What is the female word for dictator?

Dictator?

There is no female variant for the word dictator.

I wonder if it could be that the number of female dictators are so minimal and that is why no one has felt the urgency to invent a female variant?

It remains conjecture.

Right now, on the world stage, I see mostly men with dictatorial traits. They advocate (trade) wars, they appropriate land and resources, promise cease-fires and keep attacking and sending young adults to the front. These, often old and confused men, seem out of tune with how a human life can be lived with dignity. Bathed in their selfishness, they seem disconnected from reality and I hear them speaking in the language of the strongest and the most powerful. I see them deftly excluding, containing and imprisoning groups of people. It is the competition of populists, an arm wrestling of who can MANipulate best. Wins and victories are widely publicised and losses massively denied.

If I want to look away from this I tend to hide in the fake facts of the fantasy world of my sacred screens. Screens that distract me from what it should really be about and on which the algorithm puts me on the track of following or being followed. It absorbs me completely. And then I haven't even properly delved into the prompt of the artificial intelligence that advises me the solutions for a new coexistence, that does within 10 minutes the work that a team of humans have weeks of work to do. Can I as a human still connect with the other if I am not collaborating and living together? I imagine artificial intelligence could be a boon if, within those same 10 minutes, it can burst the inflated egos of influencers, the monkey rock status of sales & marketing gurus, the influence of populist shouters and confused old dictators like a bubble. What prompt do you need for that? I am afraid that if you want to use artificial intelligence to make life more humane by, for instance, protecting our planet from depletion and monitoring the balance between taxability and recoverability of humans and Earth. We will then first have to start defining our shared intention on how we want to live together. Who do we live for? For money? For power? For the state or the market? Or for each other, for ourselves and for the Earth that gives us life?

If, with all scientific and technological developments, you would first ask the question: What will this mean and what consequences will it have for the next seven generations? Would we have acted differently and better understood the consequences of invasive technology and social media? Could we have foreseen these evolving into tools of influence, manipulation and fake news?

I am reading a book by primatologist Frans de Waal; Otherwise. It deals with gender and sex differences in humans and other animals. In doing so, he draws on his vast knowledge of our two closest relatives: chimpanzees and bonobos. What is the secret of bonobos' female-led peaceful society? And what can we learn from male dominance and territoriality in chimpanzees?

I personally think that looking back at history, we have lived like chimpanzees for a very long time. A society where the right of the strongest and smartest counts, and where this regularly manifests itself in oppression, violence and murder. The fact that we have lived from male supremacy for so long has ensured that we are conditioned in everyday life. That through upbringing we grow up in an environment where we tend to ridicule, exclude, belittle and discriminate against others. We do this without thinking about it; it has become automatic. We let ourselves be led the fear of being excluded ourselves because we want to belong somewhere. We all have to be average. But no one is the same. Just act normal and you'll be crazy enough. Peer pressure driven by our own assumptions and judgements is crippling. I personally think history has repeatedly told us that we are stuck in this vicious cycle until we choose to change the way we treat each other. For a brief moment, there was a hopeful ray of hope when, after the French Revolution, we called for living free, equal and together. But to this day, we have been unable to realise that.

I think now is the time, over the next few centuries, to start shaping and engaging in the women-led peaceful society. Let us take an example from the bonobos and maybe we will arrive at the free, equal and society. A new period in history where we make space to discover and seek the right balance between free and coexistence from our feminine attributes. By seeing each other as equal among equals. 

If I start living from tomorrow with the well-being, meaning and connection for the next 7 generations in mind will I automatically create a better world? Suppose on this basis I can take my place in the community acting from love and trust. Then I learn to live from the inside out. Then I learn to see what nature gives and takes and I can make the balance between giving and receiving myself. And thus see earthly circumstances as a mirror of my actions. In my experience, this is the ‘female’ in me that needs more space so that I no longer have to measure up to the male egos on the monkey rock and the dictating alpha male.

Pieter Hessel | living together artist