One myth. Many worlds.

Give & Take Universe exists to turn feminist story into feminist action.

Feminism means believing in women’s equality and acting to achieve it. The more I look at how deeply patriarchy shapes our institutions, relationships, and expectations, the less convinced I am that it can simply be reformed from within.

Give & Take Universe therefore explores a more radical path: withdrawing our labor, money, attention, and cooperation from patriarchal systems that depend upon our participation—and acting collectively to build egalitarian alternatives grounded in female autonomy.

Inspired by the ancient Hymn to Demeter, in which the goddess Demeter withdraws her life-giving power and the earth falls into famine until her daughter is returned to her, G&T reimagines women’s withdrawal from patriarchy as a nonviolent path to equality, democracy, and planetary survival.

Across film, television, theater, music, and public performance, G&T centers women who stop cooperating with systems that exploit them—and together begin building systems that honor female autonomy, mutual care, shared power, equality, and life itself.

This is not entertainment as escape.
This is story as consciousness-raising for collective change.

This is art that asks: What if women stopped giving to the world that keeps taking from them?

Essays by Susan Guggenheim on feminism, culture and storytelling on Substack