Subject To Power

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
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Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/
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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  subjecttopower@gmail.com
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  subjecttopower@gmail.com
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  subjecttopower@gmail.com
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  subjecttopower@gmail.com
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  subjecttopower@gmail.com
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  subjecttopower@gmail.com
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.