My Values + Feminist Business Practices

 

Mini-Manifesta

 

The new culture of care:

  • The responsibility to uphold the ethic of care belongs to all of us, and extends to the natural world and the planet itself

  • A reclaiming of compassion that allows us to be our most ferocious selves while standing in it- upholding values while not taking shit.

  • Self-care as a gateway to community care and liberation, and vice-versa

  • Space for expressions of full humanity

  • Autonomy and agency in decisions around how to give care

  • Compensation and protection that reflects care as a valued and valuable act

  • Abundance of choice and enthusiastic consent

Feminist caregiving requires consent.

Feminist caregiving requires conservation.

Feminist caregiving requires inter-independence.

Feminist caregiving requires story-telling.

Feminist caregiving requires regeneration.

Feminist caregiving requires expansiveness.

Care is power. We are the tenders and stewards of a new culture, birthed from quiet rage and deep love, and that power is in the marrow of our bones.

It’s time.

Feminist Business Practices:

(Heavily inspired by Kelly Diels and Lauren Elizabeth, and this article by Tema Okun)

 

As I write this, my business is still emerging, and is mostly this website and an Instagram account. My “team” is me, my website developer (Hi, Laura!*), and a lot of apps and software subscriptions. Which means that some practices I don’t fully know yet, or don’t apply, or I don’t totally have answers for.

(*Hi, Allison!)

But which also means I’m in the best position to bake my feminist business practices right in, rather than trying to distract people from the bad taste with frosting and sprinkles.

Because a feminist business is not just a business run by a woman, and a DEI-informed business is not just one that has people with marginalized identities in it. If those businesses are still aligned with patriarchal, white supremacist, and other oppressive values, it doesn’t matter whose picture is on the website, or who’s got a seat at the table.

 

My overarching feminist business practice right now is to untangle. 

This is an ongoing and unending process, but I can’t go further without being in right relationship to it.  Untangling from the capitalist hustle and burnout culture, from traditional hierarchical organizational structures, from perfectionism, from what makes a qualified candidate, from secrecy around pay, from time clocks, and from scarcity.  Untangling from my personal privileges and learning how to betray them.  Untangling from girlboss and mompreneur and white feminism in general.  Untangling from toxic positivity, diet culture, spiritual bypassing, and good vibes only.  

If you’ve ever had to untangle three necklaces and a pair of earrings from your travel bag, or a string of Christmas lights that you swear you rolled up nice and neat on January 3rd last year, then you know that the untangling is delicate, tedious work (and often you spend 20 minutes doing it, just to realize that you were actually re-tangling everything tighter). 

So my second overarching business practice is to mind my nervous system.  

This shit isn’t for the faint of heart (the building of a business nor the untangling).  But neither are oppressive systems or an oppressive business structure.  So if I have to be in the shit one way or the other, I’ll choose the work of untangling, and I’ll stay steady by being with my body.  This means I will stay aware of what happens when I am challenged and feel defensive about a mistake I made (even those with good intentions).  I will not avoid accountability just because it feels bad, nor will I avoid compassion for myself just because it feels too self-indulgent.  I will know when I, or my team, needs rest, play, or different boundaries.  I will listen to my nervous system when it is about to erupt in danger signals, and not push past limits.

And, for my final overarching feminist business practice, I will be translucent. 

I am the creator of this business, I am not the business.  My clients, my engagers, my observers, my critics, and my trolls will not have access to all of me.  I will be honest and open about my politics and values of social justice, but I won’t feel pressured to speak on every issue or event (there are a lot of fucking issues and events and a lot of people more qualified to speak on many of them) in order to perform my solidarity.  I will build from my experience as a mother, but you will rarely, if ever, see my child (same goes for my house, my car, my meals, or my vacations).  

I will be clear about my business practices and who I am equipped to serve, and I will always show up to my work in a full expression of my personality, spirit, and body of knowledge, but I will also maintain and protect the parts of me and my life that are sacred and not for this setting.  And, while I do believe in the dignity and worth of all people, and hold compassion even for those whose ideologies I find abhorrent and hateful, (Mens Rights Activists, All Lives Matter, the alt-right, MAGA and QAnon supporters, TERFs, MLMs, to name a few), my job ends at that compassion.  It is not my journey to try and educate or change someone who just wants to sow chaos and violence.

 

Here are some more concrete practices:

  • I post my prices on my website so that you can let them land, see how they feel, and make your move from there.  I respect anyone’s decision to move on, while also being unapologetic about my pricing.

  • I do not charge for payment plans, and will happily discuss extended ones as well.

  • For every five full price clients, I offer one spot for reduced fee or trade (and I won’t ask you to prove your income or tell me a trauma tale to do so).

  • As I build, I will offer more free or low-cost options to access my work, such as workshops and webinars.  Currently, you can receive my free newsletter, Take Good Care, and my free seven-day email series, Hearty, <here.>

  • I hire very little at this point, but those who I do set their own rates and I pay them.  If I am in the position to hire in the future, I will take lived experience and other non-traditional skills as qualifications as much as I may take work experience or education.  

  • People with marginalized bodies and identities will always be first in line.

  • I am beginning to audit my software and apps to try and include as many founded by women and people of color as possible, and to give money to founders whose values align with mine.

  • I am working on being more structured and accountable in my donations, mutual aid, and community care, rather than frantically giving when trauma and tragedy strike. Right now my pledge is 10% of income, but I would like to have more of a process with this.  I imagine having several running contributions, a portion for mutual aid, and a portion to give to my community. 

  • I am deepening my knowledge of land acknowledgements and landback initiatives (with guidance from Trevia Woods), and make donations to the rightful owners of the land on which I live and work.

  • I don’t allow toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, cultural appropriation, or mindset-shaming in my programs.

  • I use citation and signal-boosting to honor my lineage and inspirations and as an ethical practice.  If alerted that I overlooked citing someone, or that I am appropriating from a culture that is not mine, I will fix it immediately and take public accountability for it.

  • Consent is a vital part of my sales and marketing, and I work to check-in and ask for your “refreshed consent” (h/t Kelly Diels) from time to time.

  • I will not guest on podcasts that have majority-White guests, will not sit on majority-White panels, and will not speak at events with majority-White speakers.

  • I do not speak to my clients or audience as if they are broken.  I take aim at politics and policies, not people; systems, not individuals.  I will never shame you or use scarcity as part of my marketing, nor will I promise to “heal” or “fix” anyone.  I am not the authority on your life, not a guru or spiritual leader, and my sales, marketing, and content is designed to help you access and invigorate what’s already there, not design a whole new you.   

  • I am keenly aware of White Feminism and the blinders that come with an abundance of privileges, making it unwelcoming and unsafe for certain bodies.  I know that traditional “female empowerment and equality” is still rooted in establishment, extraction, and exclusion, and I seek to make room for the stories and experiences of everyone who has experienced oppression, not just a privileged few.  

  • Intersectionality and allyship should not be diluted to buzzwords or virtue signalling.  I give them the respect they deserve by acknowledging that I don’t know everything, I won’t pretend to, and I will make mistakes.  That having blind spots and being human and well-intentioned doesn’t absolve me of responsibility. What my best looks like is to educate, read, stand up sometimes, take a seat at others, be loud sometimes, be quiet at others, listen, look, hear, be with, laugh with, hold space for, center, apologize, take accountability, do better, do better, and then keep doing better.  

  • I describe my feminism in these words: Curious, unlearning, committed, uncomfortable, lateral, just, liberatory, collective, grounded, unapologetic, inter-independent, story-based, power-sharing, equitable, grey, nuanced, thoughtful, painful, nourishing, restorative, stewarding, deliberate, iterative, and rooted.

A NOTE ON LANGUAGE AND GENDER (because when you name a thing The Matriarchy, you need some footnotes)

Why The Matriarchy?

Ok, so it’s sort of tongue-in-cheek, as well as imperfect.  The Patriarchy gets so much press, maybe it’s time we talk more about a matriarchy.  For these purposes, I use the word “matriarchy” as an intentional flipping of the patriarchy.  While a patriarchy is hierarchical, paternalistic, individualistic, objective, and oppressive, The Matriarchy is a collective that centers marginalized parents (more on that in a minute) to heal, lead, and collaborate with feminist values and ethics, in order to uplift and care for not only our selves, but our communities, and our cultures (h/t to this article about the Blackfoot Nations original “hierarchy of needs” ).  

A matriarchy is traditionally symbolized by the archetype of The Mother, which is often interpreted as female or feminine. But the qualities of The Matriarchy do not belong to a singular gender, age range, or visual representation.  I separate the qualities of a matriarchy from being exclusive to mothers, or to cis-women. I focus on shared experiences, not made-up gender traits, and recognize that not everyone who is a parent birthed a baby, not every birthing parent is a mother, not every mother has a uterus, and not every person who is a woman or a mother has the same lived experience or socialization (h/t Kerry Ingram and Dr. Devon Price).  

In creating The Matriarchy, I take these qualities, which have traditionally been seen as weak and prone to exploitation, and reclaim them with a ferocious fuck you to systems of oppression. I move them from being meek to fierce and bold.  I enrich them from being barren to being fertile and ripe.  And I move them from being extractive to being generative and expansive.  I use them in this work to steward ferocious, justice-oriented caregiving that is inherently audacious and advantageous, not strictly feminine or maternal, but necessary and vital for everyone to embody.

So what do I mean by “marginalized parents?” Simply, my work holds space for parents and caregivers who hold marginalized gender identities, such as women, queer people, transpeople, and non-binary people.  More specifically, my work centers parents with the direct wounds of “traditional female socialization” and misogyny.

I make that distinction in the interest of full transparency: I am a cis woman.  Most of my clients over my career have been cis women.  While I am working to gain more competency, education, and skill in working with trans and non-binary parents (and in confronting my own gender socialization), and I do not ascribe to TERFism or gender binaries, it would be unethical and reckless of me to say I am highly-practiced in working with trans and nonbinary people, or to not understand why being affirming and accepting is not the same thing as being competent.  I’m aware of the harm and violence I could cause by not being fully oriented to this specific population, and want to make my current limitations explicit so as not to be complicit in that harm.