So how does it happen, this opening of new doors, this continual redefinition of what we believe the world can be?
It takes place in conversations. "Just talk" has always been the path to reinvent the world.
"Back in college, I'd go to a women's consciousness-raising group every week at the YWCA across the street from the university," Pam told me as we were working on this book. "It didn't seem like much--a dozen women sitting in a circle, talking. But it changed my world."
"We talked about jobs and sex and politics, about history and housework and love," she continued. "We told each other stories about our own lives and the truths we found in our most personal experiences. We dissected language and questioned society's rules. We talked about the books we were reading--The Second Sex; The Feminine Mystique; Our Bodies, Our Selves."
They also relived the stories of other women, Pam told me. The heroic women of the past, like those who had won the right to vote a mere half-century earlier, at the same time Margaret Sanger was championing reproductive freedom.
"Most of all," she said, "I learned for the first time that I wasn't alone. I found myself united with strong women, past and present, who shared my desire to be free individuals. In their company, I learned who I could be and what I could stand for."
"There was no going back."
All across the United States, and beyond, countless women held similar conversations, and sparked a revolution. By "just talking," they created new agreements about social norms. They changed forever what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man; indeed, what it means to be human. What seemed to be private, personal interactions permanently changed the way we see each other.
Those changes have become so interwoven in our culture that it's now difficult to fully grasp their significance. Let me touch on just one aspect that stands out for me right now. My mother died when I was 8 years old. I learned much later that my father cried himself to sleep every night after her death. But at the time, he never let me know that, never spoke to me of the depth of his grief. The minister who told me of my mother's death assured me, as my father sat by, "Son, it's OK to cry." Instead, I followed my father's stoic example.
Today, it's hard for me to imagine that was once the way men were expected to be. When I watch an emotional movie with my son, he'll often sneak a glance at me, knowing there's a good chance he'll get to see me teary.
In the space of just one generation, the genie has been let out of the bottle, and our world has been transformed.