But after reading Susan Brownmiller's "In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution," I realize that I am, in fact, a feminist, an old-style one from the late '60s and early '70s. Feminism in the early 1970s was a civil rights movement. In those days, women had no reproductive freedom. Rape was considered a rare occurrence. Domestic abuse was a nonissue. A woman's only choices of occupation -- besides becoming a housewife -- were secretary, waitress or movie star.

Not that early feminists (or "women's libbers," as they were called in the suburbs where I grew up) shared a mutual agenda. The anti-war feminists clashed with the communists who clashed with the lesbians. Brownmiller, author of the important treatise "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape," describes this social movement's history even-handedly, revealing it to be a riveting time in American history when ideology was exhilarating.

I said as much to Brownmiller at the beginning of our interview.

Your book reminded me of the days when the left still stood for something, and the right wing hadn't yet monopolized the moral high ground.

I'm so glad you said that, because 99 percent of my readers are always women. So maybe some men who are interested in political theory and activism will appreciate this. Certainly young men have far greater understanding than the men of my generation ever had or ever will. Men of my generation say, "It wasn't until I had a daughter that I began to see what you were talking about."

Having a female boss gives one plenty of perspective.

[Laughs.] I think having no boss is the best. But you know, I feel that the generation just after mine developed this great dislike of us for what we had done. And I think today's young people are just so much more open to what was happening in the '70s.

There once was a time when a woman had to put the date of her last period on a job application.

The young just don't know that. It wasn't their experience at all.

Some women readers regret that you didn't write more about yourself in the book, but that didn't bother me. You only appeared as often as you needed to.

That's what I thought. Although I can imagine some movement women saying, "There she goes! Talking about herself again!" But I knew I needed to be very careful not to become the Zelig or the Forrest Gump of the women's movement. Was I significant to this movement? Yeah, I was significant to the anti-rape movement. I was not significant to the anti-sexual harassment movement. To put myself into that chapter would have been self-serving.

So you worked on this book for four or five years -- what was it like seeing your old comrades?

Well, it was often very emotional. I did a lot of phone interviews because everyone was dispersed around the country. The interviews were usually conducted very late at night for me because many of them seem to be on the West Coast now. There was such a stillness over the telephone wires as I was getting them to recall and tell me about their history. They were remarkable conversations, but I have to say that many of the women I called were very depressed. They had captured the attention of the nation in the '70s, and their time had passed. Nobody remembered their name and contribution. They were often surprised to get a call from me, because of course I'd become more famous with "Against Our Will." So if they'd been waiting for a historian's call -- and they all had been -- they didn't imagine that it would be me.

What does feminism mean today?

Well, it remains a solidification of the values that we created, but I'm too much of a realist to tell you that there's a feminist movement out there. We're in a holding pattern -- and that's OK. Its time will come again.

I think there should always be some sort of conflict between men and women. Otherwise we'll become one boring homogenous gender.

I agree totally. I think there's a place for a woman to be a sex object, in bed, you know?

After Nina Burleigh wrote in the Washington Post that she'd gladly give Clinton a blow job, I had an argument (which I lost) with a Salon editor that in the end, after 30 years of feminism, it still comes down to giving Mr. Big a blow job.

Well, maybe you should have won that argument. I wrote a kind of naughty piece about Bill and Hillary for my Web site called "Bill Clinton, Jack Rabbit." I was so pissed off that all these feminists were falling into line and defending this guy. I felt very sorry for people like Gloria Steinem who thought she had to defend the president because he had done more for women than any other president to date. It's my feeling that he did that because of our movement. He couldn't not do it.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"