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When Ukumbwa Sauti and I sat down for this conversation, it wasn’t simply to talk about men.It was to talk about memory. About what patriarchy made us forget: tenderness, belonging, accountability, and the sacredness of being in right relation with ourselves and one another.
Our dialogue was less an interview and more a ceremony of remembrance.What emerged wasn’t just theory; it was curriculum.
“We are carriers of patriarchy,” Ukumbwa said softly.“It is the water we are drinking and existing in. Part of our job is to notice that, and to put down the weapon we’ve been given by default.”
Men’s work, he reminded us, is not a performance of progress, it is a process of putting the weapon down.
Men’s Work as Remembering
In that single statement — we are carriers — lies the truth of this work.Patriarchy is not a mindset; it is a possession, a haunting that lives in our nervous systems.To remember, then, is to become intimate again with what the system demanded we forget.
Ukumbwa called it “sweat equity of the heart.”The hard work of heart work.
“We have to learn to not just identify with the strength of our biceps, but the strength of our heart — and the strength of our vulnerability to stand in our truth as men.”
When men return to their hearts, liberation becomes a shared language again.
The Grief of Unlearning
There was a moment in our conversation where silence felt like scripture.Ukumbwa spoke about leading grief rituals for men, about how necessary it is for men to feel, to weep, to unlearn numbness as survival.
“We’ve been central in so many things,” he said,“but now we’re centering ourselves in violent, manipulative ways. We bring weapons into those spaces — we bring weaponry home. We have to learn to drop that.”
Grief is how the armor cracks.And when the armor cracks, light — and truth — can finally enter.Liberation asks us all to grieve the selves we became under systems of harm.
The Role of Community
In the Dagara tradition, every person carries a sacred role, elder, firekeeper, truth-teller, caretaker.Ukumbwa reminded us that imbalance in one role disturbs the whole ecosystem.To heal patriarchy, men must re-enter community not as leaders of domination but as stewards of balance.
“We have to stand like the forest,” he said.“With a divine mycelial network of connections between us all that help each other live.”
Liberation, then, is not an individual awakening, it is a collective remembering.A re-rooting of humanity back into the soil of interdependence.
Accountability as Sacred Practice
When we spoke about accountability, Ukumbwa said something that echoed through my bones:
“Maybe it’s not about blame — it’s about accountability and responsibility.”
And I replied,
“Accountability is neutral. It’s just a recognition of what is true.”
Accountability, when rooted in love, becomes sacred practice.It is not the weaponization of guilt, it is the witnessing of truth.It’s where power transforms into presence.
Paywall Transition
This is where the conversation becomes practice.
If what we’ve explored so far has stirred something in you, stay with it.The next section moves from reflection to embodiment, with somatic prompts, relational repair practices, and access to the full replay of this conversation.
For the Women Listening
For years I’ve said to white women: you are your men.
Because patriarchy didn’t just train men to dominate, it trained white women to find safety inside that domination.To confuse protection with power.To mistake silence for solidarity.
“Men run when they hear the word patriarchy,” I said in our conversation,“because what they hear is automatic blame — and that’s because so much of anti-patriarchy work has been framed through white feminism, which traps white women in the same systems they’re trying to escape.”
Loving men differently means divesting from the comfort of innocence.It means recognizing that safety built on silence is still supremacy.And liberation asks for more than silence; it asks for surrender.
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