notes on feminism & ecology

by Donna Warnock

ecology (e-kol'e-ji) 1. the branch of biology that deals with the

relations between living organisms and their environment. 2. in

sociology, the relationship between the distribution of human

groups with reference to material resources, and the consequent

social and cultural patterns.

- Webster's New World Dictionary

from RAIN, VI:6, April 1980, p.13-15

Both feminism and ecology embody the belief that everything is connected to everything else -- that the eco-system, the production

system, the political / economic apparatus and the moral and psychological health of a people are all interconnected. Exploitation in

any area has repercussions on the whole package.

Merging feminism and ecology is not simply a device to unite two currently popular movements, thereby strengthening the numbers of each. It's no coincidence that the two movements share common concerns, common roots, and common visions Patriarchy's attack on women is so closely associated with its assault on nature that it's difficult to see where one begins and the other leaves off. " Feminist ecologist" may be a new term. But the movement it describes is not.

Societies once existed which were ecological, democratic, communal and peaceful, where women held social and political power.

Relationships between women and men were non-monogamous, so that the paternity of children was often difficult to establish. Consequently, kinship was matrilineal (traced through the mother). Property was owned by women and inherited by women. Records

of the tribes and their balances and accounts were kept in the temples of the deities-the Divine Ancestresses. It is likely that the

women of these temples invented writing to maintain these records. It is only with the invasion of the Indo-Europeans (beginning about

3000 B.C.) that cultural patterns dating back many centuries are disrupted (the earliest goddess image found has been dated about

25,000 B.C.). The Indo-Europeans replaced the mother deity, the life worshipping religions of the people they conquered, with a male

god. To secure patrilineal kinship and inheritance they instituted monogamy. To guarantee paternity, any transgression of the monogamous

relationship on the part of the woman (including her being raped) was punishable by her being put to death.

There was tremendous opposition to these ideas. They were seen as unnatural. Whole tribes were massacred for their resistance (see

the Old Testament) . But resistance and reactive slaughter continued into the 18th century in the form of witch burnings.

In the meantime a market economy developed . Political power accompanied economic power. As merchandising grew, communal

property became private, production expanded, small tribal governments became kingdoms, and communal agricultural societies gave

way to feudal ones. The economy became profit-centered, and classes of producers and consumers were created to generate that

profit.

The contemporary product of all of this is embodied in our global crisis. Non-renewable resources have been all but depleted. In the

past quarter century alone global fuel consumption has tripled, oil and gas consumption quintupled, and there's been a seven-fold increase

in the use of electricity. Thousands of new polluting chemicals have been put on the market, and deadly radiation from nuclear

power production will remain with us for the next 250,000 years. Five million people could be killed from a nuclear reactor accident,

and nuclear war could end life on earth . The doomsday predictions are all too real. And who are we told is to blame?

"In an overpopulated world, ordinary, 'normal' woman may yet become the sorceress who inundates man with every new creation,

who keeps pouring forth a stream of children for whom there is neither role nor room, whose procreative instinct , irresistible, keeps producing like a machine gone mad ..."

"And in the end the balance of this globe may yet again have to be redressed by the Great Mother herself in her most terrible form: as

hunger, as pestilence , as the blind orgasm of the atom."

- Wolfgang Lederer, M. D.

The Fear of Women , 1968

Never mind the fact that people -- especially women -- have had little or no say in production decisions. Never mind who profits from pollution, or who pays for it. " People cause pollution ," the industrialists argue, " by their insatiable demand for the products

which pollute ." Women are at fault any way they look at it. After all, " people" are consumers, "consumers" are women, and " people"

are caused by women.

So now the standing-room-only syndrome has environmentalists and industrialists alike putting the blame for pollution and hunger

on population growth and, ultimately, on women. Population control becomes a handy coverup for the rape of the Third World countries

(see RAIN , Jan. '80) and for domestic problems, too. In rhetoric reminiscent of Hitlerite eugenics, the Rockefeller-backed Population Council argues that births must be "equalized between people at different socio-economic levels" and discouraged "among the socially handicapped." They conclude that tax, welfare and education policy could be used to achieve this (and these have certainly had an effect). But when all else fails, they return to sterilization.

And so we see that sterilization has been on the rise. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that perhaps as many as 25

percent of all Native American women have been sterilized -- many of them involuntarily. There is one tribe in Oklahoma in which all

of the full-blooded women have been sterilized.

The implications of sterilizing Native American women should be seen in full. It is anti-woman. It is racism and it is genocide. It also represents a modern return to the witch hunts, for it is an attempt to kill a culture which challenges the anti-nature Judeo-Christian theology. Native spirituality has reverence for life and understands the merger of the body and soul, the spirit and flesh. It is the closest culture that exists in the geographical U.S. to the ancient ecological civilizations.

Like sterilization, rape must also be understood as more than the crime of violating a victim's body and spirit. Through its adjective,

"rapacious," it has also come to mean "living on captured prey. " Today's patriarchy becomes "the rule of rapists. " Mobil, Exxon,

Westinghouse, G.E. and their corporate brothers all stand guilty. Their violence, lies, deceits, manipulations , exploitation , violations -- all part of the act of rape. Our bodies, our minds , our spirits, our planet -- all victims.

We are at a crossroads in time. The feminist and ecology movements must work together to oppose the notion that women and

nature exist to serve man. For, as serious as the threat of global destruction is right now, it promises to get worse and we must be

prepared: The patriarchy wants to play God. This is especially evident in their experiments in DNA, their institution of involuntary

sterilization, and their development of atomic power and warfare. They want to determine who will live and who will die. They want

total control. And they will get it if we don't all work together to stop them.

The needs of the planet and the needs of women have merged. But the line of division between the movements supporting each

remain. Ironically, it is reminiscent of the patriarchy's own separations between the body and soul, the political world and the natural

one. It's academic; it's artificial; it's illusory; it's a trap; and it benefits the exploiters only. Feminism and ecology require thinking

across such boundaries.

I'm not talking about adopting the old school "You-come-to-our-demos-and-we'll-go-to-yours" attitude. I'm talking about the need for a deep philosophical and political merger which results in ecologists seeing themselves as feminists and vice versa.

Feminism and ecology both call for liberation through self-reliance, cooperation, community and democracy. They call for nurturance of the earth, its resources and its inhabitants. They understand that everything is connected to everything else. Therefore, any attempt to liberate women or solve the ecology crisis without countering the forces of hierarchy and domination which place men over women, whites over peoples of color, heterosexuals over lesbians and gay men, the able-bodied over the physically challenged, industrial nations over "underdeveloped" ones, the rich over the poor, and so on, is a gross misunderstanding of what is necessary to save this planet and establish peace and equality.

Donna Warnock works with Feminist Resources on Energy & Ecology (FREE) and is a member of the Syracuse Peace Council. "Notes on Feminism and Ecology" are notes from Donna's research for a book on this subject.