Subject To Power

• They Still Call Us Witches

  What drives societies to turn on women in their midst - with accusations, branding, persecution and often violence and death - in the name of witchcraft? Witch hunting occupied a dark chapter in European and early American history, but variations of this brutal phenomena lives on in many parts of the world today. Guest on today’s episode, multidisciplinary feminist research scholar Govind Kelkar, wrote a book called Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation and in this hour we talk about Govind’s research into modern-day witch hunts in India and around the world - the surprising factors that drive it, how it unfolds in communities, why women are targeted, and what the practice tells us about men, women, and different kinds of power and powerlessness. Episode Links GenDev Center for Research and Innovation Contact Subject To Power  Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at  [email protected] 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 

  --------  

  52:13
• Loneliness Guaranteed

  The world rushes to meet the ever-expanding sexual appetites of men - and then we collectively call it “men’s needs” and agree that “men’s needs” must be met.  All forms of prostitution and pornography, online and in real life, offer a bottomless menu of sexual experiences, fetishes, and boundary-crossing pursuits. Technology works overtime to invent novel ways to achieve male orgasm and indulge men in what they might fancy next.  And nowhere is this busy business of realizing men’s sexual fantasies more obvious than in the sex doll business.  Guest on this episode, Caitlin Roper, is an activist, writer and Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout, a global grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising and popular culture. Caitlin’s writing has been featured in The Guardian, Huffington Post, and many other publications and in 2022 she came out with her book Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating. In this hour we talk about all of what Caitlin discovered when researching the whole world of sex dolls - the manufacturing, the marketing, the men who buy and use the sex dolls, and the many real-life impacts on women, girls and boys. On the sympathy-inducing ways in which sex dolls are marketed, how they are offered as a cure for lonely men, suggesting that a silicone replica of a woman provides the human connection that these men lack, Caitlin says, “What sex dolls do, is they actually get in the way of any kind of intimacy and real connection, genuine human relationships because they keep the user alone. They're penetrating a doll, but there's no connection because again, they're alone. They're masturbating into an object.” Episode Links Collective Shout Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating Contact Subject To Power  Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at  [email protected] 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 

  --------  

  1:06:06
• The World Is My Brothel

  Prostitution cannot be contained in one small corner of the culture. Once we accept and endorse the sale of women for men’s sexual use and abuse, the ideas and practices of prostitution bleeds into all layers of society. Germany shows us how. In 2002, Germany gave state-sanctioned approval to the sex-trade and made prostitution a legal and legitimate industry in cities and towns across the land.  Researcher, writer and public speaker Elly Arrow tracks and reports on all aspects of prostitution in her homeland of Germany and around the world - and in this hour, Elly talks to Elle about what it was like to come of age as a young woman in a pro-prostitution culture, how it has affected relationships between men and women in her country, and how the normalization of prostitution has bled into other sectors - housing, employment, labor, children’s rights, local and national politics, immigration, policing and more.  We also talk about the debate that is now being had in Germany about whether to adopt the Equality Model, whether to try to rein in the 20-year prostitution industry that has exploded across the landscape - or to continue being “Europe’s brothel”. Episode Links Elly Arrow on YouTube Elly Arrow Blog Red Light Exposé The Invisible Men - Germany Contact Subject To Power  Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at  [email protected] 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

  --------  

  1:13:55
• Good Girls No More

  As a woman, you can roll along with the assumption that your body belongs to you and you alone. That you are an autonomous human being like everyone else. But then your fertility, your baby-making capacity comes into view and suddenly you are subjected to powers far outside yourself. Guest on this episode, UK journalist and author of The Positive Birth Book, Give Birth Like A Feminist and My Period, Milli Hill, has reported on and written about this complicated zone, the zone where woman meets “system”, and the power struggle that often takes place between you as an autonomous woman with inherent rights - and the powers that be. In this hour we talk about the much-contested world of childbearing and Milli’s writing and activism to empower women and girls to reclaim their self-determination. But also how Milli, mid-career, has found herself under attack by gender ideologists and how she is now documenting the ideological capture and implosion of her own former community - women’s organizations in the areas of menstruation, breastfeeding, pregnancy, antenatal care, and birth - that once were exclusively for women and girls, but are that no longer. Episode Links Milli Hill’s website Milli Hill’s Substack Contact Us  Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at  [email protected] 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 

  --------  

  1:11:57
• How To Build A Good Human

  What makes a good human? We receive prescriptions for virtuous morality from all manner of religions, philosophies, and intellectual traditions - but is human morality something that is taught and learned? Guest on today’s episode, researcher and author Darcia Narvaez, does not think human morality has much to do with principles, or guidelines we’re taught, or lessons we learn.  Rather - that human morality is built - from a complex, interwoven, physical, neurobiological, sociocultural process that begins in our mother’s womb and continues throughout our life. A process that developed out of humanity’s millions-year-old evolution of child-rearing practices that made us the connected, cooperative, socially intelligent species we actually are - underneath the last few thousand years of trauma. As a young academic, Darcia, driven by an intense feeling that there is something wrong with the way humans treat each other, turned to the study of human morality. In her years of research she took a multi-disciplinary approach to find answers, incorporating evolutionary biology, anthropology, developmental psychology, animal sciences, neuro-sciences. Along the way, she published dozens of academic articles and twenty books, among them one titled Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom. Also, synthesizing her discoveries about what humans actually need to thrive, Darcia developed a new framework called The Evolved Nest, a blueprint of real-life practices that produce human beings with healthy, connected moralities. In this hour Elle talks to Darcia about The Evolved Nest, about her research into human morality, how humanity got so lost, and how to cultivate and build back our species-normal compassionate nature. Episode Links The Evolved Nest Darcia Narvaez, PhD Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom Contact Us  Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/ Instagram: @subject2power X: @SubjectToPower Email us at  [email protected] 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

  --------  

  57:35

More Society & Culture podcasts

Trending Society & Culture podcasts

About Subject To Power