I was reading over the paper I posted on ecofeminism (under 'suggestions for further reading') to see what I could use in my term paper, and the simplicity of its ideas really hit me. Some of the feminist material I've read can get really out of hand until you can't comprehend anything, but this article spelled everything out. Women, especially in 3rd world countries, work with and depend on nature directly every hour of every day of their lives. They count on natural resources for fuel, food, clothing, and shelter; so what happens when nature is degraded to the point of disappearing? These women have nothing left to sustain their families. Women living in poverty across the world are cut off from any sort of power, ecologically or otherwise. They don't have the money, the resources, or the time, and are given gravely substandard employment and income.
Anyone in this class has a much better future ahead of them than these women, especially if nothing is done in the near future to give the environment, and thereby impoverished women, another chance. No matter what your standard of living is, because you live in the U.S. and are gaining a quality education at Penn State, you are better off than any 3rd world country citizen ever has the hopes of being. So why is it that we would rather ignore their presence, 'fight for our own'? I know that there is poverty in the U.S., but we should be working to change that here and everywhere, and not place class and culture restrictions on giving someone a better life.
As stated in the paper, "women, like the land, are abused, violated, scarred...women and the natural environment are overcome by forces with superior strength, power and technology. " These points hark back to some of the discussions we've been having in class lately. When does power become too much for humans to handle? I believe when it becomes detrimental to another human, we need to rethink our priorities. Why should some creatures be important to us while others are considered useless pests (like the flea). We should have the humanity and empathy to respect and cherish every living being, to understand its place in the world. And certainly humans such as women in 3rd world countries, and even closer to home, as in Canada and the U.S., should be given the fighting opportunity to an equal life as the rest of us.
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I agree with eco-feminism more than some of the tenets of deep ecology. Of course, the two are not completely separate, but eco-feminism seems to have a better handle on its own philosophy and real world applications. It doesn't get lost in abstraction the way deep ecology tends to.
ReplyDeleteI still think that its impossible to cherish every living being, though. What about HIV virus that ruin the lives of people around the world? Or pests that destroy the crops many people are dependent upon for their livelihood? What if they don't have access to the education or resources for organic methods of deterrence? I think we need to learn how to take better care of each other before we worry about every single living being.
I'm not sure if the flea remark was an indirect response to my post or not, but I admit I was being a little dramatic. Regardless, what about the fleas that infest the animals we're more fond of, like dogs and cats? Do we not value these animals more? Should we not kill fleas for the well-being of cats and dogs, or should we let them suffer to give fleas a fair chance? Also, are we willing to forcibly decrease human population to give every other species a chance to flourish? I don't know, these are tricky questions, but I still don't think that all life forms can have an equal opportunity to life because the very nature of life involves the death and/or consumption of other life forms.
This paper brings to light a lot of information I've learned in my International Ag class. The interesting thing in the 3rd world is that women actually do most of the physical labor for a household. I can't recall which country, but we watched a film about female roles in a village in Africa. When a woman is pregnant, she is expected to do physical labor right up until the baby is born. After the baby is born, she gets a whopping 8 days of rest until she is required to go back to work again. The men basically "manage" the fields their wives work, as well as control where the money is being put. In the United States, women don't have to work if they don't want to, pregnant or not! I wonder if comparing these 2 worlds shows similarities with how we treat our land too?
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