YOKO ONO INTERVIEW
Ms Magazine Nov 2007

Q: How has Ms. magazine, the women's movement, feminism or womanism changed your life, or changed our lives, in the last 35 years?
YO: Ms. Magazine, founded by the courageous Gloria Steinem, helped to unify the thoughts and beliefs of us feminist women, and made them into a power that influenced the whole world.

Q: What now for the women's movement, feminism or womanism?
YO: I don't think we should be intimidated by the people who started to smear the name "feminism." If we change it to womanism, they will laugh at us, thinking that they succeeded. Womanism is a less powerful a word. Also, it limits the movement really to women. Feminism is celebrating the feminine quality in all of us, embracing men who wish to cherish their feminine side as well. Change the name and they will intimidate us again. I also think it is an insult to all the women (and men) who fought for feminism over the last century of human history.

Q: Your insight - looking backward or forward.
YO: I'm breathing in the present, with the trees telling me all that they have witnessed, and the wind whispering into my ears, that War Is Over, if you want it.


Yoko Ono
Sept. 07, nyc