I believe that the image chosen for our class discussion is meant to portray speciesism, which is the idea that humans are the dominant species with the right to exploit, kill, and consume other animals.  To be honest, the image was a little vague to me, but as I began to think more abstractly I noticed certain imagery that symbolizes the need for equality.  For example, the Pillsbury dough-boy figure was about the same size as the cooked red meat being cut into on the cutting board.  To me, this reflected how humans and animals are both equal to one another, but the figure was more dominant due to it’s ability to kill the animal.  This made me think, just because the figure was able to kill the animal and serve the meat for human consumption, does this give them the right to?  I connect this to the patriarchal hierarchy in our ecosystem.  As a society, we are taught this is normal behavior.  We are taught that humans are at the top of the food chain because we have the ability to hunt other animals.  We aren’t taught to question whether or not this is the right thing to do, because power structures are so present in all parts of the way we live- it just seems natural to us. 

It is an interesting concept to think of the food we eat as gendered, but yet again, this is the U.S. where everything is based on and divided by gender.  After following Eisenburg’s example of searching images of “women eating” and “men eating” on google, I saw the standards our society puts on men and women’s eating practices.  Women are pressured to eat salads and greens, and men are encouraged to eat meats.  Our gendered food comes from a larger social manipulation that works to separate men and women all the way down to the food we eat, and it basically comes down to femininity and masculinity.  Meat means protein and muscle building, salads mean no weight gain.

Gaard would have to agree with my connection to meat eating and speciesism above.  She believes that ecofeminists have a a deeper understanding to what animals go through because of women’s shared oppression under patriarchy.  Sexism and speciesism is an interconnected oppression because they both stem from the idea that one being is greater than the other, whether its an entire species or an entire sex.  She explains our relation to non-human animals, “… speciesism is a form of oppression that parallels and reinforces other forms of oppression… they are different faces of the same system,” (Gaard 20).  That goes for racism, classism, ableism, etc.  I think Curtin would expand on my questioning of whether hunting and consuming animals is morally correct.  She sees the morality behind vegetarianism, but understands how in the some situations eating animals is necessary.  There is a contextual moral vegetarianism that she explains as, “it recognizes that the different reasons for moral vegetarianism may differ by locale, by gender, as well as by class,” (Curtin).  In economically stable and technologically advanced countries, people have a choice of whether or not to eat animals (Curtin).  It is not necessary for their survival, yet people do it anyway. 

I think this is where the connection between sexism and speciesism comes into play in the contextual moral vegetarianism.  Our society does not need to discriminate against women, but it chooses to.  Our society does not need to eat meat, but it chooses to.  We don’t have to enforce gender roles with the food we eat, yet we do it anyway- it’s our normal.  How do we change this?  How do you change the morality of a nation? If ecofeminisists continue to draw the connection between non-human animals and people and the understanding of the same oppression with different faces, can our society change it’s hierarchical way of thinking?  Eisenberg says, “it’s hard to shift an individual’s perception without first tackling their society’s view,” so I believe we have to change our environment before we can change an individuals choice.  We have to popularize these moral choices to create a socially accepted environment that connects human oppression to non-human oppression.

Curtin, Deane. “Contextual Moral Vegetarianism.” http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/curtin01.htm.  Accessed 24 Feb 2019.

Eisenberg, Zoe. “Meat Heads.” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoe-eisenberg/meat-heads-new-study-focuses_b_8964048.html. Accessed 24 Feb 2019.

Gaard, Greta. “Ecofeminism on the Wing.” https://www.academia.edu/2489929/Ecofeminism_on_the_Wing_Perspectives_on_Human-Animal_Relations. Accessed 24 Feb 2019.

There is this special balance to how the nature around us allows for life to grow and flourish within its environment, that I believe is often overlooked and taken for granted.  As Barbara Kingsolver said, “I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant’s way of making love… or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.”  I have the sense that nature thrives off of a state of equilibrium, where all of its species live peacefully in coexistence, knowing they each need other to survive.  As I’ve said in my previous posts, it seems that all parts of the earth work together to function as a whole, but hierarchical thinking has justified a world of dominance.  Our readings this week showed us the power of understanding our roots to nature, and the importance of wildlife for the benefit of our own psychological states.  We have learned to question how the destruction of natural wildlife for a man-made way of life through commercial development kills the natural communities of the earth.  I think we have become so consumed with creating our own world that we forget where we, as humans, come from and we lose sight of how a balanced, natural environment is good for our souls.  We have this estranged relationship with nature, that needs mending because, “wildlife puts us in our place,” (Kingsolver).

The picture above is from my hometown of Sandwich, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  It is of a beautiful weeping willow tree that use to live in the center of my hometown.  I get a little sentimental over this tree because I grew up watching and admiring its natural beauty.  As a kid it reminded me of Pocahontas, when she would listen for and appreciate the wisdom of Grandmother Willow.  She was wise because she had lived for so long.  Her strength and knowledge reminds me of what Terry Tempest Williams said, “these lands have been here for millions of years, and they will certainly outlast us by another million years or more,” (6).  But, now the weeping willow that I watched and loved growing up as a I drove by or stopped to take pictures underneath it’s canopy, has now been taken down for commercial purposes.  I was heartbroken when hearing of the news.  I remember feeling as if my home had been invaded, and destroyed.  That tree was a part of my world for so long and now it is gone.  Williams would see this kind of human destruction as a result of people being so separated from nature.  I agree with Kingsolver that wildlife helps to put us is our place, because it helps us to see the earth in its natural state, untouched by the greed, corruption, or ignorance of humankind.  I think we become accustomed to our environment and when we stay in one place, such as a city, it becomes our normal and we can forget that the Earth was not made this way.  We stop questioning if its okay to cut down trees and build more corporations or developments. We become use to breathing in the toxicity we create.  But, nature has the power to bring us back to our roots, back to a natural state of balance and coexistence that our world has thrived on in the past.  Williams believes, “there is a resonance of humility that has evolved with the earth.  It is best retrieved in solitude amidst the stillness of days in the desert,” (17).

Kingsolver, Barbara. Knowing Our Place, PBS, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_smallwonder_print.html. Accessed 15 Feb 2019.

Williams, Terry Tempest. Home Work, https://umassd.umassonline.net/bbcswebdav/pid-1227044-dt-content-rid-11913334_1/courses/D2830-12796_MASTER/Scanned%20from%20a%20Xerox%20multifunction%20device001%283%29.pdf. Accessed 15 Feb 2019.

Brenna, George. Weeping Willow Near Sandwich Town Hall on Chopping Block, Cape Cod Times, 2016, https://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20160822/weeping-willow-near-sandwich-town-hall-on-chopping-block. Accessed 15 Feb 2019.

Environmental degradation has grown as a result of patriarchy’s hierarchical thinking.  This kind of thinking lacks diversity in the understanding of how the world works and who is living in it.  Patriarchy stems from a biased assumption of power that tries to justifies its domination through a natural order where men are at the top of the pyramid.  We have seen patriarchy in many forms throughout societies and political agendas, but we have yet to take a closer look at how patriarchy has exploited our environment through its idea of humans being the dominant species and therefore has control over our ecosystem.  Because of this, our environment has faced detrimental affects of human destruction, and those who are primarily affected have no platform to speak on, “…the people who use this knowledge in their daily live… especially women of these communities-tend to be excluded from the institutions which create what is seen as scientific knowledge,” (Agarwal 136).

In the Global South, one of women’s most important contributions are to supply water for their families and communities.  These women walk miles to get this necessity and basic human right.  Environmental degradation from human interaction has made their essential journey for water even harder over time.  Girls are pulled out of school or never see their right to education in order to help their families.  As women, with little to no education, it is hard for them to find jobs and they are forced to take low-income pay or live in complete poverty (Women and the Climate).  If women had more of a national or global voice to raise these issues, there could be more being done to combat against climate change.  Women do not constitute the majority of these corporations that pollute the environment, and these low-income women are not the scientists looking for the reasons behind environmental degradation.  They are affected the most, and yet they are not what people see when they think of climate change movements, but, “since women primarily manage water resources at the local level, women’s voices must be heard at national and international levels if global equity is to prevail in a water-scarce world,” (Women and the Climate). 

I have recently learned of Native American women’s fight against climate change here in the United States.  I remember feeling so ignorant about these issues because even the women in my own country are directly affected by environmental degradation, yet I never knew it to be a women’s issue.  I learned of how their communities means of survival through fishing and hunting have become limited over time and how they have had to turn to other ways of sustainability.  But on a positive note, I read how, “tribal ecological wisdom and practices… increasingly recognized by the larger society’s efforts to address climate change,” (Climate Change).  This gives me hope and at the same time, justifies the need for Third World countries to be more inclusive in their studies of climate change.  Listening to those who are primarily affected can be helpful in deciding how to take on and change the effects of environmental degradation, instead of only seeing it through a biased and limited perspective as past patriarchal thinking has done. 

In my last post, Hobgood- Oster and Warren’s perspectives on ecofeminism were more about how women’s relation to the oppression of nature are interconnected with all forms of oppression throughout the world.  Each oppression stems from the same ideas of patriarchy that justifies one to have control over the other.  I appreciate Agarwal’s perspective because she helps bring light to these Third World issues that I believe we can easily ignore when we don’t live through it ourselves.  Agarwal’s ecofeminist theory focuses more on the direct ways in which women’s roles are affected through climate change, and how these changes are due to forces out of their control.  I think both perspectives take on different forms but have a similar understanding of how patriarchy has caused our world to think from a natural hierarchical point of view, and ecofeminism helps to reclaim everyone and everything’s right to exist in equality.

Agarwal, Bina. The Gender and Environmental Debate. Feminist Studies, 1992, https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.umassd.edu/stable/pdf/3178217.pdf.  Accessed 10 February 2019.

Women and the Climate. Feminist Campus. http://feministcampus.org/campaigns/women-and-climate/. Accessed 10 February 2019.

Climate Change. National Congress of American Indians. http://www.ncai.org/policy-issues/land-natural-resources/climate-change.  Accessed 10 February 2019.

For this post, I started off by doing a quick google image search of “ecofeminism” to get an idea of what I wanted to talk about.  The image above was one of the first to appear, and I noticed an overall theme of similar images where women are depicted as part of nature through trees and other natural wildlife. 

I related this to Karen J. Warren’s eight women and nature connections where number two on the list explains how different conceptual connections are made through a socially accepted male-biased perspective of feminizing nature.  Warren discusses how women are historically depicted as the inferior sex by associating feminine qualities with emotion, body, and nature and how men are depicted as the superior sex by linking masculine traits with reason, mind, humanity, and culture.  These gendered depictions are a result of the strong influence of, “value dualism and value hierarchies in larger, oppressive conceptual frameworks… that shape and reflect how one views oneself and others,” (Warren).  Based on this idea, when I see images such as the one above I cannot help but think it is doing a disservice to ecofeminism.  I feel like this is normalizing the idea of “Mother Nature” where Warren argues that this kind of association wrongly feminizes women’s connection to nature and ultimately justifies and continues the oppression and subordination of women.  So, it bothers me that these types of images arise when I search “ecofeminism” into Google, because I wonder if this is a reflection of society’s misunderstanding of ecofeminist theory?  Is it working against ecofeminists goal to create a gender-sensitive approach or is it only helping to further progress a male-biased perspective?

From reading Hobgood- Oster’s take on ecofeminsim, I got the basic understanding that ecofeminism is the theory that all human and nonhuman oppressions are connected through dominating patriarchal structures.  Her thoughts pull similarities of Warren’s eight connections, especially the male-biased conceptions of women’s relation to nature, as mentioned above.  She says, “ecofeminism claims that patriarchal structures justify their dominance through categorical or dualistic hierarchies… established oppressive systems continue to manifest their abusive powers by reinforcing assumptions of these binaries,” (Hobster- Oster 2).  This assumption of a binary women and nature, only justifies these deep- rooted patriarchal social dominance. 

The first one of Warren’s eight women- nature connections is about the historical and causal connections.  This focuses on how the understanding of the history of oppression can stop history from continuing to repeat itself.  She links the current global environmental crisis to historical patriarchal social hierarchies.  What I understand from this connection is that our past is the cause for our present day issues.  I can relate to this my chosen image above, because when I look at this picture, I see the relation of women and nature based from  male-biased perception that has been integrated so deeply into our society from our long history of patriarchal oppression through social and environmental domination.

Carson, Rachel. The American Midwife of Ecofeminism. 2014. WordPress,  https://doubtingcontemplative.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/rachel-carson-the-american-midwife-of-eco-feminism/. Accessed Feb 2 2019.

Warren, J. KAren. “Women’s Introduction to EcoFeminism.” There It Is.org, http://thereitis.org/warrens-introduction-to-ecofeminism/. Accessed 2 Feb 2019

Hobgood- Oster. “Ecofeminism: Historic and International Evolution.” http://users.clas.ufl.edu/bron/pdf–christianity/Hobgood-Oster–Ecofeminism-International%20Evolution.pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2019/