DEEP THOUGHT SERIES

Will women be the saucy French maids of technofascism?

Andreea Petre-Gonçalves

 Ideas / Conversations  | Sat 8th Nov | 5-7pm

Even as we look down the barrel of the gun that is fascism enabled by technology, it’s still awkward to talk about the things that communism got right. Apart from pulling whole generations from the indignity of subsistence and ensuring unparalleled social provision, one thing that communism also did was deliver feminism - from above.

From comrades

While that might sound distasteful, and it sure as hell was a long way from perfect, it did mean that growing up behind the Iron Curtain in the 80s, there was never a reason to suspect inequality between men and women. Everyone was a comrade. Women pursued science careers and had access to leadership that might have delighted their Western counterparts. To this day Eastern Europe has notably higher proportions of women doctors, scientists, and tech specialists than do countries that have enjoyed the more lauded freedoms of capitalism.

This is the point at which apologies and caveats are expected, and clear professions of faith that communism was also bad. Comparisons between then and now are however useful, as we take fast strides towards a new period of authoritarianism in human history, a fascist takeover of the architecture of the state solidified by the almighty tech-enabled distortion machine of social media and AI.

To French maids

Far-right autocracy has women back in the kitchen as trad wives, pushing out babies without paracetamol. Technology enshittifies our existence by proliferating misogyny on social media and through biased large language models that reshape social reality. Whole new generations of boys are steeped in dehumanising sexual norms driven by increasingly degrading and ubiquitous pornography. Before long, the cultural and social gains of the last few decades will seem like a woke hallucination.

The iconography of technofascism will have us in aprons and suspenders, in service to the bros, the pater familias, the mighty boss man. In the second brush with European autocracy of our lifetimes, we will not be comrades, but objects in service to strongmen, saucy French maids in all seriousness, without the nudge and without the wink.

Things don’t have to be so. Join us for a steadfast conversation.

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ABOUT THE HOST

Andreea Petre-Goncalves was 8 years old when totalitarian Communism collapsed overnight in her native Romania. She saw then how quickly yesterday’s absolute truth can become tomorrow reviled atrocity. She knows that societal narratives can shift fast, and when they do, they make deep system re-set possible. For two decades she worked for international development, human rights, health and sustainability in the EU institutions and international NGOs. In 2019 she set up Flare, a Brussels-based think-and-do tank that experiments with practical ways of shifting the collective ideas we hold of what is normal and desirable. This work builds on 15 years of her researching and writing about societal narrative shifts. She is a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader and a member of Global Diplomacy Lab.

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ADDITIONAL INFO 

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Small (10-15)	Available on request