We are all our own oppressors, every issue we ever had and will have is in our own heads!
This week blog post has me thinking a lot! I have for a while now realized everything is related. The first reading on Intersectionality has made me realize that feminism has started action rather than thought. Such as in how science is the act of discovery and engineering is the act of doing. Feminism is the act of thinking how to solve issues, while perhaps intersectionality is the act of enacting that thinking and testing it out. It may be confusing why I have a picture of a food chain and then a food web on an ecofeminism blog, but as I said everything is related.
The reason these images are shown, is because it depicts a change in the way of thinking. In biology, the food chain was how the transfer of energy and hierarchy was perceived. Plants produce, something eats the plant, and something eats the thing that eats the plant. Over time though, it was realized that a food web is a more realistic depiction of the transfer of energy, that there is no hierarchy. Which can be related to how humans think and to a point still do. That not only are we the top of our food chain, but leaders are at the top of the human hierarchy. The issue is that there is no food chain and hierarchy. There is nothing more important than another, maybe more vital such as how plants are more vital than tigers in sustaining an ecosystem, but that is because plants are the base, they are the producers. Such as how farmers are the producers for civilization. If we never were able to produce excess food, then peoples would never have been able to do anything more than food production. It is not a bad way of living, but not the most prosperous. With the birth of society/civilization a food chain was formed. The leaders were at the top, with a single chain linking down the order of commands till you get to the proles or general masses, till you get to the source, the farmers.
What I believe ecofeminism is trying to point out is we are not a food chain, but a food web. Humans are part of the web of life, we are nature and in that we take from others, but also give. We give water to the plants we eat, we give our bodies back to the earth, our composite of body that remains after death goes back to the earth. Not only are we part of the grand, continually changing, food web of life and existence, but we are also in the food web of the human “hierarchy”. In which it was believed Leaders were better than their people. That A king was chosen by god to lead the people. Using religion as a tool to order people and explain why they are in their place in life, such as how Hinduism promotes the caste system. In truth though and I would say since the American government was made, people realized they can govern themselves, that leaders are not chosen by god, but there to help the people.
I would argue that like in a food web, the classes of society exist, but one is not more important than the other. We has a people have put stigmas on others, taking the dominant as what everyone else should be. Either you are “us” or you will never be accepted as us. The issue is that “us” has been made into a singular. Today “us” is an in-shape, white, christian, wealthy, male. It is almost God like in goals to meet that criteria. It is something few can ever be and even fewer actually be. I feel what ecofeminism is trying to obtain is to get people to realize that everyone is important, not only that, but in truth the general masses, the ones working the stigmatized jobs of retail life/grocery stores/”non-career” type jobs and more vital jobs such as farmers and doctors are the more important ones.
It is funny to think in history that women are often seen as the less powerful, which is true in leadership positions such as “government”, but in the day to day life women hold most and almost all the power. That is what we have been reading, how Women are the caretakers of children and nature, doing the farming and when deciding to, planting millions of trees and make a movement last. Not only in those abstract power positions, but even on an American plantation there is stories of men having to ask his wife for the keys to a shed, having to ask permission to gain access because the women ruled the household. Unfortunately, men ruled the world and did not stop to care about the womens’ opinion. Creating the shift we have today. Though I continue with my stance that each individual is as important as the other, The president is no more powerful than the people they lead. That the people producing the food, the infrastructure, and wealth is where a nation’s wealth comes from. That although the president and congress are vital in helping to maintain order and redistribute wealth, that the American government was made realizing that it is not the leaders who are important, but the people. As father time moves forward, the people are starting to include more and more faces, not just the white Christian land owning male.
Essentially, intersectionality, the combination of anticategorical and intercategorical, will be what establishes that everybody is different and comes from different back rounds and that we cannot forget that, but that does not mean we separate ourselves from others because we are all the others. We all have dominate and subordinate features in us, and that there is no one way, as we see in corporations that strive for diversity. They realize it is more beneficial to have people that think differently trying to steer the bus in opposing directions rather than everybody thinking the same and just driving the bus merrily along never being challenged.
Intersectionality, I believe will be the engineering of society, the applicable side of ecofeminism, and that the problem it is fighting, which has been subdivided into many categories, will really be solved by one solution. As said in the readings, we cannot be equal till we are all equal. That by oppressing one group, whether it be based on nature rights, women, race, religion, and anything else that makes us different, we are only oppressing ourselves.
In one of our first readings, Warrens introduction to ecofeminism, it talks about dualism thinking and how it is bad. I have never so quickly disagreed with a way of thinking, that dualism in a sense is the society we are trying to make. There is constant argument that we live in a patriarchal society, and that it is one of domination. This could not be anything but true, and though we are trying to fight it with femininity, it will always be a continual struggle. Such as the Daoist symbol, there is ying and yang, men and women, masculinity and femininity. That the fight is subdivided into the rich Vs poor, black Vs white, this idea Vs that idea, but the true fight is in a sense men Vs women. That our dominating society is only half successful, because all we do is dominant. We do not approach with much femininity and try to help the different people, species, and world. I agree completely women will never be liberated in a society of domination because that is a mans world. Women will only be liberated when their voices are heard and we live not only in a society of domination/ masculinity, but in a more balanced society that will constantly battling between masculinity and femininity. That we need both, it needs to be a WoMens world, not just a man’s world or a woman’s world. A man’s world will only ever represent one man and a woman’s world will only ever represent one women, but a world where both are present and active will be able to better represent a world that needs balance.
I always find it crazy that we have seen our abilities to create and destroy and not think we are not gods. That we can create a wilderness and society that does make perfect harmony. Perfect harmony can be constant, it will just be constantly changing. Imagine a world, where every soul is truly working to only ever bend down to lift others up. TO truly recognize the importance of all those that contribute and help those that can’t. When we are living in a world where everybody not only focuses on bettering themselves and helping themselves, which many cannot currently do, but also helping everyone else whether they are like you or different from you, then truly there would be one god instead of 7 billion deities. Not to say that we will always agree, but at least then we would all be striving for the betterment of all peoples, organisms, and everything that exists.