Sex, Gender and the Journey to Wholeness with Jane Fonda

The Fifth Feldt/Barbanell Women of the World Lecture

On Oct. 17, 2008, Jane Fonda shared profound moments of self-discovery and feminist epiphany with an eager, standing-room-only audience in Neeb Hall at Arizona State University on the Tempe campus. Fonda was guest speaker for the annual Feldt/Barbanell Women of the World lecture, hosted by the Women and Gender Studies Program at Arizona State University.

She spoke with passion and candor about personal relationships, politics and activism and their inseparable nature. For Fonda, the personal became political, as she transitioned into her “third act,” that poignant stage in life’s drama when the need for a climax, for finality and for wholeness emerges. “I had to renegotiate,” she asserted. Regarding moments of deep doubt about her marriage and attempts to write her memoirs, Fonda related the experience to giving birth to herself.

Fonda described her activist interventions through the Women’s Media Center, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, the V-day campaign and several other initiatives that revolve around sex and gender relations in American society. The Academy Award–winning actress was visible in her facial expressions, her voice modulations and her fluid movements on the stage which transformed a lecture into an act of unforgettable artistic and political performance.

“Girls and women are the agents of change everywhere,” she affirmed, because they are not “disembodied” as early as boys are. For her, disembodiment is a process of alienation with one’s own self, when one must learn to separate one’s emotions and intelligence, head and heart, and be socialized into gender molds shaped by dominant ideologies. In her work with adolescents, she realized that this process of alienating socialization begins early in boys, while girls retain their voice for a few more years. She named media messages as a chief agent for creating a feeling of lacking and anxiety, in order to induce endless consumption. “Our culture mitigates against wholeness,” she said. “It creates a toxic masculinity and unreal femininity based on the idea of perfection.” She urged everyone to “be whole.” Fonda fielded questions from the audience ranging from issues of welfare and fatherhood, to her controversial image as “Hanoi Jane,” and her acting career.

By Debjani Chakravarty, ASU Women & Gender Studies

Photo by Laura Segall:  L-R Alex Barbanell, Gloria Feldt; Front, Jane Fonda