Much of today’s rise of violent misogyny can find its cultural traces in the witch hunts of old Europe and North America. And while many of us are casually aware of these historical events, our two guests on this episode, novelist Zoe Venditozzi and human rights attorney Claire Mitchell, spent the last seven years digging deep into their own country of Scotland’s prolific history of witch trials and executions - a history that was up to now virtually unknown.

Gifted storytellers and viciously funny, Claire and Zoe document their journey into this dark past in their fascinating new book How To Kill A Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women as well as on their hit podcast Witches of Scotland. Through a sharply feminist lens, Claire and Zoe unravel exactly how the witch craze kicked off, spread across Scotland, and was kept going for centuries, resulting in the torture and execution of over 4000 innocent people, most of whom were women.

In this episode we talk about all of their projects, including their legal campaign to bring justice to those accused, convicted, and executed under the The Witchcraft Act of 1563, about the creation of their Clan Witches of Scotland tartan (for sale on their website), the importance of remembering and memorializing, and also about making connections between those grim events and our present time - as the forces that were at play hundreds of years ago are very much alive today.

EPISODE LINKS

Witches of Scotland website

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

Male-run totalitarian governments copy paste each other’s oppressive tactics; one aspiring dictator looks at what another tyrant is up to and adopts similar methods - and all seem to be different variations on the same theme - mainly to keep women vulnerable and under men’s control, and away from self-determination and any political power.

Guest on this episode, Li Wen, started out as a journalist and policy analyst in China and now lives in Germany where she hosts a wildly popular Chinese podcast called Seahorse Planet. Banned in China but globally popular, Seahorse Planet features critical and inspirational feminism, the type of women’s rights talk male-run totalitarian governments despise and forbid.

In this episode we talk about China’s u-turn on gender equality, the many social pressures women are subjected to now, including beauty duty, the marriage trap, discrimination in education and jobs market, and what its latest MeToo movement is accomplishing.

We talk about the huge ripple effects of China’s 35-year-long one child policy and compare notes between the US and China on the birth rate panic and each of our government’s desperate attempts to promote marriage and so-called family values.

We talk about what is considered a good and acceptable kind of feminism in China and the kind of feminism that can ruin your life - and how we, in this ultra-patriarchal world, build a more just social order and what that looks like.

EPISODE LINKS

Seahorse Planet Podcast

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

One of the main goals of Subject To Power is to create an international platform for women (and some men) from different cultures to come on and report on what is happening in their corner of the world, so that the rest of us can learn from them, and maybe heed some warnings.

It's easy to think that what happens in our own little bubble is unique, unique to our government, unique to our laws, to the way men behave in our particular country, unique to our cultural customs. But the more you listen to women in places elsewhere, the clearer it becomes that so many of the methods and tactics used to control women - are the same across nations, and are very predictable.

In this episode Elle talks to young Hungarian feminist Krisztina Les, about what her advocacy and activism for women’s rights in Hungary looks like, and all of what we could learn from what has unfolded there in the last 20 years.

It has never been more crucial that we look beyond our own country’s borders to see what might be ahead for women in our own countries. How democracy, basic freedoms, women’s rights, equality and whole value systems can be dismantled in a very short amount of time. And that none of it is guaranteed.

EPISODE LINKS

PATENT Association

FiLiA Hague Mothers

Telex: Expat mother who died in house fire in Budapest had been living in fear for a long time

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

For Finnish scholar Kaarina Kailo, sauna is the medicine we need in these 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 belief in an abstract god 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, 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

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

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

Award-winning non-fiction writer and journalist Rachel Hewitt unearths and writes about various corners of women’s history - and the subsequent erasure of that same history - showing us how women are indeed equal participants in all aspects of public life - until we are banned, excluded and erased.

In her latest book, In Her Nature, Rachel looks at women’s accomplishments in sports and the great outdoors from the Victorian era to the present, and chronicles the various ways in which men organized to exclude and ban women from athletics and the outdoors - and more broadly from public spaces and public life.

In her writings, which includes the brilliant Substack Small Revolutions, Every Day, Rachel makes crucial connections between women’s hidden history and how women navigate our current-day climate of rising misogyny. She also writes about feminism, grief, trauma and recovery - and her own experiences as an ultra-runner.

In this episode Elle and Rachel cover a sprawling map of topics, from Rachel’s research and writing about women’s history in sports and outdoors adventure, to how women navigate public spaces - now and then, the constantly changing shape of misogyny and how women weigh being safe against being free. We also talk about Rachel’s own running career, and how immersion in nature can carry you through grief and trauma, and much, much more.

EPISODE LINKS

Rachel’s website

Small Revolutions, Every Day

Family Fortunes by Leonore Davidoff, Catherine Hall

CONTACT US

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

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

Parents, teachers and youth workers of all kinds are warily watching how the internet, smartphones and social media is impacting adolescence, and there is no question that we are in uncharted territory - especially as it pertains to boys and young men.

Michael Conroy has spent his career working in personal development and well-being programs for boys and young men in secondary school in the UK, and has had a front row seat to the enormous changes the world-wide web has brought to bear on the developing minds and social lives of boys and young men - in particular, the pornification of the internet and culture more broadly and the rise of the manosphere and related misogyny.

In 2021, feeling like existing programs were not up to the task of supporting and safeguarding the healthy development of boys, Michael founded Men At Work, an innovative training program using dialogue to develop and equip boys and young men with critical thinking skills, sharper curiosity and discernment, as well as greater capacity for empathy and other pro-social modes.

In this wide-ranging conversation Michael talks to Elle about the art of fostering a positive vision for boys and young men, what should and shouldn’t be feared about the big bad internet, Andrew Tate and incels, what the Netflix series Adolescence told us and what it missed, what feminism has got to do with it, and why raising healthy young men matters to all of us.

EPISODE LINKS

Men At Work

CONTACT US

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

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @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