Discussion Questions
These questions are taken from The Partnership Way: New Tools for Living and Learning, 2nd ed. by Riane Eisler and David Loye.
Partnership Discussion Questions
- What do you think our lives would be like if there were equal partnership between women and men?
- How would it affect our self-image as women and men?
- How would it affect our family relations?
- Would international relations differ? Race relations?
- Would our religious institutions change?
- How would it affect our education?
- Would the corporate sector and the workplace be altered?
- How would it affect social priorities?
- Would there be changes in entertainment, art, and humor?
- What kinds of things would be considered funny?
- What would be most highly valued and rewarded?
Many of us are exploring new ways of relating to one another. We are discovering that the old models of relationship do not really work, and are seeking better alternatives. A way of cutting through some of the confusion is to look at our exploration as an attempt to shift from dominator/dominated to partnership relations and to ask ourselves to look at our own relationships from this new perspective.
The following questions can help stimulate this discussion:
- When have you been dominated? What did it feel like?
- How did you cooperate with this?
- What do you think you might do differently now?
- When have you been a dominator? What was that like for you?
- What were its advantages? Its disadvantages?
- When have you participated in a partnership? What was that like for you?
- What were its advantages? Its disadvantages?
- How do you think you received social support for a partnership relationship?
- How do you think it was opposed or undermined?
The introduction to The Chalice and the Blade shows that we have been taught a limited vision of alternatives. For example, we tend to think that the opposite of patriarchy is matriarchy without realizing that they are both dominator models and that the real alternative is partnership.
We have also been taught to divide the world into opposing camps such as religious vs. secular, capitalist vs. communist, developing world vs. developed world, light-skinned vs. darker-skinned races, and so on. To gain real insight into how these systems and structures affect humanity, it is useful to look at the dominator or partnership aspects in each of them.
- Why do you think that all over the world today there is so little social priority given to so-called women’s issues?
- Do you think we would have massive overpopulation if women had free access to both birth control technologies and equal educational and job opportunities?
- Do you think the fathers who today see their role as including the traditional “feminine” mothering will be less likely to consider warfare “manly” and “fun”?
- Why do you think the modern feminist movement has met with so much resistance from both the extreme right and left?
Many of our contemporary crises are also opportunities to develop new and better ways of living, working, and loving. For example, on the personal level, the changing roles of women (and men) are sometimes confusing. But they are also opening many new options to both women and men.
On the social level, we have seen the piecemeal replacement of old dominator forms (like the despotic rule of kings over their “subjects” and of men over the women and children in the “castles” of their homes) with more democratic families and states, where linking rather than ranking is the primary organizational principle. But such fundamental social changes cannot happen without a certain degree of social and personal dislocation.
- Why do you think some people focus on the “breakdown” of the family and others recognize that if new partnership family forms are to emerge, the older dominator family forms cannot remain in place?
- Why do you think that people are more likely to deny and suppress their real feelings in a dominator society?
- How do you think the modern development of psychology relates to the movement toward a partnership society?
- How do you think current psychological priorities support or impede the movement toward partnership?
- How do you think the civil rights movements and the struggle against racism and colonialism are central to the modern partnership thrust?
- How do you think rapid technological changes have worked in creating for us both crises and opportunities?
