LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): In your mind, did Cosmopolitan, with its pushing the envelope message on sexuality, did it help mainstream the hookup culture and the rampant promiscuity that we see today?
SUE ELLEN BROWDER: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The media, the women's media jumped on the bandwagon and it was good to sleep with a -- at Cosmo it was good to sleep with a married man, it was good to take the pill, it was good to have an abortion to get ahead. Anything that you could do to get ahead was good. It was all for you.
INGRAHAM: And in retrospect, and we're talking to Sue Ellen Browder whose book, Subverted is [a] fascinating look at the women's movement and, specifically, the sexualized nature of it. When you look at this, Sue Ellen, these issues that the women's movement allowed inserted into the conversation and it became the dominant issue of abortion and sexual liberation. In the end, you can really -- I think a very compelling case could be made that this has set women back. The most powerful thing a woman can do is give birth, that is it. That is your power, really your power. And you can do a lot of things in your life, but that's what makes you unique, and now it becomes just kind of commodified in today's society.
BROWDER: Listen to what Betty Friedan said. She called Cosmo quite obscene and quite horrible. And in the year 2000 she said, “For me the matter of choice has never been primarily the choice of abortion, but that you can choose to be a mother. That is as important as any right written into the Constitution.”
