Part 1 was posted yesterday.
What are the conditions necessary to foster an environment in which we can truly listen to one another across differences? Gathering insights from many perspectives[i], Alison Jaggar outlined the essential conditions for what she called Feminist Practical Discourse or FPD. These include: 1) the creation of opportunities for participants to talk about their own lives, stressing the importance of first-person narratives and of others listening; 2) the equal importance of each person’s experience; 3) an openness to reevaluating one’s perspective; 4) the inclusion of people whose lives are different from our own and each other’s, especially those whose public voices have been most marginalized; 5) a nurturant, rather than an antagonistic environment, while still allowing for respectful disagreement; 6) participant qualities of self-discipline, responsibility, sensitivity, respect, and trust; and 7) the motivation of care and friendship.
The last is drawn from Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman’s groundbreaking piece, “Have We Got a Theory for You.” It was one of the first, if not the first, to challenge the dismissal and silencing of marginalized voices, in this case particularly Hispana voices, in feminist spaces. As they wrote, “if white/Anglo women are to understand our voices, they must understand our communities and us in them.” [ii] This requires involving oneself in the other’s world and coming to know them from that perspective, as well as being unobtrusive and open to learning. The only appropriate motive for this is not obligation nor self-interest, but rather genuine friendship and reciprocity of care grounded in concrete individuals, rather than abstract stereotypes.
It also requires particular qualities on the part of the listener, first and foremost Patricia Hill Collins’ condition that each party to the dialogue recognize that their perception of the situation is only partial. She writes, “ . . . because each group [or individual] perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group [or individual] becomes better able to consider other groups’ standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of their own standpoint or suppressing others’ partial perspectives . . . . Partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard . . . “[iii]
This is also the condition of truly listening. Jaggar asserts that “FPD emphasizes good listening as much as, if not more than, good speaking. . . .”[iv] and good listening, she argued, requires self-knowledge. Jaggar references what Marilyn Frye termed the “loving eye” to explain what knowledge hearer needs in order to be able to listen well. The “loving eye,” according to Frye, is one in which the listener, “is attentive not only to the other, but also to herself, her own interests, desires and loathings, her projects, hungers, fears, and wishes,”[v] so that she can recognize how these influence her perception and her ability to understand of the one speaking. Such self-knowledge also facilitates the kind of self-questioning and circumspection that Lugones and Spelman regard as essential for dominant voices to listen, learn from, and understand those whose voices have been silenced, dismissed, and marginalized. And this, they recognize, is a difficult task requiring specific effort and skills. Finally, listening, particularly to marginalized voices, involves a responsibility for what Patrocinio Schweikart called “Interactive labor,” — “’to protect and nurture fragile speech, . . . to draw out, to facilitate, to engender and cultivate the speech of the other.’”[vi]
In Part Two of her posts, Dr. Hadia Mubarak wrote that she prefaced a later panel in which she participated with these remarks: “Our ability to empathize with the suffering of one group does not negate our ability to empathize with another group’s suffering. It simply means that we are human, and we acknowledge the humanity of all people.”[vii] In this one statement she set up the very conditions which facilitated each participant to listen and learn from each other – creating a nurturant environment that affirmed the equal importance of each person’s experience, while also calling on the listeners to regard the speaker with an open heart, a loving eye, and self-awareness in the context of reciprocal care. The rabbi’s response clearly showed how valuable this was for creating an atmosphere in which people from different perspectives could listen to and care for one another.
To return to the thoughts in my first post about the value of responsiveness in showing the one voicing their experience and ideas that they are in fact heard and listened to, my experience so far (pun intended) in FAR has been that responses are welcomed, and that those who do respond exhibit the kind of qualities that Jaggar outlined in her Feminist Practical Discourse. I hope that recognition serves to “draw out, facilitate, and cultivate” more in the FAR community to respond and engage in that “interactive labor,” knowing that, in Adrienne Rich’s words, “we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.”[viii]
References
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1983.
Jaggar, Alison M. “Toward a Feminist Conception of Moral Reasoning.” In James P Sterba et.al. Morality and Social Justice: Point/Counterpoint. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995.
Mubarak, Hadia. “Genuine Inclusivity Means Rejecting ‘Comparative Suffering.’” Feminism and Religion blog post, April 12, 2024.
Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose: 1966-1978. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1979.
Schweickart, Patrocinio. “Engendering Critical Discourse.” In The Current in Criticism, Clayton Koelb and Virgil Lokke, eds. West Lafayette: Purdue U press, 1987, 295-317.
[i] Jaggar relied especially on the Women’s Encampment Handbook from the Seneca Falls Women’s Peace Encampment, and the scholarship of Patricia Hill Collins, Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman, Marilyn Frye, and Patrocinio Schweickart.
[ii] Lugones & Spelman, 24.
[iii] Collins, 236.
[iv] Jaggar, 133.
[v] Frye, 75.
[vi] Schweickart, 308 quoted in Jaggar, 133.
[vii] Genuine Inclusivity Means Rejecting “Comparative Suffering” by Dr. Hadia Mubarak (feminismandreligion.com)
[viii] Rich, 194.
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What a helpful two-part post, Beth! During my work this past week at a local women’s medical center, I witnessed a client engaging an anti-abortion protestor using some of the principles you write about. Anti-abortion protestors play a single note. ”Killing your baby is wrong. Don’t do it.” My client, who drove a long distance from one of those southern states that have put inhumane (IMO) restrictions on abortion to get to the medical center, spoke up to a protestor who kept hitting that one note regarding the client–someone she did not know. My client spoke with the protestor calmly telling her, “I know where you are coming from. I used to be there. I know your story. You do not know mine.” The protestor kept at my client, “Don’t do this,” refusing to even hear my client’s story–something she was willing to share if the protestor had a mind to listen. After a few minutes, my client said, “I hear you. I don’t agree with you. You don’t know me. Now, please leave.” (The protestor was on public property, but close to the back of the medical center’s building where the distance between the two of them was small.) And, the protestor DID leave that particular area! We have such a long way to go to get the anti-abortion faction to hear those of us who make decisions regarding our bodies that go against those who feel they KNOW what is right. Absolutism is deadly.
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this is great Esther Back
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Listening to One Another: Part Two by Beth Bartlett
6h ago
Beth Bartlett
active listening
Dr. Hadia Mubarak
Maria Lugones
Elizabeth Spelman
2+
Part 1 was posted yesterday.
What are the conditions necessary to foster an environment in which we can truly listen to one another across differences? Gathering insights from many perspectives[i], Alison Jaggar outlined the essential conditions for what she called Feminist Practical Discourse or FPD. These include: 1) the creation of opportunities for participants to talk about their own lives, stressing the importance of first-person narratives and of others listening; 2) the equal importance of each person’s experience; 3) an openness to reevaluating one’s perspective; 4) the inclusion of people whose lives are different from our own and each other’s, especially those whose public voices have been most marginalized; 5) a nurturant, rather than an antagonistic environment, while still allowing for respectful disagreement; 6) participant qualities of self-discipline, responsibility, sensitivity, respect, and trust; and 7) the motivation of care and friendship.
The last is drawn from Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman’s groundbreaking piece, “Have We Got a Theory for You.” It was one of the first, if not the first, to challenge the dismissal and silencing of marginalized voices, in this case particularly Hispana voices, in feminist spaces. As they wrote, “if white/Anglo women are to understand our voices, they must understand our communities and us in them.” [ii] This requires involving oneself in the other’s world and coming to know them from that perspective, as well as being unobtrusive and open to learning. The only appropriate motive for this is not obligation nor self-interest, but rather genuine friendship and reciprocity of care grounded in concrete individuals, rather than abstract stereotypes.
It also requires particular qualities on the part of the listener, first and foremost Patricia Hill Collins’ condition that each party to the dialogue recognize that their perception of the situation is only partial. She writes, “ . . . because each group [or individual] perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group [or individual] becomes better able to consider other groups’ standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of their own standpoint or suppressing others’ partial perspectives . . . . Partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard . . . “[iii]
This is also the condition of truly listening. Jaggar asserts that “FPD emphasizes good listening as much as, if not more than, good speaking. . . .”[iv] and good listening, she argued, requires self-knowledge. Jaggar references what Marilyn Frye termed the “loving eye” to explain what knowledge hearer needs in order to be able to listen well. The “loving eye,” according to Frye, is one in which the listener, “is attentive not only to the other, but also to herself, her own interests, desires and loathings, her projects, hungers, fears, and wishes,”[v] so that she can recognize how these influence her perception and her ability to understand of the one speaking. Such self-knowledge also facilitates the kind of self-questioning and circumspection that Lugones and Spelman regard as essential for dominant voices to listen, learn from, and understand those whose voices have been silenced, dismissed, and marginalized. And this, they recognize, is a difficult task requiring specific effort and skills. Finally, listening, particularly to marginalized voices, involves a responsibility for what Patrocinio Schweikart called “Interactive labor,” — “’to protect and nurture fragile speech, . . . to draw out, to facilitate, to engender and cultivate the speech of the other.’”[vi]
In Part Two of her posts, Dr. Hadia Mubarak wrote that she prefaced a later panel in which she participated with these remarks: “Our ability to empathize with the suffering of one group does not negate our ability to empathize with another group’s suffering. It simply means that we are human, and we acknowledge the humanity of all people.”[vii] In this one statement she set up the very conditions which facilitated each participant to listen and learn from each other – creating a nurturant environment that affirmed the equal importance of each person’s experience, while also calling on the listeners to regard the speaker with an open heart, a loving eye, and self-awareness in the context of reciprocal care. The rabbi’s response clearly showed how valuable this was for creating an atmosphere in which people from different perspectives could listen to and care for one another.
To return to the thoughts in my first post about the value of responsiveness in showing the one voicing their experience and ideas that they are in fact heard and listened to, my experience so far (pun intended) in FAR has been that responses are welcomed, and that those who do respond exhibit the kind of qualities that Jaggar outlined in her Feminist Practical Discourse. I hope that recognition serves to “draw out, facilitate, and cultivate” more in the FAR community to respond and engage in that “interactive labor,” knowing that, in Adrienne Rich’s words, “we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.”[viii]
References
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1983.
Jaggar, Alison M. “Toward a Feminist Conception of Moral Reasoning.” In James P Sterba et.al. Morality and Social Justice: Point/Counterpoint. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995.
Lugones, Maria and Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice.’” In Kolmar, Wendy K. & Francis Bartkowski, ed., Feminist Theory: A Reader. 4th Ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2013. 17-24.
Mubarak, Hadia. “Genuine Inclusivity Means Rejecting ‘Comparative Suffering.’” Feminism and Religion blog post, April 12, 2024.
Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose: 1966-1978. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1979.
Schweickart, Patrocinio. “Engendering Critical Discourse.” In The Current in Criticism, Clayton Koelb and Virgil Lokke, eds. West Lafayette: Purdue U press, 1987, 295-317.
[i] Jaggar relied especially on the Women’s Encampment Handbook from the Seneca Falls Women’s Peace Encampment, and the scholarship of Patricia Hill Collins, Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman, Marilyn Frye, and Patrocinio Schweickart.
[ii] Lugones & Spelman, 24.
[iii] Collins, 236.
[iv] Jaggar, 133.
[v] Frye, 75.
[vi] Schweickart, 308 quoted in Jaggar, 133.
[vii] Genuine Inclusivity Means Rejecting “Comparative Suffering” by Dr. Hadia Mubarak (feminismandreligion.com)
[viii] Rich, 194.
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Sara Wright
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Sara Wright
Sara Wright
2m ago
“Partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard” Each of us has a piece of truth colored by our biases and perspectives etc – as you say it is critical to understand that each truth is authentic but at best it is partial – and self reflection – knowing who we are is also critical – otherwise we end up projecting. Another important post.
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Esther Nelson
Esther Nelson
1h ago
How helpful! “I know where you are coming from. I used to be there. I know your story. You do not know mine.” I am going to have to remember that
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Wow! What a beautiful thing to witness.
This woman who tried at least to engage in a dialog is so courageous. Although I am sorry that she was being judged by the protester.
Thanks for sharing this experience. It gives me hope.
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Thank you for sharing this, Esther. What a powerful thing to witness. How I wish the protester had asked to hear your client’s story and a truly mutual exchange had begun. But what restraint and care your client showed. And at least the protester walked away.
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“Partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard” Each of us has a piece of truth colored by our biases and perspectives etc – as you say it is critical to understand that each truth is authentic but at best it is partial – and self reflection – knowing who we are is also critical – otherwise we end up projecting. Another important post.
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Thank you, Sara.
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Thanks for this information, Beth.
All if it is so poignant.
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