THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Brenda Feigen

“I feel very strongly that people have lost sight of the whole idea of women’s rights.”

Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, February 2024

MJC:  So, Brenda, tell me who you are, and when you were born, and how your early days were.

BF:  That’s a big question, but I’ll try to narrow it down to I was born in Chicago in 1944 and lived there until I basically went off to college and then law school on the east coast. I guess that the formative and relevant information here, is that I was always a jock. I played; I was a captain of all the teams. It was a little school. There were 32 people in my class. It’s nothing to write home about, but I was very proud to be athletic, and I had a boyfriend and everything.

The negative of growing up in Chicago was the terrific antisemitism that I lived with for all the years that I was there. I can give you examples. There was a dance on New Year’s Eve that no Jews were invited to, and the boys would come out at midnight and take me out for a date or whatever.  There was a fortnightly dance that they let one Jewish boy (no girls) in because they needed an extra boy.  When I was ten, there was a swimming class that didn’t accept any Jews until one friend of my mother lobbied hard to get me in. There were very few of us anyway, but we weren’t allowed to do a number of things. It was formative, because later, when I became aware that I was a feminist, I likened the discrimination against me as a woman, to what I had experienced as a Jew in Chicago.

MJC:  What was the school that you attended?

BF:  It was called the Latin School of Chicago. It’s still there. It’s a very good school, and now, I think they’ve solved the problem. I think they have a number of Jewish students. They had a Black head of school until very recently, and apparently it’s changed completely. In the old days, it was completely white bread. It was hard. I was born on the south side of Chicago, and my parents, when I was three, moved to the near north side because they thought it would be better for my schooling. So, there I went.

MJC:  Okay, so were you born in Hyde Park?

BF:  I was born there. I lived at the Windermere East Hotel, and then I moved to the near north side of Chicago, which I love. It’s a beautiful part of the city despite the antisemitism of the days when I was growing up, and probably continues.

MJC:  Did you have siblings?

BF:  Yes, I had an older brother, 14 years older, who basically lived on the south side with my parents until he went off to Yale. He was so much older that by the time I was in first grade, he was already in college. So, it was interesting, but it wasn’t like a regular little buddy brother.

MJC:  So, you graduated from the Latin School, and then what happened?

BF:  Then I went to Vassar College and managed to do really well there. I enjoyed it a lot. I made some Jewish friends; I’m not trying to skew this that way, just so you know. My consciousness was being formed in those years, and I very much enjoyed Vassar. We may not get to it, but I just want you to know that in 2022, I won the Spirit of Vassar Award out of 49,000 alums. I’m very proud of that award, and of my days at Vassar, which were really wonderful and enlightening.  There were many, many fields of interest that I developed.

I was a math major, minored in economics and Russian, and had a class in constitutional law Mr. Post taught. I was very impressed by that, and decided I should go to law school, despite my father, who was a lawyer, suggesting that I not be a lawyer. It was too hard and too something. But I defied that, and I went on to get into and go to Harvard Law School in the class of ’69.

MJC:  Excellent. Was there any women’s movement involvement at Vassar, women’s rights involvement?

BF:  Well, you have to remember that I graduated from Vassar in ’66. I wish I had been aware of the Civil Rights Act during those last years that I was a Vassar. I really wasn’t very aware of it. Vassar was all women, and it was, in that sense, a fake environment. Because I felt I could do anything, and be anything, and I didn’t have any compunctions. I know I spoke in class a lot. I had a lot of questions. I was a math major. I was always active. I did go on weekends to Yale and Dartmouth and who knows where else on busses they provided. But Harvard Law School was really the beginning, for me, of feminism. It was completely opposite from Vassar, and so hostile to women, that I’ve written what seems like volumes on the subject. It’s just frightening how bad it was.

MJC:  So that would have been?

BF:  ’66. In the fall of ’66, I started. I can give you some examples.

MJC:  How many women were in the class?

BF:  32 women out of a class of 565. So, it was less than 6%. I would be sitting in a class and I didn’t see any other women. They had five sections and it was very hard to even know there were other women around. They didn’t call on us. The Socratic Method at Harvard is for the professor to ask a question, and get an answer and then a back and forth with the professor. I think they thought that we would fall apart with that process, so, they reserved a day just for us, women.

In criminal law it was the day that we were discussing rape and, “How much penetration constitutes rape?” That was the question they put to the women in the class. In contracts, it was, “If an engagement is broken off, what happens to the ring?” All tantalizing questions, but nonetheless reserved for women; no other days were. It was just a very hard environment

I had a mind-blowing experience in constitutional law. Paul Freund was the most eminent constitutional law professor in the country, and we were discussing a case that involved Michigan barmaids who were told that they had to have a husband or a brother in the bar at the time they were working. And the Supreme Court held that was perfectly legal for the state of Michigan where that was going on, to have that law.

Freund, the professor, thought it was a great opinion. I was furious, and I stood up and I really gave it to him, except that the entire class laughed at me for that. I left that class in tears of rage.  And that was really the beginning as a conscious feminist, that I wasn’t going to take it. I was furious. And so, things proceeded from there.  That was 57 years ago!

To skip to ’69 when I got a call from Betty Friedan and Lucy Commissar, asking me if I would run for National Legislative Vice-President of NOW. They said they didn’t have any other feminist lawyers and they needed one. And so, I did. I believe you were around in those days. I did. I ran. I won. And that positioned me inside NOW.

MJC:  Do you remember how they knew about you? How did they find you?

BF:  I have no idea. I don’t know. That’s an excellent question that I never had the courage to ask. I don’t know because there was nothing publicized about any of what I was doing at Harvard. So, I don’t know. I should have asked.

MJC:  So that was your beginnings of official feminism, where you were in an actual organization?

BF:  Yes, that’s right. Let me skip back for a minute to 1965, when I was interning for Senator Birch Bayh from Indiana, working on the constitutional amendment that would give18-year-olds the vote. I got along well with him, and so, in the spring of 1970 he called me up. It could have been late ’69, whatever it was, and said, “Would you organize the pro testimony for the Equal Rights Amendment for the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments?” And I said, “Well, sure,” not really knowing much of anything, but just happy to do that. And he said, “And can you get well-known people to do this, too?” And I said, “I’ll try.”

I had been at a party at my brother’s gallery. He was an art dealer, and I had seen Gloria Steinem there. I hadn’t really met her, but I asked Richard, my brother, for her phone number. I called her on the phone. I said, “Will you testify?” And she said, “Well, I have no idea what to say, but if you write my testimony, I will.” So, I did, and I think it was May 7th of 1970, I met her in Birch Bayh’s senate office, where we were getting ourselves together to testify minutes later, and that was the beginning of my sort of more public appearance in the world.

And then other things happened shortly thereafter that were confirming, and affirming, of that decision by me to get out there. I remember when I testified in the senate, I said, “I’m speaking on behalf of all women when I demand equality.” I mean, I’ve literally had no fear of being outspoken, and I feel that way now about a bunch of issues. I’m just saying it. I’m speaking on behalf of women a lot of the time, and they may not even know it, or care, but I am.

MJC:  That was wonderful. That was the Equal Rights Amendment. And tell listeners, what happened to the Equal Rights Amendment out of that experience. What happened to it? The ERA. The congressional part. You testified at the hearing, and then the congress.

BF:  Yes. So, the senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment out of the subcommittee, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” That’s the Equal Rights Amendment. That passed with, I think it was seven years; a seven-year-period in which the states had to ratify. And so, both houses of Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment through, and out it went to the states.

That basically began, just to make it personal for a second, my career debating Phyllis Schlafly all over, everywhere. She was a nightmare. Nobody else wanted to confront her and I was out there everywhere. She was horrible. I mean, she lied, she made up cases that didn’t exist. It was really, nothing good that I can possibly say about that. Not even a word about that can I say.

One time, we went on, I guess it was CBS, and it was a big evening on television. We were talking about the Equal Rights Amendment, and she had this huge cross on her chest. It was really huge. And she was facing the cameras. Even though she was talking to me, she was facing the cameras and sticking out her cross. I found that extremely offensive. She wouldn’t look at me while she was talking, and there she was, sort of showing exactly how she behaved to the world. And that subsequently, got interpreted in “Mrs. America,” the show that you probably have seen. It was quite a scene.

MJC:  And it was quite a scene. It was quite a scene because I was in Illinois, too. So, Phyllis Schlafly was more a part of our lives than we would have hoped for.

BF:  Were you in southern Illinois or Chicago?

MJC:  Chicago. I was born in Wisconsin. I came to Chicago in ’68. I was in Chicago, working on the ERA with Chicago NOW. So, you were with Bayh, and then what did you do? What was your next opportunity?

BF:  Well, I had a job at a law firm which I wasn’t really enjoying, but I was doing it. And by this time, I was married. Gloria and I became friends. She asked me to go to Vassar with her because she was giving the commencement address in June of 1970. We had just met in May. So, I said, “Sure” and off I went to Poughkeepsie with her, and proceeded to get into a fight.

We had stayed overnight in the president’s house. The morning of the commencement address, we were having breakfast in the president’s dining room, and one of the other guests was Kingman Brewster, who was the president of Yale. And he started in saying that if Vassar merged with Yale, there would be no more than 25% female faculty. He was adamant. I had another fit. I thought that was outrageous. It was terrible, and I gave it to him. Anyway, that happened, and then her speech took place.

After that, the president had invited us to his garden for a reception after the commencement address, and I saw my friend and former art history professor, Linda Nochlin, in that garden of the president’s house. And I went up to her and I said, “Linda, why have there been no great women artists?” That’s a statement that I was quoting directly from my brother: “There have been no great women artists.” And she said, “Hmmm…. Well let me think about that.” That was in June of 1970. In January of 1971, six months later, came the article, “Why Have There Been no Great Women Artists?” It was the cover story of Art News Magazine, and that subject became her career for the rest of her life.

I’ll just say that a couple of years ago, I noticed that Christian Dior was selling a t-shirt that had, “Why have there been no great women artists?” emblazoned on the front of it. And I thought, “Hey, that’s my question.” So, I called Christian Dior’s president, and I said, “Could I please have one?” Oh, and they were selling for $894 dollars.

MJC:  Oh, my God.

BF:  I said, “Could I please?” She said, “No, you may not have one.” So, I proceeded to find a t-shirt that looked like theirs, tan with black stripes, and I took it to a place that does lettering, and I had it copied exactly the way Christian Dior did and I’ve been wearing that around. I mean, these things just drive me crazy. So, anyway, Linda made a huge mark on the art world, and on women artists and women in general, with her work on how women were kept down and not exposed to anything that male artists were, and so couldn’t make “great art.” That’s a whole other world that I’m not very familiar with, except to say that I started it with that question. And by this time, as you know, I was running around for the Equal Rights Amendment.

MJC:  Can I just comment that it underscores, and tells our audience, how much there was an explosion of this question in every area of American life.

BF:  Which question are you talking about?

MJC:  The question of where women fit in all aspects of American life.

BF:  Absolutely. If I had known how bad it was, I would have been more outspoken. Outspoken more loudly and more fully. But it was gradually dawning on me that I really had to speak up, and that really kind of defined all the rest of my life. I mean, in that same year, I realized that NOW, no offense, but NOW was focusing its energy on the Equal Rights Amendment, and on abortion. And I knew that there were issues that women at the local level would relate to even more than those two big issues, because those are pretty theoretical for most women. Even abortion is more theoretical, unfortunately.

So, I went to Gloria, and I said, “Listen, I think we should start something that addresses women at the local level.” She said, “Yes, I guess that’s right.” So, we started something called the Women’s Action Alliance. All of this is compressed; I mean, it took months. We started something called the Women’s Action Alliance, which my then husband got a 501(c)(3) status for, so we could get donations that would be tax exempt.

We had this idea at that point, that we needed a newsletter to tell women what other women were doing all over, everywhere, and what was going on. Gloria thought it ought to be a newsletter. I said, “No, you’re too well known. We ought to do a slick magazine.”

So, we ended up inviting every woman journalist and writer we could think of in New York City or anywhere else, first to her apartment and then to my apartment. The whole place was just overflowing with women who didn’t feel their work was getting represented or accepted or anything by the main major women’s magazines. And the answer was, yes, they wanted it, they would write for it, and so forth. And that was really the beginning of Ms. Magazine.

We decided that was going to happen. We’re now up to December of 1971, and then I got a call from the ACLU’s legal director, Mel Wolf, asking me if I would be interested in directing, with then Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the newly forming Women’s Rights Project that they thought we should be getting off the ground. I said, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve just started this magazine.” But I said, “Give me three weeks” because literally, we’d just had a press conference, and it was announced in the Washington Post, everything. I talked to Gloria, and I thought about it, and I decided I should leave the magazine and go work with Ruth. So, I did, and it was extraordinary.

MJC:  Do you want to say anything more about the founding of Ms. or who took it over after you left, or anything about that?

BF:  Well, there was a big, huge fight with somebody named Betty Harris who came along. I knew Dick Goodwin, and he said he knew this woman who was interested in magazines. Anyway, she got involved – that was a mess. By this time, Pat Carbine was also involved, and they paid Betty off to get her out of there. And then, I wrote an article for the first issue called, “Rating the Candidates: Between McGovern and McCarthy” with another person.

And then I, two years later, three years later, wrote the cover story (July 1973) that had Billie Jean [King] on the cover. The title of which was, “Giving Women a Sporting Chance.” So, I met Billie Jean, I talked to her. I said, “What if you played against the men?” She was number one in the world, and she said, “I’d come in 25th or 50th, which is realistic, given testosterone.” I didn’t really do much more with the magazine. I was just working hard at the ACLU by this time.

MJC:  But you gave it a good start. So, good for you. And it made its position known then. It had a great impact on the women’s movement. So, let’s talk about the ACLU and working on the Women’s Rights Project.

BF:  Well, I hadn’t met Ruth when I took the job but I knew about her a little bit. She wasn’t that well known. She was a professor of law at Rutgers, but I got to know her. She was the kind of person who, like me now, would not go into the office early. She would call me at about 11:00 in the morning. I was in the office, she’d call, I’d say, “Hi, Ruth, how are you?” She would say, “Brenda, have you read the Advance Sheets yet?” Ruth was not someone for small talk or chatter. She just wasn’t. And it was an extraordinary experience.

For example, the first case that I worked on with her, actually, the first case that we took, was the Frontiero v. Richardson case. I don’t know if you’re familiar with any of this. Sharron Frontiero was an air force lieutenant who had a husband, and the husband was not being given the same benefits that wives of male lieutenants were automatically afforded. So, we took the case. It was on its way to the Supreme Court, which is the way it usually works, it does work, when you have a national project like ours. There were lawyers all over the country who were basically functioning, I’d say, under, but with us, to take cases.

So, this case was not an ACLU case. It was a Southern Poverty Law Center case that this lawyer, Joe Levin had, and it was going up to the Court. The

Court had accepted the case. I think Ruth kind of worried about that, because it could have made bad law. Who knows what it would have done? So, we wrote an amicus brief. It was absolutely brilliant, and it was using quotes from Elizabeth Cady Stanton. From the Declaration of Sentiments, all the way through women’s history up to that time.  It was both poetic, and extremely important. I mean, really made people understand.

The brief was so good that the lawyer, Joe Levin, asked us if we would write the joint reply brief, and then the government came in defending their position that husbands should get less than wives.

In the process of an earlier case that Ruth and her husband, Marty, took to the 11^th Circuit, the government listed all of the federal statutes that would have to change if this case were accepted and approved, because then men and women had to be treated equally under federal law. That case involved a single man who was being denied social security benefits to help care for his elderly mother, benefits that were given to all female adult children and married men.  That list turned out to be very useful to us.

Anyway, we ended up writing a joint reply brief that was also brilliant. And then my task was to talk to Joe Levin about getting Ruth some time to argue the case even though it was his case. She had not argued in the court before, she had just co-written a brief in the Reed case, before our project started.

He agreed. I think I got her twelve minutes out of his 30. It was a negotiation, and it was not simple. Ruth proceeded to prepare for that for several months. Finally, we went to Washington, were escorted through the Supreme Court building which is extraordinary with all the white male busts of old white men, and we’re led into the hearing room of the Supreme Court, and [I’m] seated at the council table with her.

I had all these huge law books because I thought she might – and she wanted me to have them – need the cites for cases she would be speaking about. When it came to her turn, she did not need a single cite. She had every single thing memorized and was just positively so brilliant that nobody on the court asked her a single question or interrupted her. And as you know, that’s unusual. It was just an extraordinary oral argument.

After which, I couldn’t tell, she couldn’t tell either, what they were doing because they didn’t say anything. We couldn’t tell if they liked it or hated it. We didn’t know. After that argument, when the hearing was over, Marty Ginsburg, her husband, came up to me and said, “Would you please see that Ruth,” after he congratulated her, “Would you please see that Ruth gets home okay because I have to stay in Washington.” He was a tax lawyer. And so, I said, “Sure.” I got Ruth on the shuttle and off we went back to New York.

Subsequent to that, we heard from the Court that we had won, in a major, major decision. What we really, really wanted, was not just that it was discrimination, but we wanted the standard of review to be as strict, as what’s applied to race discrimination cases. And all we got was, this isn’t good and it’s discrimination. And so, the next cases that she took she kept asking that the court apply a strict standard of review.  This all took a while, and by the time we get to 1974, I’m pregnant, I’m thinking of leaving because I was making $18,000 a year and that really doesn’t, even in those days, allow for the fact that you have to support yourself and your baby.

After I left, as you may know, I wrote several tributes to Ruth after she died. I’ve analyzed the cases that she worked on, and argued, and briefed, and they were all brilliant; most went to the issue of the standard of review. Which, just to cut many years forward, we didn’t really get the exact level that we wanted until 1993 when she was on the Court. And in the VMI case, the Virginia Military Institute case, which was a military institute just for boys, the Commonwealth of Virginia did not allow women into that military institute.

Ruth wrote the decision for the Court, the majority opinion, saying, that that doesn’t work, and that there has to be an “exceedingly persuasive justification for any discrimination on the basis of sex to continue.” So, that now is the standard, and it was a total victory, 19 or 20 years after the Frontiero case. So, that’s what happened in that vein. It was a wonderful time in my life for having these partners, if I can put it that way, who were really changing, as far as I’m concerned, changing the world.

MJC:  Definitely, yes. So, you had the baby and found another job, I would assume.

BF:  I started my own firm with my husband. It was called Fasteau and Feigen. We just took a bunch of cases. One of which was actually important. It was a guy who was a teacher in a public school in Brooklyn. He wanted to take a parental leave of absence for his upcoming baby, and he wasn’t allowed to. We took the case and we won it. Fathers were entitled to get parental leaves of absence.

MJC:  Those were all groundbreaking cases, one after another.

BF:  I just wanted to mention one other groundbreaking case, and nothing to do with anybody else but me, and my colleagues in this. When I got married at the Harvard Club in 1968, I was walking through the halls of the Harvard Club in my wedding gown, when I saw a sign in the library of the Harvard Club of New York City that said, “No Ladies Allowed.” I was furious. I’m on my way to get married. I couldn’t believe it. Because this is Harvard University. I had just graduated from there.

And I, five years later, in 1973, with three colleagues, brought a four-pronged class action lawsuit against the Harvard Club of New York City, demanding that they let women graduates of Harvard join the club just the way men graduates could. And the night before the hearing in the federal district court, the judge called us all in, and the man defending the club pleaded with him, “Can’t we please keep the bar male only?”

The judge turned to me and said, “What do you have to say?” I said, “Absolutely not.” So, he said to them, “Okay, what do you have to say?” And they caved. So, the Harvard Club of New York City started to admit women, despite the fact that it has books in its rooms describing a completely different emergence of women in their membership.

MJC:  Well, that’s why we have to set the record straight, Brenda.

BF:  That’s what we do. I keep setting the record straight. I try to make the record, and then set it straight, but whatever.

MJC:  Right, so that was your wedding. So, even on your wedding day, you had to fight sexism. I love it.

BF:  Right. I didn’t do much that day except look at the sign and feel appalled, and then proceeded five years later to bring the lawsuit.

MJC:  Just think of how many people looked at that sign and did nothing.

BF:  That’s exactly right. Precisely right.

MJC:  That’s the difference. All right, so now that we got the Harvard Club under control, so now what’s next? You and your husband have the law firm now, and so, some of the cases you’re taking also have to do with sexism. Would that be fair to say?

BF:  Yes. None of them as groundbreaking as what I was working on with Ruth, you know, going to the Supreme Court. I mean, that’s a big deal. Let me just think if there’s anything, if there’s any milestone that you would be interested in. I mean, give me any examples of what you might think.

MJC:  Well, anything that challenged the segregation of women or the non-participation of women is of interest to a history of feminism, I think. So, anything that jumps into your mind that falls into that category. I think part of the story in working on this for five years, it’s so obvious that every corner, of every place, had to be examined. Because there was sexism from the time you were born, until you laid your head down. There was something wrong with how women were treated in every aspect of American life.

BF:  Absolutely. I have pictures of myself in marches for abortion in 1990 and 1991. Let me mention Roe now, okay, I’ve got to get into Roe. We had nothing whatsoever to do with Roe. Nothing. It was 1973. The decision came down, and even though we were happy that women were being afforded the limited right to get abortions, Ruth and I both did not like the way the court approached that case, because the decision was all about the trimester breakdown of pregnancy.

And she was adamant, and I was, too, that it should have been decided on equality grounds. In other words, if men can do whatever they want with their bodies, so should women be able to. And I feel that passionately today, as I have throughout these years. So that decision was welcome, but it was complicated. So, there were marches in 1991, and Casey came up in ’92 or ’93.

MJC:  Would you just explain a little about Casey for this audience?

BF:  I really think that the point of it all was to reaffirm the right to abortion, but during that whole period there were questions about what the federal government should be responsible for, and not responsible for.  That the government could not place an undue burden on women seeking abortions.  So, Casey kind of affirmed the right of abortion. I had nothing to do with it, but I was happy that it was decided, and that’s that.

So, there were these marches, and then as I said, Ruth wrote the majority opinion in the Virginia Military Institute case. I just want to skip to the end for a second. Well, it’s not the end, but to 2017, to the big, huge, march around the world, after Donald Trump was elected president. I was here in Los Angeles.  We were at the march downtown.  It was so crowded we couldn’t move.  Later, when I got home I was watching television, and I learned there had been 750,000 people; there were signs of every kind. But everybody was there for the purpose of feminism.

I mean, Trump stood for everything that, he still does, that wasn’t good. And I came up with this notion in my brain that I subsequently committed to paper about a wheel of feminism, and how even though maybe Black Lives Matter isn’t my first issue, women’s rights may be my first issue, the climate is another important issue, antisemitism is another issue. I have a wheel with twelve spokes. I call it the wheel of feminism.

That came into play in my life, because; now I’m going back to 2000, I wrote a book called, Not One of the Boys, I happen to have it here. Not One of the Boys: Living Life as a Feminist, and this was published in 2000. The last chapter is dated in 2000, but I wrote a subsequent last chapter two years ago, in 2022, that has been published, only digitally and audibly. The book is also digital and audible, too. But anyway, the point is that this wheel of feminism is sort of governing what I’m thinking of as feminism, and then all of these issues that are important.

You can’t be a racist and be a feminist. You can’t think the environment isn’t in trouble, and be a feminist. And be an anti-semite and call yourself a feminist.  I think that feminism encompasses all of it. And the specific issues are specific to groups and people who care most about those, but affect all of us. So that’s my latest passion, to make people aware of the fact that there are issues that we have to care about, but we cannot put women second to anything. And some of the stuff that we’re hearing lately does put women second to other things and I don’t like that.

MJC:  Give us an example of how you’re thinking of that.

BF:  Yes, I can give you an example. I can go off on this, but I don’t really think I should. The whole trans movement is making it unclear, for example, what rights women have in gyms and locker rooms and prisons. Places that we’re supposed to be safe, or able to excel. And in sports, not have people like Lia Thomas who went through male puberty compete against girls and women.

So, I’m very concerned about that. There was a really good article in the New York Times, by Pamela Paul, who’s one of my heroes, who wrote about how dangerous puberty blockers are. And how much trouble kids are in who think they can choose their sex, and then many of them de-transition because it’s not as simple as it’s made to seem by the pharmaceutical and medical industries that make a huge amount of money from that whole entire process.

It was started by two very, very rich men. Gay, at the time, but anyway, rich men, who once the same sex marriage issues (about which I did a lot of writing and same sex other issues) were resolved in their minds, because the court basically resolved them, plunged a huge amount of money into this trend. I almost call it a cult, but I’ll try to be civilized; into this trend that has made a lot of people very sick and injured.

So that’s an example of something that people may think that I’m on the side of because of the LGTB everything, but I don’t accept that. Yes, for a few people. Some adults who feel they have to change their sex. That’s not my business. They should have equal rights, but not to trample on women’s rights.

MJC:  Okay, so that’s a current issue of the wheel that you’re talking about.

BF:  Yes, but I say, it’s a right. You shouldn’t be discriminated against because you were once a man and now you’re a woman. But you can’t assume or subsume women’s rights within that. And in a way, we have been, and are being, subsumed.

MJC:  It’s important to point out those distinctions. So, what other periods do we want to talk about after Roe? We’re missing a lot of your life in women’s rights politics. So, let’s go back and pick up some.

BF:  Maybe before I go back, I should go to Dobbs for a second, just because it squares that circle. The court decided a few years ago that women don’t have the federal right to have abortions and it’s up to the states. And so now there’s a huge hodgepodge of crazy restrictions and bans. And some states, like California and New York, allow abortion without all kinds of restrictions.  But it’s a mess.

I am disturbed by the fact that women have to leave their state and go get an abortion. The whole thing’s just a mess. And now we have to deal with everything, just getting the pills, whether they can control the post office, all of those different issues, including IVF treatments and the personhood of embryos, bother me enormously. And I think it’s an issue that we really have to look at.

MJC:  So, we have another generation, I guess two at least, down from our generation, who are really having to fight those battles again.

BF:  I think that’s good that they have to fight them.

MJC:  Any thoughts on the strategy?

BF:  Well, I just want to make sure you know that I am flattered to say that I have spoken to a number of groups of women, and I’m going to be speaking to Planned Parenthood next month. I have nothing but a positive reception, reaction to all of this. From young women. I was just honored to be asked to debate at the University of Cambridge in England. The question posed whether or not the American  Constitution is fit for purpose.  I took on some Brits who said it isn’t, but who are they to speak when there is no written constitution in Britain?!  Something called the Cambridge University Reproductive Rights Group also asked me to speak the night before the debate.

They had to turn people away at the door. All these young feminists, mostly women but there were some men, really eager to hear our story. My impression is that young women are really getting it, and they call themselves feminists. This goes back to what I was saying about the march in 2017, with everybody from everywhere being there. It became fashionable to call yourself a feminist.

MJC:  Do you think that the Trump election was a change moment for us?

BF:  Absolutely a change moment. I mean, I think it settled in with the 2017 march. But we were getting ready for that the minute that horrible creature was elected. And I think it stayed. You can see it with women. I mean, Taylor Swift calls herself a feminist. All these people are feminists now. Nobody’s saying I’m not feminist.

MJC:  No holding back.

BF:  Nothing’s holding them back. And they get it about abortion. Certainly, if they didn’t understand anything else before that, they certainly understand abortion. And if you watched the Grammys, which I did, all the women that were celebrated, more than men. And it was wonderful, right?

MJC:  It was wonderful. So, are you hopeful for the future based on what you’re observing, or how are you thinking about it?

BF:  I’m very hopeful, but I’m a perpetual optimist, so I don’t want to sound like there’s something new that has happened to me. I do feel like women have to keep on asserting themselves everywhere, all the time. There still are way too many women who defer to their husbands, or other men in their lives, in weird ways, that I just think is so dated I can’t even believe it. But they do defer. It would be okay if it were mutual deferring going on. It’s not that they’re accepting second place, but they’re letting the men sort of speak up first and take positions first.

But when it comes to abortion or the Equal Rights Amendment, which they seem to be still talking about, they get that they have to be aware of their own rights. I mean, I can just say going back I don’t know how many years now in the Equal Rights Amendment history, that after the VMI case and Ruth’s decision about what I said earlier about how she ruled in that VMI case, that there has to be a really strong, really powerfully strong reason, for any kind of distinction on the basis of sex. I think women are getting it.

I am not able to say I think we ought to keep fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment. I just don’t feel that way. One of the reasons I feel that that’s true, is that right now, you can still have affirmative action for women. You can still have women’s prisons and women’s whatever. And I’m not positive if the Equal Rights Amendment were to be ratified, what would happen?

Even though I, myself, argued all over the country that if the Equal Rights Amendment were to pass back in 1972, or whatever it was, I was positive we would be able to have women’s prisons and keep bathrooms separate. But I feel like now, I’m not sure what point would be reinforced. It would worry me. So, I’m not a fan of that movement for the Equal Rights Amendment. I’m just not. Even though it was my sole, most important issue, for about a decade.

MJC:  Do you think that the proponents are overstating what good it would do for women? Is that what you’re thinking?

BF:  I don’t think they know. I think very few people are familiar with the majority opinion in the VMI case, so they think we need the Equal Rights Amendment legally or constitutionally, when I do not feel that way. I think we have what we started out wanting with the Equal Rights Amendment, and I’m afraid that it might cause more chaos.

MJC:  This is a very important point. Could you just explain why you think the VMI case is sufficient for basic equality for women? I would really appreciate that.

BF:  Her language was “exceedingly persuasive.” There has to be an exceedingly persuasive justification for distinctions based on sex to exist in the laws, or through our state or federal government. And as far as I’m concerned, legally and constitutionally, that is all we need. The exceedingly persuasive standard is one that is backed up with case law. It’s not something she came up with in her brain, all brand new. So, the question then is, do we want the Equal Rights Amendment to be up with that constitutionally? Even Ruth said it would be symbolically important. It would be very nice to have the Equal Rights Amendment so that women understand that they are entitled to equal rights.

My only concern, and I recognize the importance of that, and so I guess if it were right here and I had a choice between yes or no, I would push yes, let’s have it. But I feel like there is a possible problem with it that I’m not able to parse, because we already have her standard in this case. I have no idea what would happen to trans rights versus women’s rights with the Equal Rights Amendment by the way; just as a total footnote on that.

I just feel like it’s confusing enough with this Supreme Court to worry that they would find some way to do something that women wouldn’t like. I may be wrong about this, but I don’t want to upset this particular apple cart, because I don’t trust this Court. I believe that the symbolism should be made clear in every way we possibly can, but maybe not tinkering with the Constitution.

The 14th amendment, under which she wrote that decision, the equal protection clause, is a very, very powerful clause in the 14th amendment. As long as it’s interpreted the way Ruth interpreted it.  The “exceedingly persuasive justification” is what the standard is. I think it’s kind of important not to fiddle around with it. I mean, would I feel that it would help with abortion? I don’t think so. I don’t think they’re on the same track, nor have they ever been. They haven’t been.

I mean, people used to say the Equal Rights Amendment would help with abortion. From a constitutional point of view, I’m afraid I don’t see that. Let me rephrase that. Roe, should have been decided on equality principles. It wasn’t. Then along came Dobbs and it made a big mess. But we don’t have the Equal Protection  Clause of the 14th Amendment involved with abortion in any right way, and that’s where I get concerned. I know I’m being confusing and I don’t know how to make it simple, but I’m just saying what my own gut tells me.

MJC:  Well, I think you’re raising very critical and important issues that I wish were in the public debate a little more. So, thank you for doing that.

BF:  I would like to have more debates about this by the way. I think it would be very helpful for people to discuss this publicly. I don’t mean going back to what I went through with Phyllis Schlafly, that was a nightmare. I was the one who was out there with her. I mean, Gloria doesn’t believe in confrontation, which I think is silly, but anyway, I sat there having to take the attacks from Schlafly.

MJC:  I mean, her last thing that she did on earth practically, was endorsing Trump. To put her in the political context, which I think there needs to be even more discussion about. Ironically, I think as a powerful woman, she doesn’t get the credit she deserves in the Right, for the harm she did. I mean, she’s a much more powerful political figure than she’s given credit for. Then Ronald Reagan gets the credit, but she deserves a lot of the credit for the harm that was done, I think.

BF:  I love the way you use the word credit. Did you see Mrs. America? Because that’s been an interesting moment. It depicted Schlafly the way she really was. Cate Blanchett did a wonderful job, I thought. And also, as a footnote on this, got a lot of people, women in particular, to be aware of our movement and to appreciate it. Which may sound counterintuitive, but it really was. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on that, including a disagreement with Gloria over that by the way, but that’s a whole other discussion.

MJC:  I agree with you. I think the pandemic sort of came at the time right after that was shown. Lots of people had approached me about discussing it, and then none of that happened because of the pandemic. And I think that she deserves, and her role in creating the Right in this country deserves, way more discussion than it’s ever gotten.

BF:  You’re right. “Mrs. America” basically came out in May of 2020, and I was stunned that they had shown me. I did not know. They were basically using my book as the sort of structure of that entire show. I heard about it from my friend Lily Tomlin’s agent that something was going on, and I called Gloria. I said, “Do you know anything about this?” She said, “Well, I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anything.”

Anyway, it turns out she had actually seen a draft, and I was very angry that she hadn’t told me the truth. But that’s another discussion. The show itself was powerful in that it showed different people’s perspectives, and it showed sort of how much we had to do, and put up with, to get what we did get. So, I think we got a lot of attention from that.

MJC:  Maybe I should advocate for VFA to do a showing of it and get people together. Sounds like it would be fun.

BF:  Listen, I’m all for whatever gets people to be involved, and understand what was going on. Because it was accurate. There was nothing inaccurate about it. That’s the thing about it. You’re talking about Ronald Reagan. You saw her cozying up to Reagan.

MJC:  She was very important. I mean, there was sexism in the Republican party. She didn’t get her due, in a way, because she was a woman. But her power, just, the accuracy of history is very important, I think.

BF:  I agree with you. I mean, I disagreed with Gloria when she wrote that the focus should have been on the insurance industry. Yes, we were fighting the insurance industry but that wasn’t what was going on.

MJC:  It was the rise of the Right.  I mean we failed; failed is the wrong word. We were not fully in touch with the rise of the Right. But the Houston conference was the evidence. I mean, we had, what, 25,000 feminists at Houston, and they had 20,000 people down the block? They had 20,000 antifeminists, and I don’t think we totally got it at that time.

BF:  No, we just were glad they weren’t invading our hall, and I’m still glad of that. But that was a very important moment in Houston.

MJC:  It was. It’s another whole topic. But this is about you, and I want to go back and make sure that we have covered your major accomplishments, which I’m not sure we have. Let me ask it differently. When you think about the major changes you were a part of, have you talked about all of those policies or work that you did, or are there things you haven’t yet discussed in this interview?

BF:  I mean, just so you know, I slaved with the help of Joanne and a couple of other people on my new website. It’s www.brendafeigen.com, and it has aspects of me from lawyer, to author, to producer. I produced the movie called NAVY SEALS. I can mention that. In 1990.

MJC:  Okay, how did that happen? How did you happen to get into, in addition to law, into the movie making business? Maybe you could talk about that.

BF:  Well, I got into the Business Affairs Department of William Morris Agency in 1982 after my own firm. And I said to the president of the agency, who said he was hiring me, that, “I really wanted to become an agent, not just in business affairs” which is legal stuff. So, after a year, I became a motion picture agent. And in that capacity, had a writer client who came to me with a script that he had written with a partner.

The script was about Nazi U-boats off Cuba chasing them. I met his partner, who I thought seemed very, very interesting. Anyway, the partner turned out to be a Navy SEAL, which I had never heard of. Nobody had ever heard of them in those days. And I said, “You know, Chuck;” he had written a screenplay and I knew he could write, “Why don’t you basically leave the SEALs, write a screenplay, and I’ll leave William Morris and produce the movie?” That’s what happened.

I ended up getting the movie set up at Orion Pictures. And so, in 1990, after a huge turmoil which I will tell you in a minute, the movie came out. Prior to that, we had gone through hell trying to get a director, and the stars were falling into place. The first director we had, dropped dead of a heart attack. The next director, Lewis Teague, was engaged by Orion because they needed to hurry up and make the movie for financial reasons. Lewis Teague was a monster. He actually told me that if I went on location with the production, he would quit. He did not want a woman around. I mean, these things come up in my life.

So, I went to the head of the studio, and he said, “Well, you better do it. You have to get the movie made.” So, I was told, on my own movie, I couldn’t go to the locations in Spain; there were a bunch of different locations. I spent my time on the music end of it, because there had to be music in the movie. Anyway, that was an eye-opening experience. My colleague that I’ve just been working with said, “You really ought to write a book on women in Hollywood. It’s so terrible there.” And it is. Every single kind of discrimination I have witnessed here and there, when I was in New York. It’s really disgusting.

The movie came out and did pretty well, and I was very proud of the fact that it was my idea with Chuck. And I got to know these Navy SEALs who are really quite extraordinary as people. They are very highly trained. You have to understand, you can’t be more well trained. And they are brilliant, or they wouldn’t be able to survive. Because you have to be able to use your brains if you’re going to be, I don’t know, swimming under everything. I was very impressed by these guys. Even though they may be deemed macho, they’re not sexist because they’re so together with themselves that they don’t feel the need to put women down, unlike other men, who are just weak in comparison.

That’s opened my eyes to the kinds of men that are receptive to women’s rights. As opposed to men that feel threatened by women and are always just dismissive, or nasty, or totally sexist in every which way. So, I learned a lot from making that movie. And while I was sort of toiling in Hollywood…. For example, we have been trying to get a movie made about the suffragists, Susan B. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for years. Whether it’s a movie, we have Joanne Parrent, my partner; and she was also by the way, an active feminist in Michigan when all of this was going on.

MJC:  So maybe we should talk to her as well.

BF:  You should. It’s completely different. I mean, she grew up in Detroit and had a different kind of life from mine but is a very talented writer, and now has her own private investigation company. But anyway, she’s written these scripts, and we’ve tried to get them made. We’ve talked to Meryl, we’ve talked to Lily; Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner are very good friends of ours. And we’ve been talking to them about getting a movie or television series off the ground about these extraordinary women.

Right now, the news on our front, is that we are planning now on doing a musical about them. Suffs that just came out is about the passage of the 19th amendment, which focuses on basically, the 20th century. We’re talking about 50 years before that, when Elizabeth wrote her Declaration of Sentiments. Joanne is just the expert on this stuff, and therefore, she can draw a parallel from that to this.

I’ve learned a huge amount from her about this. You know, we didn’t just spring full blown from nowhere. We had a lot of consciousness about the Declaration itself. In fact, Ruth, in the brief I was talking about, the Frontiero brief that I mentioned, quotes from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments. She quotes from Sojourner Truth about, Ain’t I a Woman? I mean, it’s a brilliant brief. It’s thought to be literature, not just a Supreme Court brief. So, all these things come together in my scattered life. From Navy SEALs to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in one paragraph, I just took you.

MJC:  I would say, someone should write a book about men in the way you’re describing them, because I think that’s a discussion that needs to happen, too, about the men who are feminists. That would be good.

BF:  Yes. I mean, my husband at the time, Marc Fasteau, wrote a book called, The Male Machine, which was published in ’74 and went into all of this about how important it is for men to be feminists, and what’s in it for them to be feminists. And the SEALs are. I mean, it sounds weird, but they really are. It’s amazing how these strong men…, you can spot them a mile away.

MJC:  Yes, that’s good. So, Brenda, what are we missing here?

BF:  Well, I guess you referred earlier to the business about having been married to a man and now being married to a woman.

MJC:  Right. You want to discuss that a little bit? Do you want to discuss that transition in your life and how that happened?

BF:  Yes. I don’t have to go into detail. I feel like it was sort of in the air in New York in the early ’70s. You know, people were saying, “Why am I leaving out half the human race?” I was playing softball on the Ms. team, and Rita Mae Brown was buzzing around and brought me a corsage and was really coming on very strong. I was receptive to it, let me put it like that. And so, after that foray into whatever, I ended up having a couple of relationships.

My marriage was by this time going to be doomed because it was clear to me that I was more interested in relationships with women. I mean, Marc and I were very close. I can’t even say anything negative about him other than that, I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it. But be that as it may, it just did not continue to work out. And so, I had some different relationships with women in New York. I finally got out of New York and came here, and didn’t know anyone.

MJC:  What brought you to California? Was it the movie?

BF:  The movie. I had to get out here because it was in pre-production and so I came out. My daughter had been at Dalton in New York, and then she decided she wanted to go to boarding school out here. So, she went to Thacher in Ojai, California. And I was wondering, “I don’t know if I’m really here; I thought I was just coming for the movie.” I, however, got a place. And then she decided not only to be at boarding school in Ojai, but she would be at college at Berkeley, and then subsequent to that, at Berkeley’s law school. So, she moved herself with me, basically.

At the beginning I was here and I didn’t know anybody. I was having lunch with my friend Robin Morgan in New York and I said, “Do you know anyone out there? I don’t know anybody.” And she said, “Well,” and she ran to her window and said, “Here, I have this friend.” And she showed me this really dorky looking person, and then this really attractive one, and it was the same person. It was just Joanne morphed from being in Detroit to having come out to Los Angeles.

So, she said, “Here, maybe you’ll be friends at least.” So, she gave me her number. I called her. Six days later we had dinner and that’s basically been it. I mean, that was in 1992. We’re different in so many ways, but in many ways, we share all kinds of interests. And this passion for getting our stories told, if you have any friends or people that are interested in seeing the stories told, we really need help to get this whole thing to fruition.

MJC:  You’re talking about the suffrage movie? The movie about the suffrage people?

BF:  Movie or television series. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’m hoping that we will be able to produce this musical that we’ve now morphed it into. That will be different because it’s a musical, but it’s something that we feel so strongly about. There can’t be too many stories about extraordinary women. There just can’t.

MJC:  Right. Exactly. Now, would you tell me Joanne’s last name, please? So we have it correct?

BF:  It’s Parrent. Like mother and father with two r’s. P-A-R-R-E-N-T.

MJC:  Okay, good. Wonderful.

BF:  Subsequently, just recently, I just want to say that I have written tributes to Ruth in both the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review right after she died in, if memory serves, September of 2020. So, they were published and I was pleased that they were. The Columbia Law Review article was really quite comprehensive about her and her contribution and everything that anybody could possibly want to know about the law and women as she impacted it, which was huge. Nobody did it better.

I spent a lot of time on same sex rights. I have pictures of myself descending the Supreme Court’s steps after a hearing. I mean, I was her guest at almost all of the hearings and decisions, opinions, during that whole period. And, yes, it’s cool. And then there’s my last chapter that I care a lot about. I want people to read my last chapter, because the book has a last chapter, but it’s not the last chapter which I finished 24 years ago.  The new last chapter I wrote in 2022.

MJC:  Right, this is the updated version of your book, right?

BF:  Yes. The digital version and the audible version have everything. Have it right. The hardcover, which is hard to get, is lacking the update of 2022.

MJC:  Okay, now tell me that name again, just so I have it right here. The name of the book?

BF:  Not One of the Boys: Living Life as a Feminist. Published by Knopf, and then in the digital and audible versions, by Random House.

MJC:  Okay, good. So, is there anything that we haven’t talked about, or that you want particularly for people to think of you as part of your contribution, or as an important contribution to the women’s movement?

BF:  Well, I care that people know how hard I’ve fought and how hard everybody has to keep fighting. I mean, I don’t think people can just sit and rest on our laurels. There’s always something, and right now, there’s a lot. Because from abortion, as I think I indicated, I’ve been invited to speak to a big, huge Planned Parenthood luncheon in March. And the trouble is that all I have to say is, “No bans. No restrictions on abortion at all. Nothing. Leave it up to the woman.” That’s the end of it. So, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say. I’ll have to waft into other areas of feminism.

It’s so important that we not fall for these schemes of trimester divisions. I mean, a good friend of mine who was in my class at Harvard Law School, actually was Justice Blackman’s clerk and wrote the Roe opinion with him. And I was proud that I knew him. But now I’m thinking, and I was thinking then, too, “Why did they come up with a legislative scheme that has no place in a Supreme Court opinion?” And that’s what Ruth was saying as well.

MJC:  Interesting. Very interesting. Well, I thank you so much for this time. And, of course, all you’ve done all your life and will continue to do.

CONTINUATION OF INTERVIEW

MJC:  All right, Brenda, we’re going to resume our interview. Nice to see you. Let’s talk about politics.

BF:  Okay, I will. First of all, as you know, the National Women’s Political Caucus was founded in 1971. I went to an advisory committee meeting because they hadn’t yet begun. And the purpose of that organization was to try to get more, preferably Democratic, women who supported choice, and there was a lot of interest. At the first advisory committee meeting, I was sitting there with a Black friend of mine who was also in local politics, and I noticed that the youngest person on the policy council was Gloria Steinem, who was (and         is) ten years older than I was. That would mean she was about 37 to my 27. Barbara Galopter (sp?) was the name of the friend of mine who was younger, like I am.

I can’t remember if I made a proposal or whether I just said, “Wait a minute. You don’t have a good sampling of women because nobody here is under 35.” And so, with that, they decided to have a youth caucus. And it wasn’t just me and Barbara. It was a number of other people who were sitting in the hall who joined together, to create the youth caucus and elect two representatives from the youth caucus to be on the advisory board of the National Women’s Political Committee, and they elected me and Barbara. And so, we were then on the board with a number of other people you probably know the names of.

MJC:  Let’s clarify Barbara. Who’s Barbara?

BF: Barbara Galopter. I can’t remember what office she was running for, or had, but she was a local, I’m going to put it, politician, in New York State. Who was very smart, and deserved to be like I did, on the policy council. Because we were interested in politics and wanted to support women who were obviously eligible to be candidates and supported by the caucus. So, that was that year, but by 1972 we were cranking up for the Democratic National Convention. And that was an amazing experience.

We went to Miami which was where that took place. I flew on a plane with Gloria, who actually managed to get me over my fear of flying by promptly falling asleep every time we got on a plane. It didn’t matter how bouncy it was. I was scared, white knuckled, and she was sleeping. We got to Miami, and I think one of the very first meetings we had was with the McGovern people. There were two candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. But there was also a whole issue of Shirley Chisholm, which I want to get to in a second.

To the extent that I really wanted Shirley to be the candidate, I also, like other people, was practical enough to know that McGovern was more likely than Shirley to get the nomination — unfortunately. So, we were working on two fronts. One was supporting Shirley, and then the other was getting McGovern to have the right platform for his running, assuming that he would win the nomination.

We had a meeting. Gloria and I were at the meeting. I can’t remember who else except Shirley MacLaine, who was very tight with McGovern, and we made the case that he should adamantly support gay and lesbian rights; which is what it was called, gay and lesbian rights, as well as abortion. We seemed to be getting somewhere with abortion, but the gay and lesbian plank was getting lost in the shuffle.

Gloria asked McGovern, whom she knew, to call her, or asked through somebody, to have him call her at midnight in the room we were sharing. At about midnight, I decided to go downstairs – and this is in the hotel where we were all staying – to the floor where the platform committee was meeting. I got out of the elevator on that floor, which I think was the second or third floor.

Shirley MacLaine was standing there, and started to scream at me that, “You people will have us wanting to fuck goats.” I’ve never heard an expression like that in my life. No, it was worse. Fucking goats was her expression. She had accused us of wanting to have the right to fuck goats. Which was so grotesque, I couldn’t even believe it. (This encounter was later described in a NY Post report as “making love to lampposts!”) I then realized, that I wasn’t going to be able to get through to McGovern, because she was like Cerberus at the gate. I returned to our room, and I told Gloria that I doubted she was going to get a call from McGovern. It was just hopeless. That was that.

I have to now back up. When we were going to get ready to go to the convention, Gloria and I, and my husband Marc, and my brother Richard, and one other person; it could have been Barbara, I just can’t remember, decided to run as Chisholm candidates for the Convention. We ran, we were actively involved, we knew a lot of people on the Upper East Side, which was the district we were all in.  In order to be able to represent a district, you have to live in it, which is how it works for getting candidates selected at the Convention.

We ended up losing. Not by very much but losing to the McGovern delegation. That’s what we were doing in Miami. Focusing on McGovern, because Shirley Chisholm, who had become a friend of mine and whom I was very fond of, had not managed to get the nomination. So that was an issue that has a lot to do also with the question I have been asked sort of repeatedly over the last 50 years: “Were there any Black women in the women’s movement?” “Why weren’t there?”

And I keep saying, “Wait a minute. There was Shirley Chisholm, there was Eleanor Holmes Norton and many others,” these people I knew, and was friends with, and working with. So that’s a very myopic view of what was going on. Shirley was a very strong candidate, and I very much respected her. So that was that story.

So, the convention came and went. McGovern won, and off we went into the big order of politics. I just want to add now that I was inspired by this time to get interested in politics. Not quite yet, but by 1977, I had met Karen Burstein and Carol Bellamy, who were both Democratic state senators in New York. They were both leaving. I don’t know if they were termed out, or if they’d just been there long enough to need to go back to real work. They’re in the New York State Senate, and they persuaded me to run for the New York State Senate in 1977, which I did.

It was a really gruesomely hard experience. I managed to raise $38,000, which was a lot of money; it still is a lot of money. My opponent, William Woodward IV, whose family has a very colorful history of a mother who shot his father. She killed herself one way or the other, as did his older brother, so, it was a really messed up family.

And I was running against this guy who had so much money that he would put four lookalikes on each corner where the subway stops were in Manhattan. So, it would just be me, and then there were four of him, and a lot more people were being given flyers and told that they were meeting William Woodward IV.

I remember that we were in subway stations. I remember Marc straddling the two outer handrails to put a big poster of me up in the subway station near where we lived because we needed to get them someplace where the Woodward people wouldn’t tear them down, which they were doing regularly. Wherever I had a poster, they would tear the posters down. I don’t know that it warrants more attention, except that I lost with my $38,000 to his $500,000. And the reason we were both running is that Roy Goodman, the Republican from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, was terrible. He was doing nothing. He had been in the Senate for a long time, and it was a wildly important seat for New York state. I lost that.

MJC:  Did the Democrats win? Who won the general?

BF:  Roy Goodman. He paid apparently $600,000 to beat Woodward’s $500,000. It sounds low now, but it was a huge amount of money back in 1978, and it was terrifying. I should have said, and I’m sorry I neglected this part of my life, that right before this campaign, I decided that I wanted to get a degree in political theory from Columbia. So, a year before I ran for the state senate, I applied to Columbia, and I got into the PhD program, and there I was, doing very well.

I became a President’s Fellow in that year, which enabled me to take classes anywhere in the university for credit. That would have been for a PhD, but I was just too rambunctious and antsy, and I didn’t want to study all the time. So, I did then decide to go into politics, and that’s how I managed to meet these people. I had a lot of people who supported me.

I remember I was campaigning in a movie line. You know, you stand there and hand out brochures and leaflets as people go into the theater. Betty Dodson, who had some degree of celebrity herself, came along and helped me hand out brochures. She was a very sex positive feminist, all about sex. It was an amazing time. I lost that, and then I shortly thereafter changed my entire career and went into the movie business via the William Morris Agency.

MJC:  So how did that happen?

BF:  Well, I went to dinner with Gloria and this very big deal at Warner Brothers, and he said to me, “You know, you’re like me. You like to have a hundred things going on at one time. You should be an agent.” That sort of sank into my brain. I was kind of getting – I keep using the word antsy. I was kind of getting tired of the practice of law that Marc and I had developed, which was turning into mostly matrimonial, mostly representing men in custody cases.

I just didn’t feel like continuing in that vein and I thought the movie industry sounded interesting. And I, by this time, was interested in making movies and other television shows about women, and I thought this was a step toward that. It was a long step, but I ended up getting offered a job at the William Morris Agency as a business affairs lawyer. And I said, “Look,” to the president, “If I do that, I want to become an agent.” And he said, “Okay, I’ll give you a year in business affairs and then you can become an agent.”

So, I did, and a year later, I became an agent at William Morris. And that’s when one of the more to me, horrific stories, well, it’s not horrific in any actual sense, but it was for me. One day, when I was in my office, Loretta Swit, who was of “Mash” fame, came in.  She had heard about me and wanted me to represent her. I’m now in the movie department, not business affairs. I’d moved up into the movie department, and she said, “Will you represent me?” And I said, “Well, sure I will.” And paperwork was drawn up.

The next day, the president of William Morris, Lee Stevens, called me into his office and said, “It’s fine if you do the work, but you’re not getting the credit. Your name is not going to appear next to Loretta Swit.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He wanted, I think his name was Hal Ross, who was I think aq big deal in the television department to get the credit, even though he had done nothing for Loretta. In fact, he had turned her off. He just didn’t want me to get the, I don’t know how to put it, but the profit, that would be made in an agency for clients who were making fees. I mean, every single place I went, there was something that was coming right at me as, you’re a woman and you don’t get treated fairly.

Anyway, I was at William Morris for basically seven years until I came up with the idea of making NAVY SEALS, and met the Navy SEAL that as a client, and as a writer, inspired me to say, “We’ve got to get out of here. You write, I’ll produce, and we’ll make a movie.” And we made NAVY SEALS.

MJC:  And that was a wonderful opening. So, seven years, you’re in movies.

BF:  Well, that’s not a famous movie, that’s the opposite. But I wanted to get my foot in the door so I could make movies that I really wanted to make. And I really did think it would allow me to be able to have the credibility to make a movie about something that I want to make. That was 1989 or ’90. And here we are, I am now still working 34 years later, on getting the project set up that Joanne, my partner and spouse, and I have wanted to make about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony since the day we met, in 1992.

MJC:  It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the periods of great movement forward and then the brakes go on. The reaction comes, I guess.

BF:  It sure does. I just want to say about Mrs. America, if I may jump to that for a moment. Mrs. America was a project that was developed not by me. They basically relied entirely on my book, which I was told they did, but then when I called the lawyers to say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” They said, “Sorry, you’re a public figure. You have no right to any claim.” I first found out about the fact that Mrs. America was in the works, when I spoke to Lily Tomlin’s agent who was at William Morris; this is many years after I left.

He said, “You know about this project about the women’s movement, right?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, you’re all over it.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Well, there’s this project.” I said, “Well, do you have a script?” “No, I don’t have anything.” “How do you know about it?” “I don’t know. I heard about it.” And he said that Gloria was depicted in it, and Bella and Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan. I said, “Well, I want to know more about this.” And he said, “Well, I don’t know more about it.”

I ended up deciding to call Gloria to say, “Have you heard about this? We’re being depicted and I haven’t seen anything. Have you seen anything?” “No, I just heard that one of the actors was mentioned as playing me.” Anyway, subsequent to the airing of Mrs. America, and my viewing of it, my pleasure at meeting the woman, Ari Grainer, who played me, I got to know the producers.

And I found out from them that Gloria not only had heard about it, but she’d actually seen one or two drafts of the script without telling me. And that really to me, is one of the biggest injuries you can have, to be lied to by somebody who’s been a very close friend of yours for many, many years. I didn’t like that.

And I subsequently saw, to my dismay, that she was attacking Mrs. America in the press, and was saying the business about the insurance industry being the real enemy, not Phyllis Schlafly. The irony of that is that Gloria hates conflict, she says, and therefore would never want to debate Schlafly. I did and took her on, and wanted to debate her. And so, I know her venom. I know how she hated the women’s movement. And it was very painful to have that experience with Gloria.

MJC:  So, Gloria saw the script but was unwilling to share it, and she disdained the film. And you and I agreed, that it was a very valuable film. And unfortunately, Covid interrupted the kind of discussion that we should have had about that film, actually, in a wider context.

BF:  It was a series. It wasn’t just one movie. It was a series.

MJC:  That’s right. So, you don’t know what accounted for her withholding that information from you? Had she given an account? Had she promised somebody or something? You don’t know.

BF:  My only feeling about it is that she took a look at it and didn’t like the way she was depicted. You know, she was sort of dancing around and smoking, which she did. She smoked. There was a picture of me with my finger in the air in the New York Times with Gloria sitting there smoking next to me and Betty Friedan. But the point is, that I just don’t think she saw herself realistically. And I think she wanted to be the only one, or the most important of all of us, and there were five. And that was that.

MJC:  I worked on the ERA in Illinois for years, really. And it was kind of Ellie Smeal’s philosophy, or her belief, that the insurance industry was behind the opposition to the ERA, which I have no idea whether there’s any truth to that.

BF:  They came in, they got involved, particularly in the state of Illinois. But at the very beginning, when Schlafly reared her ugly head, it wasn’t about the insurance industry. It was about Schlafly beginning the horrible, horrible, radical religious right movement in this country, of which Reagan was part.

Yes, the insurance industry realized that if men and women were equal under the law, men would be paying less than they are now, because they live less long. And so, it was in that industry’s interest not to have equality. But I was there. I was on the front lines of the battle and I’m sure you were, too. I was on the battlefront. Ellie was spending a lot of her energy, as I recall, I may be wrong about this, but I think in Illinois, because that was one of the few states, we really needed – my home state.

MJC:  Right. I was there. I was there fighting like crazy. And I think it’s just such a mistake to not understand in how many people’s interest it was, to not pass the ERA.

BF:  Absolutely.

MJC:  From the average husband, to the average corporate leader, to whatever and whatever.

BF:  Right.

MJC:  I mean, there were a lot of people who didn’t want the ERA passed.

BF:  A lot. I mean, any company that would now have to pay women equally, even though that isn’t the Equal Rights Amendment, but put that aside. Everybody thought it was, and people have a perception about what the Equal Rights Amendment can and can’t do. I’m sure you know this; I’ve spoken about it a number of times. It, being the confusion about it. In fact, I just want to say one thing to you. I’m giving a talk in front of Planned Parenthood in March, and they want me to talk about this and that, and I’m going to; a pretty substantial talk to at least 600 people. And they said, “Well, do you have any video of the debate that you had with Schlafly?”

And I said, “Actually, I do” because Mrs. America, to its credit, found the debate on the Tomorrow Show that Marc and I engaged in with Schlafly and her husband. And so, the whole debate is on tape. And I sent it to them, and they’re going to show a whole minute of that debate in my talk at this Planned Parenthood event, which I think is great. But I’m just saying that there we were. I know there were other people. By the way, I don’t want to in any way imply that nobody else was out there speaking about the ERA. A lot of people were, you included. But I just am focusing on my little corner of the world.

MJC:  All we could talk about how much the battle for the ERA, though not successful, built the women’s movement and built women’s power. I mean, it wasn’t wasted time. It was not wasted at all.

BF:  It was not. And you’re familiar, I think I’ve talked about this, you’re familiar with the VMI case, right? That Justice Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion for?

MJC:  Yes. You made me more aware of it.

BF:  Well, that case is actually a better window into equal rights than the Equal Rights Amendment because the Equal Rights Amendment still was leaving some confusion about affirmative action. And women’s prisons are still a confusion now, that has nothing to do with the Equal Rights Amendment, and has all to do with trans rights, and whether people who have been through male puberty should be in women’s prisons.

I don’t think they should be. That’s another conversation. But I think that we really were out there on all these issues. And I’m just feeling that Ruth, Justice Ginsburg, in her opinion, clarified how to look at distinctions based on sex.

MJC:  Are there other issues that we didn’t cover that you wish to cover today?

BF:  I will say something. I don’t think we got much into the whole trans activism business, did we?

MJC:  We talked about it a little bit, but go ahead, please, go ahead.

BF:  I feel very strongly that people have lost sight of the whole idea of women’s rights. And how important it is for women to have the right to; for example, our girls and women should be able to have swim teams that are not populated, even with one person, with a person who has gone through male puberty, and has big shoulders, and long arms, and stronger hearts.

It’s very important for us feminists to keep our eye on the ball of women’s rights and not let all the other issues that have cropped up, including, for example, in the state of California, where now somebody can declare himself a woman who’s in a men’s prison and now gets to be in a women’s prison. It’s traumatizing. Too many women, I’m not one of them because I’m not in a prison nor am I on a swim or any other kind of team that requires strength. I want the young women and the women who are in these situations to be able to speak up freely without fear of retribution.

I was listening to an interview a mother who was an athlete herself gave, about her daughter, who was a highly ranked swimmer on her team. I can’t remember where it was, but anyway, a highly ranked swimmer, and she got booted off because the man, I think it was Lia Thomas, got onto the team and they only can take x number of people. It’s very discouraging to young athletes who have been working all their lives to become fast swimmers or whatever the sport is, and not have to worry that a man is going to come in and decide, and I mean this, decide that he’s a woman.

The other issue in this, beside prisons and changing rooms and bathrooms and teams that require strength, the other issue is kids and puberty. I mean puberty blockers are very dangerous. I’ve done a huge amount of reading on this; are very, very dangerous for both sexes. And people are just saying, yes, puberty blockers. And I think that the medicalization, I think it’s very dangerous. But I’m not the keeper of young souls on the subject of puberty blockers. I just think parents are getting cowed by their kids and by their districts to let this happen.

My message now, is to women, especially feminists who believe in women’s equal rights, to remember that that’s a big issue that’s getting, I think, trampled on, and ignored, by some of this trans activism. And I’m not the only one. There are some brilliant books about it. Helen Joyce wrote this brilliant book called, TRANS. There are fabulous books. And the movements intersect. I’m afraid that; I have a feeling, and I hope I’m wrong about this, that some of the people that you’re interviewing haven’t had the knowledge or the courage to talk to this issue. And I wish they would because it’s really important.

MJC:  Appreciate your thoughts. Thank you. Anything else?

BF:  The whole LGBT. Okay, the lesbians and the gays, that’s what we were talking about in 1972 at the convention. Now it’s turned into trans, and I’ve got my own set of issues, and I understand those issues, and it’s certainly equal rights. Everybody has to be given equal rights to jobs, to everything. But not when it comes to private places like changing rooms and prisons. I just think there’s a definite distinction. And that would work within Ruth’s framework of an exceedingly persuasive justification. There are exceedingly persuasive justifications for keeping men off women’s teams, and out of locker rooms, and prisons. And I feel very strongly that she would have agreed with me.

MJC:  Okay. Thank you. Anything else today, Brenda?

BF:  I don’t think so. I think I’ve covered everything. Except to tell people to read my book, Not One of the Boys: Living Life as a Feminist. And I guess I can put a plug in for the work I did for a whole year to bring it up to date, up to 2022. On my website, brendafeigen.com I’ve inserted the link to that chapter so you don’t actually have to buy it. Otherwise, you buy the audiobook or the digital book and you get the whole thing. But if you have the hardcover and you want to see my last chapter, where I discuss a bunch of this stuff, including what we were just talking about. It’s on my website.

MJC:  Great. That’s wonderful and helpful. Thank you very much.

BF:  Well, thank you very much.