Symmetry and Society

Fallen leaves

How Feminism Might Still Save the World

Halfway through the new aria I composed last spring for Blued Trees, which will be presented Oct. 30 at the Anita Rogers Gallery, the wife of a fossil fuel executive accused of ecocide, sings, "… now he shines brightest for his shareholders." In the gallery, I will also show the documentation of the preview for the opera we produced last summer, in which the character of the executive and his patriarchal world is somewhat revealed.

In my own life, what Feminism has mean to me is the aspiration to an equal say in relationships, the good and the bad, to find a symmetry in differences, whether about parenting or fionancial decisions. That aspiration was always part of a wider vision of an interdependent world. In the aria I wrote, the wife no longer feels the warmth of her husband’s light. Their intimate relationship has become as asymmetrical as the wider relationships between his job as a fossil fuel executive and the Earth he is extracting.