Sabine Winters
When writing this essay, The Moon as Woman, I allowed myself the freedom to think in analogies and to reflect personally on the Moon, while also weaving in the broader discussion about colonialism and patriarchal society in relation to mining the Moon. However, I did not go too deeply into these topics, but instead kept the focus close to myself, reflecting on what is happening in society, connecting it to my own personal experiences, and elaborating on my relationship with the Moon.
The Moon, to me, has always been a friend and companion.
Even in my darkest times, she was there, listening to my complaints and sorrows.
As a child, I grew up on a farm. From my bedroom window, I overlooked the floodplains of the Rhine River in the east of the Netherlands, a wide landscape filled with water and grasslands. The Moon, bright in her appearance, often shone and reflected on the water, her light casting shadows around the willows and the cows that grazed in the meadow. Countless times I leaned out of that window, gazing at her.
Around my eleventh birthday, I received a small telescope. I still remember how mesmerized I was the first time I looked through it at her craters, whispering to her as if she could hear me. I traced her craters into a notebook, sketching for hours and hours, watching her until it was far too late at night.
Later, during my student years and beyond, I often turned to the Moon for comfort and calm. In my experiences as a young woman, I, in many ways, found parallels between the phases of the Moon and the ways we speak about women. Like hers, our fight is a cycle. Resistance is carving new paths through shadow. We have been measured, mapped, claimed in names not our own. Stripped of mystery, shaped for use, treated as resource, never as sovereign.
In relation to what I mean by the duality in my work as a philosopher, this project is a wonderful example, because I also take part in think tanks about the ethical implications of mining on the moon. I write articles about the moral objections to space debris and research how scientists reflect on building on the moon. The analytical approach is not separate from my personal relationship with the moon. I actually believe it’s important to look beyond strict arguments, and to our feelings, to our sentiments and reflect on them, because isn’t that connection with the cosmos, with the world around us, and with the moon itself, precisely what makes us human?
The excerpt that is included in the Moon Bound book is part of a larger essay I wrote, reflecting on her role in my life and the analogy between women and the Moon. Through my work, I give form to that call.
I honor the Moon as woman, as matriarch, as keeper of cycles and clarity.
She is a mirror of survival and transformation, a guide in the dark, and a voice that insists on being heard.
For me, this is a way of voicing resistance, softly but persistently.
I work as a philosopher of space and science. My work lives at the crossroads of imagination and inquiry. My practice not only examines how we conceive the cosmos but also how such imaginaries shape scientific, ethical, and cultural futures. I teach, lecture, and curate, and I am currently pursuing a PhD and writing a book on the role of imagination in space science. I like to think about my work as a philosopher of science and space, in two ways. On one hand, I am very analytical. For my PhD, for example, I analyse theories, ethnographic data, and arguments, and examine how they align with or refute my own hypotheses. On the other hand, because I am a philosopher at heart, I seek and follow the broader context of the narratives in which science, technology, and society come together. In this context, I grant myself the freedom to draw analogies, to think in metaphors, and to create rich imaginative narratives. There is no sharp distinction between the two, but rather a shift in perspective, a different way of writing. Both practices feed into each other.
