by Christopher Jones
It was an honor to contribute to the polylogue about hesitant feminism (Milojević 2024). I have been fortunate to be able to encourage and promote women’s futures and women futurists over many years of research, writing, and teaching. Milojevićʻs (2024) provocative text cast a light on the challenges facing feminist futurists of any gender. By her definition, I am a futurist and feminist: a person who advocates for women’s equality, the feminist principles of non-violence, gender balance, social justice, and diversity of expression. In response to her checklist (Milojević, 2024, p. 58), I answered in the affirmative to all 12 questions. As a person of the male gender, it has undoubtedly been easier for me in many ways compared to my sisters. Thus, as a male, I am not hesitant, but I am surely an imperfect feminist (ask any one of my ex-wives). I am happy to be a part of the polylogue about feminism, its acceptance, backlash, and growth over my lifetime. Milojevićʻs Guide parallels my own journey. My journey, as a white, male, cisgender heterosexual has been privileged and no doubt suspect, but my support for women’s futures has been long-standing and persistent.
I have considered myself a feminist man for at least half a century. My parents undoubtedly had a huge influence on my values, particularly obvious to me in my adolescence compared with my peers. My mom was 29 years old when I was born; she was a very assured, present, and loving. She had an undergraduate degree from the University of Oregon, and later took graduate courses at Vanderbilt and in Cuernavaca, Mexico (Paulo Freire [1996] was in residence). She was a semiprofessional mezzo soprano who sang with Pablo Casals in Puerto Rico at the Conservatory of Music. She later became a peace activist, futurist, and was twice arrested for chaining herself to the gate of a nuclear power plant outside of Phoenix, AZ. While their marriage was imperfect, my parents did model a partnership, for which I am grateful.
My path to feminism is informed both by experience and intellectual curiosity, and by the stuggle for women’s rights and two centuries of images of women’s futures. This culminated for me during graduate school in the discovery of ecofeminism—the melding of deep ecology and feminism with the goal of encouraging respect for women and nature, for women and Mother Earth. My postdoctoral research focused on womenʻs images of the future in literature and culture. Exhibit A is the Futurist article (Jones,1999) cited in Milojevićʻs (2024) Guide (pp. 52-53). I am delighted that she called out the Partnership scenario and included me along with the parents of that scenario, Elise Boulding, Riane Eisler, and James Roberson. Others who contributed to my thinking about ecofeminism, matriarchy, and partnership included Nancy Chodorow (2023), Eleonora Masini (1987; see Stevenson, 2006), Charlene Spretnak (1990), Peggy Reeves Sanday (1981), Carol Christ (2017), Mary Daly (1993), Kathy Ferguson (2023), Robert Graves (2013), Susan Griffin (2016), Hazel Henderson (1978), Joanna Macy (1983, 1995), and Starhawk (1987). They were all sources and/or inspiration for my Ph.D. dissertation on Gaia futures as were others who guided my thinking about possible forms of matriarchy or partnership.
My dissertation was about the Gaia theory (Jones 1989; see Jones 2009), and the related mythologies constructed about the Earth by indigenous people, women, pagans, and deep ecology activists. As an inquiring graduate student, I was curious about the power of imagery and mythology. I was influenced by Joseph Campbell (Campbell & Moyers, 2011), Carl Jung (1936), and historical and collective mythology and collective consciousness, but also by the literature on women’s spirituality and goddess literature. I am particularly grateful for the insights from anthropology, particularly Sanday (1981). Her assertion that there was a correlation between societal and environmental stress and the decline of matriarchal/partnership societies was provocative. In terms of our futures, her analysis was suggestive that environmental collapse could drive partiarchal values: dominance, control, and violence. Stress almost always leads to backlash.
My ecofeminist orientation was certainly reinforced by what I was learning about the relationship between the development of patriarchy, hierarchy, and the destruction of planetary systems. I completed my research and published my dissertation (Jones, 1989) that had seven scenarios for Gaia in 2046, two with explicit feminist power: ecofeminst Gynolatric Agrotopia and Deep Ecotopia, and two transformational futures potentially empowering women in new ways. The Futurist article and distillation of five futures was the result of a presentation in 1995 that I made to the La Grande, Oregon chapter of the American Association of University Women. Futurist senior editor Cynthia Wanger suggested that I submit it as a popular article, and that is what I did. Unbeknownst to me, the artwork that accompanied the article was produced using the Mona Lisa motif. Not surprisingly, the image of a bruised and shackled Mona Lisa produced some angry letters, but more importantly, there was pushback that a male author was being published and opining about women’s futures. I totally sympathized and was rather horrified to be associated with the backlash image.
Fortunately, and thanks to the efforts of the magazine editor, two special issues on women’s futures were published in the next few years[1] — those articles written by women. Womenʻs futures and women futurists have flourished across the planet. I got away with creating and teaching courses in Oregon and Texas on womenʻs futures and science fiction. Preaching ecofeminism and Gaia futures was not always pleasant. I was hassled one evening after a conference workshop and presentation at Novosibirsk State University in Russia by some young men who questioned my manhood and gender. I probably should have seen that coming.
I landed my first teaching job in the 1990s, and from the perspective of those years, my expectation was for the continued expansion of women’s rights, of human rights in general. In the small college where I worked, I was also the Model United Nations faculty advisor, I taught international relations, and spent considerable focus on the UN Declaration of Human Rights, violence against women, and the challenge of female genital mutilation. Susan Faludi wrote Backlash (1991), but it seemed more abstract than an impending threat at that point. A quarter century later, Margaret Atwoodʻs Handmaid’s Tale (2017) was adapted for television. In 2023, the US Supreme Court ended the right to abortion in the US and numerous states began to restrict the rights of women and the rights of the LGBTQIA+ communities. Backlash is real and is on the campaign trail in America as I write this. But my focus was on transformational images of women and women’s futures. I relied heavily on literature, particularly Atwood, Piercy (Woman on the Edge of Time), Gilman (Herland), Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness), and Bryant (The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You) for utopian and dystopian images of ecofeminist futures.
One of the central questions raised in the Guide is: What do feminist futurists want? I concur with the themes it identified: agreement about the pervasiveness of gender; futures that are mostly, already, colonized by patriarchal ideology; and, visions of feminist futures that are “spacially and temporally context dependent” (Milojević 2024, p. 49). What I learned from feminist futurists and feminist science fiction, is that patriarchy is a deep structural artifact of civilization. It is ingrained in daily life, institutions and organizations, and society. It is a stubborn set of behavioral patterns that self reproduce. For example, how infants are engendered in the US by color coding (blue or pink) and gender cues are given to babies in the first days of life. This socialization persists in spite of feminism, feminist literature, and research that demonstrates these patterns of behavior.
Patriarchy is fundamental to religion and dominant cultural traditions across the planet. It seems highly likely that patriarchal values will resist change for centuries if not millennia. Within my own culture, the Catholic Church is a prime example of a patriarchal organization that will not disappear overnight. Universities–younger and perhaps more adaptive organizations–also perpetuate male dominated hierarchies that are resistant to change. Military, paramilitary (fire, police, EMTs), and medical institutions also are examples of organizations within the structure of patriarchy that resist feminist values. To borrow from Morton (2013), patriarchy is a hyperobject that we are embedded within, which makes it doubly challenging to reform or transform. Individually and collectively, with nearly every action, we validate and reinforce the civilization that was brought to us by patriarchy.
To their credit, Scandinavian political parties mandate gender equity and this “50% solution” not only provides gender representation in parliaments, but also by putting women leaders in power, they become role models for younger women. Raising women’s consciousness, women’s circles, and women are power not insignificant forces of change within patriarchy. In spite of retrenchment and resistance, women’s power continues to grow as represented in the #MeToo movement and current Harris campaign for the presidency of the USA. Claudia Sheinbaum was elected this year to the Mexican presidency. These are potentially transformative changes for women and us all since we no longer have to imagine women is power, but can see them in action.
I am an admirer of a pantheon of goddesses: Pele, Pakewa (ocean goddess on the island of Takuu), Osun, Freya, Saraswati, and many others. The archetypes and anima polarities of the natural world deserve our acknowledgement and respect. Yet, we are going beyond the binary of male/female and understand that sex, gender, and orientation are complex and contextual. There is the psychological tension between anima and animus, the genetic and physiological variations in gender expression, and spectra of identities wound around cisgender being. The exciting thing is the realization that our power over the material world makes it possible, feasible, to change gender, and not be victim of chance. As Dator (2022) argued, were are entering the era of Becoming. The future is fluid, which argues for a wide array of possible alternative futures for women, men, and the genders and orientation that we may potentially invent.
I do have some hesitancy, however, about how we are coping with the transformation of boys’ childhood and adolescent socialization. Given the lack of consensus about feminism and the growing power of women, younger men seem ill equipped to grasp the transition between male dominance and rising women’s power. That is one serious reason to worry about backlash. There has been growth, particularly thanks to social media, of misogynistic communities that celebrate violence and macho behavior.
For the last half dozen years, much of my research and writing has focused on postnormal times, that “in between time” between paradigms or civilizational worldviews (Jones et al., 2021). This uncertainty about roles and responsibilities is a major contributor to postnormal chaos and contradiction. The clashing narrative of patriarchy and backlash–the call for a return to a perceived Golden Age–confronts the legal realities of equity and inclusion and rise of women’s power in business and government. We (in the USA) are currently facing the misogyny of ex-president Trump, on one hand, and the enthusiastic campaign of vice president Harris that reflect this contradiction. Postnormal times lay the groundwork for backlash in the face of the trajectory of change that is more inclusive, more gender equitable, and just. It is almost as if the her-storical project of women to gain control over their bodies, their aspirations, and their futures is currently in the balance. With luck, the moral arc of the rights of women and humans in general will prevail.
Of the 1996 scenarios for women (Continued Patriarchy, Male Backlash, Partnership, High-tech Androgyny, and Separation), the most desirable for many hesitant feminists is Partnership. That is the goal of gender relations in progressive culture. Men have contributed since the beginning of feminism: Robertsonʻs SHE future (see p. 52 of the Guide) was influential in my early thinking about gender-freindly futures. My mentor, Jim Dator, played a supportive role in my own construction and advocacy of womenʻs futures (Kathy Ferguson was also a committee member). Ultimately, men will have to make the transition by sharing power, collaborating in visioning transnormal partnership futures, and walking the talk.
My money is on surprises, the unexpected, and the unknown. We definitely cannot disregard or minimize the power of women. By definition, the shift to either partnership or matriarchy will be transformational. Donna Haraway (2013; 2020) continues to remind us that feminist futures may be weird, cybernetic postnormal futures that blur boundaries, roles, and even species. Imaginaries of collapse, catastrophe, and backlash cannot be ignored either, but one hope is that images of SHE and feminist futures can be an antidote to pessimism. Sisterhood is powerful in giving us transnormal, desirable futures, with XYʻs sometimes included.
References
Bryant, D. (1997). The kin of Ata are waiting for you. Random House.
Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. (2011). The power of myth. Anchor.
Christ, C. P. (2017). Why women need the goddess. In Women’s Studies in Religion (pp. 163-173). Routledge.
Chodorow, N. J. (2023). The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Univ of California Press.
Daly, M. (1993). Beyond God the father: Toward a philosophy of women’s liberation. Beacon Press.
Dator, J. A. (2022). Beyond identities: Human becomings in weirding worlds. Springer.
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed (revised). New York: Continuum, 356, 357-358.
Ferguson, K. E. (2023). The man question: Visions of subjectivity in feminist theory. Univ of California Press.
Gilman, C. P. (2024). Herland. Simon and Schuster.
Graves, R. (2013). The white goddess: A historical grammar of poetic myth. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Griffin, S. (2016). Woman and nature: The roaring inside her. Catapult.
Haraway, D. (2013). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge.
Haraway, D. J. (2020). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
Henderson, H. (1978). Creating alternative futures (pp. 83-91). Media Resources Center, Iowa State University.
Jones, C. (1989). Gaia futures: the emerging mythology and politics of the earth. University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
Jones, C. (1996). Women of the Future: Alternative Scenarios. The Futurist, 34-38. May-June 1996 Reprinted as Tracking the way ahead for women,” Melbourne Age (Australia) 12/6/96.
Jones, C. (2009). Gaia bites back: Accelerated warming. Futures, 41(10), 723-730.
Jones, C., Serra del Pino, J., & Mayo, L. (2021). The perfect postnormal storm: COVID-19 chronicles (2020 edition). World Futures Review, 13(2), 71-85.
Jung, C. G. (1936). The concept of the collective unconscious. Collected works, 9(1), 42.
Macy, J. (1983). Despair and personal power in the nuclear age. New Society Publishers, 4722 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143.
Macy, J. (1995). Working through environmental despair. Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind, 2, 40-259.
Masini, E. (1987). Women as builders of the future. Futures, 19(4), 431-436.
Milojević, I. (2024). The Hesitant Feminist’s Guide to the Future. Tamkang University.
Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. U of Minnesota Press.
Piercy, M. (2016). Woman on the Edge of Time: The classic feminist dystopian novel. Random House.
Sanday, P. R. (1981). Female power and male dominance: On the origins of sexual inequality. Cambridge University Press.
Spretnak, C. (1990). Ecofeminism: Our roots and flowering. Reweaving the world: The emergence of ecofeminism, 3-14.
Starhawk, S. (1987). The religion of the great goddess. The Trumpeter, 4(3).
Stevenson, T. (2006). Eleonora Masini: Nurturing visions of the future. Futures, 38(10), 1146-1157.
- The Futurist special issue in July/August 1988 featured articles and perspectives from women in the field. September/October 2002 highlighted the contributions of women to futures studies thought and practice. ↑
