Partnership Language and Media

In Chapter IV, I discussed how language operates as a social institution to teach us the values, attitudes, and beliefs of our society. Our dominator legacy is deeply embedded in the language we use and the ways we have learned to communicate. Since language acts as such a powerful social institution, it is also a great place to begin to create a partnership culture. “We need a language that connects us to the heart of our human experience—our values, dreams, desires, and needs” (Hart, 2004, p. 115). We need language that liberates us from the limiting either/or perspectives of a dominator culture and inspires the unlimited both/and perspectives of a partnership culture. We need language (and styles of communication) that help us focus on the ways in which we are connected as human beings, more than the ways in which we are different (which serves the dominator values of ranking human beings). In Chapter V, I discussed how media teach us the values, attitudes, and beliefs of a dominator culture via the persistent use of stereotypical images and messages. To create the climate for partnership in IT, we need new representations of women and people of color in relation to technology in books, magazines, television, film, and advertising. We need to break free of the “geek” stereotype and show more complex human beings portrayed as developers, users, and beneficiaries of technology. We need to move outside of a narrow Amerocentric lens regarding the ways in which we think about and envision technology and its uses. Creating this kind of change may seem daunting, but it need not be. People often resist participating in change because they see society as a rigid mechanism that’s “always been this way” or “just the way things are.” However, we need to shift away from this dominator view of society as a machine in which people are “expendable cogs” (Eisler & Loye, 1990, p. 185); this attitude contributes to a lack of responsibility towards being part of the change. “If we deny our power to affect people, then we don’t have to worry about taking responsibility for how we use it or, more significant, how we don’t” (Johnson, 2006, p. 133). The truth is that individuals interact with the larger social institutions, and those social institutions can be changed by that interaction. To create a partnership society, you must adopt the view of society as a living organism that you are co-creating with others. This will make it easier to claim responsibility for your part in reifying our dominator system or moving towards partnership.