The Lost Middle
Sometimes themes do not emerge as a conscious choice, but as an inner necessity. As if certain developments in the world slowly accumulate until looking away is no longer possible. This theme arose from such an experience.
Years ago, when I first watched The Handmaid's Tale, I saw a dystopia. A suffocating fictional reality about patriarchal power, religious extremism and control over the female body. Disturbing, yet far removed from my own reality.
Now that I'm watching the series again, that distance suddenly feels unsettlingly smaller.
Today, I see a world in which women’s rights are once again under pressure. A world in which abortion rights are being rolled back, online misogyny is growing and women are increasingly reduced to objects of consumption, control or ideological projection. At the same time, I see a culture in which many men are still taught that emotions are weakness, vulnerability is humiliating and empathy is something that must be suppressed in order to remain “strong.”
This series of essays departs from the conviction that these developments are not separate from one another.
Patriarchy does not only oppress women; it simultaneously alienates men from their inner lives. And it's precisely when people become disconnected from their own vulnerability that relationships with others more easily become rooted in power rather than reciprocity.
Where empathy disappears, love eventually disappears as well.
By The Lost Middle, I don't mean political moderation or a safe middle ground between extremes. The middle I'm writing about is a human space: the place where strength and vulnerability can still meet, where autonomy coexists with connectedness and where the other is not approached as an object, enemy or possession, but as a fully human subject.
In our current time, that middle feels increasingly difficult to reach. As though empathy is slowly giving way to ideology, power and alienation. As though we are forgetting how to truly be present with ourselves and with one another.
And yet, I do not believe this middle has disappeared forever. It has simply faded from view. Lost within a culture that rewards control more often than inner life. This series is therefore not only an exploration of dehumanization, but above all a search for what might still be recovered.
I'm the mother of both a son and a daughter. I teach my son that emotions are not weakness, but serve a purpose. That he's allowed to cry, to feel pain and to be vulnerable without losing any part of his dignity or strength. I teach my daughter the same, but alongside that I also teach her that her voice matters. That she has the right to set and protect boundaries. That her body belongs to her and that only she has the right to decide over it.
But beneath that upbringing, something else also lives: fear.
A maternal, and at times all-encompassing, fear of everything that could happen to her in a world where violence against women remains a daily reality. A world in which girls learn from an early age to stay alert. A world in which I want my daughter to learn how to defend herself, not because I believe the world is inherently evil, but because I know she will have to move through it differently as a girl.
The essays that will be placed here are not an accusation against men. Nor are they a plea for simplistic enemy images. I don't believe human beings can be reduced to such black-and-white tinking. I do, however, believe that we are living in a time in which empathy, inner life and human dignity are increasingly under pressure, and that women are often the first, and the hardest, to be affected by this.
And no: not all men. I genuinely don't believe that. I have men in my life who are loving, empathetic and emotionally intelligent. But it is almost always men who commit violence against women. This series is also about that. About the social, cultural, psychological and philosophical structures that underlie this reality. About the manosphere and emotional alienation. About objectification and the crisis of masculinity. About violence against women and the fragile layer of civilization upon which human equality rests.
Ultimately, the question hidden beneath all these subjects is this:
What happens to a society when inner life disappears and connection gives way to control?
