A: It's a much trickier book to write in that it inevitably will deal with the psychological issues which I'm less comfortable with than basic journalism.

Q: What kind of material will you be using? How will you collect it?

A: There will be some men who will be less than eager to talk to me. I'm already running across this with kind of humorous reactions, humorous and somewhat egotistical reactions [from] men who will make some comment in front of me and then say, `oh no, you're not going to put that in your second book.' I'm sitting here thinking: 'I wouldn't even think to write about you.' There's a fair amount of paranoia. It's also looking at the male culture within the traditionally male environment, where men feel the women are invading, like the army.

Q: Will you be looking at individual cases or general studies?

A: Individual cases are a part of it, but I'll also be looking at a lot of the research that's been done on masculinity--historical parallels in which masculinity has perceived itself as being in a crisis.

Q: What are you doing now, at Stanford?

A: Mostly what I'm doing is going to classes myself and preparing to do the historical research and consulting with feminist studies scholars.

Q: You criticize the media a lot. How do you reconcile yourself to being part of it?

A: Media goes through the sins of omission and commission, both by not reporting and by supporting the cliches about feminism. It presents the women involved in feminist causes as white upper-middle-class women with too much leisure on their hands, but fails to cover the grassroots movement, which is multi-cultural.

Q: What about being cited in Newsweek as a member of the cultural elite?

A: I mean, I don't think any of this is conscious. I've noticed the tendency to refer to Naomi Wolf, me and Gloria Steinem as the quote-unquote yuppie feminists. It's this phenomenon where two or three women are picked out as feminist spokespeople, are elevated and then trashed in hopes that 'well, we've attacked them, gotten them out of the way, so feminism itself can be discredited.'

[Media]'s turning feminism into a fashion trend, where feminism was `in' this year and women and politics are `in' this year. Saying it's part of a trend puts an expiration date on the movement, turns it into another consumer event.

Q: Will you go back into journalism?

A: I'll go back into it in some form. I don't know in what form, but it's more likely going to be through longer magazine pieces that relate to women's rights in one way or another.

Q: When do you think there'll be a woman in the White House?