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According to Chesler, women need an entire "feminist continent."

"Women need more than a room of our own. We need a continent of our own," she said during a recent stop in San Francisco to promote her new book on feminism.

Chesler has neither a specific plan nor a particular spot in mind for this utopia. But she has long espoused ideas that throw a wrench into the average person's mindset.

She's been doing this since she joined the feminist movement in the late 1960s. She is best known for "Women and Madness," her 1972 book slamming the mental health system's treatment of women. It sold 2-1/2 million copies.

Today, she is a professor of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island, which is part of the City University of New York. She is editor-at-large of On the Issues, a feminist magazine.

And last year, Chesler was named a research associate at Hadassah's new International Research Institute on Women, which is housed at Brandeis University.

But status and age haven't dimmed her enthusiasm for women's liberation.

Her eighth and latest book, "Letters to a Young Feminist," is a memoir filled with stories and advice for young women and men. Chesler touches on such topics as sexual harassment, deadbeat dads, genital mutilation, abortion rights and rape as an instrument of war.

Though visiting here to plug the book, Chesler couldn't resist talking about an array of other favorite topics.

Sitting on the edge of her chair and occasionally taking bites of carry-out Chinese food, the 57-year-old Brooklyn resident talked excitedly about her long-time love for Israel, her zeal for women's rights at the Western Wall, her take on religious pluralism and her personal history.

Raised in the 1950s in the Brooklyn home of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Chesler lived in a heavily restrictive atmosphere.

She wasn't allowed to shave her legs, wear makeup, pierce her ears, wear pants or go on dates. No adult spoke about sex or menstruation.

"My parents didn't want me to have a bad reputation. We were poor, and my sexual virtue was all (they thought) I had in order to make a good marriage," she writes in her new book.

Chesler fought back.

Once she realized as a young girl that Orthodoxy had no public role for her gender, Chesler turned to Zionism.

"I became a passionate Zionist," she said. She joined Zionist youth movements, including one that packaged machine-gun parts for the young Jewish state.

Today, Chesler doesn't identify herself with a particular Jewish religious movement. She asserts that she is comfortable among all Jews, secular to Orthodox.

For her, the feminist movement was "an opening in history" and something she had been "waiting for all my life."

So when she began hearing feminists bash Israel in the 1970s, Chesler defended the Jewish state. "I think it was in my bones, post-Holocaust, that we needed this state," she said.

She would try to confront fellow feminists who understood other people's need for a homeland — but not the Jews' need for Israel.

"Maybe you don't understand," she would say.

Chesler has also been involved in shaping Israel. She joined Women of the Wall when it formed in 1988. The group maintains that women should be allowed to hold services, in the same way that men do, at the Western Wall.

She was part of a group of women who first prayed with a Torah at the holy site.

"I was so moved by the potential for this yearning," she said.

Since then, she's been fighting what she sees as an attempt to turn the Western Wall, a national public space, into an Orthodox shul.

As such, she has advice for the Reform and Conservative movements battling for rights in Israel.

She doesn't expect much from the Ne'eman Committee, a government panel that's been working to resolve the demands of the Reform and Conservative movements for official recognition in Israel.

Women of the Wall has been waiting 10 years for a response to its concerns. Israel's High Court and several commissions have worked unsuccessfully to end the deadlock during that time. Meanwhile, women can pray together at the holy site — but only with massive restrictions.

Though the High Court case is still pending, she said, "We lost really because we're not praying there…So I would tell the Conservative and Reform to pay attention to how little justice we've gotten."

At the same time, Chesler believes that Women of the Wall has established "facts on the ground." Women show up every month for Rosh Chodesh and come for bat mitzvahs, aufrufs and megillah readings. They don't meet at the wall itself, but nearby.

Though she prefers a legal victory, Chesler said women may end up using acts of civil disobedience instead. Maybe women will need to get arrested to solve things for the next generation, she said.

"Ultimately, we can't be stopped."