Hey Y’all Welcome Back!!

We are nearing the end of this blog very quickly! I hope you won’t miss me too much!

This week’s post is going to be part one of a two piece blog. This week I’m going to walk you through my plan to implement ecofeminism into not only my household but 4 others.

This is the crazy bunch of us that will be making some changes over the next few weeks.

Looking back at all the materials we’ve gone through and everything we’ve learned together I kept going back to the week in which we discussed not only being a vegetarian but how women are often compared to animals in very crass ways. So I decided, since my crazy family has more than enough time on their hands in quarantine, that we would all eat vegetarian dishes for the next seven days. We will then be able to see how many animals total, that we saved. *I have a feeling that number is going to very high.* I have five families and 18 people participating, I’m surprised I was able to convince them all to give it a try!

On Weekly Average…

Family 1 (4 members) eats 6 lbs of chicken, 5 lbs of beef and 3 lbs of seafood.

Family 2 (5 members) eats 15 lbs of chicken, 10 lbs of beef and 5 lbs of seafood.

Family 3 (4 members) eats 8 lbs of chicken, 5 lbs of beef and 3 lbs of seafood.

Family 4 (3 members)  eats 3 lbs of chicken, 3 lbs of beef and 2 lbs of seafood.

Family 5 (2 members) eats 2lbs of chicken, 2 lbs of beef and 1 lb of seafood.

I’ve made a graph to look at things a little easier.

Yeah, Family 2 really likes chicken.

I think many of us will struggle for the first few days especially the men in Family 2 but I really hope they are able to push past that so we can see some serious results.

My hope is that we (myself included) will be able to see that living a vegetarian lifestyle is doable and even healthier for us. I also hope to educate the rest of my family about ecofeminism during this process. I’ve challenged them to read a few different materials that we’ve already gone through while learning about ecofeminism. The most important and effective source I sent them was the Animal Kill Clock. I hope this has some sort of effect of everyone, but at the very least I hope it gets them through the next week.

We are all starting our seven day animal cleanse tonight! My family is going to make Butternut Squash Pasta, which we actually make a lot but it’s delicious! I’ve linked a recipe similar to ours, give it a try!

I’m looking forward to hearing about the recipes the other families try. I encourage you to try to find more vegetarian recipes to incorporate into your own diet. If you have any good ideas please share! I’d love to give them a try or send them along to the other families.

I’ll be posting the result within the next few weeks!! Fingers crossed we are all able to make some adjustments!!

Stay Safe and Healthy Y’all!!

Until Next Time!

Hey Y’all Welcome Back!!

We are so close to the finish line of this hectic semester. I hope you are all able to find the motivation so you can finish it off strong. Then we can be trapped in our houses with absolutely nothing to do.

This week we are focusing on intersectionality and the place it holds within the ecofeminist discussion. I hope you’re not too surprised by this topic, for intersectionality is a major player within any conversation about someone’s identity and how those identities are often simultaneously oppressed by the patriarchal system.

“The term intersectionality, which is generally attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, began as a metaphorical and conceptual tool used to highlight the inability of a single-axis framework to capture the lived experiences of black women” (Kings, A.E. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism.” Ethics & the Environment). Since then, intersectionality has become this sort of umbrella to define anybody’s multiple factor identity. But how does it fit into ecofeminisim?

Thus far we have discussed extensively how women are connected to nature and thus equally oppressed. But we haven’t talked about the specific types of women this encompasses. In the article The Necessity of Black Women’s Standpoint and Intersectionality in Environmental Movements by Cacildia Cain, she talks about how the ecofeminist thought leaves out the black woman by instead focusing on white women in the middle class. This creates a complete lack of intersectionality. I found this to be particularly interesting especially considering, just last week we were discussing Wangari Maathai and her great accomplishments in the positive changes of our environment. This specific article was written in 2016, so it’s more than possible that within the four years there has been a serious advancement within ecofeminism and the addition of intersectionality but I’ve never felt as though ecofeminism only encompasses white women. This aspect could fit into our conversation that there is no one ecofeminist ‘bubble’ or as Karen Warren would assumingly say, ‘there is no one ecofeminism‘. Some ecfeminists’ thoughts may include intersectionality while others’ don’t.

There are many ecofeminists with many different beliefs and perspectives. I believe that how you learn of any topic creates your view of it. The specific materials in which I have gone through to create the ecofeminist thought and blog I know have has created my view of it to include intersectionality. Materials such as The Movement, Vandana Shiva, and Wangari Maathai all include conversations about different types of women and how they’re effected differently by nature. I think it’s more than possible that my view could lack intersectionality had I been given access to materials that left out women of color in regard to ecofeminism. I am thankful for the ecofeminist perspective I have and that intersectionality is a big part of it. I wonder, do you feel the same? Does your ecofeminist thought already includes intersectionality based on the materials I’ve provided you with? Prior to this blog did you mostly picture white women as the center of our conversations?

When learning of ecofeminism and how it encompasses intersectionality, the article Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism was a real eye opening piece. I highly recommend you at least scan it because it will really contribute to your understanding of ecofeminism because there is always more room to learn. I think the most important take away from this article is “that by applying the lens of intersectionality to analysis, one is better able to understand and assess the complex relationship between humans (specifically women) and the natural world” (Kings, A.E. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism”). Really, by including intersectionality into your ecofeminism perspective it only strengthens that perspective because it now addresses a wide variety of people and the multiple contributions to these peoples’ identities. I really do wonder how one’s ecofeminist perspective can exclude intersectionality, especially in today’s day and age.

One last thought to leave you with from Beverly Tatum’s The Complexity of Identity: Who am I? “Our on going examination of who were are in our full humanity, embracing all of our identities, creates the possibility of building alliances that may ultimately free us”. How do you see this quote as being very much connected to this conversation about intersectionality among ecofeminism?

Stay Safe and Healthy Y’all

See you next week!!

Hey Y’all Welcome Back!

I don’t know about you but these weeks seem to be flying by, lets hope this continues.

We have a lot a materials to cover this week, but I don’t want to overwhelm you so we’re going to break it into sections. Our main goal, especially with all the knowledge we now have about ecofeminism, is to be able to go through these materials and make connections of oppression between women and nature. I’m pretty confident in our ability to do so.

The first source we’re going to talk about this week is about “Brazilian Slum Children Who are Literally Swimming in Garbage”. Which is a perfect place to start our discussion. I encourage you to have a look at this article yourself, but for the sake of being on the same page the short article discuss children living in poverty in Recife, Brazil. The government does very little to help these children and their mothers. It wasn’t until this article came out that the government decided to put the pictured boy and his family on welfare. I can say with some amount of certainty that this was only done because the spotlight was put on them, so they felt forced to do something. This was the featured picture…

Yes, the child pictured is a boy, but what is also made clear to us is that this young boy is being raised by his single mother, the father is clearly not in the picture. This is where we are able to see a connection between both oppressed women and nature. This boy is standing in a canal underneath one of the city’s so called ‘majestic’ bridges. If this is how to government treats the environment near a well known landmark I don’t want to know what the city looks like in the ‘forgotten’ corners, and how the people living there suffer because of it. Much like last week, we can see a connection between Brazil’s treatment of women and nature, both are being ‘swept under the rug’. I would also connect this article to a conversation earlier on, environmental degradation. We can see women and children being equally effected by this trash just as, I’m sure the once beautiful canal, is being effected.

This next source, is hard to read. The video attached is even harder to watch. It’s about Native Americans, specifically women fighting against police brutality, harassment and overall inhuman treatment. I do encourage you to watch the video, which is very captivating because of the honest truth of it all. I’m going to summarize a little bit but I think every little detail is really important for the bigger picture, so if you are able to at least look over the above attached link, it would really add to you knowledge about ecofeminism from different aspects.

What is made the most obvious to us within this case, is first the mistreatment of an entire group of people, based on their religious beliefs and they way they choose to live their lives. As the article and short video goes on we see that the Native Americans’ land is being ripped to shreds for a pipeline. This land is a burial ground where their loved ones and ancestors are buried. Although my knowledge of the beliefs Native Americans hold is very limited, I do know that digging up the deceased is extremely disrespectful and leads to the disruption of the deceased’s spirit. All in all, the dead is not to be touched upon burial. The Dakota Access Pipeline came in and completely uprooted this burial ground, disrespecting the people and their beliefs. While holding no concern for the damage of the surrounding nature. Which Native Americans are also very connected to. We can easily see the oppression of nature here, but what about women? Well within this same tribe the women are often targeted by the local police. The women pictured above was arrested along with her friends without any probable cause, taken to the local precinct, asked to take her clothes off for a strip search. She refused. From there I would argue she was sexually assaulted, by both female and male guards as the forced her clothes off and left her in a cell. The Crime and Justice Studies major in me really wants to lay out a very obvious criminal case, but that’s not the knowledge I want you to leave my blog with. Sadly, this is not an isolated case, Native American women across the country are being harassed and mistreated by the authorities while their land is being ripped apart to benefit our ‘modern’ world.

While our world is full of people that fall victim to the system like Prairie McLaughlin and Paulo Henrique, we also have people and movements fighting to prevent this and rallying people to educate the public about it. Wangari Maathai is one of those people. Wangari Maathai founded The Green Belt Movement in 1977 which “is an environmental organization that empowers communities, particularly women, to conserve the environment and improve livelihoods.” Maathai was able to create an entire organization out of an ecofeminists’ two most important interests. Another known movement that was very active during the time The Green Belt was founded is the Chipko movement, which is based in India and fights against deforestation. Chipko is more focused on one aspect of our environment while the Green Belt is more broad, nevertheless they are both creating positive change.

I encourage you to have a look at Wangari Maathai’s website. There’s a lot of really great information on there.

Now that we’ve discussed a few different very modern cases in which both women and nature are being equally suppressed there’s a much bigger question we should be asking ourselves. Do you think that behind the material deprivations and cultural losses of the marginalized and the poor lie the deeper issues of dis empowerment and/or environmental degradation? I know, that’s a loaded question but let’s think about it in pieces, because the answer is right in front of you. With things such as, social class, religion, economic status and race set aside is dis empowerment and/or environmental degradation the root of the problem? I know it can be hard to set those things aside as we have been conditioned to see them as the most important within our society, but it’s important to be able to answer this question. I want you to be able to develop your own answer and opinions for this question but I believe both dis empowerment and environmental degradation have a prominent place within ecofeminism and the foundation of it. However, I think it’s nearly impossible to set such things aside or think in terms of ‘behind it all’ because they are such important parts of this conversation. Class creates certain issues and so does race and religion. People hate change, which is the core of most issues within our society. All factors need to be considered to create a solution.

I want to leave you with a quote from Wangari Maathai’s Speak Truth to Power speech that really stuck with me. “The clarity of what you ought to do gives you courage, removes the fear, gives you the courage to ask. There is so much you do not know. And you need to know. And it helps you get your mind focused. Now, you are out of the bus and moving to the right direction. They will see you move with passion, conviction, and persistence. You are very focused.”

Stay Focused Y’all!

Until Next Time….

Welcome Back Y’all.

We are certain living in some crazy times right now, so I hope my blog can distract you a little from the chaos for a while.

With that said, this week we’re going to discuss abortion and its connection to both feminism and ecofeminism. But most importantly we’re going to discuss an ecofeminist’s views on abortion.

In regard to abortion there are primarily three stances surrounding it. “the extreme conservative view”, commonly known as the ‘pro-life’ debate,  “the extreme liberal view”, commonly known as the ‘pro-choice’ debate, and “moderate views which lie between both extremes”. For ecofeminist, Ronnie Zoe Hawkins, the ‘pro-choice’ stance most closely aligns with her belief system, but it’s not really about either side of this argument, but rather the facts that support her ecofeminist thought. To align with the theme of my blog I not only feel inclined to support Hawkins’ views but I also find doing so to come most naturally. Her ecofeminist thoughts only strengthen the pro-choice debate while adding some rather important factors into the conversation, factors that I had never really considered to be a strong back bone to this topic. Nevertheless, now that I’m aware of these factors and the ecofeminist view of abortion my stance on pro-choice is only strengthened.

But what are these factors? What is it about an ecofeminists’ perspective on abortion that creates a whole new aspect to the conversation?

Well, as we’ve learned an ecofeminist is primarily concerned with issues that surround and connect feminist problems with ecological ones. At first glance though, abortion doesn’t seem to be an ecological issue, or does it? Hawkins starts off her essay with “While much as been said about the morality of choosing to abort a human fetus, too little attention has been given to the moral implications, from an environmentalist perspective, of deciding whether or not to add a new human life to the planet”. Right away my eyes were opened to a completely new way of approaching this conversation. There is a much bigger picture involved with abortion than I thought. According to the Worldometer our world currently has a population of 7,771,512,530 and it’s rising by the second. Although we have thousands of deaths everyday, our population continues to rise rapidly. The idea of ‘over population’ is starting to become a reality. Although within the United States we don’t see it being as prevalent as in places like China or India, we are still one of the largest countries in the world, population wise. So how does abortion fit into all this? Well according to Hawkin, specifically South Korea, without abortion it is said that their population would be 22% higher than it is now. And in the grand scheme of things South Korea is a small country, this year alone there have been 8,903,422 abortions, and counting. This is an extreme number of potential people that could have added to our current population, only limiting our resources even more. Most people don’t realize it or acknowledge it, but our planet does have a max capacity, and resources will one day run out. When they do, I don’t want to imagine how many more deaths we’ll start having per day.

Although the abortion conversation makes people very emotional and very ‘stubborn’ in regard to their beliefs, Hawkins forces us to look at the bigger picture, to forget about all the emotion and noise surrounding the conversation. Maybe this is what the topic needs, some perspective, this sort of ‘outside looking in’ concept. Maybe it’s not as complicated as our society has made it. If we can start stressing ‘pro-choice’ from an ecofeminist perspective, maybe that will open people’s eyes or at least make them question their own beliefs on abortion. What do you think? Has abortion become a way too complicated debate? Will simplifying it give people a better understanding? Had you ever thought of Hawkin’s views on abortion or at least made the connection to overpopulation? I certainly hadn’t. I’m also curious to hear from those who don’t agree with Hawkins, do you think her ecofeminist perspective is irrelevant to the abortion topic?

Thanks for joining me this week!!

See y’all next week!!

Until then….

Please stay inside and wash your hands!!

Now onto the next picture, take a minute to really look at it before reading the following…

Much like the above picture there’s a lot going on here, it’s just a bit more subtle I guess you could say. First off the most obvious, once again a woman’s body is being combined with meat, except this time it’s dead meat. Which is even more offensive, I mean seriously? The little bubble that says “eat me” is quite obviously a sexual innuendo in regard to the woman’s body. This might just be me reading a bit too much into it but, the placing of the sign; a street late at night, and the woman’s fish net tights with tall red heels definitely insinuates the stereotype of a ‘prostitute’. Honestly the whole thing is just sickening. When I came across this photo it automatically reminded me of Carol Adams’ idea of ‘Pornography of Meat’. “We see how pornographic photographs, like advertisements, are carefully constructed: nothing that appears in the photograph or the advertisement is there by accident” (Carol Adams, The Pornography of Meat). This advertisement is very carefully constructed all the way down the the spelling of ‘nite’ versus ‘night’. The shorter spelling has a very flirty connotation to it. The entirety of the advertisement is exactly how Adams describes it to be, clever, specific and degrading.

Terry Tempest Williams who is a writer, educator, conservationist, and activist developed a sort of theory that attempts to explain the relationship between us and our earth, more specifically that piece of earth we feel most connected to, that holds most of our history. She calls this theory the Bedrock Democracy. There are many factors to this theory but she best captures its essence when she says “As the world becomes more crowded and corroded by consumption and capitalism, this landscape of minimalism will take on greater significance, reminding us through its blood red grandeur just how essential wild country is to our psychology….The hope of a bedrock democracy, standing our ground in the places we love together.” My little corner of the world does just this. It’s a place where all the ‘noise’ disappears and I can get some perspective on our crowded world. My biggest take away from this concept, is that it’s important to remember that despite all the evil our world has, nature is something that has never failed us. It’s always been there to quite literally support us, and if this is something we can remember then as a community I think we’ll be okay.

“Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own” (Barbara Kingsolver). I have to say that I agree with Kingsolver, who is a writer. In today’s world I think…no I know that many people become way too confident, they forget who they truly are and often times become something very unpleasant. But as Kingsolver would say “wildness put us in our place”, the enormity and beauty of nature reminds us that we are in fact a very small portion of all of existence. It shows us what’s really important and in turn makes us live better lives. For city dwellers I think it’s hard to have nature’s support because of the obvious lack of actual nature within cities. We as humans have done a really good job at creating tiny living spaces with little to no nature. I think city dwellers are still able to have a connection with our earth and their own history through it but not so much with nature in it’s purest form. I wish nature was bad a bigger priority within our culture.

That’s it for today folks. Thanks for listening.

See Ya’ll Next Time!!!

Hey Ya’ll Thanks for coming back!!!

What shall we talk about this week? More ecofeminism?….well duh. I have a lot to say you know. I love to talk!!

Now that we know what ecofeminisim is or we at least have a basic understanding of it, we can talk about how certain issues that fall under the ecofeminism umbrella affect certain groups of women. Within our western culture it’s important for us to remember that even if we can’t see certain issues happening within our own society that doesn’t mean it’s not someone else’s reality.

In the global south, otherwise defined as our third world countries, women are affected by a number of different environmental issues because they don’t have the access to resources on a regular basis that we (western civilizations) do. Arguably, the biggest way women experience environmental degradation in our poorer countries, is their water access, or lack there of. Within the culture of most third world countries it is primarily the women and girls who are responsible for the household’s water.

{While water is the main conversation here, it’s also important to acknowledge the issues women face that thrives off their lack of water. Issues such as sanitation, hygiene, menstruation, and even being excluded from occupations and education.}

The responsibility of water for women does more damage than you may think. Unlike our western world, water is generally stored pretty far from most families’ homes within low-income countries. The actually process of collecting water and bringing it back to the home is extremely time consuming, and puts great deal of strain on a woman’s body, as the walks are far and the ‘containers’ they lug the water back in are made to be as heavy as possible but still carry-able. If this wasn’t enough to deal with, women doing this are usually in a very vulnerable position as they venture out to collect water, using every ounce of energy they have. This makes them susceptible to attacks as they are alone and physically weak from the strenuous work they are responsible for. Both of these issues are only made worse when a women is on her period or pregnant.

I believe that the most important thing to take away from this conversation is that the fact that women are disadvantaged and boarder line victimized by certain environmental issues that men just aren’t. If this can be acknowledged on a wide scale I think we’ll start to see some serious change.

Thus far when we’ve discussed ecofeminism, we’ve discussed it in terms of how the western world interprets and believes in it. However, there are many more perspectives of ecofeminism, and how women and nature are and should be connected. Unlike what I discussed last week, an ecofeminist by the name of Benal Agarwal has a very non-Western perspective of what ecofeminism is. While Warren and Hobgood-Oster, (western ecofeminists) focus on explaining how environmental issues and feminist issues are both caused by our patriarchal system, Agarwal suggests that certain environmental issues are the cause of feminist issues. The way Agarwal presents her perspective, I believe to be rather important to the perspective as a whole. She essentially breaks her paper into two conversations under the ecofeminism umbrella. The first speaks of women as victims to certain environmental issues such as the women and water issue discussed above. The second one discusses how women have always been very active in protecting the environment, probably because they are so often affected by it, especially within third world countries.

I think the difference between the two different perspectives simply comes from the difference in the cultures. While women in third world countries are often being put at a significant disadvantage because of an environmental issue, women on the other side of the world don’t experience anything like that, especially those within a higher class. It’s important to remember that despite the different perspectives all ecofeminists have the same overall goal; to protect our planet and the women living on it.

While I believe both perspectives to be intriguing and representative of their culture, if I had to choose the most appealing I’d have to choose our western view. Yes, it doesn’t include how certain environmental issues create or worsen feminist ones, but our culture doesn’t see that on a day to day basis. However, it does include; in fact it’s probably the biggest factor within ecofeminism in the western world; that our patriarchal system is the cause of both environmental and feminist issues. Although the details of a patriarchal system differ between cultures, it remains a fact that we live in a male dominated world and we can’t ignore that in reference to ecofeminism. I think it’s important to include this conversation within all perspectives of ecofeminism. Regardless, all of these different perspectives only contribute to the larger idea which can only be a positive advancement for women and our environment.

That’s all I have to say today!!

See Ya’ll Next time!!