Alternative Editorial: Feminine Power Revisited
By coincidence – or serendipity – we were directly involved with three events exploring Feminine power this past week, all with quite different points of attraction. The first was called The Call of the Wild Feminine, the second the launch of the Warrior Women podcast and the third FemmeQ.
We write this knowing that the public space is suffused with female vulnerability this week. The shocking murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa dominate the front pages of our newspapers – alongside similar murders of 81 young women over the past 28 weeks. While the most senior politicians point a finger of blame at the police force, women everywhere are demanding that something be done about the constant threat to their freedom. Whether this means being able to walk without fear of being called names in the street. Or feeling safe to walk through a park at any time of the day on their own.
Most men hearing this complaint will feel aggrieved on behalf of the women; some will have experienced that same vulnerability themselves. Many of all genders will regret the implication that every man is a potential abuser, knowing the majority are not. At the same time, few of us would question that the male subjugation of women persists in our culture: whether in terms of inequality or the continuing - often extreme - objectification of women in visual media. This aspect of our culture continues to ruin the lives of people of all genders: young boys are increasingly the hidden victims of pornography.
So what is the potential for women’s movements to affect effect? change? By gathering as women, are they taking the responsibility upon themselves to challenge this situation? Maybe not directly: although none of the mostly female spaces I was part of this week blamed men for women’s vulnerability per se. Even the naming and shaming of patriarchy – the historic domination of male leadership – was never in full focus in our discussions. Instead, each of these events focused on the potential of feminine power to transform our world as we know it.
You might ask, why are they not under the same umbrella? Aren’t women supposed to collaborate? These events separately pointed at different paths, but all were ambitious for whole system change. Feminism has disaggregated but is all the stronger for it: each event captured a different kind of agency. In doing so, they are going deeper and identifying what each woman can offer in this era, which requires rapid transformation in every corner of society. There is less need for an often compromised bunching of diverse perspectives.
The Call of the Wild Feminine convened by global education platform Advaya is a twelve week course, taking an historical, developmental approach:
Each week, a new speaker will introduce us to a different aspect of the feminine and take us on a journey to hear more about the violent history that kept women silent for centuries, from the brutal takeover of Christianity to the horror of the witch-trials, to female infanticide and FGM, and finally to the violence that continues against both women and the feminine spirit today. We will also be collectively inquiring into contemporary issues around the feminine, in particular the ‘wild feminine’, and what we might mean when we say ‘the feminine’ in the context of gender liberation.
In the first week of this on-line event, self-styled Elder Anne Baring spoke powerfully about the difficulty of bringing a different experience – and assessment – of success to our social imaginary. While we are all subject to the measurements of economic growth – where only numbers can measure progress – that method of capturing value has been destroying the planet. Can we shift our idea of goals to achieving the quality of life that brings not only happiness, but also health to ourselves, community and nature? Picking up on these early themes, AUK’s Indra Adnan will speak to the feminisation of politics on November 9th’s Advaya session.
The launch of the Warrior Women’s podcast was, by contrast, a raunchy affair. Set in the hyper-arty foyer of the Mother advertising agency, founder Karla Morales-Lee more than filled the cavernous space with a bold invitation to the women there to step up to their full expression. A massive screen promoted her new podcast interviewing female innovators in every field. The WWNetwork describes itself as:
a global community of pioneering self-identifying women, all of whom are working to drive positive change. Our members advise organisations on how to unlock growth in ways that are kind to people and planet. Many of them are building and have built their own impact ventures. Some are driving change from the inside of large organisations, charities and foundations in full-time roles.
On that evening the line-up was ‘prison warrior’ Paula Harriot, ‘waste warrior’ Kresse Wessling and the ‘politics warriors’ of A/UK. In a very different key from “The Call of the Wild’, this event invited A/UK’s more radical activism – reaching for the establishment of a whole new political system (parallel polis). Feminine in this context evoked the courage to bring to the public space the forms, structures and ways of working that come naturally to women. Partly as they have always existed in community – the more relational, networked and personal politics - but now so much more potent as healing for the breakdown of society and planet.
In the yin yang symbol which is often used to, rightly or wrongly, describe the difference between feminine and masculine ways of acting (ref), on the Warrior Women are claiming the dot in the Yang half – determined to bring their feminine insights onto the stage for all to see.
With similar goals but in a distinctly different setting, FemmeQ gathered at St Ethelburga’s Church in the heart of the City of London. Many will know it as the ‘journalists’ church’ that was bombed by the IRA and then rebuilt - squeezed between the skyscrapers like a small sliver of possibility in the belly of Mammon. Coming only a couple of months after FemmeQ’s 5th international gathering in Costa Rica where 28 speakers presented over five days, Co-Founder Karen Downes introduced this evening as an ongoing ‘critical conversation about a complex subject’. She described feminine intelligence as:
A deep knowing that we are all part of a living universe, an innate sense of responsibility for the survival of human and planetary life. A conscious intention to heal. The concentration of love, energy and life-force, dedicated to someone or something that is of the greatest importance beyond self-interest and serves the greater whole.
Crucially FemmeQ includes men who are ready to activate their own ‘feminine knowing’. Says Karen:
The current crises have woken us up and opened the gate to a global conversation where we disentangle gender and biology as well as addressing the centuries-long colonisation of our social systems and of our human psyche.
This evening took up the Anne Baring “measurement” challenge mentioned above, and offered a deep, wide and transformational experience for the participants in that small yet legendary room. We spoke of the system shift needed at the heart of society – community, trust, agency - and modelled it in the personal shift each of us present could enact. Less through bold statements, more through asking the right questions and listening to each other open up to possible futures. Always linking the personal to the social to the global: I to the We to the World.
To experience all three of these perspectives in the same week was to observe the power of the feminine perspective and ways of working growing and taking root in our society. It’s not easy to see how this impacts directly on the ongoing tragedy of the abuse of women, unless we are ready to think of a growing global story about the evolution of feminine power. In a more relational, response-able society, would the chasm between oppressed and oppressor seem so fathomless?
Over the pandemic, much was made of the greater wisdom of women leaders in the handling of the pandemic, leading to fewer lives lost but also more social cohesion during the process. While we seem to have regressed in the battle for women’s rights in Afghanistan, the solidarity with their plight all over the world surely signals that, as a culture, it cannot thrive. Misogyny – nor misandry - is no longer something we can ignore or tolerate.
Meantime, one young female powerhouse has been coming of age. To watch Greta Thunberg on the world stage in the run up to COP26 is a reminder that even the most vulnerable can become immeasurably strong. Not long ago the representation of tremulous, alienated youth, Greta has grown the sort of confidence that ‘brooks no bullshit’, from the most senior of global leaders.
She invests that power not simply in deriding their complacency, but in enthusing the young people of her generation that, despite governmental failure, they will be able to win this battle to save the planet. In her wake, millions of young women and men are standing up to take responsibility for the future.
