Meeting the Moment 2021 #26

Invitations abound to meet the moment of patriarchy and to let it go for a more inclusive way of being people and planet.  This weekend I am working with a bunch of talented individuals who have come from far and wide to imagine what a digital platform co-op might look like that disrupts patriarchy by being a platform intentionally designing in feminist and co-op principles.

What follows is the brief the teams have been given. Maybe it will spark some ideas for you?

In creating the brief I drew on what I was looking for when at the end of last year I started to consider monetizing this weekly blog. I went looking for a subscription platform that was female founded or at least had a majority of female users or shareholders.  I was surprised to find nothing that matched that criteria.  I then started to think about all the other criteria that would satisfy me – a community owned platform, one designed and always being iterated by the owners, one where people were fairly rewarded, one where we would find people like me and others not like me, one where there was the potential for the future to be evenly distributed.

Here is the brief:

It is 2021. We are living in the time of a global pandemic, a climate emergency, a time when the veil has dropped on misogyny, where decolonisation has begun and racial justice is being called for. Equity. Inclusion. Love. Wisdom. Collaboration. Community. Trust. 

We need care before code. We also know the future of work is going to be local including working from home to a global market. This hackathon is set in this context.  

Automation, remote working and the knowledge economy are here and expanding. This is disproportionately impacting on women, First nations, people of colour, LGBTIQ+ and people with disabilities. The platforms being used to buy and sell are predominantly not owned and operated by these groups of people. This is increasing the economic and social divide. If we want a more just and equitable world we are going to need to build accessible, socially and economically just platforms. We need democratic and ethical templates to build disruptive technologies actually focused on real disruption and social change. It is not enough to tweak the platforms we have.  

Can you imagine instead of outsourcing our futures to automated systems that are limited to market solutions, we envision a new social ecologically oriented online community that reinforces its productive energies and creativity, toward restorative and resilient ends? 

We can imagine it, so can we build it? 

We come to this problem with a beginners mind, and a willingness to disrupt our own thinking, to invite beginners luck, to take chances and use our imagination as a tool to unlock and unleash ideas. We come to the task clear about what is negotiable and non-negotiable. There are beautiful constraints in this hackathon, just as there are in all our lives.

These are the constraints that will make our hack beautiful. What we make will be transformational and: 

• disrupt patriarchy
• be a co-op
• reflect feminist principles
• competitive pricing with other platforms like Patreon, SubStack 
• make money for its members
• have an attitude of  abundance 

As William Gibson (scifi writer) put it:  “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” For instance in the bitcoin community is 91% men and 96% of Ethereum users are male. Blockchain definitely promises the potential for more equity in distribution, but this is yet to be realised. How might collaborative, inclusive processes create a prosperous future  for people, planet and future generations?

Existing platforms for creatives take a % in fees and the fintech platforms take another fee, all this before the producer of the content or service can have their share. It is an extractive model. 

Patriarchy is competitive, hierarchical, where masculinity is normative and there is a bias towards male dominance and control. These features are reflected in the business model, design, algorithms, communications and marketing in platforms. Scale is always understood as hypergrowth upwards, rather than deeper or wider. Patriarchy is killing men too – they are dying earlier than women, have worse mental health and higher suicide rates – imagine a world with happier and healthier men.

The problem as we see it is we need to #femthefuture.  This means creating generative, distributive, inclusive and equitable ways to participate in the online economy.  We thought starting with a platform to enable this kind of exchange to take place was as good as any place to start. 

Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash

2021 Meeting the Moment #14

On this Easter Sunday morning the air is still enough to hear the waves caressing the coastline in even time, the tidal rhythm, a comforting sound. There is a rising tide as the ice cap of desecrations is melting. The patriarchal panic has all the symptoms at scale of any indviduals experience of a panic attack. There is the heightened vigilance for danger where reporters of renown suffering with this panic say things like “emotional demand” for “norms of respect and justice”, the response from eminant academic and co-facilitator of the Uluru Statement, Dr Davis tweet go to the heart of the political economy.

Paul Kelly: “The emotional demand by women to re-set the norms of respect and justice”. WTAF? The norm of sexual assault and workplace sexual harassment?

The women of Australia are “emotional” while the blokes get on with the real job of managing the economy 🙄 so cliched 💤 pic.twitter.com/zYgaHFgZoB

— Prof Dr M Davis (@mdavisqlder) April 3, 2021

The feeling of dread and danger also showing up in this tale, and the nations top financial paper went after the female journalist who broke story that has the nation resetting its trajectory towards justice in workplaces, and safety for women went belly up when Samantha Maiden was attacked. A sign that the thorn is in the paw and the lion is in pain. Before too long the ongoing truth telling oother women leaders calling out mis-steps and poor judgements, they are labelled as going to far and gaslit. Doing your job as a journalist is a gift, in a world where fake news and constant fact checks are required to get to truths. We need more of this to burst bubbles of all kinds.

First met ⁦@samanthamaiden⁩ in perhaps 1993. Can confirm she was “prickly” in a good way, once described me as a “milk fed dairy maid” (valid), remains one of the most formidable women I know. You take on Sam? You stir a barricade of hornets. https://t.co/fOAoc9sn1e

— Zoe Daniel (@zdaniel) April 3, 2021

On this Easter day I think back to my modest activism in the Catholic Church around inclusive language, to the days of providing advice to an Archbishop who once told me, that he liked working with women because they did the hard work and were finishers, they didn’t let go til the job was done, nor hide from the pain it was causing them. At the time I was very annoyed he wasn’t going further, although I could see he was definitely taking himself to the edges of possibilities. The greatest gift of those times for me was learning about the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion” , to look for what was not there in the text, but was hidden in the seams, the shadows and by what was missing. This technique continues to serve me well and while I am no theologian or historian, I can see that in these days of the rising tide, a tsunami is coming. I can read between the lines that there are many more stories to be told, many more voices to be heard, much more pain to surface. There will be a crash of waves at high tide when the moon is full and when the moon is new. Sister Moon wouldn’t have it any other way.

I am looking to the heavens on a regular basis for inspiration and support. I feel saturated by the grief in the air and I know the tears, anger, frustration are rocket fuel, propelling us out of the old gravitional pull to new orbits. And this poem to remind me and perhaps others of the value of taking a little rest, while the soul catches up. thank you to Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin for this poem, a perfect companion for this day.

Turas d’Anam

Often times 
the step backward 
lets the soul catch up. 
So that all our happy 
hindsights harmonize 
and wisdom builds. 

Share your luck. 
Be miserly only 
with misfortune.
In each seismic 
shudder we learn 
to trust the ground 
again, humble again, 
knowingly broken,
unrepentantly wounded, 
proud to bare pain. 

Laying claim to 
the Joy factory 
of your body. 

No more tariffs, or sanctions. 
Wage cuts and glass ceilings. 
Conventions, expenses paid, nor 
lanyards or company position. 

Often times, 
this way you can live 
in ways other simply 
will not, develop sides 
of you others simply 
would not. 

So feel the rhythm 
beyond the beat. 
Begin with a break, 
and let your soul 
catch up.

Easter Eve, Songlines, Sellicks Hill.

Year of Self Compassion #18 #dancing

I have always loved to move my body, but to call these movements dancing would be an overstatement. The instruction to dance as if no-one is watching is easier for me when no-one is actually watching. In a conversation this past week I learnt of women who danced to a DJ hidden behind a screen while they removed their veils and danced wildly and inclusively with women of many cultures. And then last night I had the opportunity to dance with women from all over the world and together we laughed and moved easily between and around each other in a universal language of movement. The evening ended with Shania Twain’s “Man I feel like a woman!” With around 50 nations represented in the room the whoops and cheers and freedom expressed moved me to tears. There was a glimpse of living like it’s heaven on earth.

Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching,
and live like it’s heaven on earth. – Mark Twain

I am wobbly and finding it hard to find solid ground. The earth between my feet keeps shifting despite my attention to the horizon. Looking up helps. I know singing helps and last night I was reminded dancing helps. The global sisterhood helps. Family and friends help.

In a week where I have drawing from a well of women’s wisdom (at the Global Summit for Women) and a week where famous men have been on trial with one notorious conviction completed with a sentence, my heart and head turn to the women we are for each other and in each other’s lives. I was honoured to hear from the first woman President of Kosovo Atifete Jahjaga tell her nation’s tale of systemic sexual violence and how she has led the movement for this taboo to be lifted by recognising this women as war heroes and survivors alongside other veterans. The women who survive domestic violence and those who stand alongside of them in the law, the shelters, the support services, in the hospitals are the foot soldiers in this everyday battle field where power plays out in the bedrooms and kitchens all around the world. This past 12 months has been a watershed year with campaigns like #metoo going like wildfire around the world aided and amplified by social media and the bravery of women speaking up and telling their stories.

My inner work is solitary and swirling. More discoveries every day seeking to be banished but not before integration, feels like asking canker to make a home before it is treated. Canker in birds is an ancient pathogen that goes back to the dinosaurs. The pathogen has patriarchy in its DNA and infects my heart and soul. Patriarchy needs to be as extinct as any dinosaur. There is an antidote for pathogen and I have a suspicion that dancing’s healing powers might be part of the medicine. My privileges are many, and call me back to reality. all the while I am on one hell of a personal journey. I am a reluctant traveller on this road, but whether I want to walk it or not, the path unfolds before me.

Time to dance like no-one is watching.

Photo by Levi Guzman on Unsplash

Playing with Fire

Learning how to play with fire is one of the essential lessons on the path to adulthood.

There are so many lessons to learn:

–       don’t stand too close or you’ll get burnt

–       begin with small combustible items to get the fire going

–       there needs to be space between each piece of kindling so that air can circulate

–       air is fuel for the fire

–       a good wind can get the fire going in places you weren’t expecting

–       it has the power to burn

–       it has the power to destroy

–       it leaves a pile of ash after its over

–       some seeds can only explode and come to life in a fire

–       green shoots look amazing on the burnt out black stumps after a bushfire

–       it can kill everything in its path

–       it only takes a spark to keep the fire burning

–       it glows, gives warmth and inspires

I am sure there are many more lessons fire teaches, but these are some of the ones I have learnt. I have learnt them over the years from campfires in the desert, standing by for evacuation during bushfire season, listening in to the news and operation rooms where wild fire disasters were unfolding, watching my own children learn their own lessons (sometimes very anxiously).

Hildegard for you, the fire was within, you combusted with passion and for generations we have been basking in that glow and been fuelled by it. Your Fire of Creation is stunning and this is a little taste for readers who haven’t ever had the treat of listening.

The fire can burn brightly to show us where to go, and guide us to a safe place as well. The eternal flame, a long time symbol of remembrance and reflection of hard won battles and promise of a peaceful future.

And so it was that theidea of playing with fire that lit me up this week when Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard  (who had certainly been flame grilled) gave her post  parliament interviews to adoring fans in Sydney and Melbourne. Around the campfire of our TVs and twitter-feeds women like me who weren’t there in the flesh, hung every word, seeking our own closure to the circumstances of her demise.

As a “first” Ms Gillard had a baptism of fire.  The fact she is a red head was mentioned more than once.  We heard her speech that ricocheted around the world, denouncing misogyny as the theory and sexism as the practice. And with the fire in her belly, many others if us were warmed – many of us have stood to close to those flames and been burnt.

Gillard urges us to have a sophisticated conversation and to look for the shades of grey in the issues. There maybe shades of grey for the educated and resourced, but it is pretty black and white if you don’t earn equal pay, if you face domestic violence, or if you are being sexually harassed at work.

And then there are all the women and girls who won’t ever get to make or hear a speech like that, murdered at birth because of their gender, not getting to school because of their gender or being sold in a market place because they are female. For these women and girls it is shades of blood red.

There is still plenty more to do before there is the inclusion, respect and equality frame that  Anne Summers kindly put around the analysis of what we all witnessed and for some also participated in (nb Germaine Greer).

I want to fan the flames that will grow up more women in leadership, that will inspire,  warm and comfort us all. I want to fan the flames that will bring down institutions and practices because their patriarchal foundations are crumbling. And I want to do all of that with songs of joy, with justice in my heart and having learnt the lessons of playing with fire.

PS  Hildegard, I love that your scribe was a man.

Hildegard channelling the Holy Spirit and her scribe taking it all down!