For Finnish scholar Kaarina Kailo, the sauna is the medicine we need in these dark and tormented times. “In the sauna you are brought into direct contact with the holy spirit.  It's the alternative to the patriarchal church. It's the space of peace, of equality, of ritual and the sacredness that we have lost and are craving.  It's a multidimensional healing space for the body, the spirit, and the mind.”

A researcher of women’s cultural studies and folklore, Northern women’s culture, goddess mythologies, Indigenous worldview and theory, modern matriarchal studies, the gift economy, and the bear religion, Kaarina has spent many years investigating the very old history of sauna and sweating cultures in Finland, in Old Europe and in Indigenous cultures in North America.

With her new book Sauna Culture, Sweat and Spirituality - Kaarina explores the origins of pre-Christian, pre-patriarchal sauna as a sacred space for healing and rebirth, and how female symbols and the maternally perceived cosmos in past sweating cultures have been transformed.

In this episode we talk about the early religions that didn't require anyone to believe in anything because they were based on mother earth and verifiable material reality. We talk about the patriarchal takeover of sacredness, the great cost of losing our embodiment and connection to the natural world and each other, the power of feminist spirituality to reconnect our broken bonds, and how we embrace the darkness so we can be reborn in the spring.

EPISODE LINKS

Kaarina Kailo’s website

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

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email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

With male violence being an inescapable and world-shaping force, one that undermines democracy, equality and peace - how do we unpack and tease apart the ingredients that go into the making of men and male culture of dominance? How do we shake up and push for a cultural shift away from violent domination?

In this episode Elle talks with world-leading researcher and educator Michael Flood, who has spent his life doing exactly that - researching, writing and discussing men, masculinities, gender, violence against women, and maybe most importantly - violence prevention for men and boys and creating alternative, more positive masculine narratives.

Starting with the question of what makes a subset of men join violent extremists movements, Michael takes us through what the research reveals in his book Masculinity and Violent Extremism (co-authored with Joshua Roose in 2022). We then move into a broader conversation about the overlap between violent extremism and the mainstream conditioning that makes up modern masculinity, and crucially - the unifying role of misogyny. Also, with masculinity on the move and being redefined, how do we seize this moment to move away from entrenched, pro-patriarchal visions of manhood?

EPISODE LINKS

XY Website

Masculinity and Violent Extremism

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

Poet Usha Akella talks about poems as bridges into worlds, bridges that help to soften borders - and there is nothing we need more at this moment - than a softening of the criss-crossing lines that cut us off from one another. Borders are hardening, honest and patient dialogue is becoming rare, and meeting each other halfway seems more and more difficult - but a poet’s words can offer a bypass, a more direct path from one human heart to another.

Acclaimed poet and author of 11 books, Usha has contributed to over 150 literary anthologies and journals, and is the founder and director of Matwaala, a South Asian diaspora poets’ collective launched in 2015.

Usha's poetry is full of very real world matters and it does not shy away from confronting the ironies and contradictions of living life as a woman on this planet - no matter our cultural belonging. With her x-ray honesty and masterful craft, she writes from the raw emotions of her own life experiences as well as a soaring bird's eye view.

In this episode Usha reads several poems from her book I Will Not Bear You Sons, and shares the stories behind the poems as well as the clash of cultural forces that shaped her as a woman and as a poet. We also talk about the firestorm that erupted around the book in India, the different forms of patriarchal control women endure, Usha's own refusal to be silenced, the cost of writing feminist poetry, and finding sisterhood with fellow women’s writers.

EPISODE LINKS

Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poets’ Collective

I Will Not Bear You Sons

The POV

CONTACT US

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

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com