Feminist Looking Glass

Neither Emily nor I are fans of using labels to describe different aspects of the feminism movement.  That was reinforced to me when I read an article titled “Ecofeminism: our last great hope?” by Allan Irving, who is an environmental professor at King’s Univerity College of the University of Western Ontario.  Although I had never been aware of the term “ecofeminism” before, according to Irving, it has been around since 1974, when French feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne used the term “ecofeminisme” in her book Le Feminisme ou la mourt, which “strongly linked the devaluation of both women and the earth.”  The book opined that women had used sound ecological methods, but that they were almost always disrupted by male-dominated interests.  d’Eaubonne said that a complete revolution in thought and action was necessary and that, if ecofeminists were listened to, “our planet, close to women, would become verdant again for everyone.”

So far, so good.  Unfortunately, Irving gets into a discussion of how, in his view, women came to be associated with nature because of being “passive” compared to males who were “active” and that “this dualism between an active subject and passive object suggests literally man who receives, interprets, and organizes the sense data of a passive objective nature.”  He even provides the quote from Aristotle that ““the female, as female, is passive and the male, as male, is active, and the principle of movement comes from him.”  He brings Francis Bacon into the picture by saying that Bacon:

urged his new “man of science” to force from nature the secrets she conceals in her womb, to unearth “the truth that lies hid in deep mines and caves” and “to shape her on the anvil.” Nature, as far as Bacon is concerned, must be “bound into service” turned into a “slave” put “in constraint” and “molded” to serve man’s (not woman’s) ends. Both nature and women were nothing more than objects to be undressed and exploited.

Irving’s discussion about women historically being associated with nature is as demeaning as those who say that women are different from men because women are more “nurturing.”

But I think that Irving makes sense when he provides the quote that “nature hating and woman hating are particularly related and are mutually reinforcing.”  Irving thinks that statement is true because women are seen as being closer to nature.  As I said above, I think that is demeaning, but, nevertheless, I intuitively think that people who are anti-environment are also anti-woman, and vice versa.  It would be interesting to see if there are any polls that back up that thought.

And then Irving gets really weird when he brings spiritualism into the picture:

Starhawk [a person he describes as an “influential ecofeminist] is a highly respected voice in contemporary earth-based spirituality.  She is a wiccan and has written extensively on paganism, and defines the spiritual wing of ecofeminism as based on goddess traditions, indigenous spirituality, and immanence rather than transcendence.  What is necessary, she affirms, is a full understanding and acknowledgement that the earth is alive and will talk to us, call out to us “to act to preserve her life.”  For Starhawk “ecofeminism challenges all relations of domination. Its goal is not just to change who wields power, but to transform the structure of power itself.”

It would seem appropriate to conclude with some lines from another ecofeminist Canadian poet, Di Brandt.  In her 2003 collection, Now You Care, she writes: ….all our night flying has made us bold, here we come riding quantumly through your armoured glass windows on our multicoloured cyborged wings, still bats, witches, goddesses, still unruly mistresses of our, your, the world’s pulsing heart.

Obviously, both women’s rights and the environment are hugely important issues.  But, trying to combine the two into the label of an “ecofeminist” movement is of no value.

Filed under: Feminism Tagged: | Allan Irving, Ecofeminism