The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance

Diane Rosenfeld

I read a lot of books, most of the people I interview on this podcast are authors, so I'm pretty used to finding interesting aspects to various subjects. But when I started reading this book I was riveted! I couldn't wait to talk with Diane about what we humans, particularly females, could learn from Bonobo apes. 

That apes had figured out how to eliminate male sexual coercion and violence while this is still a huge problem for a, supposedly, more evolved species fascinated me. By the time I finished reading the book I had pages of questions for Diane. When we finally got to speak I was not disappointed. There is a way to address the crisis of violence against women and women hold the key. This is something that we can do. We just have to choose to. As Diane describes it, it's a pivot. A different way of engaging, with other women both individually and collectively. Then, that different engagement changes the way that males and females engage. From a culture of sexual coercion and violence to a culture where that behavior is not tolerated and does not occur.

Listen to this conversation and then think about how you can create your own Bonobo Sisterhood and what an enormous shift that would create in the world. The opportunity is right there for us. We just have to take it. 

About Diane: 
Diane L. Rosenfeld is an attorney, a lecturer in law and the founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, where she has taught since 2004. Rosenfeld has appeared in major media outlets, including ABC, Nightline, Katie with Katie Couric, CNN Headline News, Fox and Friends, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition. She is featured in the award winning documentaries, The Hunting Ground: It Could Happen Here, and Rape Is. Rosenfeld served as the first senior counsel to the Office of Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as an executive assistant attorney general in Illinois. She is the recipient of multiple awards for her teaching, mentoring and change making legal policy work. She is also the author of the new book, The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance.

For a written transcript of this conversation click here.

Diane's Action Items:

The first thing is what we talked about to stop judging yourself. Just start with yourself, stop judging yourself. And really take the book as an invitation to to be in an intimate space with yourself and the ideas in the book and see what resonates and what you feel, if anything, that you want to change and how you want to change it. The first thing is really to stop judging harshly yourself, and to open space for your sisters. To really believe in the bonobo principle and that you have a self worth defending.

Learn self defense learn, self defense that's inspired by the bonobo sisterhood. You could even start by going on YouTube and watching a 15 minute video, a lot of self defense is, is being ready to verbally shut down any aggression that's aimed toward you. But learn self defense.

And then once you learn self defense, the third thing is that that enables you to imagine defending your sisters. And it pisses you off. And you learn from the outside in and from the inside out that you have a self worth defending. And then you really want to do it. And you really want to defend your sisters. So it's a physical embodiment of the ideas. And that's what will change, because that's what will stop male sexual coercion.

Credits:
Harmonica music courtesy of a friend

Resources mentioned in this episode:
The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance by Diane L. Rosenfeld