by Miki Kashtan

(Below is an excerpt of the article that you can find on Medium)

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(An abridged and modified version of this is available in the Mother Pelican journal under the title: “On the Other Side of Separation: Individual and Collective Steps Towards a Post-Patriarchal Way of Living”)

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“One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. … What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?”

We live in dark times. Even asking about a feminist vision takes courage and determination. Putting forth the idea that humans can live well with each other and all of life is taken as naïve. Suggesting that this may be how we lived before patriarchy, that this is our evolutionary makeup, and that we can realign humanity with the deep principles of life without any coercion or imposition is, in many contexts, an active invitation to not be taken seriously. And yet this is what I am doing here, willingly and lovingly taking on the risks that come with it.

In this article, I present a feminist vision of a global maternal gift economy and pathways to moving towards it from where we currently are, in the grip of patriarchal systems and conditioning. I believe that our stunted vision is one of patriarchy’s immense impacts on us.

Full article to be read on Medium

PHOTO CREDIT

“We’re all in this together”, by Carl Schulz on Flickr.com CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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