The concept of power is misunderstood. We see it all over the media, politics & government, academics, leadership, and relationships. Most often, power is distorted into a hierarchical form, a chain of command. Which is true but, only partially true. There is another side to power rarely talked about, and it deserves a voice.
The Shape of Power
Power is everywhere. From kings conquering empires and committing genocide. To the quiet power of love and connection between people and communities.
It moves through families as silence, abandonment and favoritism. It governs classrooms and workplaces through fear or mistrust. It shapes governments, economies, cultures and markets. It also shows up in the body as sexuality … raw, undeniable and impossible to fake.
In each encounter we make, the concept of power can bend either way.
Power over … domination, control, diminishment.
Power with … connection, illumination, expansion
We can feel the difference in our bodies. The tightening of our throats when we hesitate to speak or when we are silenced. The expansion in our chest, breathing more easily, when we are given the chance to be heard, to tell our story and be seen.
Power is never a neutral concept. It always shapes who we are becoming … as individuals and as a human race.
First Lessons: The Family
This is our first taste of power.
Some parents were heavy handed, ruling with anger and punishment. Pinning siblings against each other, playing favorites, and demanding loyalty at any cost. More often, though, power hid in silence, in what could not be said. Truths were buried for the sake of keeping the family intact, even if it meant tearing the family apart from the inside.
This is power over … thriving on secrecy, shame and control.
And then the truth teller arrives. The one who speaks the unsayable. Who questions and refuses the inherited family storyline script. Their intention may be repair, but their reflection can sometimes feel like an attack on the status quo. They get accused of being disloyal, cruel and judgmental.
Because power over cannot tolerate reflections or mirrors. To reflect is to be a rebel.
What the truth teller offers is not the concept of “power over” but the invitation into power with. To face problems together. To be a compassionate listener, even when it hurts to hear. To risk honesty for something more than the silence. For the sake of real love and connection.
Families can rise, or they can fall apart, on this choice.
Work & Authority
I worked at a government community college for 25 years, through six different administrations. This same choice between power over and power with plays out in every workplace as well.
One president of the college I worked at shoved his decisions down everyone’s throats. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.” Not many people had the courage to stand up to him. Fear drove obedience. But obedience did not inspire anyone to be a better person or improve their performance. It encouraged people to protect themselves. Not step out of line. Work to rule. Creativity died.
Another president expressed appreciation often. “We are all in this together.” He held his authority, sharing successes and decision-making responsibility. He welcomed every voice. He kept an open-door policy and encouraged conversation. Trust grew. People gave more than they were asked. Not because they were afraid, but because they felt seen.
It isn’t about questioning authority. The real question is: how is authority held?
In the Classroom
I saw the same power dynamics in the classroom with students. There is always a hierarchy between teacher and student. The teacher holds the experience and curriculum… and the student must demonstrate their acquired knowledge.
But what happens when a student takes longer to learn than the time allotted? Who is responsible for the learning?
In modern academics, the power over concept dominates. Administrators are responsible for the budget, matriculation numbers and graduation rates. They pressure the teachers to move students through the system. When students don’t make the cut, the teachers are blamed. Money and control drive this power over model.
I chose a different approach, the power with model. Students are responsible for their own learning. I cannot make them learn. Just like in life, we cannot make anyone do anything. What I can do is make myself available, create the space for the students to practice, and walk beside them.
If a student drops out because they realize they want to do something else, I still believe I have done my job as a teacher. Because education is not just about skills, but about helping students find direction, purpose, and a path that belongs to them.
Politics and Culture
Stretch the lens wider, and the stakes sharpen.
Fascistic regimes are built on power over. Look at what is happening in America and other nations. Resources are being hoarded by the rich, promises made and remain undelivered. Team members who disagree do not verbalize, which serves to control public opinion and stifle debate. Fear rules. Safety is guaranteed, but only if you obey.
Corruption is power over. Manufacturing scarcity so the few can control the many.
Capitalism carries the same power over principles. Relationships… human, ecological, relational … are reduced to resources for profit making. Culture is flattened by stripping away our multi-dimensional complexities and sold as something to be consumed. Big-box stores replace the messy resilience of local markets. People are reduced to consumers whose worth is measured by their spending.
But there are other ways.
Local markets are noisy, chaotic, alive and sometimes overwhelming. They embody power with. They build resilience by shortening the distance between the people and the resources that sustain life. Sellers are makers. Buyers are neighbors. Exchange becomes relationship. These roles multiply by restoring dignity beyond “consumerism”. Community is built through commerce.
Every culture leans one way or the other. Toward domination or cooperation. Toward diminishment or illumination. And the consequences are lived inside our bodies, our economies, and shows up on our streets.
Sexuality: The Body’s Laboratory
Nowhere is the difference between power over and power with felt more nakedly than in sex. The body becomes the place where “domination over” and “connection with” show their truth. Flesh doesn’t lie.
“Power Over” Sex
The conquest … and one of the oldest scripts. Penis power!
He takes her. Owns her. She yields. Sometimes resistance provokes his violence. His penetration, his orgasm – the end of the story. Her climax? Her pleasure? Optional. Secondary. Sometimes not even tended to or considered.
This is power over… Domination confused with intimacy. Submission confused with connection. Possession mistaken for love. Control mistaken for safety. Presence replaced by performance, masking the vulnerable act of truly being with another. The freedom to be fully yourself is love.
Power over thrives on illusion. Feeding on the gap between appearance and reality. Offering only the shadows of what we long for and need: safety, belonging, and even love. But behind the curtain, what’s revealed is control instead of protection, dependence instead of belonging, possession instead of love.
“Power With” Sex
Now, turn it all around … pussy power!
The woman’s pleasure is the priority. She comes first. This is where everything changes.
The penis is no longer the conqueror but a partner and co-creator. Her orgasm is not the icing on the cake, it becomes the entire meal, and you don’t get to skip it. Sex shifts from a goal-oriented race to an expansion of connection and love. Desire is no longer taken for granted… it is a shared commodity.
When sex is practiced as power with, bodies fuse in union. Lovers become undone together. Not by taking from each other, but by giving.
The BDSM Paradox
No arena shows this truth sharper than BDSM. From the amateur and outsider perspective, it looks like power over. The bondage, submission, pain and commands.
But deeper on the inside, the dynamic flips, and it tells a completely different story. Every action, every scene, rests on trust and negotiation. With each swing of the flogger, every spanking, every command is ruled by consent. The dom’s power is made real only because the sub chooses it to be.
It’s not the sub being of service to the dom. It’s the dom in service to the submissive. Submission becomes the authority. The safe word is the true center of gravity.
This is where we can see the paradox of power over versus power with. The one who is bound and submissive is free and the one who we think is in control is serving.
Flesh as Revelation
In the logic of power over, sex collapses into a performance. The body is treated as object rather than participant. Bodies meet, without honor, without compassion. Pleasure becomes an extraction, intimacy simulated, and the encounter reduced to pure friction without embodied intimate recognition. What passes as connection is only the illusion of closeness — release mistaken for relationship, dominance mistaken for connection.
In contrast, power with sexuality shifts into discovery. A reciprocal exchange. Intimacy is not taken for granted but co-created. Needs are exchanged, not imposed upon. Giving and receiving are in union. Intimacy grows through shared vulnerability, through the willingness to learn each other’s humanness. Here, sexuality becomes a practice ground, showing us that genuine connection cannot be built on control, but only on co-creation.
Moral Repair
Power is not only about who leads or who follows. It sets the conditions in which our moral lives grow—conditions that can either strengthen us or slowly wear us down.
David Brooks speaks of illuminators and diminishers—the people who expand humanity and the ones who want to shrink it.
Power over diminishes, severing trust. It promotes silence, compliance, and self-betrayal until people forget the strength of their own voice.
Power with illuminates. It multiplies strength. It builds togetherness. It creates belonging. It restores our dignity.
The crisis of our time is not intelligence—we are already drowning in information. It is not technology—we are wired beyond measure. The crisis is relational. We have forgotten what it means to have power with. We are living through a crisis of intimacy.
Moral repair begins here. In remembering that strength is not found in putting others down but in helping them stand. Not in possession or control, but in showing up honestly, vulnerably, willing to be seen. Not through dramatic gestures, but through ordinary everyday acts of generosity and kindness. Listening without interrupting or offering unsolicited advice. Showing ourselves without deception and carrying power in a way that we can share.
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