I believe that given this past presidential election, and
current events calling for environmental activism, an ecofeminist sensibility
is extremely important as we move into 2017. Issues of climate change, mass
environmental destruction, and concerns of women’s reproductive health care
have all been gathered up, degraded, and exploited in today’s political
discourse. For these reasons and more, I am urging feminists, psychotherapists,
and those interested in political activism, to learn more about ecofeminism. For
me personally, it has been helpful to understand ecofeminism as a theory, and
as a political movement, which understands there to be an important connection
between the oppression of women and the destruction of the environment, and
that the eradication of both oppressions is necessary to an egalitarian world
When I began to study ecofeminism during my earlier years of
graduate school, I had wanted to solely focus my research on the intersections
of the war on women’s reproductive rights and the destruction of nature.
However, as I began to learn more about our political situation, I came to
realize that this intersection also speaks to the ways in which science
oppresses both nature and women's bodies in the name of “progress” and the ways
in which the free-market profits on the destruction of women’s bodies,
especially when controlling their reproduction and for the purposes the Sex Industry.
The task feels overwhelming and endless. It is extremely difficult to write on
one specific form of oppression, when so much oppression is shared amongst
groups of people, sentient beings, and the environment. To talk about one
struggle, in a way is to talk about every struggle, and to deny the
intersectionality of oppression, secures the existence of oppression itself.
Historically women’s
bodies and the natural world have been exploited, owned, commodified, and
regulated by governing bodies of power, especially by patriarchal forms of
free-market capitalism. As a young feminist, student, and training clinical
psychologist, I am interested in the ways in which this exploitation and
degradation affects our collective consciousness and personal psyches,
especially when considering the war on reproductive rights and environmental
destruction. Ecofeminism and select orientations of psychology have made clear the
dangers of oppression for our personal and social well-beings. The destruction
of the environment and the occupation of women’s bodies is a worldwide
phenomenon that holds in common a view of nature as a boundless resource, and
women's bodies as profitable and in need of regulation. Climate change, war,
pollution, and oppressive political regimes directly harm the natural world and
oppressed populations. Women’s bodies are frequently at the front line of
political conflicts and ideologies which often focus on the regulation of
women’s bodies and means of reproduction. Similarly, akin to the natural world,
women’s bodies, are often exploited in the name of science or progress, and at
times are profited from in the case of the entertainment and sex industries.
It feels as though every time I check the news, there is
another abortion clinic closing, another obstacle towards securing
contraceptive care, another report of domestic violence, and another
environmental atrocity. Violence against the environment, and violence against
women are felt internationally, and the consequences of this violence affects
the whole of humankind and the Earth, our home. As activist and scholar, Greta
Gaard (2010) so eloquently writes:
Ecofeminism calls for an end to all oppressions, arguing that
no attempt to liberate women (or any other oppressed group will be successful
without an equal attempt to liberate nature. Its theoretical base is a sense of
self most commonly expressed by women and various other nondominant groups—a self
that is interconnected with all life. (p.1)
Gaard is
right. We cannot move towards a more egalitarian society when there is so much
violence being done, violence against the Earth, women, people of color, our
animal friends, and religious and sexual minorities.
I hope that we, as a collective, can
enter the New Year with a renewed sense of hope and conviction regarding the
preciousness of the Earth, and of all sentient beings. We have seen the power
of solidarity and activism most recently at Standing Rock, and have also
witnessed the resurgence of a renewed women’s movement following the presidential
election.
The time to tackle these
environmental and reproductive rights issues is now. As was once often heard,
uttered in the cries of protesters and activists during the political turmoil
that followed the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the world can’t wait.
References
Gaard, G. (2010). Ecofeminism.
Temple University Press.
Written by:
Rebecca Marcelina Gimeno, MA.
Duquesne
University
Thank you for drawing attention to such an important and growing issue!!
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