion.

We knew the world needed

a civil rights organization

for women's rights.

That's one reason it exploded

so really quickly and powerfully,

was because it was long overdue.

The mayor this afternoon met

the women's liberation movement

in a way that he had not before.

As soon as NOW existed, and I

heard about it, I was in NOW.

I became president of the

Chicago chapter of NOW.

And against the women of this

nation, and we intend to react.

Some of the earliest

letters that we got was,

"Where are you? I can't find you."

You know, there was no Internet.

There was mimeograph and

stamps. That's what we had.

Um, these were people's

memberships coming in.

Here's a woman... And this is so typical

of the women joining NOW at the time.

"Recruited by myself!" With

a big exclamation point.

Let's see.

I've collected buttons all my life, so...

This one's one of my

favorites... "Uppity Women Unite."

We certainly did, didn't we?

FOX:
The most important motivation

for all of us in founding NOW

was jobs, employment discrimination.

CEBALLOS:
We all know that women

are underpaid and overworked

and there is no chance

for advancement anywhere.

We in NOW teach women how to fight

discrimination against their own companies,

how to sue their companies.

(applause)

The want ads were "help wanted

male," "help wanted female,"

and all the good jobs, the

career jobs were for the males.

In fact, there was one ad

that said, "Just got your BA?

Want a job to be secretary

of a good-looking, uh, executive?

You might end up as his wife."

I swear to you!

WOMEN (chanting): Male

chauvinism up against the wall.

Male chauvinism up against the wall!

What do we want? Equal rights!

When do we want it? Now!

FOX:
I remember we had picketers

outside The New York Times

and the man would have

a sandwich board, said,

"I got my job through

The New York Times"

and the woman's sandwich

board said, "I didn't."

(upbeat theme)

Good morning and thank you very, very much.

I remember going on television shows

when I was the chapter president,

and people would seriously ask you

whether you thought women

should get equal pay.

"Well, do you think women should get

equal pay?" I mean, people would say that.

You had to say, this wasn't

just handed down from Moses.

This was discrimination.

(siren wailing)

(protesters singing)

What is the point of your march?

There are hundreds of women that

want peace, and we want peace now.

COLLINS:
I became aware of what was

called the younger branch of the movement.

Now, I was 30. But anyway...

They identified themselves

as women's liberation,

and this was people coming

out of the antiwar movement

and the college movement and

the civil rights movement.

WOMAN:
In the Southern

civil rights movement,

the most important role that anybody

could play was the role of an organizer.

(singing)

You know, you met with people and you

helped them find the courage to stand up...

that it was their voice and their desires

for change that gave a movement its power.

We shall overcome

WOMAN:
I worked in Alabama,

going door-to-door, canvassing,

getting people to go register to vote.

All the women I encountered

who were working in the

civil rights movement...

It was an impressive bunch of women.

What I saw was a different image

of what it meant to be a

woman, a different model.

And we do realize

with every step forwards,

and with every effort and sincere prayer,

that we will overcome.

- Yes!

- All right!

FREEMAN:
Although I didn't

fully realize it at the time,

I was, in fact, getting the

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