HC: Some say that the #MeToo movement has gone too far. In your opinion, why do you think this is, and do you agree or disagree?
LZ: I think we’d have to define what ‘too far’ means. I think we are way beyond the time that this should have come out, so in that respect, I don’t think we’re too far at all. I think we’re way behind. The injustices, the harassment, and the abuse of power has been here for ages as we know. And I think it’s fantastic that it’s gaining the awareness in the public eye that it really deserves. The comment that it has gone ‘too far’ comes from, I believe, from the perspective that in women coming out and taking a stand and saying, “This is what has been going on,” or “This is what’s happened to me”—often when it’s picked up quickly by the media, or social media, that it takes off—in a global internet world today, it takes off—and then there’s no recourse. So there have been, you know, as we’ve seen there have been a couple cases where the accusations were not justified. And so that is where, I think, that it does go too far. The other thing that, I think, is certainly understandable [and] we can talk more about this—the emotions that come up when women have been harassed or abused are intense. As they absolutely should be, it’s totally natural—but when that comes out in the media, it becomes more of like a drama statement rather than really an indicator of what is not working and what needs to be changed.
HC: Could you clarify which cases [you think] were unjustified?
LZ: Well, there was the—I can’t remember his name now, I can get it to you—the comedian.
HC: Aziz Ansari?
LZ: Yes, exactly. Not that it’s not justified—I’m not saying it’s not justified—but because of the dynamic of social media and the internet today, and just our global media news-stream, once it starts going, it’s hard to get that back again. And then if accusations start flying, it’s hard to correct those. So those are situations where we need to go slower. We need to be clearer and more methodical about how we’re sharing our information if we’re going to make changes.
HC: In order to be represented properly, and not have the media take things out of hand.
LZ: That’s correct.
HC: For #MeToo Part II, you frequently mention standing in power, not anger. So what would this look like to you, and how would it differ from #MeToo Part I?
LZ: Well, #MeToo Part I—as I’ve said, there’s been injustice against so many groups, but if we’re talking today about the injustices against women, that when it finally is given an opportunity to be aired, there’s an eruption. People are emotional, they speak out loudly, there’s outrage—and that’s totally understandable. But taking that momentum, then, and turning it into needed change in a very practical way—in our government, in our work environments, in the procedures that are there in our social circles and even how we talk about women or with women—that all, in order to make changes there, we need to stand more clearly in our thought process, and what we want to be intentional about what we’re sharing. So it’s being more active than reactive. And that anger, which is totally natural and healthy when someone has been subject to unjust behavior needs to come out—needs to be processed—but then the next step. That’s the Part II. The next step is, what do we do now? Now we know it’s not okay, these horrible things have happened; what are we gonna do with that? And we need to make it clear that we are powerful not only individually as women, but as a group. Females on this planet have incredible power and responsibility to make changes, to hold containers of understanding and clarity in motion, and to use that power that we have, rather than our anger, to make the changes. I’m not saying, “get rid of anger forever, it’s bad,” but it has its time and place, and now we need to use our power to make changes.
HC: You also say women have to be strategic in their actions and reactions when it comes to the women’s movement. What do you mean by this, and what kind of strategies and actions do you think women should take?
LZ: So, the first thing is just to take care of themselves. I always say, “personal peace first.” If they have been subject to something, even if it’s not overt or extreme harassment or abuse, even if it’s just a consistent degradation or second-class citizen situation, you need to take care of that. Whether it’s with a group of friends to talk things out, or whether you get professional help to really work it out level—so you take care of yourself when you find your own peace. And when you’ve done that and you feel comfortable with what’s happened to you, or at least you’ve come to peace with it if not comfortable with it, then you make the next step and you say, “okay, what do I need to do or what do I want to do?” If it’s in a public arena—“do I need to make a public statement?” If it’s at work—“do I need to go to a supervisor, or to the HR department?” And in doing that it’s really useful to have a support system. So to find your tribe—if it is at work, and you know that other women have been harassed or subject to behavior by a particular person or situation, then you gather those people. You know, there was the example in Southern India, where there had been a [Bollywood] actress who had been abducted—quite literally—by one of the people that had been on a recent movie scene that she had been working on. And she was abducted for the day in a limousine and abused—physically and sexually abused—by people that were on the cast of this movie. And she was just devastated, obviously, but in that industry and in that culture, from what they’ve said, is that you have no recourse. Well, she started talking to other women—other actresses—and a number of them said, “me too. Me too, me too.” So they came together and they created a collective to find [their] tribe, find [their] support system. And they went to the courts and said, “We want to have recourse [so that] we can at least have due process—to speak of what has happened to us and have the perpetrator come to justice.” To find your tribe, and to figure out what action you’re going to take, and then to take action in a way that is really going to make a change. So not standing in accusation, in judgement, but standing on facts. Facts are incredibly useful tools, and they speak very loudly when they’re used strategically.
HC: What do you think the core paradigm of the women’s movement is at the moment? How do you believe that anger influences that paradigm, and what would it take to change that?
LZ: So—the core paradigm is that we are fighting for equality. That’s a mistake in itself. It’s not something we need to fight for; we are equal. But we have bought into the paradigm that we’re not, and that we have to fight for it—or that other people don’t know that we are, and we have to fight for it. So the whole concept that we have to fight for something we already are puts us at a disadvantage—because we cannot stand in our power if there’s something we have to get, rather than knowing that it’s something that we have—something that we are.
HC: Just to follow up—we are equal, obviously, but do you feel that we are considered equal by society and the legal system?
LZ: Right—now that’s where we need to differentiate. So I’m—former English and German teacher here, I’m very big on language. That’s where we really need to differentiate. So we are equal in value. We are not the same as men, and men are not the same as women. Thank God! Right? So in German, there is the word “gleich” which means “same,” and there’s also the word “gleichwertig” which means “of equal value.” So when we’re talking about equality—things being equal, because “gleich” means equal and same—we’re not talking about it being the same, we’re talking about it being equal. So first in a paradigm shift we have to know that about ourselves and really get it. Not try to justify that we’re equally valuable, but really know it on a deeper level. And quite honestly, the only way to do that is just to do it. You can talk around it, you can look at your beliefs around it, but in the end you just get to say, “You know what? I am completely as equally valuable as every other person on this planet, period”—just because you are. No matter if you’re black, white, male, female, gay, straight, doesn’t matter. So that’s the first shift. And then to understand the second part of that paradigm shift is just to understand something that Martin Luther King was—one of the most brilliant things about his campaign of the Civil Rights Movement was that he helped the African-Americans at that time understand that if anybody has to treat you poorly—has to believe they are superior, use violence, whatever it is—quite literally, they’re not superior, right? Because it’s the same thing. If they’re trying to fight for their superiority, the indicator is that they’re not. And so when African-Americans understood that the playing field was leveled in value, then it was a matter of, “okay, let’s deal with the inequality of action. The inequality of laws. The inequality of how we’re treated.” But that’s the second step—that’s the expression of a paradigm that believes that there’s inequality. When you step into the paradigm of “you are equal,” then you naturally will just simply change the way you see yourself there to mirror that understanding.
HC: What would true gender equality look like to you, and how do you think #MeToo Part II will get us there?
LZ: What I think is—how I see gender equality is honoring our differences. I mean, men and women are simply different. And I think that we women shoot ourselves in the foot by trying to be like men, dress like men, work like men—we’re not men! Thank God! And that’s part of that paradigm shift…to really say, “I am a woman! Oh my god, what a blessing that I get to be a woman! And I don’t need to make men wrong in order to do that.” So that gender equality goes in both directions, because a lot of females seek to claim their validity as women by making men wrong or stupid. “He’s just such a jerk” or “he’s just such a man.” Well, that’s the same thing in reverse of what men do to women. True gender equality goes in both directions. It’s—both genders are equal in value, but look at those differences. So if it’s in the workplace and there are certain job descriptions and you’re doing the job equally to a man, there are no differences. How you dress, how you talk, the fact that you have different body parts makes absolutely no difference. But if you have more people skills or more emotionality or whatever it is than a man, for example, you know, there’s a big difference between an engineer and an artist also. Their mentalities, and how they express themselves in the work world—if there’s a difference between the male and the female, honor that and use that. Let females be who they are, and accent that, accentuate it—it’s a wonderful thing.
HC: What are some of the key differences that you think there are between men and women? Like, biology aside—or if you think that there are any, biology aside.
LZ: Well, I don’t think you can do biology aside, um, because that is actually the genesis of a lot of our differences. Just how we function, our nervous systems, are very different. Women can hold a lot more stimulation capacity for multitasking, which is erroneous because you just go back and forth, you can’t divert your attention in many directions. You just go very fast between things. Um, but women can hold a lot more. They can cook a meal, be on the telephone, and attend to their three children, right? I mean, if we just take it from a domestic perspective. Whereas males can maybe chop carrots. And I’m not saying that men can’t multitask, but if we’re going to generalize, which is what we’re doing for the sake of this conversation, women can generally deal with a lot more in their nervous systems than men can, or just in their way of being than men can. And men are more analytical. And they don’t go to emotions initially; they first look at the facts. “What happened? Who did what; when?” And they’re problem-solvers. If you share something with them—a woman will come and want to share a situation, you see it in the workplace. If there’s a problem, a woman will come and talk about it trying to figure it out, collaborate, work it through—and a male will come and be very pinpointed and say, “this is the solution, this is what we want to do.” And so there’s this mismatch of just how we communicate about things. And to allow both of those into a framework and say, ok, if we go again with a situation even in a classroom, if you’re working in groups of students in class, or if you’re in a business and you’re working with a collaborative team, or even on the home front then you could say, “okay, so we’ve got this situation—so let’s look at it from all angles.” And if the females are coming in, they’re gonna speak about whatever emotionality is there, whatever connectivity between people, relatedness, how these different things layer on top of each other—and then the male may come and say, “okay but we’ve got Point A, Point B, Point C, Point D, and we need to get to Point E.” Now how do we weave all of those things together? It’s not that one way is right, and the other way is wrong, but how do we utilize all those to come together? And thank god we have all of that!
HC: And that actually leads really nicely into one of my next questions. Some of the critiques of #MeToo Part I have been that it’s not inclusive of all women or all victims of sexual assault—for example, sex workers, women in poverty, or trans and nonbinary people. What, if any, role do you think these groups should play in #MeToo Part II?
LZ: What role? I think that it’s important to categorize because what you’ve just done is spoken about different categories of both abuse or injustice, as well as gender orientation, or professions, or what have you. Right? So, we categorize in order to help us have conversations, but also to work in our minds. That has its place, but de-categorizing is incredibly important in certain times and places, and this would be one of them in that, if we’re talking about females—women—who either identify as women or were genetically born as women, whatever, women, I’m just gonna put us all in one bucket here—if we are being seen or treated unequally, however that expresses itself, in pay, in physical touch, in job distribution, whatever it is—it’s inequality! And it needs to be attended to, and it does not matter at what level. Now, how it’s attended to will matter because it’s gonna be a difference if we’re talking about, for example, students at a university who are being harassed or treated poorly by fraternity boys, or if we’re talking about prostitutes who are being physically abused by customers. So how we’re talking about it, or the changes we’re gonna make, are different, but the inequality is the same. There’s a group of people, that we’re calling in this particular area “women,” who are being treated poorly because they’re women, or treated [as] less-than because they’re women. And that’s not acceptable. Period.
HC: Great points. And this is coming out of slight personal curiosity because I do identify as nonbinary—because we’re not women, we’re not men, but some of us have traditionally female parts, and some of us have experienced sexual harassment—so what place do you think nonbinary people have in #MeToo?
LZ: Well, it’s so great that you ask that question—because for me, you know, as I said, that we categorize. For me, the world is just like quantum soup. And what we do is, we try and take little boxes, and put the soup in little boxes. Well, good luck trying to put soup in boxes, right? It runs over the sides, it seeps out the bottom—I mean, you can’t really do that. So whatever categories you are using, they’re important for the individuals that are in those categories but in the end are talking about injustice. And I could have this exact same conversation with you about homosexuals; I could have the conversation with you about African-Americans—or not even African-Americans, anybody of color in this country—whatever it is, any group that is being segregated out and treated as less than a prevailing group: it’s unjust! And we as human beings are all equal. And we come in different flavors, and different colors, and different sizes, and different preferences, and that’s okay. What happens is we—now we’re going into a different direction, but it’s kind of all connected. So in the WOMAN UNDAUNTED workshops that I do for women, we talk about our power, our passion, our playfulness, and our purpose. Now in order to talk about those areas of ourselves—which I think cover all expressions of ourselves—we need to be able to talk about them without judgement. And there’s something I call the ‘genius of non-judgement,’ and I just need to explain it now because I’m gonna make a big loop and come right back. So, let’s say somebody is homosexual. I’m heterosexual, but it doesn’t matter. So somebody’s homosexual, and they grow up in this heterosexual world. So their natural desire to be with the same sex—they can see it, they don’t even have to say that they’re homosexual, they see it—first of all, just most people out there, books, movies, everything is usually heterosexual. And even if that is the norm, if we take a norm on a scale and it is in the middle, that’s fine, it’s just a norm, but you can’t say that the things on the other sides of the spectrum don’t exist just because the majority is in the middle. So, they see all this in society, and then maybe their family doesn’t accept homosexuality, or whatever it is. So they get this message that how they are is not okay. So instead—so now they just have a desire to be with somebody of their own sex, and everybody around them, everything in society is saying, “That’s not okay.” So now they have to somehow figure out, “How can I feel okay when the general message is [that] I’m not okay?” So what we do is, we go into this dichotomy of good-bad, right and wrong. Now here’s where problems arise. If we look at facts, and facts as things that we can measure….facts that we can say are correct or incorrect based on measurements. But if I say that I like women, and not men, that’s not a fact. It’s not measurable; it’s a desire, it’s a proclivity, it’s who I am—that’s simply valid. So my desires and my perceptions are always valid. They cannot be measured according to the fact measurement of good-bad, right or wrong, incorrect or correct. But that’s where a problem comes in. We say, “Okay, somebody wants a same-sex partner? Well, that’s bad.” No, that’s valid. Why do people say that it’s bad? Because it doesn’t align with [their] value system. And let’s say my value system is, “I like men.” Well, I can have my value system and not be threatened by somebody else having a value system that’s different. But that’s what people do—because they don’t feel comfortable owning their own value, owning their value system, and owning their own desires, they invest a lot of time and energy into making everything else wrong in order to feel okay about themselves and to make themselves right. So if you start out with, “It’s simply valid,” then you can decide and say, “Okay, I like men, and that’s valid.” So if a woman approaches me and wants to have a relationship with me, I don’t need to make her wrong—I don’t need to do anything. I can just simply say, “I’d love to be friends but I’m not interested romantically; I’m interested in men.” And then leave it at that and then we can continue on as friends, without any judgement. So that’s where I come back to your personal question—that segmenting into different categories really becomes a non-issue when we’re all valid. It doesn’t matter what your flavor is. And, of course, it’s important what your flavor is, because it’s you. As a matter of fact, on my website, which you’re welcome to check out, there’s a free webinar—and I need to redo it because it’s kind of old—but it’s called “The Genius of Non-Judgement,” and I really take you through what I’ve just shared in this little thing, and I really lay it out very clearly; that may be of interest to you.
HC: This actually leads really well into my next question. So, you have the workshop, WOMAN UNDAUNTED—what kind of tools can this empowerment workshop provide women with to allow them to participate more actively in #MeToo Part II?
LZ: Two that come to mind immediately—well, it’s really an opportunity over two and a half days to take a deep dive into yourself and really leave behind what you don’t need anymore, and to create and carry forth who you want to be. So I think—the first thing I would say is to define your identity. And I’m not talking about gender identity or roles, I’m talking about who you are as a person in this world. And that has so many layers and so many facets—and yet there’s a core essence. And we often only find that core essence when something dramatic or tragic has happened to us, or we’ve had a terrible loss or change, whether it’s leaving home or having children leave home or divorce or, you know, something major like that. Then we really look at things and say, “Who am I?” We strip all the other things away and say, “Whoa—that’s who I am.” So the WOMAN UNDAUNTED retreat gives women the opportunity to define that. And we have different exercises, and I have a…photographer who comes, and we do photography at different times, for women to get an external view of themselves. And then have that conversation, of “How do I see myself?” and “Do I see in myself?” and talk about our beauty—and not just physical, of course, our internal beauty. The other thing is the tribe, as we were talking about—so women end up forming these really beautiful connections with other women who are on the same path of radical authenticity and action. Like “Who am I as a person?” and “Who do I want to be?” and coming from that radical place within themselves, of not being apologetic about it. And then we go into specific tools. We do a lot of role-playing; we talk about our sexuality. And again, I have to come from—and I mean this with all respect—it doesn’t matter what your orientation is. It’s important what it is, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is, “Who are you when you are sexual?” […] And if we look at the history in this country—we have a very skewed relationship with sex. It’s fascinating; having spent most of my life in Europe, it’s very interesting to be here in the United States and see the contradictions of more of a Puritanical approach to things. But at the same time, there’s pornography everywhere, especially again—if we talk about women’s issues—the objectification of female sexuality, making the female only a body. It’s kind of crazy to me. And so an opportunity in the WOMAN UNDAUNTED retreat—and we don’t go deeply into sexuality, but we look at it—is to look at our fears, our hindrances; “what holds me back from being a sexual person?” I was brought up in a very religious [household] and my mother, to this day, can’t even talk about specific genital parts. It’s just—and when I got married, she said, “Sex is fine as long as you’re married.” And that was it—that was the talk. It was like, “Okay! That’s great! Helps me not at all.” And so in our sexuality—or our sensuality; it doesn’t have to be only sex—how do we dress, how do we move, how do we feel when we have that mojo going, right? Do we allow ourselves that? And do we have to have makeup or hair or all that to feel that, or can we just feel that way because we want to feel that way? And so that’s a lot of what we work with, in WOMAN UNDAUNTED; we nurture that way of being in ourselves, because that’s really who we are. I mean, women are beautifully voluptuous in their beings.
HC: Getting back to #MeToo Part I, as you may know, some prominent second-wave feminists like Margaret Atwood and Germaine Greer have spoken out against the #MeToo movement, citing it as “whining” or as driven by emotion rather than a balanced mindset. What do you think about this, and what’s your opinion on their interpretation of the #MeToo movement?
LZ: Well, it’s their opinion, which is completely valid. But that’s precisely why I speak about #MeToo Part II the way that I do. As you saw from my website, and having spent so much time overseas—I was married to a pilot and engineer, I grew up with an engineer, medical people are in my family—I work a lot with people who are quite left-brain and analytical. And it’s wonderful—I mean, I am so in awe, because I am so not that way [laughs]. But I work a lot with people like that, and I’ve had to learn how to speak, how to present things and speak so that they can also get information in a way that will help them, and also help our common goal. And that’s whether I’m doing conflict resolution or, as I said, I’m working with women, because there are a lot of women in the medical profession, and lawyers, and engineers, etc.—thank God, too—so in working with people like this, in speaking to them, in talking to their hearing, it is important to have that calm mindset. To be able to speak in a way that facts are heard, and intentions or requests are made clearly. And the more emotionality and drama that is behind that, the less credible our stories and our movement is. And that’s what they’re pointing at. So actually, I think it’s important that they are—you know, that you have ten percent of the people in any group who are contradictory, disagree, are a little pissy—I’m not saying they’re that way, but that ten percent plays an important role, because they’ve put their finger on the issues that are not working. And then, speaking up the way they are is speaking to exactly what I’m saying: the emotions are valid and justified, but they’re not as effective in making the changes that we want. So I come back to taking that time, find personal peace first. Do your personal work, work through your emotions; don’t get rid of them. Own them, heal them, and then get clear strategically about your intention and what you want to do, and then make a plan and do it. Because that’s what’s going to be heard by…people like this, and often those people are in positions of power, because often people who are very analytical do tend to move up the ladder—we want them to hear our situation and what it is we’re requesting, and then to have the changes made.
HC: So obviously, not everyone can attend your workshops. So what kind of quick rundown of your points would you give to those who can’t?
LZ: Well, first of all, in the beginning of May, I’m going to be offering a free webinar, for exactly that reason. Because some people say, “Well, I can’t fly across the country.” I’ve also been asked [by some] to come and do WOMAN UNDAUNTED in their area, so I’m happy to do that—if someone wants to organize it, they attend free, and then I will do it in their area. So that’s a way to support the movement. So the free webinar is going to have a lot of information that will help women. I do coaching; I’m a certified coach, accredited by the ICF [International Coach Federation], so I do coaching, that’s available as well. And as soon as I can find a smidgen of time, maybe between 2 AM and 4 AM, I’m going to write a book—another book—and I will make that available to women as well. And what I want to do, quite honestly, is I want to put together some of these points and make it free or to cover costs; I just have not had the time to do that. So the women that can’t fly across the country—I’ve done a lot of Facebook Live; they can look on my YouTube channel to see the Facebook Lives that I’ve done. I will be going a little bit more in-depth with this free webinar, and I’ll be doing more of those in the future; that’s available. Also, coaching.
HC: And just out of curiosity, what would your book be about?
LZ: It would be about standing as a woman. And you know, one of the titles I’ve thought about is, “Am I A Woman?” I mean…we may have the body parts, but what it really means to be a woman is unclear to us. And I think that our elders are really important for us to understand who we are as women, because they’ve been through all the bumps and the bruises and the dips and turns, and have had to shed the layers that do not identify themselves, and strengthen the parts of themselves that do identify who they are in their value as women. So that’s what I would incorporate in that book. And one of the biggest things I would talk about is, quite sincerely, is “me first.” If I don’t love myself, I literally cannot love another person. It is not possible. I have to have that core of love, know that that is who I am—it is my identity, I am love—and stand in that place when I encounter another person so that I can let that flow outwards toward them. But I experience it first in myself, and that’s really what our power is.
HC: And what would you say to women who are having trouble with that—being able to love themselves? Because sometimes it’s not encouraged by society, or it’s looked at as being selfish.
LZ: First of all, loving yourself is the most selfless thing you can do. It really is—because [if it is] selfish, it’s the best thing you can do, loving yourself. I used to say to my children, when they were smaller, and they would have arguments with other kids, I would say, “If you’re going to throw poop at somebody, you have to pick it up in your own hand first.” And they were like, “Eww! Eww!” But it’s the same of judgement—and of love. So if you want to love anybody, or be loved, you need to be love—which is who you really are. So for the women who don’t feel that way about themselves, the place to start would be with judgement, which is why I make “The Genius of Non-Judgement” free—and also I’ll be putting that into a book soon, which is my next project. And that will be free as well. [And we need] to differentiate—so if we’re like, “my thighs are fatter than that model’s thighs,” or “I lie,” or “I’m terrible at math,” or “I can’t draw for the life of me”—we gather all these things to make a case for the fact that we’re not okay. And all the wonderful things—just the fact that you’re doing this interview, that you’re this passionate about the work that you do—how wonderful is that? […] You don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Whoa…look at your eyes! Look at that smile!” So we have this whole litany of things, and we go through it all the time—you know, we meet somebody new who has a nice…haircut, or is driving a nice car, and it’s like, “oh, my car’s not that nice,” or “my hair’s not that nice,”…so [it’s] to break that habit, and start really looking at our beauty. And that may sound so minor. But when you do that—quite literally, when you tip the scale and start looking at and seeing and feeling your own beauty—that, quite literally…will create world peace. Because when I feel good about myself and I love myself, I have zero reason to be angry at you, even if you’re angry—even if you’re upset—even if you’re doing things that I don’t want you to do. If I’m coming from a place of love, I can stop you from doing those things; I can protect other people from you hurting them; I can protect you from hurting yourself. But I don’t need to be angry at you and attack you if I’m standing in a place of love for myself. That’s the place of power.
“Love is power”; I like that.
There it is.
Want to get in touch with Leeza Steindorf? She can be reached at her personal website leezasteindorf.com.
[Image credits: feature image by Unsplash; other images from leezasteindorf.com]
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.