PEP: Grievances & Intentions

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The following statement of grievances and intentions was written with the Founding Mothers Movement in mind. It also clearly expresses PEP's positions on current world conditions. While PEP lauds FMM's intention to also seek an ERA for women from all nations, PEP's focus will remain on securing a binding peace treaty for all the reasons given in this statement.

A STATEMENT OF GRIEVANCES AND INTENTIONS
JUDITH HAND, PH.D.
MEMBER OF FOUNDING MOTHERS MOVEMENT – APRIL 2024

We are living in an extraordinary time, one so extraordinary that many Informed citizens worry that we may be creating the means of our own extinction. Instead of maximizing benefits of our exquisite and nurturing planet, we may exterminate ourselves using some weapon of war, or by so trashing or polluting soil, water, or air that conditions essential to our survival no longer exist.

Almost eclipsing these, we are breathtakingly poised to use Artificial Intelligence to unleash autonomous war weapons—drones, tanks, boats, warriors, and things not yet imagined—that can kill and destroy without human control or the ability to intervene. These extraordinary times cry out for extraordinary action.

For reasons presented below, ending war and globally securing full human rights for women are crucial to forging a path of peaceful survival and therefore are the focus of the Founding Mothers Movement.

Based on history, scientific research, and lived experience, we hold the following to be true of our nature and relevant to our existential condition:

First, we are by nature a complexly hierarchical, not egalitarian, species. By nature, absent intervention of education and cultural norms to foster egalitarianism, our dominant societies have historically organized social groups in hierarchal fashion typical for many primates, with men (or male hierarchies) at the top, and women (and female hierarchies) at the bottom. While women in many cultures can be in control and can be ultimate decision-makers in the domestic sphere, in the public sphere, all-male rule is the definition of patriarchy. All-male rule characterizes authoritarian governments, virtually all of which are patriarchies. And for several millennia, our dominant cultures have been patriarchies of many forms: e.g., chieftainships, kingships, dictatorships, and male-dominated oligarchies.

We have also created relatively uncommon societies that do function with an overall egalitarian ethos. Many are religious communities. Quakers. The Baha’i. Some are indigenous based, like the Hopi. In such cultures we find that, from a young age, children are taught rules and traditions that suppress behavior springing from urges to compete, to rise above others, to win, to dominate. In the rare case that a child pushes or shoves another child, for example, any adult seeing this immediately cautions and explains to the child, more commonly a boy than a girl, the equivalent of, “That is not our way.” In such societies, decision-making for groups or the whole community is by consent of most or all members, not by fiat of a single leader or leaders. And conflict resolution is achieved by compromise, mediation, and negotiation, never by violence.

Such communities or societies do not initiate wars, although sadly they may be drawn into fighting for self-preservation by warring neighbors. It is imperative to note that anthropological studies of non-warring societies and cross-cultural behavioral studies of children and adults in a variety of contexts prove that war is not a genetically based, inevitable result of our nature. It is a culturally learned behavior. Something we could prevent by changing our cultural orientations. (1)

Second, we are fundamentally a bisexual species. Natural selection has produced two sexes in many plant and animal species, including humans. Males, which make sperm, and females, which make eggs. The survival of any species depends on successfully reproducing next generations.

For biological reasons having to do with reproductive success, a primary evolved social concern that characterizes women, in general, involves seeing to the welfare of community and children. Importantly this includes that all available means should be deployed to ensure that social stability should prevail; social conflicts that might lead to aggression that could endanger children’s lives must be prevented. (2, 3, 4)

In operation socially, this urge to maintain social stability produces what can be thought of as part of female or yin energy. Women can be assertive. They establish dominance hierarchies. But unlike men, they rarely use physical aggression to do so. Instead, they use Indirect, less destabilizing means, such as shunning, shaming, ridiculing, or exclusion from their social group.

If prevented from directly achieving their goals they frequently act indirectly; for example, they may arrange for a person with higher social status in their group to advance their cause. In conflict situations, women typically defer to dominant individuals in their hierarchy rather than create more conflict. They may intervene to calm the situation, favoring mediation, negotiation, and/or compromise. Even in conflicts with high stakes, they are inclined to defer rather than physically fight for their view to prevail. Historically compared to men, women rarely have taken up arms, but when they do, they make courageous and often fierce fighters, most commonly in defense of children, home, or community. (5)

Also, for reasons having to do with reproductive success, a primary, genetically grounded, evolved social concern that characterizes men, in general and in contrast to women, has to do with competing for social status: achieving higher status or at least not losing status. (2, 3, 4) In operation socially, this produces what many cultures regard as a part of male or yang energy. In some contexts, the desire to rise in or retain status triggers physical aggression; in a one-on-one context, it may trigger a fight that determines which man prevails, wins, dominates, controls.

These two primal orientations are not culturally learned differences of our two sexes. They are highly influential biological realities that function on an entirely subconscious level in all social contexts. They shape individual thinking, preferences, and behavior.

Consequently, when it comes to resolving social conflicts—particularly deciding who wins and who loses—men, singly or in groups, are far more inclined to get into physical fights than are women. The majority of individuals participating in rioting are men. And notably, war, the ultimate use of physical aggression, is a human male phenomenon.

The above two realities about our nature being true, we hold that in many contexts, when faced with social conflicts and/or needing to determine what activity to pursue in our homes, communities, or by the global community, men and women will, by nature, react or choose differently. And absent some countervailing cultural restraints (customs, rituals, rules, laws), the outcomes will favor male preferences. What explains this?

When individuals or groups disagree about what path to take, what to invest in, or to what their society should give top priority, men’s’ proclivities for dominance (urges to control or lead) are operating. And in cases of sharp disagreement, women’s’ proclivities to defer to maintain social stability, and especially to avoid anything that might lead to physical conflict, are also operating. Assuming that women are being allowed to have any input at all, the inevitable result will be that men’s priorities/choices prevail. For better and worse, this relationship of the sexes to decision-making and conflict resolution has produced the hierarchical, patriarchal societies/civilizations, and environmental conditions, we see around us. We currently live in a global community heavily tilted toward dominance (yang), not egalitarianism.

To fashion the safe and nurturing future we desire for our children and the children to come, we assert that this imbalance between yin and yang must be ended. Further, that the result of reaching balance will be emergence of an egalitarianism ethos. Thus, we embrace the re-introduction of democracy, and especially liberal democracy.

In a liberal democracy, women are (ideally) accorded all the human rights and political status accorded to men, something not the case in illiberal democracies. (6) Women’s influence and social power in liberal democracies is not restricted to the domestic sphere, as is the case in patriarchies and typical of illiberal democracies. Women in liberal democracies may engage actively in the public sphere. Their concerns for community and children, and women’s preference to resolve serious conflicts by mediation, compromise, and negotiation, influences how conflicts are resolved at all social levels.

To date, the Earth community has perhaps a dozen fledgling but no fully mature liberal democracies. In a fully mature liberal democracy there exists faiths, races, and citizens with widely divergent social and cultural views that live in peace with disputes being settled by a shared social contract, the “rule of law.”

A liberal democracy in which women have the vote, the right to read, the right to an education beyond the bare minimum, and the ability to participate in decision-making in the public domain can enable modern complex societies to move our lives in the direction of egalitarianism, wherein yin and yang equally influence choices. This form of decision-making can be called Gender-parity Governing, Partnerism (7), or Koinoniarachy (8), from the Greek word koinonia which means “to share.” We hold that the condition achieved will be a more stable, less violent, more nurturing Earth community. It will also have the potential to prevent the dystopian future to which we appear to be rapidly headed.

To ensure that we shift from where we have been to where we want to be with respect to yin and yang, research and experience teach that we must attend to the percentage of gender composition of groups. Gender composition is pivotal to decision-making outcomes. Adding women into what has been an all-male negotiating situation changes group “chemistry,” strongly influencing the results.

The percentage of women needed to exert an effect is not, however, a fixed number. It varies from situation to situation and from culture to culture. A general rule appears to be that a composition from as low as 20% in some cases to as high as 40% makes a difference. Thus, a necessary condition, as the global community moves forward, is that we be consistently aware of the gender composition of decision-making and negotiating groups.

So for example, in a group composed only of men, when the choice will affect only their group, the decision-making composition would be single sex and male. The same is true for a group of women. But ideally, decision-making bodies making choices affecting the entire community or all of humanity will be composed of 50% women and 50% men, and we hold that it should never be less than 35% women in all contexts until we stabilize around that ideal 50% condition.

Furthermore, women raised in patriarchies and participating in decision-making must learn not to always defer, to rise and speak up, to insist on necessary changes, to let their voices (choices) be heard. Achieving that change with respect to decision-making bodies will be crucial to achieving the Founding Mothers Movement’s two non-negotiable goals: securing a binding global peace treaty, and full human rights for women in all nations.

We also hold as true that the following damages—which characterize dominator cultures of the past and some in which we now live—flow from millennia of hierarchical, patriarchal governing in the public sphere. Ending or avoiding them or others like them are why the path we pursue is essential:

Damages to women: For a patriarchy to remain intact, input by women in the public domain must be suppressed. This has been and is achieved by both customs and laws. A view perpetrated in some patriarchal/authoritarian cultures, for example, holds that women are not fully adult human beings, are limited in their ability to deal with complex social issues in the public sphere, and sometimes even are considered to be limited in their ability to handle serious domestic affairs, they could not possibly serve in the military. Or women are considered dangerously unsophisticated, needing male supervision and protection. These indoctrinated means of suppression are reinforced by controlling women’s reproductive lives: e.g., who they may marry, strong punishment or death for infidelity, and laws forbidding abortion. From such suppressions emerge the following damages:

Women are denied education, from severe denial of even the ability to read, to denial of education past grade school or high school.
Women are denied the right to leave the home without supervision of a person tasked with restricting what a women can do or with whom she may speak or meet.
Women cannot regulate or limit family size, especially if denied access to abortion. A serious consequence of bearing and rearing many children is that women must devote their resources in time and thought to domestic responsibilities. This power play—often disguised as or sincerely thought to be a reverence for life—consciously or unconsciously limits women’s availability to participate in public/political affairs, even if they are eager to do so.

Damages to children: All parents love their children, commonly to the point of willingness to die to protect them. Successfully raising children who in turn reproduce is the driving force of evolution, and love is the engine that motivates that challenging feat. But there are limits. Leaders may consider the welfare of children less important than “pressing priorities,” especially welfare of children not their own. Stressed parents can neglect their children or worse. Children can be thought of as merely workers by both society and sometimes by their parents. If acquisition of power is the supreme value of a culture, as it often is in a patriarchy, children can be given short shrift in many ways, by society and by parents. These are realities that emerge:

A society may believe that educating children to read or do mathematics is unnecessary, and thus it provides no such opportunities…usually, however, there is an exception for children of the wealthy or powerful, who are taught.
Children can be put into long hours in the workforce at a very early age, when they should be learning valuable life skills.
Money from the public purse for education may take a back seat to other priorities, including forms of entertainment for adults; not enough money to pay excellent teacher salaries, for example, but enough for improving weapon systems, modernizing sport stadiums, or putting humans into space.
The ultimate crime against children, who are innocent having not yet begun to participate in society, is war. It destroys their homes, terrorizes them, destroys objects that are their cultural heritage, leaves them physically maimed and/or psychologically traumatized for life, robs them of parents, grandparents, and friends, or just simply snuffs out their life.

Damages to Mother Nature: Families need life’s essentials (food, water, shelter, health care, a way to make a living). Most people also strive to secure better or maintain their current social status. Out of necessity, all humans draw from Mother Earth’s resources the means to make human life possible. As participants in the cycle of life and death, we must consume.

In the prehistoric past, when a group had consumed all reasonably availed local resources, they packed up and moved to unoccupied land. Because of such dispersal, we now occupy all habitats on the planet suitable for us. Because of the relatively recent unregulated human population explosion, however, we have reached a point where essential resources in many places are inadequate for our vast numbers. In theory we could devise means of redistributing resources in sufficient quantity from where they do exist to where they are critically needed, but significant barriers exist to doing so: the financial costs would be enormous, and social and political differences and ongoing violent conflicts also stand in the way. Reducing the rate of population growth, which requires regulation downward of family size, is helpful but proving inadequate to meet the level of need. Consequently, we suffer massive migration and suffering as desperate people seek relief. Thus, it is our misfortune that there are no longer unoccupied places with required essential resources to which we can easily move, although our basic needs remain the same and we continue to consume.

And then there is wealth. Wealth is power. It confers great status. Wealth underlies control. Wealth undergirds domination. And very often making great sums of money requires extracting vast quantities of Mother Earth’s resources: oil, minerals and metals, land for raising cattle not trees, fuel to generate electricity in great quantity to run devices and machines to facilitate even more consumption.

In the modern world, the rate at which we are using natural resources threatens to overwhelm Mother Nature’s capacity to supply them. And in the process of acquiring life’s essentials for billions of people and great wealth for a relative few, we are causing great damages to Mother Nature. These realities emerge because of both population explosion and financial greed.

From a variety of professional sources, the global community was warned that all data indicated that human activities based on using fossil fuels was heating the planet’s atmosphere at a surprisingly rapid rate. Further, that if that rate continued or speeded up, the effect on overall global temperature increase would result in a variety of disastrous changes to the climate. These would in turn trigger predictable and unpredictable alterations so severely harmful to habitats on land and sea and to local and global weather patterns that continuation of civilization as we have known it would be threatened. The orientation of too many leaders in our overwhelmingly patriarchal global community was concerned with maintaining current power structures and profits. They turned a blind eye so long we now experience increasing rates of wildfires, drought, and hurricanes. Melting glaciers disrup water supplies for the communities near them. We are losing the ice world at the North Pole. All species experiencing these drastic changes on land and sea must adapt, and the changes, the direct result of our behavior, are so abrupt that an unknown number of species will fail and go extinct. We too are affected. Drought and seasonal changes affect agriculture, disrupting food production, in severe cases forcing migration.
We are fouling the oceans with plastics that kill or harm sea life, from damaging coral reefs to fatalities that result from ingestion, starvation, suffocation, drowning, and entanglement. To date, these incidences have been reported in 267 species worldwide, including 44% of seabirds and 43% of all marine mammals. How severely over time these effects will alter the ecology of the oceans, upon which we depend for jobs and food, is unknown, but to experts the rapid and extensive alteration feels ominous.
Microplastics are found virtually everywhere: in air, water, and food; in marine organisms from plankton to whales; on beaches from Alaska to Antarctica; in cosmetics, clothing fibers, and mother’s milk. To date, there is little hard information about their effects on human health, but again, experts issue ominous warnings.
Wastes from nuclear and chemical facilities pollute bodies of water such as rivers and streams, making the water hazardous: undrinkable by humans, sickening to wildlife, unsuitable for irrigation, killing plants and animals, and if it reaches them, poisoning lakes and oceans for long periods of time. In the case of nuclear waste, the toxicity lasts for thousands of years.

Potential damages to humanity:
As we look into the future, many experts who work in the exploding field of artificial intelligence grow concerned that with our cleverness we may blunder into creating machines whose intelligence astronomically outranks our own. That we might endow them with self-learning capabilities that lead to self-awareness. They may decide that humans are not essential to their wellbeing. That in fact, we are a threat to their wellbeing and the wellbeing of the planet. How they decide to deal with us may not be benevolent.

In light of the above real and potential damages, we hold that continuing to behave as we have done for millennia is immoral and arguably a form of social insanity. At this point, if only for survival’s sake, profound change is demanded of us.

It is folly to keep doing the same thing under the same patriarchal governing structures and think we can achieve a different, more peaceful and nurturing, outcome, one that above all, values human quality of life rather than power. It is urgent that we pursue a paradigm shift that rejects violence in every aspect of our lives. Domestic violence, gang warfare, human subjugation enforced by violence, all civil wars, all are avoidable. They are wasteful tragedies springing from a social paradigm that assumes that violence, unfortunately, is just “what we do.” The overwhelming, massive destruction inflicted by wars is a criminal waste of human and natural resources. War, including all behavior that comes with it such as torture and rape, is an avoidable cultural phenomenon. It is arguably humanity’s greatest evil.

Therefore:

Understanding that
1. all of the above damages are foundational social aspects of the human-generated, existential situations now advancing on us, and

Realizing that
2. financial, physical, and human resources now devoted to planning, executing, cleaning up after, and restoring what has been destroyed by wars should rationally be devoted instead to conquering challenges to survival and thriving in the face of onrushing climate change and frightening technological possibilities,

And acknowledging that exclusion of women from governing bodies and denying them full human rights accorded to men continues a dangerous imbalance of yin and yang,
3. Women of the Founding Mothers Movement now rise in unity to co-create for all children of the global community a paradigm shift that will build for our children a safe, healthy, nurturing future. We will achieve this goal using only nonviolent strategies and tactics. And when we do, we will thereby have demonstrated for our children—our future leaders—that the belief that human violence, including war, is inescapable is a false assumption. We will also simultaneously demonstrate for them the power and benefits of nonviolence.

At this moment in history, humanity is uniquely poised, unlike at any other time, to institute this massive social and philosophical paradigm shift away from violence toward global shared unity [see here why this time is unique (9)]. But the window of opportunity to succeed appears to be rapidly closing. Patriarchies/autocracies are forcefully pushing back. We must urgently mount counteraction.

Therefore, our two non-negotiable goals, demands that we choose to call “objectives,” the foundational elements needed to achieve this proposed great social transformation, are as follows:

First “objective.” Peace. We call on the global community to embrace again the process of crafting and signing a treaty to halt international wars, a treaty that this time includes a means of enforcement and is ratified by all, not just some, nations.

Once Earth’s citizens become confident that their nation will not be invaded or otherwise attacked by any other nation or nations, realization will set in that they may safely devote their nation’s resources to other vital needs, not to supporting the war industry. In essence, with the treaty in place, we achieve an end-run around the war system, because the need for nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, the need for nations to invest in a large standing national army, the need to store and maintain war weapons, all will soon no longer exist. Vast additional benefits will flow from an enforceable international peace treaty.

UN Women, an international body, is the most logical entity to assume the task of arranging for peace negotiations. If UN Women does not accept the challenge within a reasonable time, the Founding Mothers will not rest until some other entity is found or created that will. It ideally must not be tied to any specific national, religious, political, or philosophical entity, and thus should be acceptable to all nations.

Second “objective.” We call on all nations to enshrine in written form, in their Constitution or another official document, human rights for women, to include but not limited to the right to vote, the right to education beyond a bare minimum, the right to participate in decision-making bodies at local, state, national, and international levels, and the right to bodily autonomy and family planning, including the right to terminate a dangerous or unwanted pregnancy.

If women are to share as equals in governing with men in the public sphere, they must have equal rights. And the ability to regulate family size is essential because, as explained above, it provides women time to focus on public as well as domestic affairs.

We have highlighted negative features that urge us to action. We now highlight positive features and events that justify our belief that we now have a unique opportunity to achieve our two objectives and more. These features are as follows:

During the past century, the global community has moved significantly in the direction of global peace by focusing on peace issues related to peace that are not merely local or regional. All the following bear witness to a surging human desire for an end to cycles of international wars, even to planet-wide harmony [see Shifferd (10)(11)]. Examples include 1) Adoption of international laws and treaties, 2) Rise in concern for international justice (e.g., the International Court of Justice), 3) Spread of international development projects, 4) Rise of global conferences, 5) Rise of global NGOs, 6) Surge globally in the use of non-violent direct action, 7) Spread of peace research and education, 8) Increased teaching of nonviolent conflict resolution beginning in grade school, 9) Decline in the prestige of war, 10) Spread of democratic systems, 11) Human rights principle recognized, and establishment of the United Nations, 12) Trend toward peace-oriented religion, 13) Rise in a planetary sense of human oneness, and more. What FMM is pursuing, which at first seems fantasy, will at some point be eagerly welcomed and supported far and wide!
The historically recent invention of means for virtually instantaneous global communication enables the global community to act as one, facilitating the ability to secure and maintain our two goals.
The invention of digital means now enables a specified authority, as described in a universal treaty, to monitor communications and other relevant sources from all nations for any signs that a nation is preparing a physical or a crippling digital attack on any other nation. Preventative warnings can immediately be sent to a potential aggressor that their actions have been detected. Consequently, prevention of war can function by anticipatory means of the united global community, not by punitive means such as sanctions after the fact. An example of the basics of such a treaty is described on the website Project Enduring Peace. (12)

In the past we have in good faith produced treaties we hoped would provide lasting global security. And we have learned that if they rely on voluntary compliance, they fail. We have done our homework. We know what will not work and are thereby equipped to put in place what will: rapid and universal preventative action against a potential aggressor.

Because our sense is that this precious window of opportunity is swiftly closing, we have set deadlines, for us and for the global community. When these deadlines, as set out on our website and conveyed by digital media, are not yet met, women around the globe of the Founding Mothers Movement, and all allied with us, will engage in increasingly high profile, non-violent protest or disobedience—marches, sit-ins, boycotts, work stoppages, hunger strikes, etc., until our two “objectives” are realized.

Ending international wars and thereby encouraging an historical shift away from erroneous assumptions about the inevitability of human violence, and doing so using nonviolent means, is an enormous challenge. Success will require hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of citizens from all nations to demand of their leaders that they sign the treaty. Consequently, to meet that challenge, Founding Mothers Movement will invite to join us, any and all organizations and persons whose own interests would benefit from an established international peace. So for example, what about civil wars? Ending international war will free up resources to tackle the many root causes of civil wars. All of the United Nation’s seventeen Sustainable Developmental Goals and everyone working on them will benefit from resources that might otherwise have gone to the war industry. Achieving those seventeen goals is key to eliminating the major root causes of civil wars. At that historical point, to be deeply desired, human society on planet Earth may hope to finally achieve an enduring peace.

We call therefore, on all of Mother Earth’s citizens to participate in this epic struggle. Will we aim for a Star Trek or Star Wars future? If we cannot or will not change direction, those who come after us may well inherit a dystopian, Star Wars alternative.

We are fully aware that the above extraordinary actions will require extraordinary effort, negotiation, compromise, and wisdom. They are, however, necessary to create a less violent, more nurturing future in which men, women, and children reach their full potential and find happiness and joy. A future in which all of humanity flourishes in a thousand positive directions.

Even as we women of the Founding Mothers Movement carry out the daily tasks that keep our spectacularly varied societies functioning in our families, at work, and in our communities, we pledge our best efforts and whole hearts to realize the above two “objectives.” However long it takes. Failure is not an option. Failure will not be our legacy.

Hand, Judith. 2018. War and Sex and Human Destiny. San Diego, CA: Questpath Publishing, pp. 22-28. Amazon.com and Kindle version. Hand, Judith. 2018. War and Sex and Human Destiny. The full text, sans bibliography and footnotes, here: www.afww.org/war-and-sex-and-human-destiny.html
Biological differences between men and women with respect to physical aggression and social stability. https://www.afww.org/biological-differences.html.
Why can’t a woman be more like a man? Video at the bottom. https://www.afww.org/videos.html.
Hand, Judith. 2018. War and Sex and Human Destiny. San Diego, CA: Questpath Publishing, pp. 35-43. Amazon.com and Kindle version. Hand, Judith. 2018. War and Sex and Human Destiny. The full text, sans bibliography and index, here: https://www.afww.org/war-and-sex-and-human-destiny.html.
Hand, Judith. 2014. “Women as warriors.” Shift: The Beginning of War, The Ending of War. San Diego, CA: Questpath Publishing, pp. 113-125.
Zakaria, Fareed. 1997. The rise of illiberal democracies. Foreign Affairs. 76, No.6: 22-43.
Eisler, Riane & Douglas P. Fry. 2019. Nurturing our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Hand, Judith. 2018. War and Sex and Human Destiny. San Diego, CA: Questpath Publishing, pp. 9,16, 25.
Project Enduring Peace: “Rationale”. https://www.afww.org/pep-rationale.html
Ibid. Hand. 2018. War and Sex and Human Destiny. San Diego, CA: Questpath Publishing, pp. 77-83
Shifferd, Kent D. 2011. From War to Peace. A Guide to the Next Hundred Years. McFarland & Company, Inc.
One view of how such a treaty might work is suggested by Project Enduring Peace: “How the Treaty Would Work”: https://www.afww.org/pep-how-it-would-work.html).

PEP: ​Grievances & Intentions

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PEP: Grievances & Intentions