I am excited for this.
Our next guest is quite simply one of the most important women
in American history.
She is an award-winning writer, a social activist,
and a trailblazer for the women's movement.
Please welcome the incredible Gloria Steinem.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Now I have to live up to that.
Ellen, it's so great to see you.
It's--
Good--
--really wonderful not just to be in your audience
but to actually be with you.
It's great to see you, Gloria.
How are you feeling, first of all?
You just got out of surgery.
Yes.
Well, I should explain that it was back surgery,
and there was some little chip of something floating
around my back.
So it's now taken out, and I feel
like the proverbial elephant that
has something taken out of its foot and now is in heaven.
So--
I'm s--
No, it was a great relief-- a huge relief.
Good.
Yeah, you were in so much pain.
I don't know how you were dealing with that.
I'm so glad that you're feeling better.
OK.
So you have been fighting for women's rights
for over 50 years.
And are you surprised that you're still
fighting for the same things that you fought for back then?
No.
Well, maybe myself earlier, as a young person,
would have been surprised.
But gradually, you see the depth of what we are talking about.
They were really trying to uproot racism, patriarchy,
nationalism, capitalism.
It's going to take a while.
But we have come a very long way,
because now, the issues that used to be just 20%
and were viewed as borderline are now majority issues in all
the public-opinion polls.
That doesn't mean that we've changed the structure,
but it does mean that we've come a very long way.
Well, we still now-- we have Black Lives Matter.
And how is that comparing to what was going on
in the '60s and '70s?
Well, it's an extension of the civil rights movement
and the first march on Washington in 1960
when I was there and we were all there.
It's grown from an issue that was really
about the vote in the South to a national movement that
is about all areas of injustice, whether it's
police violence, or unequal schooling, or unequal child
care.
It's become an all-encompassing national movement.
Yeah, yeah.
It's amazing, though, that we're still
fighting for all these things all these years later.
We're talking about the election coming up.
It is the most important election in our lifetime.
I think everyone agrees, whatever side you're on.
And voter suppression is a huge concern.
So how do we fight that?
Well, we need to make sure we know exactly how we vote
to vote as early as possible.
We always said it was important to vote.
Now we say it's important to fight to vote.
Yeah.
So you and Meghan Markle have been cold-calling voters.
People must be so surprised to get a call from you or Meghan.
That must be so fun for them.
It was really Meg's idea because she--
as she said, "I came home to vote."
And she discovered that we were only an hour from each other
here.
And so she came over, and we sat at the dining-room table
and literally cold-called voters.
And it was--
I don't know.
It was a high point.
Yeah, it's--
And she was saying, some people call me the Duchess.
She had to identify herself, but she
didn't want to say, "hello, I'm the"-- right?
And so--
Yeah.
Hi, this is the Duchess calling you.
Right.
And we ended up having great conversations.
Yeah, I'm sure.
I'm sure.
So Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away a few weeks ago,
and she was a friend.
How will you remember her?
I think, uniquely with Ruth--
other people on the court, we say, did they vote right?
With Ruth, if she voted that way, it was right.
She singlehandedly eliminated gender discrimination,
which was very present and very legal
when she arrived on the court.
She totally understood that racial and gender
bias is intertwined, that you can't uproot one
without uprooting the other.
She was a miracle to me because she understood,
before there was a movement, everything
that movements brought along.
But she was there first.
Yeah, she was incredible.
Incredible.
So people are concerned, if the seat
is filled by the wrong person, that is going to be huge for--
what do you say to that?
Well, I hope it's filled by the right person.
And I care very much about who is on the Court, as we all do.
But there has been many periods of time in our history
in which the Court was wrong, in which the Court said
"separate but equal" in our schools, for instance, was OK.
So we should remember what Martin Luther King said,
which is, if the law is unjust, then we must disobey the law.
If the Court makes unjust rulings, we won't follow them.
I'm not saying that we should do that,
but I think we understa-- have to understand that that's
an alternative and a possibility,
because otherwise, we get a case of the "should's," you know?
We think, what should I do?
What can I do?
As if we're hemmed in by the Court, the law, when actually,
most change has taken place by people disobeying the law.
Yeah.
Well, we all want to be on the right side of history.
And I think that's what everyone's
trying to do right now, is help us all be
on the right side of history.
We have to take a break, Gloria, and we'll be back.
More talking to Gloria after this.
Hi, I'm Andy.
Ellen asked me to remind you to subscribe to her channel
so you can see more awesome videos,
like videos of me getting scared or saying embarrassing things,
like ball-peen hammer, and also some videos of Ellen
and other celebrities, if you're into that sort of thing.
[SHOUTS]
[SCREAMS] [BLEEP]!
God [BLEEP]!