Feminist theory and practice

There is no possibility of naming all the brave women whose life and work influenced who I am and how I think and act. It feels tragic, since in this way I am actually contributing to the invisibility of women that is built into modern patriarchal functioning. What I have gotten from the feminism that I see myself part of is the systemic orientation that is woven through the NGL framework, the capacity to see into the possibility of life before and life after patriarchy, the profound shift towards integrative frameworks instead of either/or ones, and the depth of commitment to understanding all the horrors brought to humanity overwhelmingly in the hands of men as systemic expressions of their own patriarchal conditioning rather than seeing them as essential characteristics of men. Feminism has supported me in recovering vision and questioning and subsequently replacing the views of human nature that patriarchy rests on and reinforces. Knowing I leave at least some unacknowledged, I want to name, in particular, Ruth Bleier, Marilyn French, and Riane Eisler as the ones who created the initial breakthroughs in my understanding in the 1980s, and Minnie Bruce Pratt, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Katharine McKinnon, Donna Haraway, Carol Gilligan, and Jessica Benjamin as the ones who nurtured and sustained my spirit and brought me new capacities as I waded through years of graduate school and writing my own feminist Ph.D. dissertation: Beyond Reason: Reconciling Emotion with Social Theory. The article “Feminism as Power and Love: Realigning Humanity with Life” provides the briefest introduction I know to the way that feminism has influenced the NGL framework.

NGL Lineage

Nonviolent Global Liberation Community