Therese Leon
About My Guest
Therese M. Leone serves as Deputy Campus Counsel for UC Berkeley. In her role, she advises UC Berkeley’s administration on a broad range of higher education legal issues, including labor and employment, discrimination and harassment, student affairs, Title IX and Clery compliance, free speech and protests, research misconduct, general business matters, and internal investigations. Therese also served as University Counsel for the systemwide legal office of the Regents of the University of California for almost six years. She provided labor and employment advice/counseling regarding faculty, staff and student employees to leadership at the 10 campuses and 5 medical centers in the UC system, and was Chief Campus Counsel for UC Merced.
From 2008-2012, Therese was Vice President and General Counsel at Mills College in Oakland, California where she was a member of the College’s executive leadership team. She oversaw all legal matters for the college and also was counsel to the Board of Trustees. Before becoming a higher education attorney, Therese worked as a labor and employment attorney in private practice.
Therese served on the Board of Directors for the National Association of College and University Attorneys (“NACUA”) from 2010-13, and has served on numerous board committees, in addition to presenting at conferences and CLEs. For the State Bar of California, Therese served on the Council on Access and Fairness and the California Law Academy Strategic Task Force (CLAS). She is a former Board member for the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
Therese received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and her JD from the BerkeleyLaw.
Shervin Talieh:
So today I'm joined by a new guest in our conversation series around exploring misogyny, and with that, I'd like to have our guest introduce herself.
Therese Leone:
Good morning. My name is Therese Leone. I live in Oakland, California. I'm a transplant like most people. I've lived in Philadelphia, I grew up in Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. I've lived in Chicago and made my way from east to west. A couple of things about me that perhaps would describe me. I'm a mom of three boys, married to a man, and so I'm really outnumbered in my family, and I'm an attorney. I'm African-American, and so I think my experience is shaped by my background and by my experiences.
Therese Leone:
I've also been a single parent for 10 years, so that's also shaped who I am and how I see things. I think my background, as we maybe start to get into some of it, you'll understand a little bit about who I am and how I come to be who I am. So, hopefully that's helpful.
Shervin Talieh:
So why don't we just go right to that? You shared that you're a mom, that for a period of time you were a single mom in a heterosexual relationship, and that you're African-American. How is the experience of misogyny different in any one of those contexts?
Therese Leone:
Well, I would start by saying that I think gender or sex-related issues are intersectional for many of us, and that we locate ourselves in that intersectionality. So I could tell you, I was a first generation college student, I could tell you that I was an adopted person. I could tell you that I was raised in a predominantly white area. I could tell you that I was raised in a very conservative Christian upbringing. I could tell you that I'm a lawyer. I mean, all of these things, I think, bear on who I am.
Therese Leone:
But intersectionality is something I think that's important because so often I feel like the work around gender equity is located in white women's experience and I think it's really important to understand that how black women in particular in this country experience sexism can be different, and that it also have a component that is racialized, or that, depending on what your sexual orientation is or your ability, disability, or your age, also impacts all of those things. And so, where you may go from being hyper-sexualized when you're a young woman, you may have a very different experience of misogyny and sexism when you're an older woman, and I've definitely seen those things occur throughout my lifetime.
Shervin Talieh:
How is experiencing misogyny different as a black woman?
Therese Leone:
Well, I think the stereotypes are different where white women may have been on pedestals and held in cages, gilded cages as Ruth Bader Ginsburg talks about. You know, black women have not had that experience, starting with many of us in this country, have a history of being enslaved, and so black women were raped and also expected to work. There's never been the same expectation of the sort of pedestal that white women may have been trapped in. I think black women's experience with work is very, very different. Often the work of black women was at the hands of white women, and so they were... This sisterhood, this fragile sisterhood, is one that has had a racialized component.
Therese Leone:
And so the way that a black woman, for example, is treated in the workplace is very different, in some ways, because it has that racialized component. So just to give an example, the stereotype of black women is that they are loud, aggressive. It requires you to adjust and account for how people will experience you. Whereas all women may be seen as, if you are assertive, if you are confident, if you are competent, as being aggressive, as being over the top, and we all may have to adjust. I would say black women have to adjust in a particular way. Asian women may have to adjust in a different way. Latinx women, Latinas may have to adjust in a slightly different way. Native American women as well.
Therese Leone:
So for black women, or where it shows up for me, is this idea that we're too loud, we take up too much space, and that we're somehow not feminine enough. And particularly I think for darker-skinned black women, that becomes... Or we're fetishized, right? So, I do think that the racial stereotypes, whether it's Jezebel or Mammy, maybe we have to listen to everybody's problems. I call it the Oprah factor. Everybody wants to come to you and get your advice and have you tell them what to do or cry on your shoulder, right?
Shervin Talieh:
At what age did you realize that you were being viewed in a negative light? And how early on did you have to adapt and learn these survival skills?
Therese Leone:
That's a great question. I don't know that I can point to a time. I will say, being raised the way I was in a very conservative Christian... Since everyone's talking about the Supreme Court right now, environment like the nominee to Barrett... I'm sorry, not Barrett, Barnett I think is her name, from the Seventh Circuit, to the Ruth Bader Ginsburg post, being raised in an environment like the group she is a part of. Women were always second class. Women were required to... It was a very sex-stereotyped work, so we were in charge of... And I grew up in a very large family with nine children, Catholic. And so very early on women were in charge of all the housework, all of the cleaning, the cooking, the child-rearing, the laundry.
Therese Leone:
Boys were expected to do the outside work, the garbage, the lawn care, fixing things. And so, girls were expected to wear skirts. I hated skirts and dresses. I was very active and loved to play, and so those kinds of limitations were put on me at a very early age, probably why I still despise skirts and dresses to this day. So I guess I could look back to those times, right? At the same time, one of my earliest memories was working as a young person, maybe 16-years-old, at a McDonald's and having someone come up and spit the N-word at me. And it was a white woman. Now, she was clearly not well, but having circumstances like that happen to you made it clear to me that women weren't all in it together.
Therese Leone:
And so, when I think to my first real serious job at 22, I was working in the Sears Tower, downtown Chicago, and I was a management trainee for a large insurance company, managing 14 people, 15 people. And I remember the way that the expectations for the white men who were underwriters were much higher. They thought more highly of them. They thought that they would go further. And I had a white male boss at the time who really worked hard to push my career forward and to ensure that I was treated fairly like other trainees in other departments were being treated. But one thing that stuck out to me, one incident, was when I was thinking about going to law school and my fellow colleague who was the same year, we both went to Northwestern, he was working as an underwriter, he was thinking of going to business school.
Therese Leone:
And so we were both talking a lot about how we were doing our applications, et cetera. Well, he went and talked to his boss and his folks, and they basically were like, "We'll do whatever we can to keep you." And he didn't get into the top school that he wanted to get into. He got into some other ones and was preparing to leave, and I got into law school and I talked to my folks and what they said to me was, "We don't understand that the intersection between law and insurance," which is hilarious when you think about it, "We don't see how [crosstalk 00:11:04] by sending you to law school and having you come back could be a benefit for us." Despite the fact that they had a very active [inaudible 00:11:13] practice.
Therese Leone:
But they told him, after he quit his job, they filled his job. They moved someone from across the country. When he said, "You know what? I didn't get into the top business school, I want to stay another year and try to get in next year," they created a new job for him, a higher level job for him with more money, because they thought that having someone go to business school and come back made a whole lot of sense. And so, that was the first time that I really felt like, "This is not making any sense. Wow."
Therese Leone:
And I had been a sociology African-American Studies double major in college with a minor in Women's Studies, or what they called the Certificate Program then. So I had a pretty good understanding of intersectionality and racism and sexism and all these kinds of things. But I was still really surprised, as a young person, 24-years-old or so, to have that slap in the face. And I think a lot of people felt the same way that I did and were surprised that it was that stark. So, those are some early memories.
Shervin Talieh:
You've touched on intersectionality and I did not know about your field of education with respect to undergrad, but if it's okay, I'd like to talk about Bell Hooks a little bit. And specifically I'm interested in this shift from the second wave to the third wave of feminism. The reason why I bring it up, again, you mentioned Justice Ginsburg and her passing. As I understand it, she had only one black clerk, in I think among 50-plus, maybe even 100 clerks. I don't know what the total number is. you're probably closer to those numbers than I am.
Shervin Talieh:
So there's been this discussion lately around, yes, as big of a champion as she was, even she did not create adequate space and do enough, really, for black women in this country. And also, as I understand it, she was very critical of Colin Kaepernick initially, and then several days later maybe apologized for that. It's a somewhat loaded and unfair question. I'm not asking you to defend and/or prosecute someone else, but can you share your view of how things have changed, and where things frankly haven't?
Therese Leone:
That's a great question. I have utmost respect and gratitude for the work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I was reading an article the other day that talked about Pauli Murray and how many of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's approaches to sex discrimination cases came from Pauli Murray's ideas. And so I do think that she was a woman of a particular time. She was raised at a certain era and of her time she was quite amazing. The things that she did for a woman of her time launched us all forward in many ways. I would say that people are complicated, and just because you have a deep understanding of what it means to be oppressed as a Jewish woman, as a mother, as a white mother, perceived that way, and back then, being Jewish was a detriment to women as well trying to work in a male-dominated field like law.
Therese Leone:
So I don't dismiss those issues. What I will say is, it is deeply discouraging that someone of her character would have only had one or maybe even two, I don't know, clerks. When we saw the picture of all the clerks that were standing there, it was interesting because on the steps, I was talking with a friend who said, "You know, it's instinctive in us to look for ourselves in these pictures, and we didn't find ourselves." And while I think her work advanced all of us in some ways, it didn't advance all of us in every way. And so, black women and women of color are constantly asked to put one part of themselves forward in front of another part, which is impossible to do, whether it's around sexual orientation or race or ability, disability, whatever it is.
Therese Leone:
So, I guess, thinking about these various waves of feminism, I think the third wave really rejects this idea of centering white women. And so, whether you look back to the original kind of galvanizing in this country, you still have people like Sojourner Truth saying "Ain't I a Woman?", right? I don't have any of those things that you're talking about, but I'm a woman, too, and even though I don't look like you, I'm not treated like you, I have to act differently than you, I've been abused in different ways than you. I'm a woman, too, and whether you're a trans woman or whether you are a woman in a wheelchair or whether you're a lesbian, we're all women and we all have different backgrounds, different needs, and those needs need to be centered, I think is what people are saying, is that you can no longer put white women in the center of feminism and start from there and it'll trickle down to the rest of us, because our needs are specific.
Therese Leone:
And so, that comment about Colin Kaepernick really hurt a lot of us. I think, for black women, we can't "Hate our men" in the same way that many people thought of women, the white women's feminism movements in the first waves, as being oppositional to men. We know that our community has always had to stand together. That as black men were lynched, so were black women. As black women were treated in horrible and inhumane ways, so were black men. And so, we have an affinity and a community with many of the people who we then have issues with, and we have to figure those out. And so I think black women and women of color bring, whether you're a Native American woman or... You're still suffering some of the same problems.
Therese Leone:
And indeed Alice Walker's book The Color Purple was one that exposed, and people were very uncomfortable with, the idea that you can be both oppressed and oppressor. And so, black men and I think white women have that same kind of... or other men of color, had that same ability to both oppress the women within their groups, but also that we're all positional in terms of our power and privilege. I do think if we continue to move forward, we cannot continue to put white middle-class women in the center of feminism. It's not going to meet the needs of everyone, and if you put the women... The social justice lens is that you put the most marginalized and oppressed and the people who are needing the most, in the middle, and then everyone else gets fed as a result of putting them and centering them and their experiences as most important, or at least as critical.
Shervin Talieh:
As a black woman who, again, what you shared just a minute ago, was around how black women could not afford to hate black men or create enemies of them the same way that white women could, because their need for survival and unity was much stronger. How does that translate into your perspective of allyship, who can be an ally? I've heard from some women that misogyny can only be fixed by women, and there are other women who feel very, very differently about that. I'm curious how you see it.
Therese Leone:
Well, I think misogyny can only be fixed by men. Men are the ones... It's asking women to fix men's hatred of women is ridiculous to me. It's the same thing I say to white people who are just learning about racism for the first time. Maybe they're young people, maybe they're just seeing the death of George Floyd changed everything for them. I don't quite understand how that's the thing that did it after all the things that have been happening, but I look at it like this. I'm very careful at this point in my life about who I talk to about my real feelings about things. And that might be just a function of, as we get older we tend to do that. We just don't have the same time, energy, et cetera.
Therese Leone:
When you're in your 20s you want to talk to everybody about everything, right? So, I don't talk to just anybody about race, and I certainly don't talk to just anybody about sex and race and how these things affect me. And I think that it's arrogant to think that you should have access to someone's thoughts and feelings about those issues. There are ways to respectfully ask people if they would include you in the conversation, and I think that's part of the reason that I decided to talk with you, for example. Someone I don't know because someone that I trust, who I do see as an ally, recommended it.
Therese Leone:
So, I guess what I would say about allies, there's a difference between an ally and what we... I've heard, and I can't remember the woman's who coined this phrase, but I will find out. I will find it for you before the end of today. The idea of being a coconspirator, because a coconspirator has something in it. Like, they've put some skin in the game, where if I'm going down, you're going down, too. We're conspirators. Being an ally doesn't require much. It just says, "Oh, well, I agree with you and I'll read some books and I'll put some things on a Facebook thread, and, oh, yeah." You know, it doesn't require anything from you.
Therese Leone:
Being a coconspirator requires something from you. And so I want to work with coconspirators. I want to work with people who have some skin in the game, and so if I don't think that you do, or if I don't think that we're about the same business, then I'm just not engaging. I think that being an ally, I've heard as the people say, "Being an ally is lazy." It's just about your support. But you need to do more than just support us. Are you engaged in that conspiracy with others? Are you acknowledging that people of color are criminalized for dismantling white supremacy? Are you taking on the consequences of participating in that criminalized act? It's less emotionally burdensome to be an ally than to be a coconspirator.
Therese Leone:
And so, as part of allyship, you can't make it about... or coconspiratorship, you can't make it about you. You can't make it about taking the focus away from other people and their comfort. You need to talk to other white people about this stuff. Don't talk to us about it, you know. Get out there and do something about it. So my son and I were talking about... He's 20, and he says, "Mom, I'm getting tired of all these white people want to talk about race. It's like they just woke up and read about it and figured it out today." And I said, "Yeah, exactly." On the other hand, he also believes that if we don't talk to each other we'll never make any movement forward. So, there is this idea of, you have to go and teach yourself. I taught myself. I wasn't taught about African-American history in school. You weren't either. So go learn it. There are places you can go learn and you can educate yourself. And then just stop centering yourself as opposed to other people.
Therese Leone:
I'll give you an example. A white woman I know who's also a working mom, she happens to not work full-time, she's able to do that, financially, and yet she wants all of the... She really is trying hard, I think, to be a good person, to educate herself, to educate her children, but the difference is, I ask people, "What are you willing to give up?" Because that's the thing. Are men willing to give up something for women? Are you willing to actually give up some power that you have? Are white people really willing to give up some power that they have in order for other people to have some more?
Therese Leone:
So this particular woman I was talking with, and she made a comment, about, oh, her older parents are finally getting it. The George Floyd thing really helped them to get it. And that sort of irked me, because I said, "Well, what is it about George Floyd in particular that helped them to get it?" And I think she got flustered. "Well, you know, they're old, and, and they just, you know..." And I said, "No, I'm just really curious. Like what is it that they didn't get before? Why did it make this particular man's death is what helped them to get it? What do you think?" "Well, I don't really know. I don't really know." And then at the end of the... "Are you mad at me?"
Therese Leone:
And that is centering yourself in the conversation. Those are the kinds of things that make people crazy, especially women of color, when we're trying to talk to white women and what we get from them are tears and are you mad at me? It's not about you. That's the point. And, yes, you do contribute to this. You do contribute to it and you do take things away from us. And we do have to work harder. And then you think it's all about meritocracy when you don't even realize that we had to climb 500 stairs before we even got to the top and started racing. So I do think that you have to have some skin in the game, and that's where the coconspirator model, as opposed to just being an ally... An ally doesn't have to do much. A coconspirator has something in the game.
Shervin Talieh:
What is it like to talk to your son about misogyny and/or sexism? And you have more than one son, I understand. So, how early does that start?
Therese Leone:
Oh, it starts at birth. So, I have three. I have a stepson who's 23, a son who's 20 and another one who's nine, and I'm the only woman in the group. So, it starts immediately. It starts with, what kinds of experiences do you give your children? What kinds of toys do you give your children? What kinds of discussions about feelings do you give your children? So one of the things that I know... I keep wondering to the feminist goddesses, "What did I do to deserve three boys?" And I think it's this idea that, "Oh, you think you've got feminism all figured out, huh? Well, here you go."
Shervin Talieh:
Good luck. Yeah.
Therese Leone:
It's kind of a funny little joke on me. You know, it starts with helping men and boys understand their positional power and understand their own feelings and being able to express them and be able to have comfort in them. And so I talk to my sons about their feelings from the time they're very little. You need to be able to talk about your words and use your words. You need to talk about your feelings, and it's fine to have them. It's great to cry. I see that you're angry. I see that you're frustrated. What does that feel like? What can we do about it? And I talk to them about the feelings of other people so that they can learn empathy, because empathy is the beginning of all of it to be able to understand another person's perspective and feelings.
Therese Leone:
And I talk to them about what it is like to be a woman, and I talk to them when they interrupt me, and I say, "That's sexist behavior," and I call it out. And when I'm watching television with them or listening to music, and I talk about sexism and I hear words, and I say, "That's offensive. That's offensive to me as a woman to hear that. You should be offended, too." And try to expose them both to writing and to books that are... Whether you have protagonists that are female characters or whether you're ensuring that they watch programming that exposes them to the fight that different kinds of women have experienced over the years.
Therese Leone:
I think having them understand what male privilege looks like and having them understand what it means to be in a position of less power, and I can use race as a way for them to understand that as a black man you feel these things. Well, as a woman, I feel these things. As a black man you're afraid driving in the car. As a woman, I'm afraid when I see a group of men walking toward me. Why is that? Because the threat of sexual violence is always in our minds, right? And they were really surprised. Like, "Every time that's what you're thinking about?" "Yes, that's..." "Well, we're thinking about getting beat up by groups of men." "I'm thinking about getting beat up and raped by groups of men."
Therese Leone:
So we talk about, what is that like? What does it feel like to be that person? And, again, I think it all does start with empathy, but we also talk about systemic issues, and we talk about women who make more money or less money. In my family, I'm the primary breadwinner, and so I think they get a chance to see a woman in a position of power, starting with their own lives, and then also going through other places and seeing that as well. It is a unique challenge. I mean, I've had some really strong conversations about things like abortion. I remember my son was doing a paper. He went to Catholic school for high school, and he was talking about, "The definition of abortion is this." And I flew off the handle.
Therese Leone:
I said, "No, that is not the definition of abortion. That is the Catholic definition of abortion. Let me tell you this." And then we had this long conversation about abortion, and he was like, "Okay." Or, he says to me, "Mom, you and I talk about..." We talk about sex and we talk about your perspective on sex versus what a woman might be thinking about sex. And we talk about sexual violence, and we talk about where do these things start, and how do you want to be perceived? And how do you stay out of trouble? And how do you ensure that you repair relationships? I think for boys, they have to realize that sexism puts them in a box, too, and it keeps them from having a full range of human experience and emotions.
Therese Leone:
And that if you are in that box, if you put others in that box, you're putting yourself in a box, as well. So I do my best. I mean, I can't say I've got it figured out. I keep working on it. I keep talking with them. I work on a college campus where a large part of my practice has been around sexual violence and sexual harassment-related issues. And so I talk to them about consent, and I talk to them about sex, and I talk to them about respect and healthy relationships and what they look like and what they don't look like to the extent... They're different, right? So, some of them will talk, some of them won't. Trying to figure out, when my kids were little, making sure that they don't feel ashamed about all the things that they want to do.
Therese Leone:
My one son is very artistic and he loves to draw. He also loves to play with makeup, and he also loves to... For a little bit, he also loved to wear nightgowns. And one time he told me, when he was like three, I think it was when he was doing this, and I said something about, "You can wear that. That's fine." He's like, "Well, I would never..." because they had like a pajama day at school. I said, "Well, why don't you wear that to school?" He said, "Oh, no, I could never do that." I think he was five at that time. Maybe he was five. And he said, "I could never do that. People would laugh at me." So already he knew about what the gendered norms were, that age. And I told him, "We will support whatever you want to do. If you want to wear whatever you want to wear, you wear it." And he would get... about those, flack about wearing pink, for example, or wearing this or wearing that.
Therese Leone:
And so, just starting with the kids and letting them be themselves. I mean, when I was growing up, it was the free to be you and me kind of age. But going beyond that and really helping men, helping to grow young men that are empathetic and that see the world through a slightly different lens that's not just all about them. That's what I've tried to do. I don't know how successful... I'm pretty proud of my kids. I think that they're good kids and they're good to other people, and that's really all you can do. You can do your best to inculcate values and you hope that they take them and run with them.
Shervin Talieh:
Listening to your story about your son, it just reminded me that my fourth child... My third child, sorry, my second to last child, he's three-and-a-half. His name is Holden. He asked for a pink dress just recently, and that conversation around the pink dress and the time of the day that he likes to wear it and certain routine that he likes to do around ballet and whatnot, it brought a warm feeling to me to hear you share your story about your son and his experience and how important it is for us to love them and make them feel safe and accepted.
Shervin Talieh:
There's a strong sense that I'm getting, that, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like misogyny and racism, and systemic racism, really, are tied. And that white men in power, specifically... But, again, as you brought in the lens, it could be all men and that it could even include women as well, as perpetrators, are tied to this. So, I guess my question, and this is really an unfair question, but, is there a world where one can just focus on misogyny without thinking about racism? Or vice versa?
Therese Leone:
Nope. I don't think so. I don't think so. It's intersectional. You cannot look at sexism without looking at the rest of the person. So, I don't understand how it's possible, especially in this country. This country was built on the backs of enslaved people, and they kept people in bondage for hundreds of years and raped women, and then enslaved their children and disowned their own children. And the white women that were involved with these men stood by and watched it happen. They didn't have power, but some of them were just as bad as the masters were. So, I mean, this history of slavery, Jim Crow, all of the issues that, as you moved into the north, the great migration, discrimination, I mean, it's not because you're just a woman that things happen to you.
Therese Leone:
It's very racialized. If you're an Asian woman, it's very racialized in a different way than it is for black women. When we look at, for example, attorneys, Asian women may be more likely to get hired but they're less likely to ever make partner in a big law firm. They're less likely to be perceived as leaders. They're less likely to be taken seriously. Black women may be less likely to be included, and they may be less likely to also get the top board seats or the make the C-suite. And so I do think that it's impossible from my perspective to just talk about race or sex or homophobia or transphobia, or... The majority of the trans women that have been murdered that we've been hearing about in the news, they're black women. They're women of color.
Therese Leone:
So I do think it's really hard to separate these things out and just approach them from a one-issue perspective. That's the luxury of white people. And even white people that I know, they're like... Well, you could be older, you could be white, you could be gay, you could have a disability, and so you, yourself, could not even look at it from a one, single-issue perspective. I think we have to fight against misogyny and sexism in all the ways it shows up, and understand the variety of ways that it shows up. Because what you could be saying is, "Well, black women are strong. They're so strong." Well, that's a trope, and black women suffer greater health disparities, greater discrimination. There are all kinds of issues that might be important if you center a black trans woman as your starting point. Or if you center an Asian immigrant woman as your starting point than if you center a white middle-class woman as your starting point.
Therese Leone:
So I don't think you can ignore things like class and race and immigrant status and all these others things that make sexism so particularly ugly in their various forms and misogyny that it shows up. And worldwide also. When you think about this as a worldwide issue, how can you possibly situate white middle-class women in the United States as your center, for misogyny, globally? Indian women are facing issues around sexual violence that are... And women in parts of Africa, too, and then you think about religion, and you think about all these other pieces that weigh in. If you continue to center the Western white women in this analysis, it's so lacking. It's so narrow. And you'll miss so much from doing that. So, I don't think it's possible to just say, "Well, we're going to work on misogyny or sexism." Okay, well, let's do that. And how does that show up for all these different kinds of women?
Shervin Talieh:
That is an argument that does not have a rebuttal.
Therese Leone:
It's only a question, right? I don't have the answers. I've a lot of questions.
Shervin Talieh:
Right.
Therese Leone:
And I look at women like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and think about all the things that she's done to advance the causes of women, and she's done a lot. But I think that Justices like Sotomayor may look at these issues in a slightly different way because your experience tells you something different about life. And that's why we worry about Barrett being nominated to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat. It's the same worry that I think people had about Clarence Thomas being nominated to Thurgood Marshall's seat. They have totally different interests in terms of the way that they look at people in the society. They have different experiences, they have different interests, and I worry about a woman who is deeply steeped in what I would view as a very misogynistic male-led religious group.
Therese Leone:
And I say that from experience of someone who knows what it's like to be in those groups, to know that men are in charge of everything. To know that you're supposed to be submissive to your husband. It's amazing to me that she's a Justice, that she's a judge, that that's part of where she's been allowed to ascend. I've known about these efforts to take over the courts since I was a child. This has been something that they've been trying to do for a long time, and so I worry about a woman like that who, I hope, will follow legal precedent and I hope will be guided by the facts and the laws of every case that she hears. But I worry about her life perspective being one that puts women in the backseat and that she will pull up the ladder for women coming behind. That she's walked through the doors that Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened and then she'll pull up the ladder on her way back in. So, that concerns me.
Shervin Talieh:
Therese, I want to thank you for teaching me and spending some time with me and talking to me.
Therese Leone:
It's been great. Thank you for opening this window. I wish I had more answers. Maybe 30 or 40 years from now we'll have more answers than we have questions, but right now, I have lots of questions.
Shervin Talieh:
As do I, and I'm grateful for your time and sharing your knowledge with me. Thank you so much.
Therese Leone:
My pleasure. Thank you.