Womanhood & Reproductive Technologies
an interview on Meaning Making Machines, Part 2
Artificial wombs, egg freezing, birth control, the bodily wisdom of womanhood, uniting the masculine and feminine…
These are just some of the many topics Simone Leon and I cover in part two of our interview on her podcast, Meaning Making Machines. (Part 1 here.) This whole conversation is maybe my favorite I’ve ever done a podcast. I love Simone’s interview style, her wide-ranging questions and angles…. and I look forward to listening to her upcoming episodes!
From Simone Leon:
This week, we continue our discussion of the feminine, diving deeper into the psychological and spiritual implications of birth control, egg freezing, and the concept of artificial womb technology. We speak about the wisdom of the female experience as being rooted in the body, and what that means for us as we navigate life in disembodied modernity.
We speak about our experiences and thoughts on birth control, and how women’s bodies became the testing grounds for new technologies. We contemplate the consequences of a post-pregnancy world, and we dream about a future that full embraces the feminine experience.
I found this conversation very powerful. Though it may need to be said there is absolutely no judgment from either of us towards women who choose to use these technologies, I believe it is important to speak about their implications.
While this episode is mostly about the female experience, I hope that male listeners will appreciate it too. My (perhaps naive) wish is for both sexes to be interested and invested in one another’s unique humanity.
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Wrote that last comment before I had actually watched the whole interview..... I really love your dialogue at the end about the need for balance between Masculine and Feminine, men and women, and for the deep respect and affection between all of us that most people want to live within. I do feel like with the discussion around religion, there's this rather modern competitive approach where it's like "Do we have the Masculine religion "win"?" or do we need to make sure the women come "first"?". This is all Americans saying this, of course- we can be such a culture of hustling and competition.
I like a religion where all of life wins. I didn't grow up going to church, my parents left the religious stuff but kept the morality- and eventually decided that the Episcopal Church was a place that had a God that felt right. Christ is actually bigger than Jesus the supposedly male avatar, Christ is an energetic concept like the Buddha..... and because Episcopalians honor the Feminine and have so many female priests now, in some services we use terms like Mother God and Father God, Source of All Life, etc. etc.
God is simply the Infinite. The Jesus and Magdalene path is one route to the Infinite I rather like and try my best to practice. But it is very much aligned with Riane Eisler's ideas about "Partnership Societies". I'm a man who likes to be around and learn from women, and maybe now and again they have been able to learn from me. We need each other. Adam and Eve may piss each other off in the Garden, but humans are here to Love and Learn, not Compete or "Win" over on one another. I hate that kind of speech.
True Love is beyond a partial victory. It involves lots of compromise and negotiation, lots of back and forth. It is all relational. All stuff I can be bad at, so I like to learn more :)
Another great one, this is the familiar boring on the surface straight white guy who's such a big fan of y'alls work. Sylvia and Simone both, though I've been tracking Sylvia's work for many years, only just encountered Simone.
I advocate for the reality of a sacred pattern in nature, and I believe our sacred patterns of Masculine and Feminine still matter within that. Apparently in 2025 in the modern West even just saying such a thing can get you boxed in as a right-wing reactionary, and I know first and second hand that there are a number of pretty liberal and educated women who are no believers in an oppressive patriarchy, but who have now gone down a right wing political path (in America that means Trump) solely because they no longer like what the late stage sexual liberated society tastes like. It's wild and kind of disturbing to see- how are Trump and Vance going to defend women and the feminine?- but gals who were comfortably liberal a decade ago have drifted into arenas that will probably end up hurting them. I've talked to them, listened to them, and can tell there needs to be a Third Way. Something beyond OnlyFans libertinism and Vance-like reactionary politics. I believe in the Third Way for Sacred Sexuality and Regenerative Intimacy, two things that were never really taught to me in the two sex education classes I took by 10th grade.
That's the bigger picture though, I also just want to express my admiration for the bravery you two are taking in having these conversations. It's rare the depth and openness with which you guys are discussing such topics. I am kind of totally against whatever stage our "sex for sale" era is at- I'm not super comfortable with the high tech birth control, babies coming from frozen eggs, people in oppressive situations calling themselves "sex workers", and a kind of desecrated vision of sexuality that isn't so much about sexuality but about America as a shopping mall. Equally, I believe that our Sexuality can and should be the most beautiful and honored element of our human experience, both within the context of conceiving and raising children and then also for pure pleasure and affection between humans. So I also hate this new age misogyny and a kind of reversion to a made up 1950s where these Little Patriarchal households create a fake Paradise. Whatever happened to natural sexuality? To the natural joy of our bodies? Natural orgasms, natural female and male pleasure, natural moon cycles for natural bodies on a natural planet. Speaking as a man who loves sex and loves and appreciates women, I know that's what all of my good guy friends want. We don't like the modern options based on the cheap, the fast, and the shallow. We want to get back to deep. To get back to the "inconvenience" of the sacred patterns that all religions are pointing us to and how most of human society operated before the industrial revolution.
I hate an oppressive Patriarchy. And I don't like a flip version Matriarchy is the answer. How about Sacred Balance? How about natural pleasure? And yes, natural child conception and child raising is a wonderful thing that we know how to do as creatures. This leads me to my radical belief that there is a big majority coalition between more conservative religious people and liberated women and men who all want a Sacred path. We have so much more in common than we are told by the media. We don't want desecration with a shopping mall approach, and we also don't want to oppress women, oppress men, or create a new-Taliban vision of Paradise. The name "Eve" in Genesis means "Spirit of Life", so without the Feminine being honored, there is no lifeforce. Us men are merely the dust of the earth without the Feminine to shelter, protect, and love.
People just want to live and love naturally. Back to Balance. Back to our Bodies. Away from the robot and AI hellish vision of the future. Back to the Earth. Keep it up guys, this is precious work, and peace and blessings on your path ahead.