Charis Poon gives the textual equivalent of “reaction videos“ to excerpts from Ursula K Le Guin, revealing shifting desires and identities over time in this eight-part series.

Published in conjunction with In Our Own Backyard, AAA's exhibition that explores the creative impulses and forms of gathering within the women’s movements in South Asia from the 1980s onward.

The essential gesture of the father tongue is not reasoning but distancing—making a gap, a space, between the subject or self and the object or other. Enormous energy is generated by that rending, that forcing of a gap between Man and World. So the continuous growth of technology and science fuels itself; the Industrial Revolution began with splitting the world-atom, and still by breaking the continuum into unequal parts we keep the imbalance from which our society draws the power that enables it to dominate every other culture, so that everywhere now everybody speaks the same language in laboratories and government buildings and headquarters and offices of business, and those who don’t know it or won’t speak it are silent, or silenced, or unheard.

[…]

Using the father tongue, I can speak of the mother tongue only, inevitably, to distance it—to exclude it. It is the other, inferior. It is primitive: inaccurate, unclear, coarse, limited, trivial, banal. It’s repetitive, the same over and over, like the work called women’s work; earthbound, housebound. It’s vulgar, the vulgar tongue, common, common speech, colloquial, low, ordinary, plebeian, like the work ordinary people do, the lives common people live. The mother tongue, spoken or written, expects an answer. It is conversation, a word the root of which means “turning together.” The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting.

From Le Guin’s 1986 “Bryn Mawr College Commencement,“ included in Dancing At The Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (New York: Harper & Row, 1989); also recently republished in Space Crone (London: Silver Press, 2023).

The power of male group solidarity must come from the control and channelling of male rivalry, the repression and concentration of the hormone-driven will to dominate that so often dominates men themselves. It is a remarkable reversal. The destructive, anarchic energy of individual rivalry and competitive ambition is diverted into loyalty to group and leader and directed to more or less constructive social enterprise.

[…]

Male solidarity appears to me to have been the prime shaper of most of the great ancient institutions of society—Government, Army, Priesthood, University, and the new one that may be devouring all the others, Corporation. The existence and dominance of these hierarchic, organized, coherent, durable institutions goes back so far and has been so nearly universal that it’s mostly just called “how things are,” “the world,” “the division of labour,” “history,” “God’s will,” etc.

As for female solidarity, without it human society, I think, would not exist. But it remains all but invisible to men, history, and God.

Female solidarity might better be called fluidity—a stream or river rather than a structure. The only institutions I am fairly sure it has played some part in shaping are the tribe and that very amorphous thing, the family. Wherever the male arrangement of society permits the fellowship of women on their own terms, it tends to be casual, unformulated, unhierarchical; to be ad hoc rather than fixed, flexible rather than rigid, and more collaborative than competitive.

From Le Guin’s 2010 blog post “A Band of Brothers, a Stream of Sisters,“ included in No Time to Spare: Thinking about What Matters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019); also recently republished in Space Crone (London: Silver Press, 2023).

The essential gesture of the father tongue is not reasoning but distancing—making a gap, a space, between the subject or self and the object or other. [I’m an expert at this. This is what I’ve been trained in through school and in jobs. This is a weird thing to brag about, but I feel confident and smart when I tell myself I have a total grasp on the logic of the world and can sell that to others in perfectly formed sentences. Why yes, I can make sense of everything and teach it to you too. Why yes, I was a teacher’s pet.] Enormous energy is generated by that rending, that forcing of a gap between Man and World. [It’s like the perfect supervillain’s superweapon—by convincing people the unnatural is natural, total world domination is possible.] So the continuous growth of technology and science fuels itself; the Industrial Revolution began with splitting the world-atom, and still by breaking the continuum into unequal parts we keep the imbalance from which our society draws the power that enables it to dominate every other culture, so that everywhere now everybody speaks the same language in laboratories and government buildings and headquarters and offices of business, and those who don’t know it or won’t speak it are silent, or silenced, or unheard. [I’m kind of defensive about this putdown; I like having mastery over this language, this way of speaking that I know is condescending and officious and fake, but it means not having to deal with the rage of being unheard, the indignity of being silenced, the depression of being silent. It’s intoxicating to be able to shut down complaints, get a raise, command a room, just by choosing your words in a certain way.]

Using the father tongue, I can speak of the mother tongue only, inevitably, to distance it—to exclude it. It is the other, inferior. [Everybody loves a tier list. Father tongue, S tier.] It is primitive: inaccurate, unclear, coarse, limited, trivial, banal. It’s repetitive, the same over and over, like the work called women’s work; earthbound, housebound. [We’ve got to stop using “men,” “women,” “male,” “female,” “feminine,” and “masculine,” as descriptors of anything until we’re collectively able to see gender not as absolute unchanging categories.] It’s vulgar, the vulgar tongue, common, common speech, colloquial, low, ordinary, plebeian, like the work ordinary people do, the lives common people live. The mother tongue, spoken or written, expects an answer. It is a conversation, a word the root of which means “turning together.” [The father tongue expects an answer too, but answers that are contradictory and aggressive. It is calibrated to be impenetrable in expectation of an argument, another kind of “turning together” to face each other in confrontation.] The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. [Unfortunately, “connect” is coopted by corporates: Facebook connects us, Apple connects us, Uber connects us. What does it mean anymore to be connected when everything is supposedly capable of forming connections.] It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting. [“Uniting” has a fascist flavour nowadays, a scent of mob mentality, but binding is pleasantly poetic. I think of eggs beaten into flour to make dough, tree roots holding the earth together, humming and holding the same note in a choir.]

The power of male group solidarity must come from the control and channelling of male rivalry, the repression and concentration of the hormone-driven will to dominate that so often dominates men themselves. It is a remarkable reversal. The destructive anarchic energy of individual rivalry and competitive ambition is diverted into loyalty to group and leader and directed to more or less constructive social enterprise. [This illuminates what’s going on in global politics and commerce—Elon Musk’s fanboys, Zuckerberg’s and Bezos’ tech bros, Netanyahu and the IDF. “Constructive” in this case not at all meaning productive and useful, but constructive like an invasive species. The diversion of individual rivalry and competitive ambition doesn’t make it disappear, though. There’s still in-fighting and the tension that any moment one of the gang could eat their littermates.]

Male solidarity appears to me to have been the prime shaper of most of the great ancient institutions of society—Government, Army, Priesthood, University, and the new one that may be devouring all the others, Corporation. The existence and dominance of these hierarchic, organized, coherent, durable institutions goes back so far and has been so nearly universal that it’s mostly just called “how things are,” “the world,” “the division of labour,” “history,” “God’s will,” etc. [Yeah, I’ve had these exact conversations. Ones where I’m the one pointing out how the core organizing structure of every institution stems from, as hooks put it, the “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” and ones where I’m ready to give up on trying and giving the response, “hey, that’s how things are and it’s never going to be different.” Does explaining the patriarchy get us closer to dismantling it?]

As for female solidarity, without it human society, I think, would not exist. But it remains all but invisible to men, history, and God. [And it shifts in and out of visibility for me.]

Female solidarity might better be called fluidity—a stream or river rather than a structure. The only institutions I am fairly sure it has played some part in shaping are the tribe and that very amorphous thing, the family. [That’s not a strong recommendation for female solidarity, when so many people’s experience of family is fraught. Family is itself an institution in need of reconsideration. Perhaps female solidarity’s power is in its lack of legacy. It doesn’t shape any enduring solid form.] Wherever the male arrangement of society permits the fellowship of women on their own terms, it tends to be casual, unformulated, unhierarchical; to be ad hoc rather than fixed, flexible rather than rigid, and more collaborative than competitive. [I don’t know what the fellowship of women on their own terms looks like or feels like and what it produces. Is that just me? I don’t think this means any gathering of women, but a gathering of people who agree to intentionally organize with flexibility and a collaborative spirit. What comes to mind are all the times I saw women cause conflict because of competition; a colleague saying, “you need to understand how I’ll be appraised,” before claiming an unjust workload allocation. How can I respond with stream-like solidarity?]

Charis Poon is an artist and educator who makes zines, audio pieces, draws comics, and writes. She teaches Social Design at the Hong Kong PolyU School of Design where she experiments with how teaching and learning happen. 

Banner image courtesy of Charis Poon.