radicalising empathy as a tool for social change: a gendered perspective
What comes to mind when you hear to word “power”? A quick Google search will bring you images of men in suits. Stark images painting a picture projecting tall muscular physiques, loud deep voices, authoritative rule, and maybe even the decision-making qualities of a leader.
Often, these notions of power are associated with masculine traits, far from the feminine image of being soft, careful, or nurturing.
“Be more confident”, “Speak louder”, “Sharpen your elbows”, “Tell them what they need to hear”, “Take advantage”, “Get your point across- faster”, are just a few strings of advice given to me periodically on how I can “get ahead” in various projects of mine and “succeed” as a powerful legal professional in the working world.
For centuries, the narrative of a masculine identity has been heavily linked to ideas of manifesting power. As recent as 1977, Marvin Harris published a book called Why Men Dominate Women, explaining that male supremacy has “been universal” because men were the community members exerting power in the form of aggressive warfare.
Today, this display of dominance and power often arises much more subtly, such as in the form of mansplaining. Mansplaining, when a man unnecessarily explains something to a woman in a condescending tone, is a key example of this exertion of power and dominance. With the assumption that their voice is right, those who mansplain are speaking above, not with, others, ultimately exerting their self-proclaimed status as the knower-of-all-things and intellectually dominant.
However, when you look at the root of social change historically, a very different attribute of power sparks its head.
Mobilising for others, whether it be a civil rights movement, or organising to combat pandemics like COVID-19, has shaken and transformed the structure of the world arguably much more than old men in suits. It has transformed rights-based legislation to move drastically from encompassing only a few male land-owners 200 years ago, to increasingly, all members of society. (It’s definitely not perfect- but I think we’re getting there) This type of mobilising for change and redistribution of power comes from a very different form of engagement than mansplaining, warfare, or exerting dominance. Instead, it comes from empathy.
Empathy is the cornerstone of mobilising for social change: it means placing the experience of others, often minority voices or structurally marginalised groups, over the experiences of mainstream decision-makers. It requires doing just the opposite of asserting your dominance, verbally or physically. Rather, it requires one, relatively simple, task: listening.
Who do we think of when we think of good listeners? Often, a friend, a partner, a mother, a teacher, a support worker, or a caregiver. Many of these roles have been historically gendered as women’s work. The work of listening to and caring for others often in vulnerable situations has often been placed as a burden within the daily expectations of women’s routine emotional labour. Yet, listening is the backbone of empathy. It is impossible to mobilise for social change if we cannot understand the perspective of vulnerable groups that need to be advocated for. Active listening allows us to understand and internalise another person’s experience so that we are not feeling bad for them, but we are feeling their adversity it with them.
However, actively listening to others is rarely, if ever, associated with power.
Conceptions of empathy throughout history have almost never been constructed as something dominant, or powerful, despite the fact this practice is the key to mobilising activists to pursue radical and successful activism. Without actively listening to marginalised voices, there would be no successful social movements. There would be no American Civil Rights legislation, no Trade Unions, no Women’s Suffrage, and no Same-sex Marriage. Listening is instrumental to understanding, communicating, and ultimately, manifesting the change that needs to happen, whether it be ending racial segregation, or giving people with wombs access to abortion.
It is time to re-conceptualise our notions of power. Empathy is power, because powerful social movements, fundamentally, are built on empathy. But you wouldn’t know it from commonplace narratives. The formidable skill of active, empathetic listening has been brushed along to the sidelines, historically gendered as a feeble and submissive task associated with women’s emotional labour, and seldom associated with powerful change. But radical and transformative societal change doesn’t come from mansplaining or physical domination: it comes from empathic listening. It comes from internalising the feelings and experiences of others, to fundamentally push for a transformation in any given society or community.
It is time we start to recognise the power in empathy, and how gendered perspectives of power have mislead us to believe that active listening is on the periphery of power. Empathetic and active listening is what drives collective power, and the emotional labour associated with it is far from insignificant. Emotional labour is strength- and we need to understand that our gendered notions of power, strength, and what makes a societal change, lead us to believe otherwise.
It is time to start championing active listening, empathy, “women’s work”, and emotional labour as the critical tools they are, and that we need to successfully spearhead radical and transformative social change.
Illustration by Kat Cassidy.