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Eco feminism Eco feminism is the term that connects concepts of ecology and feminism. Ecology is the study of environmental systems and of human influence on the good functioning of natural communities. Human inappropriate and unlimited use of natural resources had resulted into the pollution of soil, water, and air, which caused the extinction of various animals and plants. However, ecology is not only limited to the factors of pollution, but also includes the research on population. People started to dominate over nature due to their better development over other species, but they forgot that they totally depend on the goods of nature and that they are part of it.
In 1970 s, ecologists have suggested that it is not enough to limit the devastation of the earth only to human economic activities and to the use of natural resources. They proposed the link towards examination of psychological patterns by which human beings have dissociated themselves from nature and started to claim that nature was created as the utility for the needs of people, which caused harm to nature due to its exploitation. Feminism is a movement, which is generally aimed at allowing women to have equal rights with men in every aspect of social life. The main issues of feminist movement today are equality of women in politics and employment. Women never before had equal rights with men in these fields, but today the situation is changing. Some radical feminist ideas rely on the transformation of patriarchal social and economic system into the domination of women in all social hierarchies and by creating a gerontocracy.
Feminism can be also viewed as the difference between womens and mens perception of the world and usually claims that the first womens is a right one. Originally, it was considered that women were inferior in terms of physical power and mental ability, which resulted into monopolization of power and knowledge by men. Men were developing the world and this had resulted into what we have today including different achievements and problems. Certainly, ecofeminist's can blame men for the ecological problems, but we should not forget that all that was achieved by people, all that we have today is thanks to men and to their incentive. It is true that different wars and war technologies had greatly changed the world and had negative impact on ecology, but they were the primarily reasons for the technological and scientific advance. However, ecological problems are not the only ones that are due to masculinity.
Eco feminism was brought up in 1974 by Rosemary Radford Ruether and was followed by the creation of different approaches supporting the idea of negative influence of masculinity upon ecology. Eco feminism as an academic discourse did not develop until the mid to late 1980 s (e. g. Sale 1984, Plumwood 1986 & Warren 1987).
The diversity of eco feminism is illustrated by its geographical spread. It has a significant academic and activist presence in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Australia. There are several key concepts of eco feminism among Western ecofeminist's. First, it is the connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature on the cultural-symbolic level. Patriarchal culture had defined woman as being closer to nature than man is. Woman in her weakness was identified with the body, earth, sex, and flesh.
Western domination of women and nature was conceptually linked into the processes of making them inferior and had mutually reinforced each other. For example, Merchant (op. cit. p. 165) argues that from its beginning the discourse of modern science in the West was informed by imagery that portrayed nature as female. Given womens status this both aided and made erotic the domination of nature for men of science. Woman was interconnected with the exploration of nature having love for plants and animals.
Man was identified with spirit, mind, and power over both, woman and nature. Power must be analyzed as something, which circulates, or rather as something, which only functions in the form of a chain. It is never localized here or there, never in anybody's hands, never appropriated as a commodity or piece of wealth (Ibid. p. 98).
Socio-economic form of eco feminist analyzes women in cultural-symbolic patterns in which women and nature both were in inferior situation. This connects them into some ideological structure, which in patriarchal culture appears to be justified as the legal domination of women, animals, plants, and land as the natural system. This was put forward as a distinction between internal and external nature (Less 1972: 153, Horkheimer 1947: 93). The idea of internal nature was also taken to refer to emotionality and the importance of its denial and control if external nature were to be mastered (Less 1972: 152).
Actually, there are two lines of thought among ecofeminist's, which splits them into two groups, even though they both agree on two main points. One group of ecofeminist's pays more attention to the woman-nature connection as a social ideology of patriarchal culture, as it was written before. It analyses all the information and comes to conclusion that such a patriarchal ideology was created in order to justify the mens authority over both, women and nature. Their critique of this patriarchal construction may be used to separate women and men as humans, but they are much more like each other while being different from the rest of nature. Ecofeminist's try to analyze the differences between men and women in such a patterns as thinking-feeling, domination-subordination etc. Patriarchal identification of lower parts of these dualism's can be viewed as victimization of women and nature.
Therefore, social eco feminism is about destroying such a dualism's according to both, women and nature. Another group agrees on the point that patriarchal woman-nature connection justifies male domination and abuse, but states that there is some deep positive connection between woman and nature. Women are not hunters, but food gatherers and also the inventors of agriculture. For instance, women are nurturers and life-givers. For this reason they had a great respect by early humans, who had different sculptures of God in female image. It is actually hard to find what form of hierarchy came first patriarchy or gerontocracy.
In my opinion, there is no need to seek an answer to this question. However, the interesting thing is to know what was the motive or reason for the creation or gerontocracy. It is suggested that it was a patriarchal need to secure resources for sexual satisfaction by less energetic older males. It was primarily due to the reason that older and more experienced males could use their cunning over males and females of all ages, while younger males generally relied on physical power over both men and women.
Besides, women are physically disadvantaged by their reproductive roles. If classical patriarchy was based on the helplessness of sons, we scarcely seem to have moved beyond it. Older men were sending younger men off to war and had a great benefit out of it. First, this would reduce sexual competition and second this would make easier for them to protect their accumulated property.
Looking at which model of power has a tighter hold on our lives today, it has to be said that patriarchal power, embodied in capitalist economics and state bureaucracies is certainly more exciting and pervasive than gerontocracy. In addition, a handful of liberated women, who reach positions of authority in these institutions, do nothing in order to change that structural domination, while being interested in the change. It would be interesting to know why does it happen this way. Thus, eco feminism does not reduce the environmental crisis to the gender ing of reason-nature and, for example, any explanation of the domination of nature that ignores a critique of capitalism is simply inadequate (Merchant 1995: 223 / 4). Ecologists and feminists usually assign value to all parts of human nature system. They try to examine the long and short-term consequences of decision that affects an individual, group, or species.
Nevertheless, there is an ethical conflict on determining whether masculinity had negatively influenced ecology as a whole. Such a case should be discussed in its entirety giving weight age to numerous positive elements. For both ecologists and feminists the Earth is the house where people live, therefore it should be appreciated. The goal is to change all life defeating elements and to restore healthy indoor and outdoor environment. Ecologists and feminists both accept that each individual has some experience, which is valuable in terms of human-nature community. For this reason it should get equal treatment and appreciation.
Men and women should both work together on lowering the production of commodities that have a negative impact on the nature. Therefore, eco feminism is linked with affirmation of womens closeness to nature and with understanding the importance of the Earth as a living organism, with which all life is tightly connected. Modern views on the problems of ecology can be linked with womens perception of nature. It is suggested that women should lead towards establishing new economic and social development ethic, because womens set of values have always been connected with concepts of harmony and interdependence. These views are especially valuable today, when thousand of species disappear within a year. However, this should not be the concern only for feminists but for the society as a whole.
Ecofeminist's should keep in mind that many of eco feminist leading philosophers are largely blind due to their patriarchal views. Therefore, they usually blame male domination for ecological problems. These philosophers reject the assumption that connects to the rationalist concept and to the instrumental view of nature that have been dominating in Western culture and philosophy for many thousand years. According to ecofeminist's, the major cause for maltreatment of nature by Western society and culture was due to the opposition between feminine care and concern for others and masculine generalized moral concern. They think that a more useful approach for an ethics of nature would be the removal of concept of rights from a dominating position it holds today. They suggest that for improving of ecological situation people should focus on moral concepts, such as care, concern, respect, and responsibility.
The main point of this essay would be to discuss the influence of masculinity on the contemporary ecological problems. What for are actually ecofeminist's blame males? Well, there is a big number of various reasons concerning this issue. Males tend to be more aggressive than females, which is primarily due to power.
This resulted into constant wars over the distribution or preservation of accumulated wealth. A further addition to theories of power that fits well with these arguments is the Gramsci an theory of hegemony. Hegemonic dominance is formed through an alliance of positions in which a dominant group secures the consent and complicity of others (Gramsci 1971: 12, 80). Primitive wars and conflicts, which took place many centuries ago were not as devastating and had less negative impact on ecology. Starting from the 20 th century, when new war technologies developed, their negative influence on ecology was very significant. The introduction of new weapons of mass destruction, such as biological, chemical, and nuclear ones resulted into the use of them in different wars.
Sure, later such weapons of mass destruction were prohibited by different international agreements and conventions, but unfortunately after these weapons have been already used. This caused the pollution of atmosphere, water, and soil, numerous deaths of people and animals. The war actually was the primary drive for progress in different areas of economy. For instance, war technologies were developed first, but later they were used in order to create new non-military utilities. The creation of mass production, which was aimed at both producing a greater number of weapons and for the increase of goods production for trade (again for accumulation of wealth) resulted into the pollution of nature and to extinction of its resources. Well, ecofeminist's can blame masculinity for all this, but today women (I would like to emphasize on feminist ones) are using vehicles, which also pollute the atmosphere and decrease the ozone level, besides leading towards the extinction of natural resources.
A vehicle is just a simple example, but the list can be continued for many pages. I think it would be not very ethical to blame men for all this, because eventually men accumulated wealth for women. Why women do not hold responsibility for wearing fur coats, purses from alligator leather etc? I do not want to fault all the women, because they have different views on this issue, but still I think that this point has a right to exist.
Scientific progress had resulted into creation on new goods, which people use everyday. It is not a secret that especially in urban areas with the big population the ecological problem of waste and its recycling is of a great importance. Unfortunately, ecological problems are not limited to the pollution of nature and to the extinction of natural resources. However, other problem that was caused by waste is environmental racism.
An example of this is environmental racism is where non-white communities are disproportionately affected by the risks and impacts from pollution such as being located near toxic waste dumps, research argues that this incidence cannot be reduced to class factors (see Bullard 1990 & Higgins 1994). Men for living in a community originally created towns in order to protect the members of community. Urbanization was primarily due to the technological revolution and due to the creation of factories and later of manufacturing plants, which led to the concentration of labor. This also made a negative impact on ecology. If to drop the issue of technological revolution, which resulted into poor ecological situation, still men originally had fewer concerns about ecology than women did. For instance, women were food gatherers, while men were hunters.
Even though they were hunting in order to feed their families it had influenced the development of mans attitude towards the living creatures. Men started to have less concern about the nature with the flow of time. Therefore, it is quite fair to blame masculinity in ecological problems. Patriarchy had great influence on the development of the world. There were many benefits in patriarchal hierarchy, but there were many problems, which it had caused too. Especially industrialization had a negative influence on the ecology.
Therefore, it is fair enough to blame masculinity for the poor ecological situation in the world, but eco feminism is not just about blaming masculinity for all the troubles, it is also aimed at changing situation. I do not want to support or criticize ecofeminist's for their beliefs, but I hope that they will change ecological situation for better. Sources: Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality Bullard, R. (1990), San Francisco Westview Press. Selections from the Prison Notebooks Gramsci, A. (1971), London Lawrence and Wishart. The Death of Nature - Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution Merchant, C. (1980), San Francisco Harper Collins. Environmental Ethics Horkheimer, M. (1947) Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 251 - 264.
Nature, Culture and Gender. Less, W. (1972) Eco feminism An Overview and Discussion of Positions and Arguments Plumwood, V (1986) New Woman, New Earth- Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation Ruether, R. R. (1975) Boston Beacon Press (1992) Environmental Ethics Higgins, R. (1994), Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 251 - 264. web web
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