Subject To Power

Much of today’s rise of violent misogyny can find its cultural traces in the witch hunts of old Europe and North America. And while many of us are casually aware of these historical events, our two guests on this episode, novelist Zoe Venditozzi and human rights attorney Claire Mitchell, spent the last seven years digging deep into their own country of Scotland’s prolific history of witch trials and executions - a history that was up to now virtually unknown. Gifted storytellers and viciously funny, Claire and Zoe document their journey into this dark past in their fascinating new book How To Kill A Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women as well as on their hit podcast Witches of Scotland. Through a sharply feminist lens, Claire and Zoe unravel exactly how the witch craze kicked off, spread across Scotland, and was kept going for centuries, resulting in the torture and execution of over 4000 innocent people, most of whom were women. In this episode we talk about all of their projects, including their legal campaign to bring justice to those accused, convicted, and executed under the The Witchcraft Act of 1563, about the creation of their Clan Witches of Scotland tartan (for sale on their website), the importance of remembering and memorializing, and also about making connections between those grim events and our present time - as the forces that were at play hundreds of years ago are very much alive today. EPISODE LINKS Witches of Scotland website CONTACT US Website: subjecttopower.com Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected]

Male-run totalitarian governments copy paste each other’s oppressive tactics; one aspiring dictator looks at what another tyrant is up to and adopts similar methods - and all seem to be different variations on the same theme - mainly to keep women vulnerable and under men’s control, and away from self-determination and any political power. Guest on this episode, Li Wen, started out as a journalist and policy analyst in China and now lives in Germany where she hosts a wildly popular Chinese podcast called Seahorse Planet. Banned in China but globally popular, Seahorse Planet features critical and inspirational feminism, the type of women’s rights talk male-run totalitarian governments despise and forbid. In this episode we talk about China’s u-turn on gender equality, the many social pressures women are subjected to now, including beauty duty, the marriage trap, discrimination in education and jobs market, and what its latest MeToo movement is accomplishing. We talk about the huge ripple effects of China’s 35-year-long one child policy and compare notes between the US and China on the birth rate panic and each of our government’s desperate attempts to promote marriage and so-called family values. We talk about what is considered a good and acceptable kind of feminism in China and the kind of feminism that can ruin your life - and how we, in this ultra-patriarchal world, build a more just social order and what that looks like. EPISODE LINKS Seahorse Planet Podcast CONTACT US Website: subjecttopower.com Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected]

One of the main goals of Subject To Power is to create an international platform for women (and some men) from different cultures to come on and report on what is happening in their corner of the world, so that the rest of us can learn from them, and maybe heed some warnings. It's easy to think that what happens in our own little bubble is unique, unique to our government, unique to our laws, to the way men behave in our particular country, unique to our cultural customs. But the more you listen to women in places elsewhere, the clearer it becomes that so many of the methods and tactics used to control women - are the same across nations, and are very predictable. In this episode Elle talks to young Hungarian feminist Krisztina Les, about what her advocacy and activism for women’s rights in Hungary looks like, and all of what we could learn from what has unfolded there in the last 20 years. It has never been more crucial that we look beyond our own country’s borders to see what might be ahead for women in our own countries. How democracy, basic freedoms, women’s rights, equality and whole value systems can be dismantled in a very short amount of time. And that none of it is guaranteed. EPISODE LINKS PATENT Association FiLiA Hague Mothers Telex: Expat mother who died in house fire in Budapest had been living in fear for a long time CONTACT US Website: subjecttopower.com Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected]

For Finnish scholar Kaarina Kailo, sauna is the medicine we need in these tormented times. “In the sauna you are brought into direct contact with the holy spirit. It's the alternative to the patriarchal church. It's the space of peace, of equality, of ritual and the sacredness that we have lost and are craving. It's a multidimensional healing space for the body, the spirit, and the mind.” A researcher of women’s cultural studies and folklore, Northern women’s culture, goddess mythologies, Indigenous worldview and theory, modern matriarchal studies, the gift economy, and the bear religion, Kaarina has spent many years investigating the very old history of sauna and sweating cultures in Finland, in Old Europe and in Indigenous cultures in North America. With her new book Sauna Culture, Sweat and Spirituality, Kaarina explores the origins of pre-Christian, pre-patriarchal sauna as a sacred space for healing and rebirth, and how female symbols and the maternally perceived cosmos in past sweating cultures have been transformed. In this episode we talk about the early religions that didn't require belief in an abstract god because they were based on mother earth and verifiable material reality. We talk about the patriarchal takeover of sacredness, the great cost of losing our embodiment and connection to the natural world, the power of feminist spirituality to reconnect our broken bonds, and how we embrace the darkness so we can be reborn in the spring. EPISODE LINKS Kaarina Kailo’s website CONTACT US Website: subjecttopower.com Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected]

With male violence being an inescapable and world-shaping force, one that undermines democracy, equality and peace - how do we unpack and tease apart the ingredients that go into the making of men and male culture of dominance? How do we shake up and push for a cultural shift away from violent domination? In this episode Elle talks with world-leading researcher and educator Michael Flood, who has spent his life doing exactly that - researching, writing and discussing men, masculinities, gender, violence against women, and maybe most importantly - violence prevention for men and boys and creating alternative, more positive masculine narratives. Starting with the question of what makes a subset of men join violent extremists movements, Michael takes us through what the research reveals in his book Masculinity and Violent Extremism (co-authored with Joshua Roose in 2022). We then move into a broader conversation about the overlap between violent extremism and the mainstream conditioning that makes up modern masculinity, and crucially - the unifying role of misogyny. Also, with masculinity on the move and being redefined, how do we seize this moment to move away from entrenched, pro-patriarchal visions of manhood? EPISODE LINKS XY Website Masculinity and Violent Extremism CONTACT US Website: subjecttopower.com Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected]

Poet Usha Akella talks about poems as bridges into worlds, bridges that help to soften borders - and there is nothing we need more at this moment - than a softening of the criss-crossing lines that cut us off from one another. Borders are hardening, honest and patient dialogue is becoming rare, and meeting each other halfway seems more and more difficult - but a poet’s words can offer a bypass, a more direct path from one human heart to another. Acclaimed poet and author of 11 books, Usha has contributed to over 150 literary anthologies and journals, and is the founder and director of Matwaala, a South Asian diaspora poets’ collective launched in 2015. Usha's poetry is full of very real world matters and it does not shy away from confronting the ironies and contradictions of living life as a woman on this planet - no matter our cultural belonging. With her x-ray honesty and masterful craft, she writes from the raw emotions of her own life experiences as well as a soaring bird's eye view. In this episode Usha reads several poems from her book I Will Not Bear You Sons, and shares the stories behind the poems as well as the clash of cultural forces that shaped her as a woman and as a poet. We also talk about the firestorm that erupted around the book in India, the different forms of patriarchal control women endure, Usha's own refusal to be silenced, the cost of writing feminist poetry, and finding sisterhood with fellow women’s writers. EPISODE LINKS Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poets’ Collective I Will Not Bear You Sons The POV CONTACT US Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected]

Award-winning non-fiction writer and journalist Rachel Hewitt unearths and writes about various corners of women’s history - and the subsequent erasure of that same history - showing us how women are indeed equal participants in all aspects of public life - until we are banned, excluded and erased. In her latest book, In Her Nature, Rachel looks at women’s accomplishments in sports and the great outdoors from the Victorian era to the present, and chronicles the various ways in which men organized to exclude and ban women from athletics and the outdoors - and more broadly from public spaces and public life. In her writings, which includes the brilliant Substack Small Revolutions, Every Day, Rachel makes crucial connections between women’s hidden history and how women navigate our current-day climate of rising misogyny. She also writes about feminism, grief, trauma and recovery - and her own experiences as an ultra-runner. In this episode Elle and Rachel cover a sprawling map of topics, from Rachel’s research and writing about women’s history in sports and outdoors adventure, to how women navigate public spaces - now and then, the constantly changing shape of misogyny and how women weigh being safe against being free. We also talk about Rachel’s own running career, and how immersion in nature can carry you through grief and trauma, and much, much more. EPISODE LINKS Rachel’s website Small Revolutions, Every Day Family Fortunes by Leonore Davidoff, Catherine Hall CONTACT US Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected]

Parents, teachers and youth workers of all kinds are warily watching how the internet, smartphones and social media is impacting adolescence, and there is no question that we are in uncharted territory - especially as it pertains to boys and young men. Michael Conroy has spent his career working in personal development and well-being programs for boys and young men in secondary school in the UK, and has had a front row seat to the enormous changes the world-wide web has brought to bear on the developing minds and social lives of boys and young men - in particular, the pornification of the internet and culture more broadly and the rise of the manosphere and related misogyny. In 2021, feeling like existing programs were not up to the task of supporting and safeguarding the healthy development of boys, Michael founded Men At Work, an innovative training program using dialogue to develop and equip boys and young men with critical thinking skills, sharper curiosity and discernment, as well as greater capacity for empathy and other pro-social modes. In this wide-ranging conversation Michael talks to Elle about the art of fostering a positive vision for boys and young men, what should and shouldn’t be feared about the big bad internet, Andrew Tate and incels, what the Netflix series Adolescence told us and what it missed, what feminism has got to do with it, and why raising healthy young men matters to all of us. EPISODE LINKS Men At Work CONTACT US Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected] CREDITS Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

Conversation and debate regarding transgenderism and gender ideology has been effectively forbidden and shut down for many years, and people who have dared to raise concerns have been hounded and punished in all sorts of ways. Like many outspoken feminists, Laura Lecuona was cancelled and attacked in her native country of Mexico for daring to ask questions about concepts such as ‘born in the wrong body’ and ‘gender affirming care’. In this episode Elle talks with Laura about her new book Gender Identity: Lies And Dangers; about what sparked the transgender movement, how gender ideology became such a pervasive social phenomenon, what exactly it entails for boys and men and girls and women who become trans identified, as well as the impact of this movement on women and women’s rights. We also discuss why radical feminists in particular have been sounding the alarm and mounting such an opposition to gender ideology, and why there is such an authoritarian prohibition against debate. EPISODE LINKS Gender Identify: Lies And Dangers by Laura Lecuona The Transexual Empire by Janice Raymond The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir CONTACT US Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower email us at [email protected] CREDITS Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

Like a detective trying to establish a motive for the crime, Aurora Linnea digs deep into our cultural history and Man’s destruction of the living world to find the root causes of what she calls “the world-destroying violence of male dominion”. In her phenomenally beautiful investigation, the book Man Against Being: Body Horror and The Death of Life, Aurora Linnea comes up with a very coherent - and illuminating - set of theories about why and how Man constructed the patriarchal doctrine that so brutally subjugates all living creatures in the service of masculine world-making. In this hour we talk about man’s fear of death and life, the fear-to-domination pipeline, women as the eternal scapegoat, man’s revenge against a biology he cannot escape, the unending disaster of splitting the world into warring halves (think female/male, body/mind, nature/science), and how necessary it is that we end male dominion and return to a reintegration of body and mind and living earth. CONTACT US Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] CREDITS Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

What drives societies to turn on women in their midst - with accusations, branding, persecution and often violence and death - in the name of witchcraft? Witch hunting occupied a dark chapter in European and early American history, but variations of this brutal phenomena lives on in many parts of the world today. Guest on today’s episode, multidisciplinary feminist research scholar Govind Kelkar, wrote a book called Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation and in this hour we talk about Govind’s research into modern-day witch hunts in India and around the world - the surprising factors that drive it, how it unfolds in communities, why women are targeted, and what the practice tells us about men, women, and different kinds of power and powerlessness. Episode Links GenDev Center for Research and Innovation Contact Subject To Power Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

The world rushes to meet the ever-expanding sexual appetites of men - and then we collectively call it “men’s needs” and agree that “men’s needs” must be met. All forms of prostitution and pornography, online and in real life, offer a bottomless menu of sexual experiences, fetishes, and boundary-crossing pursuits. Technology works overtime to invent novel ways to achieve male orgasm and indulge men in what they might fancy next. And nowhere is this busy business of realizing men’s sexual fantasies more obvious than in the sex doll business. Guest on this episode, Caitlin Roper, is an activist, writer and Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout, a global grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising and popular culture. Caitlin’s writing has been featured in The Guardian, Huffington Post, and many other publications and in 2022 she came out with her book Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating. In this hour we talk about all of what Caitlin discovered when researching the whole world of sex dolls - the manufacturing, the marketing, the men who buy and use the sex dolls, and the many real-life impacts on women, girls and boys. On the sympathy-inducing ways in which sex dolls are marketed, how they are offered as a cure for lonely men, suggesting that a silicone replica of a woman provides the human connection that these men lack, Caitlin says, “What sex dolls do, is they actually get in the way of any kind of intimacy and real connection, genuine human relationships because they keep the user alone. They're penetrating a doll, but there's no connection because again, they're alone. They're masturbating into an object.” Episode Links Collective Shout Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating Contact Subject To Power Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

Prostitution cannot be contained in one small corner of the culture. Once we accept and endorse the sale of women for men’s sexual use and abuse, the ideas and practices of prostitution bleeds into all layers of society. Germany shows us how. In 2002, Germany gave state-sanctioned approval to the sex-trade and made prostitution a legal and legitimate industry in cities and towns across the land. Researcher, writer and public speaker Elly Arrow tracks and reports on all aspects of prostitution in her homeland of Germany and around the world - and in this hour, Elly talks to Elle about what it was like to come of age as a young woman in a pro-prostitution culture, how it has affected relationships between men and women in her country, and how the normalization of prostitution has bled into other sectors - housing, employment, labor, children’s rights, local and national politics, immigration, policing and more. We also talk about the debate that is now being had in Germany about whether to adopt the Equality Model, whether to try to rein in the 20-year prostitution industry that has exploded across the landscape - or to continue being “Europe’s brothel”. Episode Links Elly Arrow on YouTube Elly Arrow Blog Red Light Exposé The Invisible Men - Germany Contact Subject To Power Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

As a woman, you can roll along with the assumption that your body belongs to you and you alone. That you are an autonomous human being like everyone else. But then your fertility, your baby-making capacity comes into view and suddenly you are subjected to powers far outside yourself. Guest on this episode, UK journalist and author of The Positive Birth Book, Give Birth Like A Feminist and My Period, Milli Hill, has reported on and written about this complicated zone, the zone where woman meets “system”, and the power struggle that often takes place between you as an autonomous woman with inherent rights - and the powers that be. In this hour we talk about the much-contested world of childbearing and Milli’s writing and activism to empower women and girls to reclaim their self-determination. But also how Milli, mid-career, has found herself under attack by gender ideologists and how she is now documenting the ideological capture and implosion of her own former community - women’s organizations in the areas of menstruation, breastfeeding, pregnancy, antenatal care, and birth - that once were exclusively for women and girls, but are that no longer. Episode Links Milli Hill’s website Milli Hill’s Substack Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

What makes a good human? We receive prescriptions for virtuous morality from all manner of religions, philosophies, and intellectual traditions - but is human morality something that is taught and learned? Guest on today’s episode, researcher and author Darcia Narvaez, does not think human morality has much to do with principles, or guidelines we’re taught, or lessons we learn. Rather - that human morality is built - from a complex, interwoven, physical, neurobiological, sociocultural process that begins in our mother’s womb and continues throughout our life. A process that developed out of humanity’s millions-year-old evolution of child-rearing practices that made us the connected, cooperative, socially intelligent species we actually are - underneath the last few thousand years of trauma. As a young academic, Darcia, driven by an intense feeling that there is something wrong with the way humans treat each other, turned to the study of human morality. In her years of research she took a multi-disciplinary approach to find answers, incorporating evolutionary biology, anthropology, developmental psychology, animal sciences, neuro-sciences. Along the way, she published dozens of academic articles and twenty books, among them one titled Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom. Also, synthesizing her discoveries about what humans actually need to thrive, Darcia developed a new framework called The Evolved Nest, a blueprint of real-life practices that produce human beings with healthy, connected moralities. In this hour Elle talks to Darcia about The Evolved Nest, about her research into human morality, how humanity got so lost, and how to cultivate and build back our species-normal compassionate nature. Episode Links The Evolved Nest Darcia Narvaez, PhD Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

As new wars emerge across the world, wars that ended decades ago are still destroying the societies that waged them. Guest on today’s episode, Olivera Simić, came of age in the intrastate war that broke apart her country of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and has spent her life researching, documenting, bearing witness to, and articulating the uncontainable trauma that continue to ripple through her homeland 30 years later. In her autobiography Surviving Peace, Olivera writes about how those experiences shaped her life, and in the newly published Lola’s War: Rape Without Punishment, as well as a number of academic articles, Olivera draws on twenty plus years of in-depth conversation and documentation of the experiences of victims, perpetrators and everyone in between - from all sides of the war. In this hour we talk about the long-term impact of war, particularly on women, in her home country of Bosnia Herzegovina, as well as the limits of institutions - law, medicine, social welfare, education - to remedy the horrific crimes and atrocious violence committed by neighbor against neighbor, countryman against countrywoman. Episode Links Olivera’s website: https://oliverasimic.com/ Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

The institution of prostitution has received a re-branding in recent times, appropriating terms from labor and the corporate world such as “sex work”, “full-service”, “clients”, “sex workers” “doing bookings” arranged by “managers” - presumably in order to de-stigmatize women who sell sex, to make the practice safer for sex sellers, and to make the sex industry mainstream. But has the nature of the practice - of men buying women for sexual use - really changed? In this episode, Elle talks to author and activist Andrea Heinz, who spent time in the sex industry in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where prostitution is regulated under the Equality Model, where the city of Edmonton issues licenses for brothels, and where the “sex work is work” model is fully embraced. In this hour we talk about what Andrea learned through her experiences in prostitution and how it changed her, about her awakening and exit, and how she is now channeling those years of trauma into speaking and writing about the realities of working in the sex industry. We discuss the belief systems underpinning the “sex work is work” creed and try to answer questions like - if sex is a service that women provide to men, then what is sex for women? What are the actual risks and impacts of having unwanted sex with many strange men all day, every day? Has the “sex work” makeover de-stigmatized sex sellers as promised and made prostitution safer? Episode Links: Red Light Exposé When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays? CEASE Edmonton John School Andrea Heinz’s academic paper A Mule For The Patriarchy Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

In the midst of The Enlightenment, when men in the West hailed reason and rationalism, and aspired towards lofty ideals such as liberty, equality and religious tolerance - another darker social phenomenon was taking place. Over a period of more than 200 years, thousands of women (and some men) across Europe were thrown in jail, tortured, hanged and burned - accused and tried for witchcraft. In this episode Elle talks to Marianne Hester, a world-leading researcher in gender-based violence, with expertise in domestic and sexual abuse and violence, coercive control, sexual exploitation, and forced marriage. In her book Lewd Women and Wicked Witches, Marianne looks at male violence and domination through a historical lens, locating the “witch hunts” - the violent persecution of women - in a period of massive restructuring of society, within which a male-female conflict over resources and power was raging. In this hour we talk about how and why women became targets of the “witch craze”, what the “witch hunts” accomplished for the patriarchs, and how those historical events shaped the gendered ideology we still live with today. Episode Links: Marianne Hester Journal of Gender-Based Violence Lewd Women and Wicked Witches Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

Motherhood, in our Western culture, is full of contradictions. On the one hand, mothers perform an essential task: creating and nurturing new human life. On the other, the status of mothers is that of general servitude to the nuclear family, with no significant public voice or power. Western culture, adopted across the world, is still largely structured in the mold that the male Greek philosophers created millennia ago. Roughly divided into a public sphere that is inhabited and controlled by men, and the family sphere which is inhabited by women and children; a “private world” that is under constant surveillance and control by the public sphere. While feminism continually challenges this patriarchal social order, and women as a class have made enormous gains in the public sphere, motherhood is still an arena where patriarchal interests come into direct conflict with human needs and women’s humanity. In this episode Elle talks to political scientist and author Mariam Tazi-Preve, whose research fields are politics and reproduction, motherhood, fatherhood, family and population policies, European welfare state, gender and political theory, and theory of civilization. Mariam has written extensively about the history of motherhood in Western patriarchy, about the invention of marriage, and the development of the nuclear family. In this hour we will talk about these social structures and the impact they have had on women, men and children throughout our history. Episode Links Mariam Tazi-Preve website Motherhood In Patriarchy Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

Science and technology is a synonym for progress. It is always considered a step forward, an improvement of our lives, a promise of new possibilities. A promise of a future that will necessarily contain more and better science and technology to make our lives ever more convenient, ever more automated, ever more under our control. For women, many of us are conditioned to welcome scientific and technological advancements as a form of liberation from our sexed bodies and its processes. Medicine, machines and technicians preside over our whole reproductive lives - and we don’t always consider who or what drives the science, who benefits from these advancements, and what might be lost - as tech invades the most intimate parts of our human selves. In this episode Elle is joined by Mary Lou Singleton, a life-long women’s health activist, midwife and public speaker, who has spent her career observing the very heady evolution of the reproductive industry and gauging where humanity is headed within the realm of conception, pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Episode Links Enchanted Family Medicine When Abortion Was a Crime by Leslie Reagan Natural Liberty by The Sage-Femme Collective Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

The prevalence of murder of women by men, across the world, is beyond dispute. The phenomenon - the murder of women because they are women - has become such a fixture of human life that it has acquired a name: femicide, or feminicide. While criminal justice systems are kept busy processing feminicide; whole media genres are dedicated to telling the stories of feminicide; untold governmental agencies and NGOs report on the general state of feminicide - the fact remains that no government, no country in the world actually keeps statistics on feminicide. In this episode, Elle speaks with data analyst, author and director of the Data+Feminism Lab at MIT, Catherine D’Ignazio about her new book Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action. Catherine’s book tells the story of the people, mostly across the Americas, who decided to pick up the job of counting women killed, independently and unpaid, and how they have turned this work into a powerful activist movement. We talk about revolutionizing data science, examining and challenging power through data activism, why governments are willfully blind to femicide, what can be learned from anti-femicide movements in Latin and South America, understanding feminicide as a large-scale pattern beyond the “isolated incident” model, and how women’s risk of murder is connected to the devalued status of women. Episode Links Join free book club for Counting Feminicide from now thru Aug 31, 2024. Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power Twitter: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

Our economic institutions - capitalism, trade, money, the market - are based on one fundamental principle: Quid Pro Quo. Something For Something. It is said that these systems sprung out of the age-old human tradition of trade, of exchange. That humans, from the dawn of time, have exchanged with each other for our needs - goods, services, emotions, care, language - that our very nature is transactional. Our guest on this episode, independent researcher Genevieve Vaughan, has spent her life theorizing and proving the very opposite - that Quid Pro Quo, or “the exchange economy” is completely incompatible with human life and human needs. That in fact, it is the basic interaction of unilateral giving and receiving, “the gift economy”, that is the hidden blueprint of human life, and that the “exchange economy” is indeed a parasitic system - an economy that rests on a sea of unseen and unacknowledged gifts. In this episode we talk about the maternal roots of the gift economy, the gendered division of these opposing economies, how “the exchange economy” destroys mutuality, empathy and human connection, and why we need to find our way back to our original gift-based economies. And that “when we base our economy on giving and receiving rather than exchange, we create completely different human relations.” Genevieve Vaughan's Links: gift-economy.com maternalgifteconomymovement.org Gift Economy on YouTube Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power Twitter: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

“Men don’t fall from trees - they subscribe to societal messages, they follow rules,” says Dr. Shahieda Jansen, clinical psychologist, scholar in masculinities, and author of Masculinity Meets Humanity: An Adapted Model of Masculinized Psychotherapy. In this episode Shahieda takes us through her own journey of research, practice and discovery, devising all-male group therapy that would re-integrate, re-contextualize, and pull back together elements that Western style psychology has compartmentalized, distorted and split apart. Working from the creed that “the minute something is out of sync with its context, you're busy with lunacy”, Shahieda weaves together belief systems rooted in the cultures, histories and identities of the men with whom she works. She draws on ancient and vibrant African relational ethical philosophies and understanding of the self, combines it with the latest science from around the globe, and builds bridges across the divides we all are shaped by - ancient from modern, culture from science, thinking from feeling, men from women - self from others. In this sweeping conversation we talk about Ubuntu, African identity and morality, Afro Eastern model of the self, Umoya, the ravages of colonization, the centrality of emotion, how “belonging is not recognized in the healing professions for the radicalness that it is”, and how Shahieda uses her wholeness approach to tend to the men in her all-male therapy groups. Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power Twitter: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Leave a review: https://www.subjecttopower.com/reviews/new/ Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

No status puts a woman at greater vulnerability than that of being a migrant or refugee. Anna Zobnina is a Strategy and Executive Director at European Network of Migrant Women, and she knows first-hand the realities and complex challenges that migrant and refugee women face in Europe. With over 15 years of experience in feminist analysis of male violence & discrimination against women and girls, sexual and reproductive exploitation, and international human rights policy work, Anna and her organization are at the forefront of the women’s rights policy-battles currently raging in Europe. Fundamental issues of equality between men and women are on the table, being hotly debated between EU governmental bodies, big international NGOs, the UN, and all the moneyed interests trying to influence them - and no one stands to lose more than migrant and refugee women, most of whom have fled men’s wars, violence and poverty and are trying to survive in a new land. In this super-sized episode we talk about every variety of men’s violence, sexual exploitation, surrogacy, forced marriage - and the literal gauntlet of violations, both personal and institutional, women endure to survive - in their country of origin, on their journey to Europe, and as migrant women living in Europe. Links European Parliament September 14, 2023 resolution on the regulation of prostitution in the EU Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power Twitter: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

If we think of patriarchy as a living, breathing, constantly evolving strategy that finds its expression at all levels of society - socially, economically, politically - its job number one is to control women - and thereby reproduction. Patriarchal strategies look different in different parts of the world - in some places it is embedded, disguised, and covert - in other cultures it is outspoken, brutal and overt. In this episode Elle talks to scholar, journalist and author of Leftover Women and Betraying Big Brother Leta Hong Fincher, who has spent many years studying and writing about how women in China are finding themselves on the receiving end of both old and new patriarchal strategies in their country. But also about how women in today’s China are resisting, and fighting against domination - both in the private sphere and the public arena. Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power Twitter: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Leave a review: https://www.subjecttopower.com/reviews/new/ Credits Host: Elle Kamihira Produced by Elle Kamihira Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio Cover Art by Bee Johnson Music by Beware of Darkness

In many ways, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in myths, religion, and history - are blueprints for our human lives. But the converse is also true - how we see ourselves, our attitudes, behaviors, and who holds power - in turn shape our stories. In Western culture, there is no story as powerfully influential as that of Greeks. Historical researcher Max Dashu has spent decades looking for the women in our stories, across the timespan of human history. Collecting visual evidence of women’s lives from cultures all over the globe, she has amassed a vast visual archive of female iconography and scholarship. In this episode we talk about Dashu’s most recent research project, Women in Greek Mythography - a deep dive into the major female figures of Greek myth, their surprising pre-Greek origin stories, and what the highly patriarchal Greek myths, art and history reveal about how Greek women of the times may have lived, and how it affects all of us today. As Dashu reflects, “when you think about these stories being told and sung and acted out in dramas, and through all the arts, pottery, weaving, architecture and sculpture, everywhere you look you have an enactment of this culture of domination. What kind of effect does that have on a female psyche?” #Patriarchy #History #GreekMyth Max Dashu’s work Suppressed Histories Archives Suppressed Histories Archive YouTube Channel Suppressed Histories Archives stream-on-demand videos Veleda Press Contact Us Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power Twitter: @SubjectToPower Email us at [email protected] Leave a review: https://www.subjecttopower.com/reviews/new/

In her new book Body Shell Girl, poet and sex trade survivor Rose Hunter brings us into the strange theater that takes place between sex buyers and prostitutes when money is exchanged for various sex acts. Describing the everyday reality of her ten years in massage parlors, brothels and hotel rooms of Toronto and Vancouver, Hunter says of prostitution, “it’s really nothing to do with sex, it's this other odd category, with its own bizarre rules, a very strange sphere unto itself.” In this episode we talk about what Hunter brilliantly captures about this “strange sphere” in Body Shell Girl (that which is often missed in the so-called prostitution debate): the million minute ways that ‘being for sale’ breaks down every aspect of your life, the survival behaviors and language you must cultivate to avoid male rage and violence, the impact of losing connection to your body when it no longer belongs to you, but also - what it is like - to be on the receiving end of stark-naked male entitlement, to be an unwilling actor in rote and porn-fed male fantasies, and to never ever being able to say no.

How did patriarchy first begin? The answers to that question are many and varied, and most often tries to explain it by one single factor - Agriculture! Private property! Men are stronger! But - the history of patriarchal development is a lot more complex and interesting than one single answer - and very few people have decoded what the evidence tells us about how patriarchal patterns arose and evolved in ancient Europe and Asia Minor - as deeply as research scholar Heide Goettner-Abendroth. In past episodes we have covered Heide’s work on modern matriarchies (Ep 16:The Peacebuilders) as well as the history of matriarchal societies in ancient Europe and West Asia (Ep 25: The Mothers of Invention). Well, strap in - because in this third installment we are talking about how those ancient matriarchal cultures came to their dramatic ends. About how the first small cells of patriarchy began and then grew and took hold in different parts of the ancient world, how it spread and destroyed former matriarchal cultures. How matriarchal societies waged resistance and fought against their oppressors to protect their egalitarian way of life, but how in the end those brutal forefathers prevailed and shaped the world we live in today.

We may believe that violent patriarchy is an inevitable reality, that our current world culture simply is a result of our immutable human nature. A human nature that is in a constant and brutal competition for limited resources, in which only the most ruthless of us survive and thrive. But there is much evidence - in our history, in our bodies and brains, in our nature - that tells a very different story. A story of peace, cooperation and sophisticated organization. A story in which mothers play a central role. In this episode Elle talks to sociologist Andrea Fleckinger, who studies and lectures on modern matriarchal societies. While we can find matriarchal cultures in our history, there are in existence today - societies all around the globe that have preserved and now maintain their traditions of egalitarian matriarchy - and Andrea breaks down exactly what it means to be a matriarchy - the social structures, values and practices that sets them apart from patriarchal cultures, and what we can learn from them. Matriforum

In her recent book Femicide in War and Peace, Israeli anthropologist and femicide expert Shalva Weil says that “the dividing line between femicide in wartime and peacetime is very thin.” Trigger warning: that fact is the subject of this episode. While the term femicide, the murder of a woman because she is a woman, was created in 1973, it did not gain popularity until the 2000s, and Shalva was instrumental in putting the phenomena of femicide into our collective consciousness. In this episode we discuss Shalva’s groundbreaking research and her work pioneering femicide observatories, the many obstacles to keeping track of dead women, and the question of why feminist organizations of the world, including UN Women, refused to condemn Hamas’ rape and murder of approximately 300 women in Israel on October 7, 2023 - as femicide.

In trying to explain inequality between the sexes - we often arrive at the idea that women inhabit the emotional realm, and that men inhabit the thinking realm - and in the hierarchy of realms, thinking is considered superior. In this episode, trauma and dissociation specialist Christine Forner crushes the “feelings versus thought hierarchy” and breaks down how absurd - and harmful - this fictional concept is. She also takes Elle on a deep dive into what human emotion, or the affective circuitry - as she calls it - actually is and how it works. You will never again think of emotions as a trait reserved for certain groups, or something to control, or separate your thinking from - but rather something every human being on the planet depends on to be a human being. Also included: Taylor Swift’s feminism, how to process your trauma by competing in Iron Man races, and some very good ideas about how we can cure patriarchy.

The sexual exploitation industries have been extremely successful in penetrating (pun intended) every layer of society - and like Gail Dines calls it - “pornifying our culture”. But amid full decriminalization of prostitution, the rise of OnlyFans and Pornhub, pervasive global sex trafficking, and social media providing exploiters and predators free and open access to vulnerable populations - the liberal myth of sexual self-empowerment is cracking. This in part because survivors of the sex trade are finally talking, being heard, weighing in in the debate and getting politically active - in numbers. Defying the shame and the stigma, women are writing books, appearing in media and waging political campaigns - and insisting that we listen to their accounts of what sexual exploitation really looks and feels like on the receiving end. In this episode, psychotherapist and author Mia Döring talks to Elle about her new book Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery about her experiences in the Dublin sex trade, the damage it wrought, and the importance of truth-telling to our collective healing.

Since it was published in 1987, Riane Eisler’s groundbreaking international bestseller The Chalice And The Blade has launched a full frontal challenge to the conventional story of our cultural origins - and has given us a brand new way to think about our ancient past, our present and how we shape our future. It upended the major religions we take for granted, the idea of eternal patriarchy and eternal war, and brought into focus the historical events that turned our human cultures from peaceful partnership systems that held women in respectful regard - to that of brutal, exploitative dominator cultures that venerate men and violence. More than 30 years hence, Riane reflects on the impact of Chalice, which is often compared to that of Darwin’s Origin of Species - and her body of work that followed - works like The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics; the award-winning Tomorrow's Children and her latest work Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives & Future. A celebrated cultural historian and evolutionary theorist, as well as founder of Center for Partnership Studies, Riane’s research has influenced fields including history, philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, education, human rights, social and political science, and healthcare. Now in her 90s, Riane is still honing her super-power: synthesizing wildly disparate disciplines and weaving them all into a cohesive worldview full of hope and useful instructions for a better future.

Our language - profane, sublime and everything in between - holds hidden truths about our cultural heritage, our current reality, and who determines it. Etymology, the study of the origins of words, can unlock this knowledge. Jane Caputi has spent her career unearthing the history and meaning of words, our language, cultural beliefs, and how we know what we know - with a particular focus on sex, violence and the destruction of our natural environment. In this episode we talk about Jane’s new book, Call Your Mutha’: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene, in which she critically reimagines The Anthropocene, The Age of Man, from an eco-feminist perspective. Not for the tender-eared, in this sweeping conversation Jane breaks down the origins of the term motherf***er, explains why Mother Earth is not a metaphor, spells out the difference between omnipotence and cunctipotence, and much more.

With a steady stream of new research coming to light, it is becoming clear that the version of Western history we are taught in school - has a thick layer of patriarchal myth-making. Heide Goettner-Abendroth has spent her whole life studying what this patriarchal overlay is hiding, and in her new book Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy in Europe and West Asia, using a new matriarchal paradigm, she reveals evidence of an ancient past that looks very different from the official history of “civilization” that our Western history promotes. In this episode, Heide talks through the evidence that points to millennia of peaceful development taking place in mother-centered cultures, throughout the Neolithic and before that the Paleolithic. Human societies with well-developed social structures, whose creativity and inventions laid the foundation for life as we know it.

Even in this period of perpetual war between men across the world - at no time in history did the contest for world domination reach as dangerous a moment as it did during the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. Male leaders in what was then The USSR - and America, were trying to outdo one another in amassing the most threatening pile of nuclear weapons capable of the greatest mass death and planetary destruction. In 1980, at the height of the arms race, Ann Pettitt was a young mother and vegetable farmer in rural Wales and found herself in much closer proximity to the nuclear threat than most - and in this episode Ann is going to tell the story of how she became a leader of the largest all-women peace action of all time - The Greenham Women's Peace Camp - which lasted 20 years and helped end the Cold War.

For most of us who end up in feminism, who end up actively fighting for women’s rights - the consciousness that brought us here - came at a steep price. Some of us got shocked into it, some of us went through a series of painful awakenings that forced us to search for an explanation, a framework by which to analyze the violations we had been subjected to or witnessed. Our guest on this episode, Brazilian journalist Andreia Nobre, tells the story of her own harrowing awakenings, starting at the age of 8, that put her on a lifelong quest to make sense of the lack of safety, autonomy, and dignity she experienced as a girl, as a young woman, as a mother - in Brazil, in Portugal, and in the UK. A passionate journalist and researcher, Andreia channeled her journey from silenced victim to outspoken survivor to wide awake activist, to report on the very dire reality women of the world still face - in the West, in so-called developing countries, and around the globe.

There is no issue where the distance between the idea - and the lived reality - is as far apart as in prostitution. The discourse about prostitution often takes place miles away from the thing itself, and is had by people far removed from the violence and trauma of prostitution. The voices of survivors of prostitution are rarely heard because their lives are inevitably impacted by the violence and trauma of prostitution. Our guest Cherry Smiley, an Indigenous feminist researcher, activist and author wanted to bridge this gap, and set out on an academic research project on the subject of prostitution - in the hopes that by shedding light on the lived realities of Indigenous women and girls in prostitution, she would shift people’s thinking about what prostitution actually is. She then wrote a book about her arduous PhD journey and her evolving insights called Not Sacred, Not Squaws: Indigenous Feminism Redefined. In this episode we talk to Cherry about putting her whole academic career on the line taking on the ‘sex work is work’ creed, the courage it took to bring her life experience as an Indigenous feminist woman to bear on her research project, and the cost of speaking up against the things manstitutions hold sacred.

A huge thank you to everyone who is listening, subscribing, sharing and engaging with Subject To Power. We are 20 episodes in and wrapping up Season 1 with immense gratitude and a few reflections by host Elle Kamihira, as well as a bit about what we have planned for Season 2 and forward. Subject To Power Website Subject To Power Twitter Subject To Power Instagram

If patriarchy is our default system - radical feminism is the only system of thinking and action that challenges the status quo of male domination. The only analysis that looks at our current world from women’s point of view and with women's interest in mind. And radical feminists - the women who speak, write and shape feminist thought, who are public and loud, are by definition brave people, because they are going against a powerful world order that definitely doesn't want to have its power challenged. A world order that punishes women who make too much noise. If those radical feminists are deliberately silenced, chased out of their jobs and institutions, de-platformed, even chased out of their countries, or threatened with violence - like this episode’s guest, founder of Feminist Current, Meghan Murphy was - we are silencing the only people who can explain to the rest of us what patriarchy is up to.

When we talk about rights and freedoms it is often in political, economic, and gender-less human rights terms. The conversation is often dualistic - taking place on the right/left divide or the black/white divide, or the rich/poor divide - and much that is crucial to women, gets missed. Or obscured. New Zealand author Renée Gerlich grapples with all of what is missed when we do not take women, half of humanity, into account, in her new book Out Of The Fog. In this important book she sidesteps the distracting and false choices we often entertain, and instead challenges the incredible contradictions embedded in our modern liberation movements. In this episode we talk about Renée’s own quest to fully understand all of what is at stake for women and men, to excavate the forces that distort our connection to eros, the life force, that stunt and disfigure our living energies - and how we can cultivate freedom in an unfree world.

For many of us, pornography seems like an inevitable fact of life. Internet porn use is so widespread, so normalized, so uncontroversial - that it’s controversial to be critical of pornography. But, as Dr. Gail Dines says, questioning what IS - is in her job description - as a feminist, and as a sociologist and world-leading expert on pornography. Gail is the author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality and founding president and CEO of Culture Reframed, an organization that provides educational tools for parents and teachers to cope with the impact pornography is having on young people. Gail Dines reframes pornography to show how ‘the industrialization of sex’ has groomed and captured Western culture in the last 70 years, and in this episode she takes us through the key moments in the evolution of porn - from Hugh Hefner to Girls Gone Wild to OnlyFans. We also talk about what today’s global sex industry does to women, what consuming it does to men across the world, and how we build resistance to the pornification of our lives.

Is our justice system in the business of determining what is true or false? Do our courts really determine who is guilty or innocent? Does our criminal justice system punish those who violate, and protect and restore the rights of the violated? As a former prosecutor and now professor of law, Deborah Tuerkheimer has spent her career studying how law and culture interact, and is a leading legal authority on violence against women, domestic violence, and sex crimes. In her recent book Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers she examines how our cultural values shape how law is written and executed, and also how our laws determine why we believe some and not others - and why we care so much about some, and so very little about others. In this episode Deborah breaks down how the “credibility complex” not only dictates how justice is meted out, but how the justice system, just like our culture, orients to the pain of the powerful, and disregards the pain of the powerless. And how, in a world where women as a class are subject to the greater power of men as a class, ‘justice’ becomes a tenuous matter.

Many scholars who study the evolution of humanity - sociologists, anthropologists, biologists - have come to the conclusion that we, all of us, would not have survived, let alone have evolved into the complex, resilient and innovative species that we are - without millennia of stability and peace. This episode’s guest, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, established the formal study of this peaceful past - and present - known as Matriarchal Studies. Through the institute she founded, International Academia Hagia of Modern Matriarchal Studies, she has spent nearly 40 years researching and disseminating a vast repository of knowledge about matriarchal societies around the world - their politics, economics, social practices and spirituality. In this episode we barely scratch the surface of what there is to know, but for those of us who worry about our violent and unequal present, where only a few humans at the top of the hierarchy are getting their needs met, and great masses of our human family suffer - it feels like a key to a different world, a different humanity. www.goettner-abendroth.de www.hagia.de

Every major religion in the world today features a male deity. Or as Miriam Robbins Dexter puts it: “Man was created in God's image and woman wasn't.” How does it affect women of the world - that we have no major religious symbols that reflect the female? That most religions greatly devalue women? That most religions have taboos against the female body and its life cycles? These are questions Miriam has spent her extraordinary career grappling with, and also what drove her to look into prehistory - our pre-patriarchal history - on a search for female deities and past religions that may have offered women affirmation of female power, the female body, and the female will - rather than shame and denigration. In this episode, Miriam, a hugely accomplished research scholar in ancient Indo-European languages, archaeology, and mythology, talks about uncovering the female aspects of prehistoric belief systems, unearthing the roots of Indo-European patriarchy, and how she and famed archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (and many others) formed the contested theories about the matriarchal societies of the neolithic.

We know that our sexuality is central and significant to our human existence. Human sexuality is a complex package of functions - biological surely, but also it allows us crucial intimate connections with other human beings, it is a powerful regulator and stress reducer, and a portal to joy, and many other life-giving emotions and expressions. And yet, we have allowed a massive commercial industry that brutally exploits vulnerable women and children for men’s disconnected, private, anonymous sexual gratification, to invade every corner of our lives and culture. This new breed of porn is unrecognizable from the porn mags of yesterday, and carry a very different message - that of violent misogyny. Melinda Tankard Reist, author, activist and founder of the grassroots organization Collective Shout, have spent the last two decades staring into the abyss, reporting on the destruction that today’s porn is causing - to relationships, families, schools, communities - and our humanity. However, not content with just reporting, Melinda and Collective Shout are also going after and shutting down predatory peddlers and their goods and services both online and in real life. We talk about all of the above, Melinda's new book He Chose Porn Over Me, and the bravery needed for this type of activism. Collective Shout

The battle for control of reproduction is as old as time, and since women alone have the power to create new life, women’s bodies continue to be the de facto battlefield for that power struggle. Political, economical, and social means have been used to wrestle this unique capacity away from women themselves, but in the last hundred years or so - science and technology - invented and controlled by mostly men, have overtaken every inch of human baby-making. Dr Renate Klein, a biologist and sociologist, has scrutinized and critiqued what she calls the “techno docs” and their advancements for over 40 years, and has written several books such as Broken Bonds and Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation on the subject. In this episode we talk about where the science has taken us, and all the moral questions that arise from this hugely profitable industry.

We are in our 6th millennia of patriarchy, and as this episode’s guest Susan Hawthorne puts it, “the publicity program for patriarchy has been going for some 5,000 years”. As a poet, author and founder of the feminist publishing house Spinifex Press, and as a lesbian radical feminist, Susan decidedly belongs to the publicity program for the other side, the side that has been fighting against ‘the rule of the father’ since the time of Cassandra. Susan, herself a feminist prophetess of our time, speaks in the clearest and most concrete way about the destruction that absolute male power has wrought, and drawing from ancient myths, mother nature and her own deep erudition - has written volumes that envisions a different way to live - in books like Wild Politics: Feminism, Globalization and Biodiversity and Vortex: The Crisis of Patriarchy among others. In this episode Elle and Susan riff on the dangers of watered down liberal feminism, the importance of having a 40,000 year plan, and patriarchy’s many, many Trojan Horses. Plus poetry.