LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE
In this episode we’ll hear how Amber Tamblyn went from being an actress to being an activist--defining her own role in the feminist movement--and how we can all play a role in leading change. Amber's book is called "Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution." It's part memoir, part manifesto, part call to action. We sat down together in San Francisco while she was in town as part of the release of her book in paperback.
Back in 2017, Amber wrote an OpEd for the NYTimes, called "I'm Done With Not Being Believed" in which she tells what happened when a well-known actor almost as old as her dad tried to pick her up when she was 16, and then called her a liar when she outed him on Twitter. This was before the Weinstein revelations, before the #MeToo movement caught fire and before Times Up, which Amber went on to co-found.
TRANSCRIPT. We do our best, please forgive or let us know any errors.
Lauren Schiller:
Do you remember there was an op-ed that came out a few years ago in the New York Times and the headline was, I'm done with not being believed. It was before the Weinstein revelations, before Me Too, before Time's Up. But just after Trump's grab them by the pussy tape. It was written by...
Amber Tamblyn:
My name is Amber Tamblyn, and I am an author, actress, director, producer. I am many things.
Lauren Schiller:
By the time Amber wrote this op-ed, she'd been acting for over 20 years since she was 11. You might know her from General Hospital, Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants, Joan of Arcadia. She also directed the movie Painted Black, and has published a novel and several books of poetry.
Lauren Schiller:
In this op-ed, She tells what happened when a well-known actor, almost as old as her dad tried to pick her up when she was 16 and then called her a liar when she outed him on Twitter.
Amber Tamblyn:
And so I wrote the piece which really looked at that exact idea, which was that I was really, really, really effing done with not being believed, with being told that my story was not going to matter, that it was always going to be, "Let's not believe her first. And let's believe him First," just because that's the narrative. That's the way things go.
Lauren Schiller:
After the piece came out, Amber attended a Hollywood party. She'd been to many times before, filled with bold face names.
Amber Tamblyn:
So many people in our industry, not only incredibly famous, but powerful, really powerful executives, women who run companies who I've never talked to who I would normally never really not have an interaction with, coming up to tell me how much that piece meant and many of them sharing some stories.
Amber Tamblyn:
That was the part that I didn't really realize... I mean, I knew that it had sort of set this fire on everyone reading it on social media and in that world. But that was a really powerful evening in which I sensed that something was coming.
Lauren Schiller:
And then in quick succession, we all learned about Harvey Weinstein, felt the full force of the Me Too movement, and saw the creation of Times Up of which Amber is a founding member.
Amber Tamblyn:
And now we've seen in so many ways, especially with these incredible silence breaker women who have come forward and testified and given their stories about what Weinstein did, but not only that, not only the violence, but the silencing and the stalking and hiring these companies to follow them and plant evidence against them and everything that's happened. You understand how far predominantly men in positions of power will go to keep us quiet and away from that power. So, to me it was it struck such a nerve and it just felt like an opening.
Lauren Schiller:
In the wake of all this, Amber wrote a book called Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution, which is part memoir, part manifesto and part call to action.
Lauren Schiller:
We sat down together in San Francisco while she was in town as part of the release of her book in paperback. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point, the stories of how women rise up.
Lauren Schiller:
Today we'll hear how Amber Tamblyn went from being an actress to being an activist, defining her own role in the feminist movement and how we can all play a role in leading change. We'll be right back.
Lauren Schiller:
I'm back with Amber Tamblyn. I'm curious about how you got into acting in the first place at such a young age. And how that shaped your view of yourself, your sense of yourself.
Amber Tamblyn:
This question has always been a very easy answer for me since I was very young. I had a stump speech that I was able to give. My dad who was in West Side Story, his agent saw me when I was in a play when I was very young and she said, "We've got to get her into acting."
Amber Tamblyn:
And I went on some auditions and I got a role when I was 11 on a soap opera. I had a stump speech version of that answer for a very long time. And I think it wasn't until I hit my own, to use the phrase Era of Ignition and my own sort of existential crisis that propelled me into the person I am today. Did that question become very complicated and require much deeper thought and explanation?
Amber Tamblyn:
Because I don't know when you are a child, if you are choosing to act, you're not making that choice to yourself. Adults around you are making that choice. And it's taken me a long time to think about what I lost in the course of that what you lose as a child who is not only working for a living and taking care of your family for a living, but also playing other people for a living, taking on the personalities of other people, telling your body on a daily basis from one part to the next. Today you're having a heroin overdose. Today you're raped. Today you've been murdered today. You're crying all day today. You're incredibly happy. It takes its toll.
Amber Tamblyn:
So I don't know how much choice really ever came into that part of it for me, but it's certainly been... it's a story. My story is not one I would change for anything in the worlds because it has produced the person that I am today.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, it's interesting all those roles that you just reeled off, none of them were of powerful women or girls taking charge or even, I mean, any of the roles that were sort of starting to see today. I mean, how did that make you feel about yourself? I mean and even did at the time how you felt about yourself? Or is it really only kind of in hindsight that you could reflect on that?
Amber Tamblyn:
I think as a young woman, I had many of the same frustrations that I couldn't pinpoint, or put a reason behind the way that many women do or have in their given fields in their industries. A sense of being emotionally extorted, a sense of having your value, not feel seen or utilized a sense of there is something greater for you. There is something bigger for you, a calling that you don't know how to manifest for yourself though it's there, it exists.
Amber Tamblyn:
That's universal. That is every woman's experience. That is my mom who's a retired school teacher of three decades. That's her experience. And my grandmother who was a piano teacher and vocal coach and it just every woman I know has had that at some degree.
Amber Tamblyn:
So I think it's, right now we're going through this really, really wonderful time in the entertainment business where things are not feeling like they're going as fast as they should be as far as change is concerned. But still at the same time, you are seeing an unprecedented number of women and people of color and voices that have traditionally been left out of artistic, cultural point of view, now becoming very much a part of that landscape both in television and film.
Amber Tamblyn:
Not as much as I would like and that many would like, but a lot more than before. And so there is a real... it's very bittersweet for me. because I went through a time where like the women who came before me, all of them were speaking out was really dangerous and where it didn't matter how good the movie is that you made or directed or poured your guts and life into and the reviews, how fantastic they were. It didn't matter.
Amber Tamblyn:
You were still going to be seen as less than, and therefore your work was going to be seen and valued as less than. But I think we're kind of in a different space now. I feel that. Again, with the caveat, not as much as I would hope, but we're getting there.
Lauren Schiller:
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I'm learning is that change is just a lot freaking slower that I would like it to be. Sounds like you might like it to be as well, especially when you really start to recognize the problems and put your fingers on the problems. And then its like, "Well, what's taking so long? Why can't we just fix that right now?"
Amber Tamblyn:
Yeah, I mean Rome wasn't burned to the ground and built back up in a day and it takes a minute. It really takes a minute to... we're still in the phase of people trying to get on board. We are still in the backlash phase. You have to remember that we are literally dismantling something that dates back to the Bible, that dates back to Roman Empire to all the ways in which women have ever tried to gain access or use their voice for a platform or find themselves in a position of power and have found themselves shut out. We are trying to dismantle thousands and thousands of years of that and you can't do it overnight.
Amber Tamblyn:
It's just not going to happen and it has to be slow, and it's going to take time. And what I always say to people is the most important thing is that we practice patience and perseverance. Those two things together. Because what we can't do is get frustrated and back off and go, this isn't working, we're still getting attacked, we're still being silenced. These things are still happening and go be upset about that. I mean, you could be upset about it, but we have to keep moving. We have to keep pushing forward.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, in some ways, seeing the news that comes out every day about the latest egregious a front it is frustrating, but it's also a good thing, right? Because we weren't necessarily hearing about these things before on the front page of the newspaper.
Amber Tamblyn:
I'll give you a great example of that. That's actually really smart that you brought that up because for instance, even if you look at the Academy Award nominations this year in 2020 and with full transparency, I am one of the Academy voters. I was one of the many women and people that they brought in and this huge attempt to try to balance out their membership and make it more representative and diverse.
Amber Tamblyn:
And even still, you see no women directors nominated, you see women's sort of shut out and especially people of color shutout in major categories. But I think it's fascinating and says a lot about where we're at that the conversation about who was shut out was almost more loud and profound and took center stage over who would... who was actually nominated for the Oscars this year. And that's really not something that we have seen before.
Amber Tamblyn:
We've seen outrage here and there about certain things, but the fact that this took center stage, this became the conversation, says a lot and it's really important. That type of a pressure is very important.
Lauren Schiller:
Yeah. One has a vision of, at least when I was growing up like child actors and actresses flameout in their teens and twenties whether they succumb to drug use or alcohol or other forms of self-harm or other people's harming them. And you somehow were able to avoid that fate and in fact grapple with and then get on top of your situation.
Lauren Schiller:
And I'm curious you go into it in your book, Era of Ignition, but I'm curious to just hear how that self-awareness came to be and how you climbed out of it.
Amber Tamblyn:
Well, firstly I would say that it just didn't happen to me publicly. So I think one of the most difficult things to see with young actors and especially actresses, is when this happens to them publicly in their dealing with the combination of their privilege and their sense of having no identity, yet having to be responsible for an identity that that was given to them by a public when they are coming to terms with the realization that they have only been an object for a living at a time in which you are most delicately trying to create your central nervous system and your sense of self and your ID.
Amber Tamblyn:
And so that I think like my two books before this one was a book called Dark Sparkler, which looked at the lives and deaths of child star actresses. And that was a really intense and difficult exorcism for me, looking at all of those young actresses who had died. Again, either at the hands of stalkers or fathers or the things that they did to themselves. But it was an examination, not just of my culture but also I think the sense of my own need to die at a certain level.
Amber Tamblyn:
And not literally, but to have a... I have a real metaphorical death. I was craving an ending to this type of person that I had been for so long, which was not an ending of acting, which I've always loved. It's a great work. But an ending to the not having any control and to not being able to be the bigger version of yourself you had imagined. The person who controls her own content, who writes her own words, who interprets her own art.
Amber Tamblyn:
Those things were not available to me. As they are not for many women and in many different industries. And I think I had to go through my own version of that existential crisis to come out on the other side, which again is something I think all women go through, whether you're in your late 20s or early 30s. It is that Saturn Return, which I talk a lot about in the book.
Amber Tamblyn:
This idea, I call it in the book an Invisible Alphabet, where you are at A or B or C and you see that bright, glowing Z in the distance, but you have no idea how to manifest the alphabet in between. You just have no skill for it.
Amber Tamblyn:
And our culture doesn't give us a skill set for that. It really doesn't, if anything, it tries to keep women distanced from their own potential. So for me, I think it was about feeling like if I didn't come out on the other side, figuring out how to manifest that alphabet that bridge then I wasn't going to survive.
Amber Tamblyn:
So, this was an act of survival for me. And again, this is not me talking about a literal death. This is talking about, I don't know what I would have... where I would have ended up, who I would have been, what kind of career I would have had, if any had I not pushed through and done what I had to do, which didn't feel like a choice. It felt like an act of survival.
Lauren Schiller:
But you had the presence of mind to be able to step back and say, "This is just not working for me." And I'm trying to dig into that. I mean, I love the concept of the Saturn Return and I want to talk about that more because I feel like that happens... It just keeps happening. I mean, I'm older than you and I feel like I'm having that question right now.
Amber Tamblyn:
It's supposed to happen, by the way.
Lauren Schiller:
What is my Z, right? Like I've done all this. I've gotten... maybe let's just say I'm at... what's the middle of the alphabet? L.
Amber Tamblyn:
Like around your T. An S or a T.
Lauren Schiller:
So, just to try and understand how when you have that clarity or that recognition that you do need to start reaching for a different direction.
Amber Tamblyn:
I write again in the book about how much I believe that women have been taught from a very young age, from when we were girls to confuse instinct for anxiety. I think that's very real. And the pit in your stomach, the thing that makes you sick every day that makes you question and then we are just so used to putting that away, is the thing we should be listening to the most.
Amber Tamblyn:
I think there's a great Henry Miller quote that says, "All growth is a leap in the dark." And I believe that to be true at any age. And yes, it's true that a Saturn Return, this reconnecting with your new self and pivoting to whatever that new trajectory of your life is supposed to be happens on a cycle. And it's going to happen to me again and I'm going to be in my forties probably going, "What am I doing? What have I done? What is this life I have built?"
Amber Tamblyn:
And that's the journey. I mean that is the finding the joy in that darkness and the excavation of that darkness, not shying away from it is where I have learned to find power. I think that is what some people would call, "The leaning in." There is many different ways of looking at it, but I really think it's important for us, especially as women to find safety and comfort and growth from leaning into those dark, painful questions.
Lauren Schiller:
Yeah. Leaning in started again kind of a bad rap, but it really is the right term because of-
Amber Tamblyn:
I don't know. Yeah.
Lauren Schiller:
... moving back from you really need to push into it.
Amber Tamblyn:
I don't know much about that or the author who wrote it. I know that it was controversial because I think it was also... it comes with that same cliché of like women can have it all, that's not really what the question is. The question is, are women allowed to be? Period.
Amber Tamblyn:
Are we allowed to be? And does that mean... and if we are allowed to be, are we supposed to be this version of ourselves? Are we supposed to sound like this version of ourselves? Are we supposed to act like this version of ourselves? Who is controlling the narrative of how women are allowed to show up in their own lives and be powerful?
Amber Tamblyn:
And that is the age old question that seems to at every level continue to be a huge underlying problem. I mean, we're even seeing it now in the 2020 elections still, this idea of who is electable, who isn't, who is trustworthy and who isn't. I mean the afterword in this book that I wrote in Era of Ignition, I wrote it maybe six months ago and when I read it the other night at the book release party for this.
Amber Tamblyn:
I did this wonderful in conversation with a journalist, Jodi Kantor. And as I was reading it, I had to pause and like address to the audience and say, "This is scary how relevant this is right now." And it will always be relevant and tell we are having those deeper, more difficult conversations about why this continues to happen, about why we can't even agree on a definition of what misogyny or sexism is before addressing how to fix it.
Amber Tamblyn:
We are putting... we are just continually putting Band-Aids over things instead of dealing with the wound.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, before we get too far away from this, could you explain this... Your concept of the Saturn Return? I mean folks can read the book but let's give them a little taste of what, what do you meant.
Amber Tamblyn:
Well, the argument that I make in the book and the title I should, I guess I should talk a little bit. The title really to me is talking about this condensed time of palpable rage and frustration that we are all feeling that has propelled us into uncontrollable action.
Amber Tamblyn:
This sense of we're not going to wait for permission anymore. We are going to do, which is very much what Me Too and Time's Up have done over the last several years. But the book really looks at my own trajectory and my experience going from being a child actress who felt very much out of control over her own trajectory in life, and felt like she had been pigeonholed into this one area in which she could only go into other people's rooms, step into the threshold of other people's art and interpret their work without ever having her voice be a part of that interpretation.
Amber Tamblyn:
And the book chronicles my experience, learning how to forget about that room and that door and just build my own damn house, and my own space and my own room in which to exist and be, which is dangerous and scary and doesn't always work. That's sort of the micro look of the book while looking at the macro, which is the world we're living in is sort of having its own Era of Ignition as well.
Amber Tamblyn:
It is also having this Saturn's return, this idea that every 20 to 30 years, we are coming back to a space of beginning for ourselves, which very much is without going into like a deep thing about astrology. And about the way planets are aligned. We can maybe agree, maybe not. It might be philosophical, it might be spiritual, but agree that each of us are uniquely born in the moment we are born, the universe and planets are aligned in a certain way.
Amber Tamblyn:
I am not so narcissistic and egotistical to say, "I know what those planets, what that any of that means." But I believe that each of us have a unique story to tell. And therefore some of that might have something to do with this idea that we... our subconscious and our conscious mind and our spiritual living come into this state of crisis at certain points in our life at very pivotal points in our life.
Amber Tamblyn:
And I think that the country is in one of those existential crises right now. And so my argument is to always... and in this book is to not be afraid of it, is to lean into the darkness as we talked about. And to go for what is most uncomfortable because that is how things are going to change.
Amber Tamblyn:
All these conversations that terrify you about race and white feminism and are men being canceled too quickly, anything that you can feel you are having a tough time with as a woman, as a man, as a non-binary person, no matter where you come from, it is good that this conversation is happening.
Amber Tamblyn:
It is good that these things are coming up and bubbling up to the surface so that we can address them and address them with fear. That's okay, but to not shy away and pull away from this change, which we have all demanded and now it's here.
Amber Tamblyn:
So we have to push forward and go through that. So the book looks a little bit both at how to move through the world in this change that we're in, in this momentum, in the chaos of it. How to resensitize ourselves to these very tough conversations in which we've wanted to just be numb and give a bland answer, an easy answer, but how to truly engage with people around us and in our communities and therefore truly engage with ourselves in our own lives and re stimulating who we are, and who we are allowed to become, what our trajectory means.
Lauren Schiller:
Yeah. Well, you... I mean you did that so boldly and this is when I really first became aware of you in this Op-ed that you wrote in 2017. But this was before the Weinstein thing, right?
Amber Tamblyn:
It was about two months before the Weinstein article came out, which is one of the reasons, and I chronicle this deeply in the book about how Jodi Kantor had reached out to me because so many women had after reading that Op-ed, and that's when I really understood that this was part of the zeitgeist, the rage zeitgeists and that it was bubbling and it was right under the surface. And all Trump did is like put the village idiots pin in it and it popped. And that's what happened. Yeah.
Lauren Schiller:
Yeah. Share with what the gist of the op-ed was. And I do encourage everyone who's listening to this to go back and read it. because it was, for me, going back and reading it again so prescient. I mean, clearly a lot of events were leading up to that moment, but I hadn't really seen or heard anyone just put a stake in the ground like you did at that time.
Lauren Schiller:
And then it felt like everything was cascading out of that in society, but then apparently also personally for you.
Amber Tamblyn:
So the short of that, op-ed came from a small Twitter exchange that happened online whereby I said something about James Woods picking up on me. The actor James was picking up on me once when I was 16. And of course, it became this huge firestorm. James Wood denied it, put out this thing in like the Hollywood Reporter or something. He was calling me a liar.
Amber Tamblyn:
And that was sort of the moment in which all of the James Woods's is before him. All of the men who have ever called women liars. For instance, most recently I would even look at Bernie Sanders essentially saying that Elizabeth Warren lied about this interaction they had. It is part of a narrative that women have always had to face. It is part of this idea that our stories cannot be trusted and therefore we cannot be trusted with power.
Amber Tamblyn:
It really is this logic that has been created by a patriarchal narrative and system that we live in. and it goes around and around and around and it chases it's disgusting tail. And so in that moment that was the survival thing that kicked in. That was the sense of I wasn't going to be quiet. I didn't know what the repercussions would be. And I reached out to my friend Roxanne Gay, the writer and I said, "Will you connect me with your editor at the New York times? I think I have an op-ed for them." And she did and that was it.
Lauren Schiller:
Again, even though it feels like this is so ingrained in our brains. at this point, I really, I had to go back and look at the chronology of things just to get the order of it right. So, your Op-ed comes out sometime in September.
Lauren Schiller:
The Weinstein story breaks sometime in October, a couple of weeks after that, Alyssa Milano tweets the Me Too hashtag, picking up on Toronto Burke's movement that was started in 2006. And then you got involved with a group of women and launched Time's Up in January of 2018. I mean that is really, I mean we talked about change being slow, but that's pretty rapid fire development.
Amber Tamblyn:
That is what I, the term I've coined called angronized, which when women get angry and organized and we were very angronized. That was mega propulsion of energy and being just fed up really, really fed up.
Amber Tamblyn:
And what the experience... and again, I will only speak for my own my personal journey with that was that women were getting in rooms together who had never really been encouraged to be alone in rooms together and talk in the entertainment business. You had very famous women like Reese Witherspoon, and that's not me speaking out of terms.
Amber Tamblyn:
Like she's been very much in front of this movement and, and a really wonderful proponent of change and you have America Ferrera and Natalie Portman and you had these women, then in the room with women like me who's not a huge movie star, but known in her own way, in a separate way. And then you had women who were also there, who were agents, who were assistants to agents, who were producers.
Amber Tamblyn:
You had women just from across the landscape and just... and nobody knew what to do. There was no roadmap for this which is what always makes me laugh when I hear people say, ‘Well, the punishment doesn't fit the crime." And my argument is always, well, who invented the punishment for the crime?
Amber Tamblyn:
And we don't know that yet. We are actually in the center of figuring out what fits what now according to this new world we live in. And you don't get to dictate it. And I don't get to dictate it. And this is a much larger than any one individual and certainly much larger than the feelings of men who have predominantly been the ones who are terrified of all that has happened, and been very scared and frustrated and angry about it. And, and have not had a sense of how they can help or how they can stop it.
Amber Tamblyn:
And to them I'm always like, ‘Well, welcome to feeling out of control," because that is how women have always felt. And here's where we are and things are changing whether you like it or not.
Amber Tamblyn:
No one is asking you anymore. So, my advice is always just get on board, get on board because this is the way it's going. And in that moment, it was this incredible experience. And it was messy. It was painful, it was a lot of crying. It was a lot of sharing of stories and revelations about people you had worked with, men you had worked with women you had worked with who were awful, who had taken care of predators, who had silenced women who had blacklisted actresses.
Amber Tamblyn:
I mean it was all just coming out. It was coming out everywhere and it was really a very difficult time, but it was making us feel alive. And from that place is where Time's Up was born was this idea of we need to declare something. But that declaration needs to be matched with an action.
Amber Tamblyn:
It cannot just be, "Hey everyone, we're angry. Here's a letter." It had to be paired with something which is where the time's up. Legal defense fund came from.
Lauren Schiller:
This is all taking place. This is actually women physically present in a room together.
Amber Tamblyn:
Yeah. There were meetings happening all over LA and in New York too. Just everywhere. Anyone that had a sizable house that could fit 30 to 70 women at any given time and there was no... nobody knew what the hell they were doing, and people's feelings got hurt. It was not great for a lot of the times.
Amber Tamblyn:
White women were just dominating the rooms. Famous white women were trying to lead everything and make everything about them, and women of color were not having their voices heard in those rooms.
Amber Tamblyn:
And this was... this is all important to say though, because it helped us work on this conversation, which has needed to happen amongst women. This is the micro, micro, right? This is the meta, meta, that it's not only just about systems of power around us and men who are in... who are dominating those systems of power, but it is about the, what I call The Susan Collins Effect. So it is about the women who are adjacent and aligned with upholding that white privilege and that power, who are also themselves equally as responsible. And part of the problem.
Amber Tamblyn:
Well we can sort of put down our defenses and examine that, we're still going to be a part of that problem. And so, we had to have a lot of really tough conversations. They're still happening. This is a huge, huge community building exercise that has been led with a lot of passion and pain. And people want answers and they want justice. And sometimes those things don't come swiftly or swiftly enough. But I think we are seeing as I've said, at least things are changing. At least they are moving. And that to me is something
Lauren Schiller:
I'm Lauren Schiller and I'm talking with Amber Tamblyn, whose book Era of Ignition is out in paperback now subscribe to the Inflection Point Podcast and make a contribution toward our production at inflectionpointradio.org.
Lauren Schiller:
We're back with Amber Tamblyn, actress, director, women's rights advocate and co-founder of Time's Up. So what are you seeing that's changing that you're feeling good about?
Amber Tamblyn:
I think one of the most wonderful things I see is and again, I'll maybe I'll just speak for my industry because I think that's an important place to come from of what I know. There's a lot more engagement and conversation and public discourse and dialogue about women as directors, women running things, women being able to be the ones to green light, to decide the point of view, the narrative that's going to be told in a film or a TV show. My friend America Ferrera just executive produced a show called Gentrified which is coming out on Netflix.
Amber Tamblyn:
And you've got women like Janet Mock, trans women of color who just had an overall deal at Netflix, the first woman of color ever to have that there. And you're seeing sort of these unprecedented moves as far as whose voices are being able to be in the room, who is getting to be able to create content.
Amber Tamblyn:
You've got the Lena Waithe. You've got these incredibly powerful queer non-binary trans women, women of all kinds who are making huge strides in the business. And while it's still not enough, while you still look at for instance, I think the Annenberg Institute just came out with a huge... they come out with their annual Annenberg Institute study, which looks at gender inequality in the workplace and in our business and specific in the entertainment business.
Amber Tamblyn:
And you still look and there's still just low numbers. It's still something around like 4% for women directors and it's still really low. So there's still just a lot of work to be done. But I do see that changing in the business. I do see a greater need for women in writers' rooms, women behind the camera, women running the camera, women producing entertainment, all of those things. It's happening.
Lauren Schiller:
One of the many things that I loved about reading your book is that I felt like, I don't know if it was at the end of each chapter but definitely interspersed throughout each story, was what I the reader can take away from this and what I could go do to make a difference.
Lauren Schiller:
And some of the things that I pulled out from it are this idea of opening the door for others and offering access that others don't have. And the plus one-
Amber Tamblyn:
Isn't that great?
Lauren Schiller:
So could you elaborate on... I feel like those are all kind of mixed together, but you can parse them if you want. But could you elaborate on this?
Amber Tamblyn:
So plus one is something that came out of Time's Up which was an idea that we have in our business again, but it's been carried over into Time's Up healthcare and all kinds of different industries, where the idea is anybody at any level whether you're the most known powerful person or whether you feel you have nothing to offer does have something to offer.
Amber Tamblyn:
And sometimes that is often just access. For instance, I just talked about these Hollywood parties right? How much I hate going to them. Most people hate going to them. They really do. Except for this one Jeffrey Katzenberg party. But to think that I could squander the invitations that I get to an elite Hollywood party where you might be able to rub elbows with some of the most important showrunners, executives, people who are creating content is a privilege for me to have.
Amber Tamblyn:
And that is an access that I have always had. But I have never thought that that would be possibly interesting or important to anybody else. To a young budding writer, a young woman who came out of college you would love to be staffed on a show. The idea that I would squander that. And I think it took a long time for me to realize like that is one thing I have to offer.
Amber Tamblyn:
There are so many things I have to offer. For instance my novel that came out before this book called Any Man, a thing that I'd never considered before was book tours. I go on these huge 30 city book tours for a book. I get to read in front of these big amazing audiences. And I've never once considered taking, inviting someone to open for me or to read with me in that capacity.
Amber Tamblyn:
And so I did that on that book tour. And in every city, I put out a basically like an open call and said, "If you are a woman identifying, a woman of color. If you identify as a woman in any capacity. I want you to read with me. I want you to be able..." And I would give different women 10 minutes something like that to read with me during those shows in every single city.
Amber Tamblyn:
And it was awesome. It was great. I got to meet new writers, young women whose voices. My jaw was on the floor thinking, "You've never been published? I can't wait for the world to know your work". So it was also a gave to me as well getting to lift up people who would normally not have a platform like that.
Amber Tamblyn:
And I've asked that of other friends of mine who have done the same thing for me, who have been the Amy Poehler's of the world, the Roxanne Gays of the world women who are constantly giving, the America Ferreras of the world who constantly giving to other women around them, even if they're exhausted of doing one more favor, of one more help, of one more. Whatever that is are always there saying, "I get it because I always wanted someone to pull me forward and I'm going to pull you forward."
Amber Tamblyn:
And each of us has something to offer in that way. So, in the book I talk a lot about asking ourselves what we have to offer especially men. What do men have to offer? Even if it's something small, like we always will have something that we can offer. And we think that that doesn't mean anything but it actually does. Because one of the things we say with the plus one model is, you can't be what you can't see.
Amber Tamblyn:
And if you don't... if you have never been in the room where it happens, if you've never been in a pitch room pitching something or trying to get something sold, you don't know. And so the fear manifests itself into creating a closed off space for you where you don't want to go out and put yourself on a limb.
Amber Tamblyn:
And oftentimes if you are brought into that room, even just to be able to see how it goes, how a meeting goes, you might be surprised how much you could affect someone's life.
Amber Tamblyn:
So that's like one of the many things that I talk about in thereof of thinking about what each of us individually has, and not taking for granted the access that we have at any level. Yeah.
Lauren Schiller:
And that's I mean and it's another form in the business world of mentorship and advocacy and bringing others up along with you. something else that you address in the book is the concept of white feminism that white women, myself included. I will put myself in this very bucket have cringed at the notion of that there is even such a thing that we stand for all women.
Lauren Schiller:
And you actually break that notion up quite well. Can you speak to that and why you felt like it was something it was important to address?
Amber Tamblyn:
To me this is a very important thing to address because I think all of us need to own that term. And even though it is a negative of a pejorative term, it's something that we feel like we don't want to be. But the fact of the matter is we are. Every white woman I know at some form has used her privilege to not help somebody, to make things worse for someone, to protect themselves and their own feelings over those of someone who couldn't have that protection.
Amber Tamblyn:
So, I talk a lot about that examination. And again, for each of us if we are ever called in, that's a great by the way a great term that black feminist women use which is instead of calling somebody out, you call them in. I love that so much.
Amber Tamblyn:
And so if you are ever called in confronted about something that happened for us not to immediately become defensive, in the way that... in the same way that white women would really love for men not to be defensive when we speak our truth.
Amber Tamblyn:
And when we call in somebody and say this happened it was hurtful. Instead of becoming defensive to maybe take a moment, take a beat and think about what happened and absorb what the person is saying and asking of you.
Amber Tamblyn:
So, that chapter is really difficult because I talk about my own experiences in white feminism, and my own experiences as putting myself front and center in an activist world, and an organizing world and the privilege to be able to do that. And to consider though that maybe always our voices not necessarily the one that should be in the front and center of certain conversations, especially when we're talking about racism and things like that. And we should be amplifying and supporting women around us who have real experience with that.
Amber Tamblyn:
I think everything stems back in this book to the idea of letting ourselves be uncomfortable, of letting this chaotic moment in our culture in this time that we live in happen, let it happen. And it's okay to be afraid of it. It is okay to be terrified, to feel all the feelings you're going to feel of that discomfort, of that anger, of that frustration. But to never shy away from it and certainly to not to disengage from the conversation. That to me is the most dangerous thing.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, there was talk this year the Women's March recently happened. And there's always something bubbling up in the news about how badly it's managed or who's in charge and what's the point. And yet thousands and thousands of women still came out. Have you had any thoughts on the role of the March?
Amber Tamblyn:
I think that this is something that the world wants for women which is for us to tear each other apart and to fail. They want these movements to fail. We have to always remember that at the end of the day, the world we live in doesn't want this to succeed.
Amber Tamblyn:
It doesn't want the Women's March to succeed. It doesn't want Elizabeth Warren to succeed. It doesn't want any organization that is run predominantly by women. It doesn't want a fair fight to succeed. Stacey Abrams organization, you look at that and there are real palpable present ways in which our culture and the society around us tries to disband women and pull them apart and make them hate each other.
Amber Tamblyn:
That's what's happened in the entertainment industry for generations as well. This idea of you are always in competition with your sisters. It is not about who is the best for their work, who is going to get chosen that there is enough work for all of us. because that's never the case. There isn't. So it becomes this scarcity mentality of seeing other women as your severe competition in some way. And that can be said for organizing too.
Amber Tamblyn:
I think it's really important that the Women's March exists. I think it's really important what they did. Sarah Sophie Flicker, Paolo Mendoza, Melanie Stamp as well, Yadda Trabioso. They all went and did this last [Lastisus 00:41:42] dance in front of the White House. And there is nothing more powerful to me than angry women with these bandages over their eyes yelling these lyrics, and pointing at The White House and saying, "The rapist is you. The rapist was you. And it's not my fault. It's not where I was not how I dressed."
Amber Tamblyn:
And when you have this giant choir of women screaming that that's really cathartic, but it's also very moving and important and being able to March, being able to show dissent and to be able to show up and resist against these forms of government and this form of oppression and language is a Rite of passage for especially for Americans.
Amber Tamblyn:
And so to me it's important that the Women's March still exists in that capacity. I don't know what's going on for their future. I don't know much about the inside politics of that but I do believe it's important for women to continue to show up. Even when it's most difficult, even when we are ripping at each other's throats and angry and frustrated and feeling erased. I think we have to keep showing up for each other.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, so here we are. We had six female candidates running for the current election. We're down to two as of this recording.
Amber Tamblyn:
And the New York Times couldn't pick one. So they think both.
Lauren Schiller:
I'm kind of I'm like always the silver lining person. My take on that was yeah, that was kind of weird. But also, hey two for one. I mean they both got Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren both got some words behind them and in for the record.
Amber Tamblyn:
I mean I record I think it's fine. I think it's fine but I still just question that idea of one is not enough. One is not enough. One can't be trustworthy enough. One can't be perfect enough to do this work. So, I think that's a little frustrating, but it's also... we're just we're in a different world and whether or not Elizabeth Warren wins the nomination, that's my hope anyway. I'm a big supporter of hers.
Amber Tamblyn:
But if it doesn't happen, we are going to continue to have these conversations about sexism, about this idea of perversing women's narratives and leaning into age old deeply sexist propaganda.
Lauren Schiller:
Your book opens with you talking with your newlywed husband, newly wedded husband about the fact that you are pregnant and that you want to terminate the pregnancy. And as we sit here, the president of our country is speaking at the anti-choice rally that happens every year like a week after the Women's March. And you conclude your book talking about choice and Women's Choice and choices of women.
Amber Tamblyn:
I think we have to just forever push against the idea that that choice belongs to anyone other than the body in which that choice is being inhabited. Abortion is normal. Animals do it. Humans do it. We are a species that has a conscious mind. We have the ability to understand things in a way that other animals do not. And abortion is normal. Abortion is normal, abortion is normal, Abortion is normal, Abortion is normal.
Lauren Schiller:
More broadly speaking around this idea of women's choice, I mean what is your... what would you say your vision is for women? Where would you like the imagined future in your lifetime?
Amber Tamblyn:
So, I think the best way to answer that question is to sort of paraphrase Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which when she was asked how will she know when there's enough women on the Supreme Court, she said, "When there are nine."
Amber Tamblyn:
And I think that that's just something for people to think about. And I think everyone will come away with a different feeling about that answer. Some people will think that means Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants men to be erased. Some women will understand that, that means we just want a seat at the table, a full seat at the table for a little while until things are balanced out.
Amber Tamblyn:
We want to know what that feels like to not be questioned. For that not to be a strange thing that only one voice, only one color of skin has been the only voice that has literally created this country. And so, I want people to think about that.
Lauren Schiller:
I love that. What's the best call to action that someone else has shared with you that you'd like to share?
Amber Tamblyn:
The best call to action. Oh, there's so many different things but I think that came from America Ferrera, who to me is just such an extraordinary human being and created this organization called Harness, and really has worked in these organizational spheres for a long time now and is a really brilliant mind. She's a great actress and a great producer and all those things, but she's a brilliant mind.
Amber Tamblyn:
I cannot wait to work for her presidential campaign someday. I'll do whatever. I'll wash your laundry. Just tell me what you want. I'll rub your feet. It doesn't matter. I'll do it. But I think there was in the frustration, a lot of the frustration that came out at the end of 2017 during that time when Time's Up was being formed and all of that and there was many women were feeling very much like they weren't being seen or weren't being appreciated for the work they were doing.
Amber Tamblyn:
I myself had some feelings around that. And I remember that America said, "If you are waiting for other women to give you a pat on the back and give you a reward for trying to change the world, you're going to be waiting a very long time," which is a simple thing to say but this idea of don't wait to be congratulated. You don't need to do that. You don't need permission to be angry about something and to go out and find out a way to do it.
Amber Tamblyn:
That tells me, go find three or four girlfriends that are your friends that you might have something in common that you feel like needs to change whether it's in your workplace, whether it's within your social community like whatever that is and start talking about it, and start talking about what each of you has to offer and to remember to not let your ego get in the way of that work, of needing to be front and center of everything.
Amber Tamblyn:
Sometimes deferment is the most powerful thing we can give, is to be able to step back and learn from someone else. I would say this again, it's always usually predominantly like America women of color. You can learn a lot from women of color, which just means step back and listen. Do more listening than you do the talking. But to remember that to not let your ego get in the way of it.
Lauren Schiller:
That was Amber Tamblyn, actor, director, poet and advocate for women's rights. Her latest book is Era of Ignition. I'll put a link to it and Ambers original op-ed on my website at inflectionpointradio.org. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point, and this is how women rise up.
Lauren Schiller:
That's our inflection point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple podcasts, Radio Public, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review and subscribe to the podcast. Know women leading change we should talk to. Let us know at inflectionpointradio.org.
Lauren Schiller:
While you're there, support our production with a tax deductible monthly or one time contribution. When women rise up, we all rise up. Just go to inflectionpointradio.org. We're on Facebook and Instagram at inflectionpointradio. Follow us and join the Inflection Point society. Our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions. And follow me on Twitter LASchiller.
Lauren Schiller:
To find out more about today's guest and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go, inflectionpointradio.org.
Lauren Schiller:
Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and PRX. Our community manager is Laura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Wayne. I'm your host Lauren Schiller.
Speaker 3:
Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Speaker 4:
From PRX.
