Month: February 2023

For some, this image shown above could be seen as innocent. At first glance, I saw an animation of a figure wearing a chef’s hat cutting up what looks to be a ham. However, as I continued to stare, I noticed the size of the chef in the photo and how it compared to the size of the meat. He also has his foot proudly standing on the chopping board as if he’s claiming something. Continuing to break down the photo, I started thinking about the tools the chef was using. A nice, wooden chopping board with a steak knife holding down the meat, while the chef used another steak knife to cut the slices. It reminded me of kitchen utensils found in a modern Western kitchen and the meat looked as if it was bought in a grocery store, opposed to people in different countries and cultures who, when killing an animal, will use all parts of the animal, not just one piece. I also thought of the knife going through the meat as being “stuck” which can be compared to the continuous cycle of the meat production cycle. Reproducing the animals, feeding them different kinds of antibiotics and estrogen, bringing them to the slaughter and then selling them in our stores. In the image, the meat is being sliced thinly, which I compared to the mass production of cattle, pigs, ducks, sheep, fish, shellfish, chickens and turkeys that are killed per year for food. It made me think of sandwich meat, something that can be found in hundreds of kid’s lunch boxes or a ham and cheese sandwich readily available in the sandwich section of a grocery store, being bought without a second thought of where it came from or the treatment that the animals were subjected to in order to create that sandwich.

Even though the chef in the image seems to be ambiguous regarding its sex, when I saw the chef cutting the meat, I immediately thought of the chef being a male. Perhaps that is because of the gender stereotypes that come along with dietary choices. In Meat Heads: New Study Focuses on How Meat Consumption Alters Men’s Self-Perceived Levels of Masculinity by Zoe Eisenberg, Eisenberg states that with the consumption of meat, comes being perceived as more “manly” (Eisenberg). Eisenberg also compares what a woman eats when going out to a restaurant to what a man eats, which is typically some kind of meat, like a steak, for a man and salad for a woman (Eisenberg). A vegan blog creator named Ayinde Howell, compared the consumption of meat to smoking cigarettes (Eisenberg). Both have been looked at as being “manly” in society, the more you consume, the more of a man you become (Eisenberg). In today’s society, “women in patriarchal cultures are especially valuable because women, more than men, experience the effects of culturally sanctioned oppressive attitudes toward the appropriate shape of the body” (Curtin). There is so much social pressure put on women to act a certain way, have a certain body type, follow specific diets, wear certain clothing and put on make-up every day or else someone will ask, “are you tired?” From these ideologies that women have to look and act a certain way, what they eat also comes into factor. As stated above regarding women eating salads on a night out opposed to a man eating a steak, there are other foods that would follow this pattern. For example, regarding gendered eating practices, women are looked at to consume fresh fruits and vegetables, make healthy smoothies and follow the latest trends and extreme diets such as drinking apple cider vinegar to get “skinnier,” whereas a man can eat a plethora of meat products such as chicken, steaks, burgers, ribs, wings and hot dogs without adding the weight of societal expectations and constraints. After looking at gendered foods and what was socially acceptable for men to say, eat or do compared to women, it reminded me that “feminists and ecofeminists alike have noted the ways that animal pejoratives are used to dehumanize women, point to the linguistic (and thus conceptual) linkage of women and animals in such derogatory terms for women as “sow,” “bitch,” “pussy,” “chick,” “cow,” “beaver,” “old bat,” and “bird-brain” (Gaard 20). I remember when I first learned where the term “bitch” came from. After figuring out the origin of the word, I was stunned at how popular of a term it was, and how people could stand to use it in their everyday lingo so loosely. 

“To be a pet is to have all one’s life decisions controlled by someone else: when and what to eat, how to act, whom to socialize with, whether or not to reproduce. If the situation were offered to humans, we’d call it slavery” -Greta Gaard

Looking at non-human animals from an ecofeminist perspective, they are constrained by our human sense of time and schedules, doing what we tell them to do when we want them to do it; the “suffering of animals” and the “care for animals” can be linked between “sexism and speciesism, between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals” (Gaard 20).  In this patriarchal world that we live in, choosing the food we put in our bodies pushes back against conformity and “resist ideological pressures to conform to patriarchal standards” and become once again, wild (Curtin).

 

 

Works Cited:

Curtin, Deane. Toward an Ecological Ethic of Care. Contextual Moral Vegetarianism. Hypathia. 1991. 68-71. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/curtin01.htm

Eisenberg, Zoe. The Lusty Vegan. Meatheads: New Study Focuses on How Meat Consumption Alters Men’s Self-Perceived Levels of Masculinity. HuffPost. 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/meat-heads-new-study-focuses_b_8964048

Gaard, Greta. Ecofeminism on the Wing: Perspectives on Human-Animal Relations. Women & Environments. 2001. 19-22. https://www.academia.edu/2489929/Ecofeminism_on_the_Wing_Perspectives_on_Human-Animal_Relations

As Terry Williams states in Home Work, “each of us belongs to a particular landscape, one that informs who we are, a place that carries our history, our dreams, holds us to a moral line of behavior that transcends thought,” and my childhood backyard is mine (Williams 19). This is where I played until dark as a kid on summer days, where I climbed trees and made fairy houses using only what I could find in nature. It is where I helped my mother raise chickens and create vegetable gardens. It is where my love for nature and being in nature first began. Behind the fence and our clothesline lies a corn and vegetable field and beyond that, a forest. In the field there is all sorts of wildlife, from turkeys and deer, to foxes, fisher cats, and coyotes. I would explore for hours in the thick of the corn, making my way to the trails in the woods. On my way home, I would take squash that was forgotten after the harvest, or pumpkins to carve in the October months. It is where I would ride my bike through the trails and during summer nights. If I rode my bike at night during the peak of firefly season, I would be surrounded with hundreds of fireflies that would light up the sky in a truly magical way. Down the road is a pond, and in the winter months it was a place to ice skate on the rugged terrain or to just look through the ice and see another world in the cold water below. This is the place where I fell in love with a Mourning Doves song and fall asleep to the sound of crickets. Bell Hooks stated in Touching the Earth that “when we love the Earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully” and I couldn’t agree more. Growing up in a home with open spaces and trees right in my backyard made me the person I am today. It made me someone who needs a walk in nature in order to decompress and feel like myself again. It made me someone who appreciates the softness of moss, and the smell of eucalyptus trees, someone who wants to preserve the nature around me. I feel privileged to be someone who grew up with people in my life who were also connected to nature and who were always outside exploring. Although some people are comforted by the sound of cars and construction in the city, I feel suffocated and restless. The towering skyscrapers, the smell of gas and waste, the materialistic shops, the people always rushing from place to place. 

Barbra Kingsolver states in Knowing Our Place that “people will need wild places. Whether or not they think they do, they do. They need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and ice ages” (Kingsolver 2). 

“Once strengthened by our association with the wild, we can return to family and community” -Terry Williams

I remember one year in particular when our new neighbors arrived. Lining our property from theirs was a row of tall cedar trees. It made me feel as though our house was secluded in nature. Due to the trees’ close proximity to each other, if you were to crawl through the low hanging branches it created a little hideout inside the trees. It was somewhere where you could be surrounded by nature. It’s somewhere where I felt at peace. However, my neighbors wanted to cut them down, and since the trees technically laid on their side of the property, there was nothing I could do about it. I told my parents I would tie myself to the trees or leave them a note saying how much it meant to me that those trees were still standing, but to no avail. A few years later, after a distressed thirteen-year-old me was still upset by the falling of my cedar trees, they ended up planting new ones. Although this instance is a smaller scale as to what’s happening out in the world in mass occurrences, I believe it can be related on a much smaller scale regarding preservation and the bedrock democracy as William states. 

I always wondered if people could just get out of the city and see the natural wonders of the world and listen to stories of the importance of nature to the health of the planet and the people that rely on it, if it would change humanity as a whole. I believe everyone needs nature, to be outside or just have fresh air pour through a window, to listen to the birds, see the constellations and feel the wind press against their skin. The tranquility that nature provides brings someone back to themself. Williams states that “place + people = politics” and although it is defined as a “simple equation” there are aspects that are anything but simple (Williams 3). There are people in this world that look at land and use it as their trash can, or in the West for example there is “increasing off-road vehicle use, threats of oil and gas drilling, and State Institutional Trust Lands being sold to the highest bidder, leading to the escalation of trophy homes, gated communities, and luxury resorts often near the boundaries of national parks and wilderness areas (Williams 14). People take for granted the ground on which we walk, we can’t do anything we want with it. 

 

Works Cited:

Hooks, Bell. Touching the Earth. 363-368.

Kingsolver, Barbra. Knowing Our Place. 1-2. 

Williams, Terry. Home Work. Red. 3-19. 

Environmental Degradation in the Global South

In the Global South, women have suffered due to environmental degradation. Women in tribes and villages, as well as women who are poor or impoverished, are the ones who gather fodder, fuel, food, fiber, manure, bamboo, medicinal herbs, oils, materials for building houses, resin, gum, honey, spices, and handicrafts, and therefore, are most impacted by environmental degradation (Agarwal 126). The women are also the ones who have an abundance of knowledge pertaining to nature, which was passed down from their mothers for generations (Agarwal 126). This knowledge includes knowing which plants are nutritional and medicinal, and different roots and trees that would help save populations who rely on plants, especially in the wake of climate catastrophes (Agarwal 142). By depleting Third World women’s resources in nature, it takes away what they need to stay alive (Agarwal 124). 

A quote from the tribal people of Orissa: “earlier women would rely on their neighbors in times of need. Today this has been replaced with a sense of alienation and helplessness” – (Agarwal 142)

Over half of the land in India was on the decline because of the damage India’s environment was facing, “especially water and wind erosion” (Agarwal 130). The degradation comes in forms of disappearing forests, water sources being exhausted, and the soil conditions deteriorating (Agarwal 130). 

Soil conditions are deteriorating due to the use of chemical fertilizers (Agarwal 130). Chemical fertilizers and the use of pesticides runoff into different water sources, causing massive damage to fish life as well as polluting water that humans use (Agarwal 130). Drinkable water has also become problematic because they have become dry as well as become unusable in general (Agarwal 130). This is because in several regions, the groundwater levels have dropped without the ability to make them rise again (Agarwal 130). 

Forests produce a livelihood for the people who are dependent, which in India, is about thirty million people (Agarwal 129). Back in the 1980’s, it was shown from satellite imaging that the forests were “declining at an estimated rate of 1.3 million hectares a year” (Agarwal 130). The clearing of trees is the result of expansion of coffee and tea plantations, which results in an increase of the “government’s land revenue base” (Agarwal 142). By clearing trees, this causes resources for local people to be lost, as well as pit local populations and forestry officials against each other (Agarwal 142). Because of deforestation, it erodes “a whole way of living and thinking” (Agarwal 142). 

Vandana Shiva, a physicist, philosopher and the director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy in Dehra Dun, saw the effects that deforestation had in the Himalayan Forest where she grew up (London). Shiva recalls in an interview that streams and forests were being depleted which led to Shiva joining the Chipko movement head on (London). Shiva worked with the “peasant women” to learn what the forest meant to them and the uses the earth provided for them such as medicinal plants, fodder and firewood (London). Shiva’s father was a “scientifically trained forester” however the local woman still knew more about the ecosystem and forest than him as well as any other trained forester (London). 

The photo below is of Vandana Shiva.

Image Credits: ​​​​Dr. Vandana Shiva’s Decades-Long Environmental Activism is Rooted in Health of All Beings | UC Global Health Institute (universityofcalifornia.edu)

Within the Chipko movement, women were successful on multiple occasions regarding saving forests. When it comes to defending the trees and forests, gender plays a role in what men versus women want to protect. For example, during the Chipko movement, a potato-seed farm wanted to be implemented, however that would mean cutting down an oak forest in Dongri Paintoli village (Agarwal 148). It would also mean that fuel and fodder collection from women would be gone, as well adding more travel to get these resources by five kilometers (Agarwal 148). Men wanted the potato-seed farm because it would make them money, whereas women wanted to protect trees because it provided for the community (Agarwal 148). Men also are more likely to protect the trees that would make them more money, whereas women prioritized trees that would provide for their livelihood (Agarwal 148). 

The photo below is of women in India protecting a forest. 

Image Credit: ​​​Chipko movement – Wikipedia

Ecofeminism is a range of different perspectives. Although both perspectives look at the oppression of women and the oppression of the environment, within the Western perspective as looked at by Laura Hobgood-Oster in Ecofeminism: Historic and International Evolution, ecofeminism challenges social and political structures rather than the individuals (Hobgood-Oster 2). By liberating women from androcentric thinking and from the patriarchy, then both woman and nature are free.

Regarding Western and non-Western perspectives of thinking, there are commonalities and differences between the two. Within both perspectives, they are still shifting and evolving. Non-Western environmentalism, as seen from above, looks more at the relationship between nature and humanity and that there are “important connections between the combination and oppression of women and the domination and exploitation of nature” (Agarwal 120). Women specifically, are symbolically linked to nature and are closer to nature than men who identify more with culture as stated by Sherry Ortner (Agarwal 120). Of the two perspectives, Bina Agarwal’s perspective of ecofeminism has had a greater impact on how I think of ecofeminism, feminism, and the environment, as well as intrigues me to learn more about the connection of women to earth. 

 

Works Cited:

Agarwal, B. (1992). The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India. Feminist Studies, 18(1), 119–158. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178217

Hobgood-Oster, Laura. (2002). Ecofeminism: Historic and International Developments. Southwestern University. 1-18.

London, S. (2016). In the Footsteps of Gandhi: An Interview with Vandana Shiva. Global Research. other, Global Research. Retrieved 2023, from https://www.globalresearch.ca/in-the-footsteps-of-gandhi-an-interview-with-vandana-shiva/5505135.

Many of us have probably heard of the term “mother-earth” to describe our planet that lies in the milky way galaxy, located in the vastness that is outer space. Over the course of history, women and nature have been entangled in intimate ways. Women and earth are caregivers, providing the essential building blocks for life. Women were also more likely known as healers and gatherers throughout history, using plants to heal in medicinal ways. In regard to ecofeminism, the image below is of a mountain range in Huahine, Tahiti, which resembles a pregnant woman. The Tahitian word for woman is vahine which the word Huahine is a variation of. Huahine, Tahiti is described as a fertile land full of life, which the Huahine mountain range encapsulates. The preservation of this land is imperative, not only to the local population that resides there, but the history that is connected to the Tahitians original ancestors and a pivotal place of French Polynesian culture.  

Just as a tree’s rings resemble the fingerprints taken from a human finger, we as people who walk this earth are deeply connected to nature and can find connections everywhere we look. 

Image credits: https://xdaysiny.com/huahine-travel-guide-french-polynesia/page/2/?viewfull=1

What is Ecofeminism?

Within the term “ecofeminism” there is not a single, definite theory. As Laura Hobgood-Oster describes ecofeminism in an essay called Ecofeminism: Historic and International Evolution, it is “multi-faceted and multi-located, challenging structures rather than individuals” (Hobgood-Oster 2).  Ecofeminism started to come to light during the 1970s-1980s and is a cultivation of activism, environmentalism and feminism (Hobgood-Oster 2).  Throughout time, our environment has become oppressed by mankind, as well as oppressing the woman who walk this earth. Ecofeminism looks to change this by looking at how woman can be liberated from the patriarchal oppression and androcentric thinking. Therefore, it could be stated that with the liberation of woman means nature too is liberated and when nature is free, so is woman. Ecofeminism will continue to grow in different ways and aspects, focusing on more current and prominent issues as time ticks on (Hobgood-Oster 15). 

Back in 1975, right when Ecofeminism was being introduced to the world, a women’s group was formed due to woman speaking out about their own history and experiences which was shared with other woman and people at the “first Pacific Women’s Conference” that was held in Suva, Fiji (Danielson). Although Tahiti is brimming with life, due to immigrants coming to the island looking for work, as well as military development such as nuclear testing, the population increased rapidly causing harm to the environment and the people living there (Danielson). The construction caused the coastal regions and once pristine lagoons in Tahiti to become filled with pesticides as well as sewage (Danielson). Health problems began to increase within the local population including miscarriages, leukemia, tumors were found more frequently in patients’ brains and thyroid infections increased (Danielson).  Looking at animal rights activism is another part of ecofeminism (Hobgood-Oster 14). The wildlife in Tahiti was being poisoned and algal bloom started occurring (Danielson). This caused ciguatera fish poisoning which six hundred residents on Mangareva Island passed away from (Danielson).

Regarding Polynesian women, they were looked at as “unclean” and “inferior”, and they don’t have a say when it comes to politics or the economy (Danielson). Therefore, by women participating in Pacific Women’s conference their voices were heard and their history and knowledge was shared to other people suffering their same fate. Ultimately, their movement helped spread information about nuclear testing and the impact it had on their livelihood, resulting in their movement gaining traction to provide a better future for themselves and the environment (Danielson).

“Gender is also fundamental in understanding human interaction with the environment and with respect to natural resources”

                                               – Sarah Mvududu 

Below is a photo of the 13th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women

Image credits:  UN Women/Terri O’Q

 

Work Cited:

Danielson M. T. (1993). Problems in paradise: the case of Tahiti. INSTRAW news: women and development, (19), 47–52.

Hobgood-Oster, Laura. (2002). Ecofeminism: Historic and International Developments. Southwestern University. 1-18.

Huahine. Tahiti. (2023).  https://www.tahiti.com/island/huahine