In order to be heard and respected in professional/academic/male-dominated/public spheres of discourse, I’ve had to embrace my masculine nature, offering a precision and articulation to my arguments and ideas that I rarely need to offer when gathering with women alone.
In my experience, even when gathering with highly intellectual women, it is my sentient and spiritual awareness, rather than my intellect, that is respected and responded to; my ability to translate challenging scientific or heady spiritual concepts becomes a second or third source of interest/connection behind my ability to sense and feel and truly ‘see’ the wisdom of the other woman/women present.
I have also experienced this with men, though almost exclusively in one-on-one settings, rather than in groups, where they too feel safe to shed their conditioning and connect with the wisdom of the feminine, whether in its graceful or rage-full forms.
In my experience, women also need far fewer words to convey meaning to other women. There is a sentient quality to our common communion that doesn’t require hours of discourse, though we can, of course, meander down thought streams that are rarely linear, branching like tributaries, something women have an easier time tracking than men, in my experience. I rarely need to explain a tangential thought to a woman.
When it comes to safety, well, that’s a fundamental piece of this equation, for me. To expose myself in my truest form, it requires a level of safety that public discourse has yet to consistently provide. I am an animist, I feel and see the world in infinite and animate reciprocity. My walk and work flies in the face of separatist, religious, political and capitalistic lensing. I commune with the non-human world as equal. Plus, as someone who lives with a trauma condition from a violent and abusive youth, coupled with having been raised in the bullying misogyny of the Australian over culture, even the thought of mere digital heckling is enough to keep me away from more public speaking. So I have a range of mountains to climb, in order to feel capable of speaking publicly (to men) without shaking for several hours from spiraling into a nervous system response. I’m not alone in this, sadly.
I do hear you, though. I am listening. I desire very much more sharing between women, especially those upholding the divine feminine.
Thanks Heather. That came at the right time. There’s always a moment about a day after a post when I wonder if it was worth the effort and your opening line was reassuring. There’s a lot in your comment to digest and respond to. I’ll think/feel on it all. In the meantime, do you mind if I repost your comment, which is an essay in itself? I thought I’d check because it’s quite personal. J+
Thank you for checking in Jonathan - yes - you're welcome to share it. It sort of just tumbled out; your question/reflection landed in my field as an invitation and opened a space of questioning I had only quietly muttered to myself, alone. Thank you for holding my sharing with gentle hands. I am grateful for you here.
Thanks for this Heather, there is so much here that resonates! particularly around being forced into linearity and masculine forms by the external human world
Jonathan, I read this not realising I was mentioned. I had to get up and walk around - I think it’s the first time I’ve read something by a man writing about women as agents in a curious exploratory way. I'll be interested to see if men's responses here.
I think you’ve made some excellent points and if women were only listened to by men in public settings, never mind private, the world would surely be transformed. And by listening, I think you mean being open to change your mind based on what you’re taking in from the woman. I somewhat disagree with you that the four women you mentioned are “just folk like you and me”. Each of those women have a very strong sense of purpose which propels them to delve into topics in the ways that they do. And they have the drive to write or create platforms to amplify their voices. I think it would be amazing if we could raise our children, male, and female, to cultivate their sense of purpose.
Thanks, Suzanne. You are right that that part is a little too casually expressed. I edited it above in a way that contains a similar meaning, but one that is more fully expressed. I am finding that the word 'just' rarely helps!
It's great to see men engaging with these questions. We need more of this, talhank you for a thoughtful and vulnerable piece that cracks open a lot to be explored. I'm taking you up on your provocation to enter the fray without thinking too hard about whether it will come out right, but it's a topic I care deeply about so here we go 😅
A few things feel important to layer in here - one is about violence, and the fear of violence that keeps many women out of the public sphere, physically and vocally. It's not just about finding the courage and groundedness to speak from a place of exile, even if it won't come out right, sometimes it's also the courage to risk emotional, psychological or physically harm, and then also have to take responsibility for healing from it (however subtle we define violence to be... A judgemental listener is sometimes enough to keep women quiet). Of course many times there's no basis to the fear, and other times it's very real, but the systemic pattern is definitely strong enough to hold this dynamic in place for now. And yet, despite the real risks, women are showing up every day, while also making discerning choices about who to let close enough, who to trust with their voices, building foundations within themselves of confidence which doesn't come from or often get reinforced by the outside. It's an inside out job. It takes immense energy and courage.
In my work as a coach I'm encountering a lot of deep desire and need for women to create safe spaces where they can be with other women, to speak, exist, explore new ideas and heal freely and safely, without the risk or at least some distance from potential backlash. I've heard this from women across the board - from high performing academics to aslyum seekers. It feels like an important stage in restoring balance, including healing our own shadows and untangling the parts of ourselves that feel captive to cultures of oppression to reclaim our power and sense of possibility for birthing new relational contexts and cultures. Building islands of safety, that can ripple outwards into the collective.
But then what about men? And while I'm totally onboard with listening as a crucial start (so long as it's active and non-judgemental), it doesn't feel radical enough. What is the role for men who (in the first instance) sense and witness this collective emergence / shift and are seeking ways to be active in it? Perhaps if women (or LGBTQ+ or any identity group for that matter) are gathering together to shape containers of safety in which to unravel harmful cultures, I feel it could be to the benefit of men to do this too. To come together no just to talk, but with intention to heal their own entanglements to a cultural paradigm that perpetuates a toxic definition of masculinity and ways of being that are relational, felt, emotionally intelligent, meandering, opening, compassionate, and fierce. Qualities that men can (and do) possess, but seem not to feel the permission to lean into, especially not in the public sphere.
Men healing men feels powerful. I've also seen it in action. Men holding space for eachother to redefine what it means to be a man, to reconnect with their emotion and sensitivity, to their compassion, to other forms of strength like respect, benevolence, facilitation. Men witnessing each other cry. It's transformational. It also lifts an emotional burden from women to be the witnesses and the holders of these softer human spaces where sadness, grief and joy live.
This healing can't be women's responsibility to facilitate; transformation will only profoundly happen with men taking radical responsibility for their role in healing themselves and the culture of what it means to be a man today.
This is sacred work (however you want to define that word) - a return to a masculine divine that's in balance, as important and critical to the emergence of feminine power (or insert your preferred term) and ways of being that are slowly being recovered.
I know there are a lot of generalisms here, but they are rooted in the stories of real people that I've had the privilege of witnessing, but whose stories are not mine to tell.
Thank you Amayah (I like your name!). I’m glad you mentioned violence and, I infer, the spectre of violence. Obviously I don’t have first person access to that kind of fear in the same way, but I hear you when you say it is a big part of the overall conundrum. I also agree that mere (active) listening is necessary but not sufficient. I’ve always been wary of men’s work for some reason, but I know it’s a lifeline for many, and as you indicate, it may well be much more than that too…🙏
This feels important space to be explored - thank you for writing it. It is refreshing to have a man recognise and specify the unique benefit that listening to (and being open to being changed) by women talking can bring to the individual listener and the wider culture. I can’t think of other men in this space that are highlighting this dynamic, maybe just my lack of awareness!
Hi there. I am wondering if there is a difference in writing as labour, or writing as work, or writing as action. Political and news-ish commentary is writing as action in the sense that Arendt uses it. Speech act arising in the polis (public sphere). Writing as work would refer to authors who intend to produce lasting works of art, huge intelliectual canons, iconic works of fiction, and the like.
"This series, asks you to attend differently. It asks you to look instead for a different quality of attention and compare it with what has been offered since the axial age mutations spun out of control. Compare the idea of Socrates, selling ideas on the steps of the Stoa, oblivious of the consequences of thinking with thought, and putting young men under the spell of aporia. Consider instead, a voice that comes with a different quality of attention, not towards the words, but using words to attend to the world. Consider, instead of the likes of Socrates and his ilk, a man like Barry Lopez, which Julia Martin captures in this passage:
'The quality of Barry’s attention was extraordinary. He had the capacity to speak thoughtfully and at great length without a pause, his gaze held in earnest focus. And he could just as well remain quite still and silent for long spaces: listening, seeing, touching, breathing. In all this he lived anchored in the being of one particular place. For all the journeys of intrepid exploration and adventure across the planet that we know from his writing, it was to this place that he always returned: the thirty-eight acres of deep forest and the reach of the McKenzie River below the house where he lived for fifty years. This negotiation between silence and speech, seclusion and engagement, made for a very fine and highly informed capacity for awareness as well as a powerful desire to communicate it. For while his inclinations were profoundly contemplative, there was also a strong sense of urgency to speak, to share the vision, to write, to help.'
On the first day of their conversations, Barry begins by contemplating awareness itself. His method has nothing to do with the analytic reduction of the axial Platonists or Buddhists, and does not lead to the kenosis or aporia, but to “a glorious symphony.” Barry weaves the quality of attention with the richness of the present moment, clarity of perception of the patterns of the living world, as well as their instantiations in present, living beings, with the cultural arts, weaving attention with relationship, the stream of thought with the living river— goodness, truth and beauty arising and passing in harmony.
Reflecting on a lifetime of watching the river, [Barry] describes something of the quality of attention he has learned from intimacy with the place itself: a finely tuned sense of the distinction between silence and stillness, of the rich complexities of the present moment, of the syntax of myriad things in their lively relationships. In all there’s a perception of the river as a living animal and of the pattern which connects. The stream of thought then meanders from stories about the miracle of Chinook salmon who return on the same day each year to the same place in the river, into the terrifying craziness of a human society focused on “me” and “mine,” the suicidal impact of the profit motive, and on to the wonders of the Prado, the Louvre, a glorious symphony ...
Listen, too, to how Julia notices him, in all his depth of character and beauty, including the background of natural processes, of inward tides and outward flows, that make conversation between two humans possible, because at the bottom of it, conversation too is the exchange of natural processes, of inward tides and outward flows. Notice how she crafts into her words, the love she has for him, and how that love, that intimacy is born in, and bourne through the natural world that surrounds and envelopes them, that makes mouths pronunciate-able, sound propagate-able, hearing translatable, and feeling transferable— communication as convocation.
'It was late afternoon, and we were sitting at the window of a timber cabin at the edge of the water. Whenever anyone came by— six female mergansers flying upriver into the sun, a great blue heron hunting— Barry would follow the thread of their presence for as long as it took, and he’d tell their stories. … This Experience of being a finely attentive participant in the community of all beings is perhaps Barry’s core teaching. Over decades he developed a practice of awareness that was endlessly curious and enthralled by the living world, what he calls here its pattern or syntax. This meant too that he was consequently terrified by the portents of its destruction. As a writer, his task, then, was to put this combination of wonder and terror to work.'
Listen, too, deeply, and you may catch yourself wondering why, in these times between worlds, when so much is at stake, we busy ourselves with recreating the images of Socrates and Plato, and reproducing their terrible mistakes. Perhaps you've come to wonder why, we spend so much time as petulant thieves ruminating over the contents of our fragile psyches, in circles that promote such behavior, rather than encountering those wisdom keepers (human, non-human, and more-than-human), who have lived among us, or are living still, who have listened too, deeply, to these times, in this world. For all the reasons most of us have preferred to look away and hide within the nether regions of our psyches, mastered over only by our own minds-- yet, and for these same reasons, there are those among us, that have preferred to walk into and embrace this very world, all the while it is burning alive."
Do you see any of the distinctions you are trying to explicate?
Hi Bonnie, I’m just finding time to read and respond now. Thanks for this challenge. Just as it is said that all models are wrong, but some are useful, something similar might be said for definitions and distinctions, which are mostly map rather than territory, though even then, the distinction breaks down when the territory becomes the map.
As I read her, Arendt’s concern near the start of The Human Condition was, inter-alia, to avert the collapse of Work into Labour through de-naturing mechanisation and to avert the collapse of Action into Work through a kind of anti-Imagination conformity or surrender to the system by de-politicising and de-fictionalising every day life.
As I read your extracts above, you seem to be saying that the kinds of speech acts Arendt wants to preserve for action belong just as much in Labour, partly because they are natural, and nature resides for her in the world of Labour, where we are obliged to deal with it, rather than revere it or listen to it or become more willingly and wholeheartedly part of it. By extrapolation, the kinds of imaginative public engagement she seeks to preserve for Action might today be best characterised as a return to nature and/or new alliances of ecology and technology, for instance through solar punk, digital naturalism, bioregionalism or bio-mimicry. And then there is the impact of AI on work, where 3D printing for instance exemplifies creating enduring artefacts with minimal “work” and yet also the quintessential form of work as she conceived of it.
As for Substack, for many it has become like Labour for many because it is a matter of subsistence and repetition, but it doesn’t fit her conception of labour as natural processes we are implicated in, not least to eat. For many it is Work too, because some posts are enduring works of art, even if they exist only virtually and not really materially unless you print them out and produce them for that purpose. And Substack is clearly a kind of Action too for many, and it’s mostly how I use it myself. It’s public, imaginative and concerned with the public realm….
So, yes, the Labour, Work, Action distinction looks a little wobbly or even obtuse in the world as we find it, but for the purposes of describing patterns in the lives of men and women, I still find it quite a useful place to start.
I’m not sure if I’ve answered the essence of your query, but please let me know what you think. I’ll be turning off for a few days, so may not be able to reply until late December or early new year.
PS I can see I did not take your question about writing as an act of labour as directly as I might have. I suppose to make that case we might need to explore what it feels like to write compulsively or as a practice that becomes second-nature or when it is literally a matter of survival- no writing no money no food…
Yes. Not really a question, but a contemplation. I am thinking Arendt’s model v2.0 for the new reality we live in. Is an Instagram channel labor, work, or action? Where is the private sphere today, when everything has become public and political? What does Bayo Akomolafe means by post-activist? is this post-political (post-speech acts)?
As you know, I am writing this book and it has a lot of metaphysics in it. I really don’t like the narrative voice that thinks of it as “work” — as an enduring artifact, especially since a core message of the book is one of “on-goingness” instead of substance, entities, and rigid stratification of reality.
I want to write something that is more lyrical, but still rigorous metaphysics, and so I return to that excerpt I shared, the narrative voices there are lyrical.
The lyric voice does not tell or name, rather it discloses, using language as gesture and song (which are forms of “touch at a distance”). So these are the design principles that I am applying to the work. I hope it makes a noticeable difference. More than what I say, perhaps the performance of how I say it, carries the real message.
Your question brought to mind the occasion of listening Gloria Steinem talk with Jenny Murray in and old cinema in Bath that was full to overbrimming with (mainly young) women. My wife (an elder feminist) noted that many of the young women seemed to be hearing Gloria Steinem's ideas for the first time and were very excited by what they heard. It was definitely an occasion for keeping my masculine 'energy' within bounds and enjoying an utterly non-masculine atmosphere
I sadly don't have time to read your whole post (need to put the baby to bed!) but I've just finished watching 'Women Talking' based on the novel of the same name by Miriam Toews. It chronicles two days worth of conversations in which women from an American religious colony had to decide what to do after a spate of rapes in their community. I found it very moving, particularly when it touched on just how difficult it is for women to imagine a world made in their image, as oppose to that made of man.
Thanks Jonathan - was thinking about your piece overnight and I think that one of the biggest reasons women might not 'turn up in public spaces' is because of the added labour it involves in addition to the domestic and emotional labour we are already performing. As I enter a season of intense motherhood, I simply do not have the capacity to be travelling to events or doing podcasts - in both a physical and intellectual sense.
Yes I agree and can relate to some extent; my wife Siva is in a particularly intense phase of her career and my existence is currently defined mostly by domestic and parental responsibilities; though not to same extent as a new mum of course- not even close. I think your point may help to explain another reason why Arendt’s Labour/Work/Action distinction is useful. What men might see as action can be experienced by women as labour. That’s a useful frame actually because then the question for the curator/host is how to issue an invitation to action rather than labour…(which is a kind of work!).
Jonathan, thank you for offering these insights to the world. Your exploration of the ways gendered dynamics manifest in public and intellectual spaces is an important step in addressing the broader implications of who participates in shaping collective meaning.
Over the past decade, my sense has been the conversations that I was introduced to by women (Donella Meadows, Nora Bateson, Vandana Shiva), have become dominated in dialogue about the metacrisis, complexity and systems thinking. Though ripe with potential for innovative thinking, the discourse has become increasingly dominated by masculine modes of engagement— tools, statistics, methodologies.
This dynamic often overlooks or marginalises the nuanced and relational forms of inquiry that are frequently cultivated in women’s spaces of conversation. There’s a feedback loop at play here - if these spaces don’t feel inviting to women, and if men are not noticing or valuing where women are already holding significant conversations, the imbalance is perpetuated.
You rightly point out that men must step into unpaid labour to create room for women to engage publicly. Yet, this labour also requires men to reflect on their role in inadvertently shaping contexts that exclude women, not just through overt acts, but through the unexamined norms of dominance in discourse. Two critical aspects emerge:
The Creation of Conditions: How might men in these spaces consciously foster environments where women’s contributions are actively sought and celebrated, not as an exception but as a norm?
Noticing and Listening: How can men develop the attunement to recognise the rich dialogues already occurring among women, which might challenge or expand their frameworks?
This is about more than equal representation. It’s about embracing diverse epistemologies, including those grounded in intuition, embodiment, and relationality, which are often devalued in masculinised spaces. As Vanessa Andreotti suggests in her work, the cultivation of new ways of knowing begins with a hospicing of old paradigms and the birthing of new ones, which requires humility and a willingness to step aside or step differently.
What would it look like for these male-dominated arenas to embrace a more balanced integration of the feminine and the masculine? How might men practice the kind of "relational listening" that Audre Lorde describes, an openness not just to hear but to be changed by what is heard?
These are not questions with easy answers, but they are essential inquiries for the rebalancing you describe. Thank you for opening this door; may it lead to more vibrant and inclusive dialogues.
Thank you for sharing your “potted biography” at the outset. It emphasises the vital role that context plays in all aspects of life - both human and non-human. This post has also “opened a new door” for me, into a world that is strange, but not entirely unfamiliar.
Thanks for this post Jonathan, which came at a very synchronous(?) time for me, at the end of a Sufi retreat which unexpectedly took me very far into the spiritual feminine, further than I have been before. I’m still integrating/ processing so only have a few tentative things to say
Those who speak do not know; those who know, do not speak. This is the paradox of the spiritual feminine that is inherently hidden. This is about the feminine aspect of ourselves in deep alignment to Unity, God, the Divine. (many levels at which this can happen). To speak and act we have to come into our masculine aspect, which cannot directly know in this way, but works with what reflects into the mind. However once this happens we are already at one remove. (Hence, the tao that can be spoken is not the true tao, and so on)
True knowledge is living, experiential knowledge - wordless, received directly, alive, relational, felt, and in constant new revelation. In contrast to this, word and book knowledge feels dead. When I’m in this state I can’t really be doing with words at all, they just seem to get in the way, the meaning is actually in the field, pouring in, or trickling in, depending on where I am, who I’m with, where my attention is. Yet words are creative. Logos. We shouldn’t throw them out...
For me, the feminine is the state of receptivity, being, v sensitively attuned, very precious.
The masculine holds will, strength, activity. I have been personally been in each extreme, experienced its qualities (for me) and recognised how much they need each other!
The complete person, male or female, is both deeply receptive and active - a creative channel connected to both Heaven and Earth, Immanent and Transcendent.
However as a woman - I spent the first 31 years of my life alienated from my own feminine side. I think this is very common. Feminism has not led to the valuing of the feminine, just given women a route out of being artificially confined to a small area of it. We need to actually start valuing the feminine on its own terms. I had no idea of its depth and richness until I embarked on a serious spiritual path. Also being pregnant and having children was like an initiation.
More widely, this is the time of the polarity flip, I personally think it has already happened, we are already in yin via a death process… which is taking some time because we are resisting it so much. Recovery of the feminine is essential - and happening. The masculine is also going through an important process that is not entirely clear, perhaps it is differentiation as you say, or maybe it is a breakdown that prefigures a rebirth… there is certainly a lot of activity in the darker archetypes!
I could go on - there is at least one book in here! And speaking of books, the best book I have ever read exploring the feminine is ‘The marriages between zones 3, 4 and 5’ by Doris Lessing. I highly recommend it. (It is also a detailed allegory of the soul’s journey on the Naqshbandi path, which may have some overlap with your own spiritual practice as I notice that Cynthia Borgeault draws strongly on Gurdjieff, who was trained by Naqshbandis. Certainly beginning with the heart is the Naqshbandi hallmark…)
Gosh. Thanks for that fabulously rich response, Joy. I hope I didn’t give the impression that I am calling for an army of female talking heads. I was really just trying to pose the conundrum as I see it. In a deep sense my hope rests in women, I see connections between the feminine and the ecological wholeheartedness we need. I don’t think the way there is necessarily more talking, but on the other hand the clock is ticking and the public realm is still mostly shaped by men…Maybe the whole idea of public and private is part of the problem- yet another duality we have to move beyond…In any case thanks for reading and responding and I hope we get a chance to talk before long.
Thanks, and also, sorry it was a bit of a consciousness dump! This is something very present for me at the moment and you very generously offered the space for it, implicitly at least! Your writing is very spacious and generous in that way, it has the quality of invitation and openess, without imposition. Which is actually quite rare! And I think space, spaciousness, is perhaps what is also needed for the emergence of the feminine. Certainly a huge amount is going on in the female spaces I am part of, some really extraordinary and nonlinear things, but there is not generally the space in the mainstream or even the basic mental models to permit them to be seen, let alone discussed. I agree very much with the connections you see between the feminine and the ecological. Maybe we need more spacious bridge spaces, and holders of those spaces, places and spaces where attention can gently widen and nothing is being forced or compelled to justify itself..
Nice Richard Tarnas callout! His book "Cosmos and Psyche" has some interesting ties to this as well, when he explores the way our modern mind has separated our subjective world from the objective world in a way that ancient people did not.
This was a wonderful article, thank you. I do agree with many of the previous commenters, however, regarding violence toward women with the audacity to exist in the public sphere. I've been threatened with rape and death multiple times by men here on Substack...and I write about astrology, for god's sake. My avatar is an illustration, instead of a photo, for very good reason.
Thank you for wording the ineffable. I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table yesterday with 3 women, myself, a woman, and one man. The conversation was largely held by and between the women, one younger age 25 and others ranging upward in 60s on. It was so wonderful to behold the mutuality of attention to one another with listening, sharing stories of lived history, inspiration to the younger for holding to her own agency for making differences one person at a time. I was deeply moved as I witnessed a motherly and loving encouragement for trusting in change coming from the unknown, and that none of us know what we will do until the "world events" touch us up close and personally and that's when we get to choose again. That's when change happens. The complexity of life constantly inspires me with miracles unimaginable and they often occur just in time as needed.
And that you re truly gifted in sharing your considerably wide and deeply informed "generalities," You often give voice to my own. You are advancing a new philosophy for navigation into many unknowns. Thank you. I also appreciate the notes you share of your home-life with children and wife. Blessings for all you share.
Thank you, Jonathan, for your ongoing efforts to highlight the importance of the female perspective in the larger universal conversation. I’d like to offer a clarification: when I reflect on my most meaningful woman-to-woman conversations, they have almost always been with women who embody the mature feminine spirit.
Unfortunately, immaturity among women can sometimes manifest as relational bullying, where meanness emerges within social dynamics. In contrast, mature women create space for others to show up authentically, which allows dialogue to develop and ripen naturally. This approach moves away from the competition and striving often characteristic of male-dominated conversations.
I hope this article inspires men in the spaces of ideas to intentionally invite the women present to speak. I believe that when we truly listen to one another, we can foster a deeper understanding that promotes growth—not only on an individual level but collectively as well.
I hear your call.
In order to be heard and respected in professional/academic/male-dominated/public spheres of discourse, I’ve had to embrace my masculine nature, offering a precision and articulation to my arguments and ideas that I rarely need to offer when gathering with women alone.
In my experience, even when gathering with highly intellectual women, it is my sentient and spiritual awareness, rather than my intellect, that is respected and responded to; my ability to translate challenging scientific or heady spiritual concepts becomes a second or third source of interest/connection behind my ability to sense and feel and truly ‘see’ the wisdom of the other woman/women present.
I have also experienced this with men, though almost exclusively in one-on-one settings, rather than in groups, where they too feel safe to shed their conditioning and connect with the wisdom of the feminine, whether in its graceful or rage-full forms.
In my experience, women also need far fewer words to convey meaning to other women. There is a sentient quality to our common communion that doesn’t require hours of discourse, though we can, of course, meander down thought streams that are rarely linear, branching like tributaries, something women have an easier time tracking than men, in my experience. I rarely need to explain a tangential thought to a woman.
When it comes to safety, well, that’s a fundamental piece of this equation, for me. To expose myself in my truest form, it requires a level of safety that public discourse has yet to consistently provide. I am an animist, I feel and see the world in infinite and animate reciprocity. My walk and work flies in the face of separatist, religious, political and capitalistic lensing. I commune with the non-human world as equal. Plus, as someone who lives with a trauma condition from a violent and abusive youth, coupled with having been raised in the bullying misogyny of the Australian over culture, even the thought of mere digital heckling is enough to keep me away from more public speaking. So I have a range of mountains to climb, in order to feel capable of speaking publicly (to men) without shaking for several hours from spiraling into a nervous system response. I’m not alone in this, sadly.
I do hear you, though. I am listening. I desire very much more sharing between women, especially those upholding the divine feminine.
Thanks Heather. That came at the right time. There’s always a moment about a day after a post when I wonder if it was worth the effort and your opening line was reassuring. There’s a lot in your comment to digest and respond to. I’ll think/feel on it all. In the meantime, do you mind if I repost your comment, which is an essay in itself? I thought I’d check because it’s quite personal. J+
Thank you for checking in Jonathan - yes - you're welcome to share it. It sort of just tumbled out; your question/reflection landed in my field as an invitation and opened a space of questioning I had only quietly muttered to myself, alone. Thank you for holding my sharing with gentle hands. I am grateful for you here.
Thanks for this Heather, there is so much here that resonates! particularly around being forced into linearity and masculine forms by the external human world
Thanks for speaking to this Heather. Your experience resonates very deeply with my own.
@Golden Imp, Notorious I imagine you will relate to a lot of this.
Jonathan, I read this not realising I was mentioned. I had to get up and walk around - I think it’s the first time I’ve read something by a man writing about women as agents in a curious exploratory way. I'll be interested to see if men's responses here.
Thank you Sarah. A post that makes people get up and walk around will now be my new litmus test…Thanks for being part of it.
I think you’ve made some excellent points and if women were only listened to by men in public settings, never mind private, the world would surely be transformed. And by listening, I think you mean being open to change your mind based on what you’re taking in from the woman. I somewhat disagree with you that the four women you mentioned are “just folk like you and me”. Each of those women have a very strong sense of purpose which propels them to delve into topics in the ways that they do. And they have the drive to write or create platforms to amplify their voices. I think it would be amazing if we could raise our children, male, and female, to cultivate their sense of purpose.
Thanks, Suzanne. You are right that that part is a little too casually expressed. I edited it above in a way that contains a similar meaning, but one that is more fully expressed. I am finding that the word 'just' rarely helps!
It's great to see men engaging with these questions. We need more of this, talhank you for a thoughtful and vulnerable piece that cracks open a lot to be explored. I'm taking you up on your provocation to enter the fray without thinking too hard about whether it will come out right, but it's a topic I care deeply about so here we go 😅
A few things feel important to layer in here - one is about violence, and the fear of violence that keeps many women out of the public sphere, physically and vocally. It's not just about finding the courage and groundedness to speak from a place of exile, even if it won't come out right, sometimes it's also the courage to risk emotional, psychological or physically harm, and then also have to take responsibility for healing from it (however subtle we define violence to be... A judgemental listener is sometimes enough to keep women quiet). Of course many times there's no basis to the fear, and other times it's very real, but the systemic pattern is definitely strong enough to hold this dynamic in place for now. And yet, despite the real risks, women are showing up every day, while also making discerning choices about who to let close enough, who to trust with their voices, building foundations within themselves of confidence which doesn't come from or often get reinforced by the outside. It's an inside out job. It takes immense energy and courage.
In my work as a coach I'm encountering a lot of deep desire and need for women to create safe spaces where they can be with other women, to speak, exist, explore new ideas and heal freely and safely, without the risk or at least some distance from potential backlash. I've heard this from women across the board - from high performing academics to aslyum seekers. It feels like an important stage in restoring balance, including healing our own shadows and untangling the parts of ourselves that feel captive to cultures of oppression to reclaim our power and sense of possibility for birthing new relational contexts and cultures. Building islands of safety, that can ripple outwards into the collective.
But then what about men? And while I'm totally onboard with listening as a crucial start (so long as it's active and non-judgemental), it doesn't feel radical enough. What is the role for men who (in the first instance) sense and witness this collective emergence / shift and are seeking ways to be active in it? Perhaps if women (or LGBTQ+ or any identity group for that matter) are gathering together to shape containers of safety in which to unravel harmful cultures, I feel it could be to the benefit of men to do this too. To come together no just to talk, but with intention to heal their own entanglements to a cultural paradigm that perpetuates a toxic definition of masculinity and ways of being that are relational, felt, emotionally intelligent, meandering, opening, compassionate, and fierce. Qualities that men can (and do) possess, but seem not to feel the permission to lean into, especially not in the public sphere.
Men healing men feels powerful. I've also seen it in action. Men holding space for eachother to redefine what it means to be a man, to reconnect with their emotion and sensitivity, to their compassion, to other forms of strength like respect, benevolence, facilitation. Men witnessing each other cry. It's transformational. It also lifts an emotional burden from women to be the witnesses and the holders of these softer human spaces where sadness, grief and joy live.
This healing can't be women's responsibility to facilitate; transformation will only profoundly happen with men taking radical responsibility for their role in healing themselves and the culture of what it means to be a man today.
This is sacred work (however you want to define that word) - a return to a masculine divine that's in balance, as important and critical to the emergence of feminine power (or insert your preferred term) and ways of being that are slowly being recovered.
I know there are a lot of generalisms here, but they are rooted in the stories of real people that I've had the privilege of witnessing, but whose stories are not mine to tell.
Thank you Amayah (I like your name!). I’m glad you mentioned violence and, I infer, the spectre of violence. Obviously I don’t have first person access to that kind of fear in the same way, but I hear you when you say it is a big part of the overall conundrum. I also agree that mere (active) listening is necessary but not sufficient. I’ve always been wary of men’s work for some reason, but I know it’s a lifeline for many, and as you indicate, it may well be much more than that too…🙏
This feels important space to be explored - thank you for writing it. It is refreshing to have a man recognise and specify the unique benefit that listening to (and being open to being changed) by women talking can bring to the individual listener and the wider culture. I can’t think of other men in this space that are highlighting this dynamic, maybe just my lack of awareness!
Hi there. I am wondering if there is a difference in writing as labour, or writing as work, or writing as action. Political and news-ish commentary is writing as action in the sense that Arendt uses it. Speech act arising in the polis (public sphere). Writing as work would refer to authors who intend to produce lasting works of art, huge intelliectual canons, iconic works of fiction, and the like.
But what is "writing as an act of labour?"
Compare, for example, this excerpt from
https://open.substack.com/pub/bonnittaroy/p/before-socrates-antisthenes?r=108vl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
"This series, asks you to attend differently. It asks you to look instead for a different quality of attention and compare it with what has been offered since the axial age mutations spun out of control. Compare the idea of Socrates, selling ideas on the steps of the Stoa, oblivious of the consequences of thinking with thought, and putting young men under the spell of aporia. Consider instead, a voice that comes with a different quality of attention, not towards the words, but using words to attend to the world. Consider, instead of the likes of Socrates and his ilk, a man like Barry Lopez, which Julia Martin captures in this passage:
'The quality of Barry’s attention was extraordinary. He had the capacity to speak thoughtfully and at great length without a pause, his gaze held in earnest focus. And he could just as well remain quite still and silent for long spaces: listening, seeing, touching, breathing. In all this he lived anchored in the being of one particular place. For all the journeys of intrepid exploration and adventure across the planet that we know from his writing, it was to this place that he always returned: the thirty-eight acres of deep forest and the reach of the McKenzie River below the house where he lived for fifty years. This negotiation between silence and speech, seclusion and engagement, made for a very fine and highly informed capacity for awareness as well as a powerful desire to communicate it. For while his inclinations were profoundly contemplative, there was also a strong sense of urgency to speak, to share the vision, to write, to help.'
On the first day of their conversations, Barry begins by contemplating awareness itself. His method has nothing to do with the analytic reduction of the axial Platonists or Buddhists, and does not lead to the kenosis or aporia, but to “a glorious symphony.” Barry weaves the quality of attention with the richness of the present moment, clarity of perception of the patterns of the living world, as well as their instantiations in present, living beings, with the cultural arts, weaving attention with relationship, the stream of thought with the living river— goodness, truth and beauty arising and passing in harmony.
Reflecting on a lifetime of watching the river, [Barry] describes something of the quality of attention he has learned from intimacy with the place itself: a finely tuned sense of the distinction between silence and stillness, of the rich complexities of the present moment, of the syntax of myriad things in their lively relationships. In all there’s a perception of the river as a living animal and of the pattern which connects. The stream of thought then meanders from stories about the miracle of Chinook salmon who return on the same day each year to the same place in the river, into the terrifying craziness of a human society focused on “me” and “mine,” the suicidal impact of the profit motive, and on to the wonders of the Prado, the Louvre, a glorious symphony ...
Listen, too, to how Julia notices him, in all his depth of character and beauty, including the background of natural processes, of inward tides and outward flows, that make conversation between two humans possible, because at the bottom of it, conversation too is the exchange of natural processes, of inward tides and outward flows. Notice how she crafts into her words, the love she has for him, and how that love, that intimacy is born in, and bourne through the natural world that surrounds and envelopes them, that makes mouths pronunciate-able, sound propagate-able, hearing translatable, and feeling transferable— communication as convocation.
'It was late afternoon, and we were sitting at the window of a timber cabin at the edge of the water. Whenever anyone came by— six female mergansers flying upriver into the sun, a great blue heron hunting— Barry would follow the thread of their presence for as long as it took, and he’d tell their stories. … This Experience of being a finely attentive participant in the community of all beings is perhaps Barry’s core teaching. Over decades he developed a practice of awareness that was endlessly curious and enthralled by the living world, what he calls here its pattern or syntax. This meant too that he was consequently terrified by the portents of its destruction. As a writer, his task, then, was to put this combination of wonder and terror to work.'
Listen, too, deeply, and you may catch yourself wondering why, in these times between worlds, when so much is at stake, we busy ourselves with recreating the images of Socrates and Plato, and reproducing their terrible mistakes. Perhaps you've come to wonder why, we spend so much time as petulant thieves ruminating over the contents of our fragile psyches, in circles that promote such behavior, rather than encountering those wisdom keepers (human, non-human, and more-than-human), who have lived among us, or are living still, who have listened too, deeply, to these times, in this world. For all the reasons most of us have preferred to look away and hide within the nether regions of our psyches, mastered over only by our own minds-- yet, and for these same reasons, there are those among us, that have preferred to walk into and embrace this very world, all the while it is burning alive."
Do you see any of the distinctions you are trying to explicate?
Hi Bonnie, I’m just finding time to read and respond now. Thanks for this challenge. Just as it is said that all models are wrong, but some are useful, something similar might be said for definitions and distinctions, which are mostly map rather than territory, though even then, the distinction breaks down when the territory becomes the map.
As I read her, Arendt’s concern near the start of The Human Condition was, inter-alia, to avert the collapse of Work into Labour through de-naturing mechanisation and to avert the collapse of Action into Work through a kind of anti-Imagination conformity or surrender to the system by de-politicising and de-fictionalising every day life.
As I read your extracts above, you seem to be saying that the kinds of speech acts Arendt wants to preserve for action belong just as much in Labour, partly because they are natural, and nature resides for her in the world of Labour, where we are obliged to deal with it, rather than revere it or listen to it or become more willingly and wholeheartedly part of it. By extrapolation, the kinds of imaginative public engagement she seeks to preserve for Action might today be best characterised as a return to nature and/or new alliances of ecology and technology, for instance through solar punk, digital naturalism, bioregionalism or bio-mimicry. And then there is the impact of AI on work, where 3D printing for instance exemplifies creating enduring artefacts with minimal “work” and yet also the quintessential form of work as she conceived of it.
As for Substack, for many it has become like Labour for many because it is a matter of subsistence and repetition, but it doesn’t fit her conception of labour as natural processes we are implicated in, not least to eat. For many it is Work too, because some posts are enduring works of art, even if they exist only virtually and not really materially unless you print them out and produce them for that purpose. And Substack is clearly a kind of Action too for many, and it’s mostly how I use it myself. It’s public, imaginative and concerned with the public realm….
So, yes, the Labour, Work, Action distinction looks a little wobbly or even obtuse in the world as we find it, but for the purposes of describing patterns in the lives of men and women, I still find it quite a useful place to start.
I’m not sure if I’ve answered the essence of your query, but please let me know what you think. I’ll be turning off for a few days, so may not be able to reply until late December or early new year.
Yours Aye,
Jonathan
PS I can see I did not take your question about writing as an act of labour as directly as I might have. I suppose to make that case we might need to explore what it feels like to write compulsively or as a practice that becomes second-nature or when it is literally a matter of survival- no writing no money no food…
Yes. Not really a question, but a contemplation. I am thinking Arendt’s model v2.0 for the new reality we live in. Is an Instagram channel labor, work, or action? Where is the private sphere today, when everything has become public and political? What does Bayo Akomolafe means by post-activist? is this post-political (post-speech acts)?
As you know, I am writing this book and it has a lot of metaphysics in it. I really don’t like the narrative voice that thinks of it as “work” — as an enduring artifact, especially since a core message of the book is one of “on-goingness” instead of substance, entities, and rigid stratification of reality.
I want to write something that is more lyrical, but still rigorous metaphysics, and so I return to that excerpt I shared, the narrative voices there are lyrical.
The lyric voice does not tell or name, rather it discloses, using language as gesture and song (which are forms of “touch at a distance”). So these are the design principles that I am applying to the work. I hope it makes a noticeable difference. More than what I say, perhaps the performance of how I say it, carries the real message.
(Something like that.)
Your question brought to mind the occasion of listening Gloria Steinem talk with Jenny Murray in and old cinema in Bath that was full to overbrimming with (mainly young) women. My wife (an elder feminist) noted that many of the young women seemed to be hearing Gloria Steinem's ideas for the first time and were very excited by what they heard. It was definitely an occasion for keeping my masculine 'energy' within bounds and enjoying an utterly non-masculine atmosphere
I sadly don't have time to read your whole post (need to put the baby to bed!) but I've just finished watching 'Women Talking' based on the novel of the same name by Miriam Toews. It chronicles two days worth of conversations in which women from an American religious colony had to decide what to do after a spate of rapes in their community. I found it very moving, particularly when it touched on just how difficult it is for women to imagine a world made in their image, as oppose to that made of man.
Thanks, Grace. I hope your baby sleeps easily and well.
I almost called the post Women Talking, so curious to hear about the novel/film.
Thanks Jonathan - was thinking about your piece overnight and I think that one of the biggest reasons women might not 'turn up in public spaces' is because of the added labour it involves in addition to the domestic and emotional labour we are already performing. As I enter a season of intense motherhood, I simply do not have the capacity to be travelling to events or doing podcasts - in both a physical and intellectual sense.
Yes I agree and can relate to some extent; my wife Siva is in a particularly intense phase of her career and my existence is currently defined mostly by domestic and parental responsibilities; though not to same extent as a new mum of course- not even close. I think your point may help to explain another reason why Arendt’s Labour/Work/Action distinction is useful. What men might see as action can be experienced by women as labour. That’s a useful frame actually because then the question for the curator/host is how to issue an invitation to action rather than labour…(which is a kind of work!).
Jonathan, thank you for offering these insights to the world. Your exploration of the ways gendered dynamics manifest in public and intellectual spaces is an important step in addressing the broader implications of who participates in shaping collective meaning.
Over the past decade, my sense has been the conversations that I was introduced to by women (Donella Meadows, Nora Bateson, Vandana Shiva), have become dominated in dialogue about the metacrisis, complexity and systems thinking. Though ripe with potential for innovative thinking, the discourse has become increasingly dominated by masculine modes of engagement— tools, statistics, methodologies.
This dynamic often overlooks or marginalises the nuanced and relational forms of inquiry that are frequently cultivated in women’s spaces of conversation. There’s a feedback loop at play here - if these spaces don’t feel inviting to women, and if men are not noticing or valuing where women are already holding significant conversations, the imbalance is perpetuated.
You rightly point out that men must step into unpaid labour to create room for women to engage publicly. Yet, this labour also requires men to reflect on their role in inadvertently shaping contexts that exclude women, not just through overt acts, but through the unexamined norms of dominance in discourse. Two critical aspects emerge:
The Creation of Conditions: How might men in these spaces consciously foster environments where women’s contributions are actively sought and celebrated, not as an exception but as a norm?
Noticing and Listening: How can men develop the attunement to recognise the rich dialogues already occurring among women, which might challenge or expand their frameworks?
This is about more than equal representation. It’s about embracing diverse epistemologies, including those grounded in intuition, embodiment, and relationality, which are often devalued in masculinised spaces. As Vanessa Andreotti suggests in her work, the cultivation of new ways of knowing begins with a hospicing of old paradigms and the birthing of new ones, which requires humility and a willingness to step aside or step differently.
What would it look like for these male-dominated arenas to embrace a more balanced integration of the feminine and the masculine? How might men practice the kind of "relational listening" that Audre Lorde describes, an openness not just to hear but to be changed by what is heard?
These are not questions with easy answers, but they are essential inquiries for the rebalancing you describe. Thank you for opening this door; may it lead to more vibrant and inclusive dialogues.
Thank you for sharing your “potted biography” at the outset. It emphasises the vital role that context plays in all aspects of life - both human and non-human. This post has also “opened a new door” for me, into a world that is strange, but not entirely unfamiliar.
Thanks for this post Jonathan, which came at a very synchronous(?) time for me, at the end of a Sufi retreat which unexpectedly took me very far into the spiritual feminine, further than I have been before. I’m still integrating/ processing so only have a few tentative things to say
Those who speak do not know; those who know, do not speak. This is the paradox of the spiritual feminine that is inherently hidden. This is about the feminine aspect of ourselves in deep alignment to Unity, God, the Divine. (many levels at which this can happen). To speak and act we have to come into our masculine aspect, which cannot directly know in this way, but works with what reflects into the mind. However once this happens we are already at one remove. (Hence, the tao that can be spoken is not the true tao, and so on)
True knowledge is living, experiential knowledge - wordless, received directly, alive, relational, felt, and in constant new revelation. In contrast to this, word and book knowledge feels dead. When I’m in this state I can’t really be doing with words at all, they just seem to get in the way, the meaning is actually in the field, pouring in, or trickling in, depending on where I am, who I’m with, where my attention is. Yet words are creative. Logos. We shouldn’t throw them out...
For me, the feminine is the state of receptivity, being, v sensitively attuned, very precious.
The masculine holds will, strength, activity. I have been personally been in each extreme, experienced its qualities (for me) and recognised how much they need each other!
The complete person, male or female, is both deeply receptive and active - a creative channel connected to both Heaven and Earth, Immanent and Transcendent.
However as a woman - I spent the first 31 years of my life alienated from my own feminine side. I think this is very common. Feminism has not led to the valuing of the feminine, just given women a route out of being artificially confined to a small area of it. We need to actually start valuing the feminine on its own terms. I had no idea of its depth and richness until I embarked on a serious spiritual path. Also being pregnant and having children was like an initiation.
More widely, this is the time of the polarity flip, I personally think it has already happened, we are already in yin via a death process… which is taking some time because we are resisting it so much. Recovery of the feminine is essential - and happening. The masculine is also going through an important process that is not entirely clear, perhaps it is differentiation as you say, or maybe it is a breakdown that prefigures a rebirth… there is certainly a lot of activity in the darker archetypes!
I could go on - there is at least one book in here! And speaking of books, the best book I have ever read exploring the feminine is ‘The marriages between zones 3, 4 and 5’ by Doris Lessing. I highly recommend it. (It is also a detailed allegory of the soul’s journey on the Naqshbandi path, which may have some overlap with your own spiritual practice as I notice that Cynthia Borgeault draws strongly on Gurdjieff, who was trained by Naqshbandis. Certainly beginning with the heart is the Naqshbandi hallmark…)
Gosh. Thanks for that fabulously rich response, Joy. I hope I didn’t give the impression that I am calling for an army of female talking heads. I was really just trying to pose the conundrum as I see it. In a deep sense my hope rests in women, I see connections between the feminine and the ecological wholeheartedness we need. I don’t think the way there is necessarily more talking, but on the other hand the clock is ticking and the public realm is still mostly shaped by men…Maybe the whole idea of public and private is part of the problem- yet another duality we have to move beyond…In any case thanks for reading and responding and I hope we get a chance to talk before long.
Thanks, and also, sorry it was a bit of a consciousness dump! This is something very present for me at the moment and you very generously offered the space for it, implicitly at least! Your writing is very spacious and generous in that way, it has the quality of invitation and openess, without imposition. Which is actually quite rare! And I think space, spaciousness, is perhaps what is also needed for the emergence of the feminine. Certainly a huge amount is going on in the female spaces I am part of, some really extraordinary and nonlinear things, but there is not generally the space in the mainstream or even the basic mental models to permit them to be seen, let alone discussed. I agree very much with the connections you see between the feminine and the ecological. Maybe we need more spacious bridge spaces, and holders of those spaces, places and spaces where attention can gently widen and nothing is being forced or compelled to justify itself..
Also yes it would be good to talk at some point inshallah
Nice Richard Tarnas callout! His book "Cosmos and Psyche" has some interesting ties to this as well, when he explores the way our modern mind has separated our subjective world from the objective world in a way that ancient people did not.
This was a wonderful article, thank you. I do agree with many of the previous commenters, however, regarding violence toward women with the audacity to exist in the public sphere. I've been threatened with rape and death multiple times by men here on Substack...and I write about astrology, for god's sake. My avatar is an illustration, instead of a photo, for very good reason.
Thank you for wording the ineffable. I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table yesterday with 3 women, myself, a woman, and one man. The conversation was largely held by and between the women, one younger age 25 and others ranging upward in 60s on. It was so wonderful to behold the mutuality of attention to one another with listening, sharing stories of lived history, inspiration to the younger for holding to her own agency for making differences one person at a time. I was deeply moved as I witnessed a motherly and loving encouragement for trusting in change coming from the unknown, and that none of us know what we will do until the "world events" touch us up close and personally and that's when we get to choose again. That's when change happens. The complexity of life constantly inspires me with miracles unimaginable and they often occur just in time as needed.
And that you re truly gifted in sharing your considerably wide and deeply informed "generalities," You often give voice to my own. You are advancing a new philosophy for navigation into many unknowns. Thank you. I also appreciate the notes you share of your home-life with children and wife. Blessings for all you share.
I read the whole thing in one go: article and all the comments!
This point of "women talking to women and men listening" is something I did not consciously think about or ponder over...
I surely will re-read it; and I'm wondering who else to invite to read it all.
Thanks Ria. I know you are experienced in related matters so it means a lot to me that the post was at least readable for you!
Thank you, Jonathan, for your ongoing efforts to highlight the importance of the female perspective in the larger universal conversation. I’d like to offer a clarification: when I reflect on my most meaningful woman-to-woman conversations, they have almost always been with women who embody the mature feminine spirit.
Unfortunately, immaturity among women can sometimes manifest as relational bullying, where meanness emerges within social dynamics. In contrast, mature women create space for others to show up authentically, which allows dialogue to develop and ripen naturally. This approach moves away from the competition and striving often characteristic of male-dominated conversations.
I hope this article inspires men in the spaces of ideas to intentionally invite the women present to speak. I believe that when we truly listen to one another, we can foster a deeper understanding that promotes growth—not only on an individual level but collectively as well.
Not a film, but one of my favorite videos of women talking with each other.
Praxis to Collective Wisdom w/ Bonnitta Roy, Nora Bateson, and Ria Baeck
https://youtu.be/7c7xdN1-mqk?si=J6xc7WegjUdailiv