An Ecofeminist Perspective

In order to halt or reverse some of the damage affecting Earth’s biosphere, there must be profound changes to the status quo. Humans can no longer continue to pollute and extract from the Earth at the current rate. Changing behaviour requires changing attitude. We must examine long held assumptions regarding the relationship between humans and the planet we inhabit.

Important to this task is acknowledging that we have been living with the fallacy that there is moral justification for domination and subordination of nature by humans.

It is important to recognize the persistent influence of some interpretations of the main monotheistic world religions. These are often interpreted as having a theological component where humans are divinely told they are categorically superior to the rest of nature (often evoking men as superior to women)). Here, however, I will put religion to one side and consider the logic of the argument for superiority.

The conceptual framework of oppression rests on the substantive value system that there can be moral superiority and permitted domination based on factual distinctions.

In the natural world, differences abound.

Over the course of history, humans have been determined to view mental capacity and the existence of a rationalising mind as an identifying and separating difference between us and the rest of Nature.

As a species with the ability to classify, we are given to creating hierarchical catalogues. There is no issue in this until we imbue these hierarchies with inherent value judgments as well as justifications for subordination.

The conceptual leap is to view mental capacity for reason as a ‘higher’ value quality. Placing rationality as a higher quality is too simplistic a view of the intricate and complex interweavings of the ecology of our planet. We are actually all valuable as interrelated beings.

There is a factual difference in our ability to use mental ability to exercise ‘power over’ the rest of nature, mental capacity is an identifying difference but is just that – a factual difference, it is not a morally defining quality and it does not decree superiority.

Being better at running does not make you more important than those who came second or third also it does not give you the right to subordinate the people slower than you.

Contemplate replacing the word ‘running’ with ‘thinking’ - Being better at thinking does not make you more important that those who don’t think or don’t think as much or at a high level. Also being the best at thinking does not give you the right to subordinate the lesser or non-thinkers.

To maintain the moral superiority of mental capacity and reason we have been implicitly allowing the acceptance of the opposite - we have imbued physicality and by extension what is ‘instinctive’ and ‘natural’ not just with inferiority but with immorality, triviality and implicitly with shame.

Naturism points towards racism, ableism, classism and sexism.

Consider moral judgements of sex and nakedness, eating practices, land toil, first hand experience of medicinal plants, instinctive and sensual experiences , geographical land based knowledge, oral as opposed to written culture, menstruation, child birth, defecation, death. All are cloaked with shame.

Let’s look at naturism and sexism.

In our patriarchal society, people are conditioned to extend the flawed logic that

because humans are more rational they are superior to nature and can dominate nature and are justified in subordinating nature

to

the premise that because men are more rational than women (who are more physical constrained and guided by instinct), they are also superior to women and justified in their subordination of women.

The traits that are given as rational or physical and natural can be incubated and exhibited by all people (regardless of sex or race etc.) However, I hold that it is true that culture and biology may weight their tendencies.

The argument’s false premises are that rationality is a superior quality and that those who possess the superior quality can dominate those who don’t.

Although women are of course capable of matching men’s mental aptitude and rationality, as a generalization men have historically had more opportunities to spend time in mental contemplation than women. Women can be emotional due to their natural hormonal fluctuations and are regularly interrupted by bloody menstruation and child rearing.

The idea of women as more in tune with Nature may have general biological and traditional bias. The extent to which people experience the hormonal impact of cyclical menstruality, menopause and motherhood will inform their capacity toward empathy, sensitivity and tenderness or linear rationality and uninterrupted mental endeavor. This can also affect women living in a patriarchally conditioned society who have grown up being treated as menstrually hormonal, male sexual partners and mothers (negative stereotypes of hysterical, sexually interesting to men, vulnerable and categorically maternal) even if this is not their true lived experience for any number of varying reasons including, hormone suppressant drugs, hysterectomy, sexual preferences and motherhood experiences and preferences. Similarly male experience will be informed by the expectations of other members of the mainstream Eurocentric patriarchal society.

However the subsequent conclusions of the initial argument are all flawed - that men as more rational makes them superior in value and that they are justified in their domination and crucially, the logic of the ‘up-down’ thinking in regards to value of the qualities of mental rationality versus physicality.

If both rationality, scientific objectivism and physical knowledge, sense and intuition are equally important we have become unbalanced. They are equally necessary for harmony.

The problematic, extractive attitudes towards the Earth, come from this skew towards esteeming rational, mechanical and scientific separation based objective, ‘power-over’ masculinity (resulting in the immense power wielded by the current patriarchal governments) over qualities associated with physicality and naturalness of emotion, intense feeling, instinct, empathy and tender sensitivity as well as the practical knowledge and experience of reality and land based knowledge, of life processes and lifecycles e.g. faeces as fertilizer, bloodiness of birth, decomposition in death etc.

These qualities far from being morally abhorrent and shame ridden are equally or even more vital in considering our place on the Earth as members of its community because of their connection with the concept of relationship, inter being, ecology and sustainability.

If we recognize that these qualities are important and are essential and also lacking, then we must work out ways to address the deficiency. If we do so we will be tackling environmental maltreatment, sexist subjugation, racist oppression and classist and ableist prejudices.

We all need to rid ourselves of shame attached to physicality by giving energy to direct sensuous nature experience, empowering place based regional knowledge, listening to lessons from oral culture, accepting reality of intuition, having honest and open discussions around waste management, death and women’s bodies.

Sustainability requires an understanding of cyclical seasonality and lifeprocesses. As inherently cyclically governed through their physical menstruality, women are in an authentic position to identify with this aspect of nature and it inevitably informs their outlook and empathy.

For climate justice, the female voice needs to be amplified.

In striving for balance and eschewing an ethical tenet, rationality should not be seen as negative. It is what you do with the power of rationality that has moral implications. Rationality can be appropriated as power with and power for as opposed to power over. Harmony can be rationality united with sensuous experience. Strength comes in many forms.

We need to recognize the equal worth of being different parts of a whole.

Recognising, understanding and categorizing difference is important. It does not necessarily need to be hierarchically categorized and even if it is we need to recognize any flawed conceptual leap into the realm of superiority and ethics. Otherness is diversity. Equality of diversity in unity creates a flourishing whole. Unity can mean dynamic, reciprocally interactive, creative synthesis of opposites and others to the sustainable benefit of all.