Ecological Feminism Critiques Exploitation of Women and Environment

1AC ECOLOGICAL FEMINISM
(not prakriti)
The ocean is creative and life sustaining. Exploitation of the
ocean and the environment is co-constitutive of the
exploitation of women. Both are seen as passive,
unproductive, and open to exploitation, as women have
historically been seen as themselves essentially linked to
nature. This perpetuates the destruction of both as they are
seen as the same and inferior, with man raised above them
both. Only by affirming the ocean as a space in which all life
intersects can we hope to combat the violation of nature and
only by affirming the feminine as productive and valuable can
we hope to combat the violation of women.
The Western, patriarchal ocean narrative has historically failed

to recognize this interconnectedness nature is viewed as
existing exclusively for human use, creating hierarchies in
which the environment and the women who have historically
been associated with nature are devalued and exploited. That
view of the ocean manifests in imperialist development
discourse, such as policies that would seek to obtain wealth
from the ocean without real consideration to how that may
impact the environment and those who depend on it. This can
be seen in unsustainable and exploitive practices such as
trawling and trash dumping. Concepts of development and
resource utilization that emerged in the context of colonialism
have been raised to the level of the universal. Countries,
cities, and towns are seen as underdeveloped and inferior if
they arent characterized by commercialized resource
harvesting practices, factory farms, sky scrapers, etc. This has
led to the continuation of colonization and the destruction of
the lives and cultures of millions all in the name of a
patriarchal progress - Western countries impose
environmentally, and socially disastrous programs that fail to
take into account the ways that these backward societies
have been able to advance themselves on their own terms.
Ways of fishing that have sustained communities for decades
are displaced by shrimp farms that export luxury products to
Western countries and leave those who are most affected poor
and starving.
Shiva 88 (Vandana Shiva. Indian environmental activist and
anti-globalization author. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and
Survival in India 1-4 //MG)
'Development' was to have been a post-colonial project, a choice for accepting a
model of progress in which the entire world remade itself on the model of the
colonising modem west, without having to undergo the subjugation and exploitation
that colonialism entailed. The assumption was that western style progress was
possible for all. Development, as the improved well-being of all, was thus equated
with the westernisation of economic categories - of needs, of Productivity, of
growth. Concepts and categories about economic development and natural resource
utilisation that had emerged in the specific context of industrialisation and capitalist
growth in a centre of colonial power, were raised to the level of universal
assumptions and applicability in the entirely different context of basic needs
satisfaction for the people of the newly independent Third World countries. Yet, as Rosa
Luxemberg has pointed out, early industrial development in western Europe necessitated
the permanent occupation of the colonies by the colonial powers and the
destruction of the local 'natural economy'.1According to her, colonialism is a constant
necessary condition for capitalist growth: without colonies, capital accumulation
would grind to a halt. 'Development' as capital accumulation and the
commercialisation of the economy for the generation of 'surplus' and profits thus
involved the reproduction not merely-of a particular form of creation of wealth, but
also of the associated creation of poverty and dispossession. A replication of
economic development based on commercialisation of resource use for commodity
production in the newly independent countries created the internal colonies .2
Development was thus reduced to a continuation of the process of colonisation; it
became an extension of the project of wealth creation in modern western
patriarchy's economic vision, which was based on the exploitation or exclusion of
women (of the west and non-west), on the exploitation and degradation of nature, and on
the exploitation and erosion of other cultures. 'Development' could not but entail
destruction for women, nature and subjugated cultures, which is why, throughout
the Third World, women, peasants and tribals are struggling for liberation from
development just as they earlier struggled for liberation from colonisation. The UN
Decade for Women was based on the assumption that the improvement of women's
economic position would automatically flow from an expansion and diffusion of the
development process. Yet, by the end of the Decade, it was becoming clear that
development itself was the problem. Insufficient and inadequate , participation in
'development' was not the cause for women's increasing under-development; it was
rather, their enforced but asymmetric participation in it, by which they bore the costs
but were excluded from the benefits, that was responsible. Development exclusivity
and dispossession aggravated and deepened the colonial processes of ecological
degradation and the loss of political control over nature's sustenance base.
Economic growth was a new colonialism, draining resources away from those who
needed them most. The discontinuity lay in the fact that it was now new national elites, not
colonial powers, that masterminded the exploitation on grounds of 'national
interest' and growing GNPs, and it was accomplished with more powerful
technologies of appropriation and destruction. Ester Boserup3 has documented how women's
impoverishment increased during colonial rule; those rulers who had spent a few
centuries in subjugating and crippling their own women into de-skilled, deintellectualised appendages, disfavoured the women of the colonies on matters of
access to land, technology and employment . The economic and political processes
of colonial under- development bore the clear mark of modern western patriarchy,
and while large numbers of women and men were impoverished by these
processes, women tended to lose more. The privatisation of land for revenue
generation displaced women more critically, eroding their traditional land use
rights. The expansion of cash crops undermined food production, and women were
often left with meagre resources to feed and care for children, the aged and the
infirm, when men migrated or were conscripted into forced labour by the colonisers .
As a collective document by women activists, organisers and researchers stated at the end of the UN Decade for
'The almost uniform conclusion of the Decade's research is that with a few
exceptions, women's relative access to economic resources, incomes and
employment has worsened, their burden of work has increased, and their relative
and even absolute health, nutritional and educational status has declined.4 The
Women,
displacement of women from productive activity by the expansion of development

was rooted largely in the manner in which development projects appropriated or
destroyed the natural resource base for the production of sustenance and survival.
It destroyed women's productivity both by removing land, water and forests from
their management and control, as well as through the ecological destruction of soil,
water and vegetation systems so that nature's productivity and renewability were
impaired. While gender subordination and patriarchy are the oldest oppressions,
they have taken on new and more violent forms through the project of
development. Patriarchal categories which understand destruction as 'production'
and regeneration of life as passivity have generated a crisis of survival. Passivity, as
an assumed category of the 'nature' of nature and of women, denies the activity of
nature and life. Fragmentation and uniformity as assumed categories of progress
and development destroy the living forces which arise from relationships within the
'web of life' and the diversity in the elements and patterns of these relationships.
The economic biases and values against nature, women and indigenous peoples are
captured in this typical analysis of the 'unproductiveness' of traditional natural
societies: Production is achieved through human and animal, rather than
mechanical, power. Most agriculture is unproductive; human or animal manure may
be used but chemical fertilisers and pesticides are unknown ... For the masses,
these conditions mean poverty.5 The assumptions are evident: nature is unproductive;
organic agriculture based on nature's cycles of renewability spells poverty; women
and tribal and peasant societies embedded in nature are similarly unproductive, not
because it has been demonstrated that in cooperation they produce less goods and
services for needs, but because it is assumed that 'production' takes place only
when mediated by technologies for commodity production, even when such
technologies destroy life. A stable and clean river is not a productive resource in this
view: it needs to be 'developed' with dams in order to become so. Women, sharing
the river as a commons to satisfy the water needs of their families and society are
not involved in productive labour: when substituted by the engineering man, water
management and water use become productive activities . Natural forests remain
unproductive till they are developed into monoculture plantations of commercial species. Development thus,
is equivalent to maldevelopment, a development bereft of the feminine, the
conservation, the ecological principle. The neglect of nature's work in renewing
herself, and women's work in producing sustenance in the form of basic, vital needs
is an essential part of the paradigm of maldevelopment, which sees all work that
does not produce profits and capital as non or unproductive work. As Maria Mies6 has
pointed out, this concept of surplus has a patriarchal bias because, from the point of
view of nature and women, it is not based on material surplus produced over and
above the requirements of the community: it is stolen and appropriated through
violent modes from nature (who needs a share of her produce to reproduce herself) and from
women (who need a share of nature's produce to produce sustenance and ensure survival). From the
perspective of Third World women, productivity is a measure of producing life and
sustenance; that this kind of productivity has been rendered invisible does not
reduce its centrality to survival - it merely reflects the domination of modern
patriarchal economic categories which see only profits, not life.
This separation from nature results in overexploitation of

fisheries, wasteful longlining, destructive trawling, careless
pollution, and unsafe drilling and mining practices all carried
out without regard to the impacts they might have on the
environment and those who depend on it.
Alaimo 2014 (Stacy Alaimo, Feminist Science Studies and
Ecocriticism: Aesthetics and Entanglements in the Deep Sea
in The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism edited by Greg Garrard
//MG)
As ocean sciences gain funding, attention, and access to new technologies, and more information and images of the
ocean and its creatures becomes publicized-in news stories, books, photographs, websites, and films-it will be
important to consider the imbrications between scientific knowledge production, cultural narratives, and aesthetic
styles, as well as the environmental and political implications of these factors. Robert D. Ballard, former Director of
the Center for Marine Exploration at Woods Hole, concludes his personal history of ocean exploration, for example,
with a section enti- tled "Leaving the Body Behind," which notes the drawbacks ofhuman-occupied diving machines
and submersibles. Tethers, for example, "remain a problem: They snap, they tangle, they restrict." Ballard argues
that robotics and telecommunications technologies will allow us to cut the ultimate tethcr-thc one that binds our
questioning intellect to vulnerable human flesh. . . . As Iacques Cousteau used to say, the ideal means of deep-sea
trans- port would allow us to move "like an angel." Our minds can now go it alone, leaving the body behind. What
The desire to cut the tether, severing the

umbilical-cord connection between the tran- scendent scientific mind and the
vulnerable maternal flesh, betrays an epistemology that distances and supposedly
protects the knower from the realities, complications, and risks of the material
world. The predictably gendered dichotomies here, which presume the possibility of
freely oating minds, erase the materiality as well as the economic and political
entanglements of the very technologies that would allow scientists to, ostensibly,
"cut the tether." Strangely, the figure of the angel transubstantiates the crushing waters of the deep seas to
could be more angelic than that? (Ballard 2000, 311)
ethereal atmospheres, magically shifting from one realm to another, without tracing the scientific "cascade of
Invoking angels, or, as

is more commonly the case with the seas, aliens, and promoting epistemologies in
which the human remains separate from what he studies is particularly problematic for
ocean conservation movements. It is all too easy to ignore or dismiss the threats
to ocean environments when they are conceived as worlds apart from the human .
Aptly, Tony Koslow opens his book The Silent Deep with a New Yorker cartoon in which
one woman at a tea party says to another, "I don't know why I don't care about the
bottom of the ocean but I don't" (Koslow 2007). It is useful, particularly given widespread
environmental devastation, to acknowledge "the fact that we are part of the nature which
we seek to understand" and to consider that "taking account of the entangled
materializations of which we are a part" may be an ethical matter (Barad 2007, 352, 385).
And yet tracing these entanglements, caring about, feeling responsible for, or
promoting the environmental health of remote reaches of the ocean is, even for
most environmentalists, an ethical-political stretch. Out of sight, out of mind. A sea
mediations" that leads toward "what cannot be grasped directly" (Latour 2010: 123).
change, however, is in sight, as the start of the twenty-first century experiences a seemingly sudden resurgence of
interest in ocean conservation and a concomitant push for more research on ocean creatures and ecologies,
especially those of the deep seas. The TED talks, available on the web, feature a thematic cluster about marine science and ocean conservation, including Sylvia Earle's passionate plea to save the oceans. President Obama
established the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force in 2010, creating a National Ocean Council, and several ocean
advocacy groups have gained prominence alongside Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherds, including Oceana, Ocean
Conservancy, Blue Ocean Institute, ORCA: Ocean Research Conservation Association, Institute for Ocean
Conservation Science, BlueVoice, the United Kingdom's Marine Conservation Society, the Chilean Centro de
This is certainly overdue,

given the catastrophic overexploitation of most of the worlds fisheries; the
wasteful and cruel use of longlines; destructive beam-trawling for shellfish and
"finning" of sharks and rays; the toxic waste (including sewage, chemicals, and radioactive
waste); plastics suspended in the ocean waters as well as in the bodies of fish and
birds; and plans to increase ocean drilling and mining. Unlike most threatened
terrestrial ecosystems, however, aquatic environments remain a mystery. Little is
known, even by the scientific experts, about what creatures exist, what their life
cycles are, what they eat, and how various ecological systems work. Still less is
known about deep sea life. Biologists Michael A. Rex and Ron I. Etter muse that "Since most ofthe deep
Conservacion Cetacea, and the international Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.
sea remains unexplored we can hardly guess what other wonders exist there" (Rex and Etter 2010, x). They explain
that mainstream ecology has not incorporated the deep-sea: "One can scarcely find the term 'deep sea' in the
indices ofecology textbooks and major reference works" (Rex and Etter 2010, x). The early twenty-firstst century is
marine sciences are often entangled

with the commercial enterprises that are threatening the seas. The World Ocean
Council, for example, comprised of '"the ocean business community,' " promotes
"improved ocean science," in part because, "Increased, improved, and better
coordinated ocean science is important to industry operations in the marine
environment, to help ensure the business environment is as predictable as possible"
clearly a turning point for oceanic ecology and conservation, yet
(World Ocean Council 2010). While industries and nations race to capitalize on technologies that allow for more
extensive exploration and extraction from the seas, others argue that science needs to undertake fundamental
projects that will allow us to have some understanding of ocean ecologies before they are disrupted by industrial
fishing, dumping, and mining. John D. Gage and Paul A Tyler conclude their dense, and otherwise utterly "objective,"
textbook on Deep Sea Biology with this modest recommendation: "exploitation of [deep sea] resources should not
be attempted until we fully understand the natural history and ecology of this complex ecosystem" (Gage and Tyler
1991, 406).
Therefore, the United States federal government should

increase its sustainable development of the Earths oceans
based on an ecological feminism.
Our understanding of ecological feminism includes a

recognition of the ways in which concepts of femininity and
naturalness have been used to denigrate those dualistic
cultures consider feminine or natural, an analysis of the
ways in which policies that have hurt the environment have
also inevitably been detrimental to women and other Others, a
critical reclamation of concepts such as women or nature
in a way that counters the way in which those concepts have
historically manifested in material oppression, and a reevaluation of traditional ideas in an inclusive way. Ecological
feminism takes an intersectional and materialist approach that
explicitly recognizes the way in which many oppressions are
interlocked and thus would entail a critical analysis of policies
and how they unfairly burden women and other oppressed
groups. This is further explained by Cuomo
Cuomo 2001 (Christine Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy and
Women's Studies, and an affiliate faculty member of the
Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, the Institute for
African-American Studies, and the Institute for Native
American Studies. Feminism and Ecological Communities: An
ethic of flourishing //MG)
Though there are certainly common features among various examples of
ecofeminist and ecological feminist thought, the differences among them are
equally relevant to our discussion. As feminist theorists reject some versions of
feminism as inadequate, shallow, or inconsistent, so must we critically consider the
underlying principles and values to which ecofeminists implicitly or explicitly
subscribe. In the following pages I will sometimes be deeply critical of the theoretical underpinnings accepted by
a number of ecofeminist writers. None the less, I am favorably disposed toward the ecofeminist
project the attempt to bring together both feminist concerns, analyses, and ethical
insights and ethical concerns for the well-being of nonhuman species and
environments. Ecofeminists are preoccupied with connections and intersections
among different forms and instances of oppression, and this focus can provide
important insight and direction for environmental ethics and feminist politics . The
positions of feminist and other critical theorists who articulate connections among various forms of human
oppression without also analyzing and addressing the mistreatment of nature are different from ecofeminist
positions, because ecofeminism relies also on rejecting the belief that membership in the human species should be
In fact, ecofeminist arguments are meant not only

to uncover the connections between misogyny, sexism, or institutions of gender and
the exploitation of the so-called natural world, but also to make explicit connections
among these and other forms of oppression. Ecofeminists are particularly interested
in the ways oppression depends on hierarchical, dualistic thinking, and values that
propagate the glorification of qualities supposedly naturally held by those with
economic, sexual, racial, hegemonic power. FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES 36 Still,
the sole, ultimate designator of moral value.
ecofeminist methodologies are multifarious, and some are more useful and
accurate. A number of ecofeminists take discursive and practical connections
between women and nature at face value, believing them to be a result of
similarities among oppressed entities. Others ecological feminists theorize such
connections as indicators of similarities in subjugating ideologies and constructions
of the meanings of woman and nature. Among the latter in even her early writings, Ynestra King
asserts: We live in a culture which is founded on repudiation and domination of nature. This has a special
significance for women because, in patriarchal thought, women are believed to be closer to nature than men. That
gives women a particular stake in ending the domination of nature in healing the alienation between human and
Ecological feminist emphasis, not on

connections between women and nature, but on complex causal explanations and
implications of various, interlocking oppressions has been similar to, and often relies
on, work that makes explicit links among misogyny, racism, class oppression, and
heterosexism and homophobia. Ecological feminist attention to connections, or to
perceivable/constructable points of intersection among understandings of woman,
nature, race, and labor that help justify devaluation, should not be presented, by
ecofeminists or their critics, as a totalizing or grand schema that attempts to explain
and address the root cause of all oppression. Rather, it is best seen as a perspective
that can be uniquely illuminative of some aspects of oppression, exploitation,
mistreatment, and degradation. For example, environmental racism is the term that has been used to
nonhuman nature [my emphasis]. (Rothschild 1983: 18)
refer to the ways in which racism is perpetrated through environmental harm: On still days, when the air is heavy,
Piedmont has the rotten-egg smell of a chemistry class. The acrid, sulfurous odor of the bleaches used in the paper
mill drifts along the valley, penetrating walls and clothing, furnishings and skin. No perfume can fully mask it. It is
as much a part of the valley as is the river, and the people who live there are not overly disturbed by it. Smells like
money to me, we were taught to say in its defense, even as children. (Gates 1994: 6) The mostly African-American
residents in the 85-mile area between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, better known as Cancer Alley, live in a region
which contains 136 chemical companies and refineries. A 1987 study conducted by the United Church of Christs
Commission for Racial Justice found that two-thirds of all Blacks and Latinos in the United States reside in areas with
one or more unregulated toxic-waste sites. The THE ECOFEMINIST PROJECT 37 CRJ report also cited race as the
most significant variable in differentiating communities with such sites from those without them. Partly as a result of
living with toxic waste in disproportionate numbers, African-Americans have higher rates of cancer, birth defects,
Ecological feminist
analyses of environmental racism are crucial, as they help provide a theoretical
framework for detecting and analyzing the depth of correlation among various
oppressions. This is due mostly to its preoccupation with intersections a focus that
any theory or movement hoping to do something as simple as improve the lives of
women must have. Though we cannot underestimate the importance of getting
more people to notice (or care) that when the earth gets dumped on so do people of
color, ecological feminist analysis also pushes the following kinds of questions. How
does ethical, economic and aesthetic rhetoric help justify racist, toxic policies? How
do alienation and disempowerment make it particularly difficult for communities to
fight against a system that is poisoning them and their immediate environment? How
and lead poisoning than the United States population as a whole. (Riley 1993: 192)
do current racist conceptions of people and urban spaces as unclean and hopeless help justify mistreatment?
How, in male-dominated contexts, are women disproportionately affected by the

minute and mundane effects of toxins? Regarding environmental racism and injustice, ecological
feminism can offer helpful questions, and perhaps point to promising alternatives. For example, activists might
draw on feminist empowerment and consciousness-raising models to create
community discussion of issues. Feminist politics also require that the knowledge,
insights, and questions of women of color are central in shaping understandings of
the problems and solutions at hand. A feminist lens might also be necessary to
create activist strategies that do not replicate oppressive gender roles and
identities. Without special attention to the needs and interests of girls and women
of particular races and classes, it is likely that their particular, gendered experiences
of, complicity in, and resistance to environmental harm will not be noticed .
Ecological feminist values and analyses also insure that environmental racism is
not thought of as just a problem for people, and that the interests of the nonhuman
life through which human communities are built are considered as well. But the fact
of its usefulness by no means implies that ecological feminism is the only analysis
needed. Any consideration of community problems that does not include the lives
of women and non-human beings is grossly inadequate, as is any analysis that is
not highly attentive to the racial formations within environmental issues . Various lenses,
concerning the history and meanings of racism and economic oppression in the US, epidemiological patterns,
workers issues with regard to toxic chemicals, and urban and industrial planning and policy, and the relationships
between domestic dumping of US waste and global economic practices, must all inform theoretical and practical
The power
and promise of ecological feminism lies in its challenges to the assumptions of
various other political ecological perspectives, its feminist philosophical foundations,
and its positive recommendations for options that take seriously intersections
among different systems of domination. This thinking at the crossroads can be an
important contributor to the kind of political and ethical discourse and conversation
that we need right now, not as the answer to all of our problems, or a primary
bottom-line analysis, but because its attention to patterns and connections
forecloses dead end single-issue politics and the acceptance of practices and
policies that actually contradict our goals. THE SUBSTANCE OF ECOLOGICAL FEMINISM By way of
summary, I offer the following synopsis of ecological feminist positions which
ground the discussion of ethics throughout the rest of this book. (1) Ethical systems and
values born out of conceptual universes that relegate what is considered feminine
or natural to an inferior status help justify and implement both that relegation and
the mistreatment of those groups and entities. The most obvious examples are ethical systems
responses to environmental racism and injustice. FEMINISM AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES 38
that allow for no moral consideration of those entities, that specifically claim that women, nature, tribal people,
moral systems based

on deeply rooted and exclusionary conceptions of moral agents and objects can
import problematic beliefs in more clandestine ways. Ecological feminist ethics
therefore follow in the footsteps of feminist ethics in exploring values and practices
that derive from a foundation that takes women, nature, and other commonly
excluded beings or groups seriously as morally relevant. This might include focusing on their
particularities as (for humans) moral agents, or as objects of ethical decision-making. (2) When nature gets
harmed, women and other Others (the poor, people of color, indigenous communities, laborers, and
members of other categorically disempowered social groups) are inevitably harmed, or harmed more
than the socially and economically privileged. The devaluation of women and other
oppressed groups justifies (a) devaluing, and consequently harming, other feminine
things; (b) disregarding their interests by plundering or neglecting land that they
own, control, or rely upon; (c) ignoring or minimizing their assertions that land,
water, or animals be treated more carefully (even when women or agricultural workers, for
example, may have more intimate knowledge of the objects in question); THE ECOFEMINIST PROJECT 39 ( d)
preventing them from ownership and decision-making that might result in less
destructive practices. (3) Woman and nature are socially created concepts , each
referring to highly varied categories of beings and objects. The concepts do not
belie essential or necessary truths about beings and objects, but their definitive
foreigners, or slaves are not included in a given moral universe. But it is also true that
power helps constitute and regulate material realities. In Western and other
hierarchical dualistic cultures, women and nature are likened to each other and
identified with femininity and corporealityopposite and inferior to masculinity,
reason, and their associates. These definitions render the realm of the feminine
suitable for domination, although the strange mechanisms of oppression sometimes
place the feminine in glorified positions imbued with purity, mystery, and fertility.
These and similar false generalizations are also made concerning other groups who
come to be metaphysically or practically associated with femininity and/or nature,
including primitives and sexual deviants. (4) In the process of exploring and
creating ethical options and alternatives, reclamations of traditional ideas and
practices might be helpful, but they must be critically evaluated in terms of present
contexts as well as their historical embeddedness. When the substance of a moral
claim cannot be logically abstracted from problematic foundations or implications, it
is not worth reconsideration or reclamation. Likewise, evidence that an ethical imperative has
proven emancipatory in the past is inadequate proof that it can continue to do so. Hence, feminist ethics are
not feminine ethics. Feminist ethics help uncover and eradicate the devaluation and
mistreatment of women. Because nearly all women are influenced by conceptual
and material frameworks that are oppressive to women , efforts to eradicate
oppression involve criticizing concepts and institutions including femininity and
motherhood. Furthermore, since the oppression of women includes oppression
based on race, class, sexuality, physical ability, caste, and other factors, so all of
these are feminist issues. None the less, the focus of this approach is on female
humans is feminist for several reasons: (a) Womens oppression is nearly
universal, and therefore almost always visible and instructive in exposing various
frameworks and mechanisms of oppression at work in any given context . The
oppression of women is therefore a paradigm for the consideration of oppression
and exploitation in general.4 (b) The history of feminist thought provides a specific
cluster of analyses of oppression, exploitation, and resistance. Thinkers and actors
who call themselves feminist, including ecological feminists, place themselves in
agreement with some aspect of this history, though of course they may also
disagree with other aspects. (c) Many of the most influential representatives in the
history of thought including most of the builders of Western modern science and
technology and capitalism, have included, as a central ideological and practical
component, the systematic, direct devaluation and/or oppression of women and
whatever else comes to be, or to be considered feminine. (d) Feminists are aware
that when the focus is not on women, their needs, interests, and perspectives tend
to be severely neglected
We must change notions of how people relate to the natural

world as well as change the ways in which resources are
actually extracted in a way that takes into account the way
gender, class, and race structure peoples interactions with
nature and their responses to it. Only then can we achieve an
ethical form of development.
Agarwal 1992 (Bina Agarwal, prize-winning development
economist and Director and Professor of Economics at the
Institute of Economic Growth in University of Delhi. The
Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India Feminist
Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, spring 1992, pp. 119-158 //MG)
women's and men's relationship with
nature needs to be understood as rooted in their material reality, in their specific
forms of interaction with the environment. Hence, insofar as there is a gender and
class (/caste/race)-based division of labor and distribution of property and power,
gender and class (/caste/race) structure people's interactions with nature and so
structure the effects of environmental change on people and their responses to it.
And where knowledge about nature is experiential in its basis, the divi- sions of
labor, property, and power which shape experience also shape the knowledge based
on that experience. For instance, poor peasant and tribal women have typically
been responsible for fetching fuel and fodder and in hill and tribal communities have
also often been the main cultivators. They are thus likely to be affected adversely in
quite specific ways by environmental degradation. At the same time, in the course
of their everyday interactions with nature, they acquire a special knowledge of
species varieties and the processes of natural regeneration. (This would include knowledge
passed on to them by, for example, their mothers.) They could thus be seen as both victims of the
destruction of nature and as repositories of knowledge about nature, in ways
distinct from the men of their class. The former aspect would provide the gendered
impulse for their resistance and response to environmental destruction . The latter
would condition their perceptions and choices of what should be done. Indeed, on
the basis of their experiential understanding and knowledge, they could provide a
special perspective on the processes of environmental regeneration, one that
needs to inform our view of alternative approaches to development . (By extension, women
Feminist Environmentalism. I would like to suggest here that
who are no longer actively using this knowledge for their daily sustenance, and are no longer in contact with the
natural environment in the same way, are likely to lose this knowledge over time and with it the possibility of its
In this conceptualization, therefore, the link between women and

the environment can be seen as structured by a given gender and class (/caste/race)
organization of production, reproduction, and distribution. Ideological constructions
such as of gender, of nature, and of the relationship between the two, may be seen
as (interactively) a part of this structuring but not the whole of it. This perspective I term
"feminist environmentalism." In terms of action such a perspective would call for
struggles over both resources and meanings. It would imply grappling with the
dominant groups who have the property, power, and privilege to control resources,
and these or other groups who control ways of thinking about them, via educational,
media, religious, and legal institutions. On the feminist front there would be a need
transmission to others.)
to challenge and transform both notions about gender and the actual division of
work and resources between the genders. On the environmental front there would
be a need to challenge and transform not only notions about the relationship
between people and nature but also the actual methods of appropriation of nature's
resources by a few. Feminist environmentalism underlines the necessity of
addressing these dimensions from both fronts.
Environmental law is the only way to translate a reconceiving

of the natural world into material reality
Mallory 99 [Chaone Mallory is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, where she
teaches courses in environmental ethics, environmental justice, green political theory, ecofeminism, food studies,
philosophy of place, science and technology studies, and other topics that relate environmental issues to
contemporary social, political, and cultural thought, and shes got a PhD yo, Toward an Ecofeminist Environmental
Jurisprudence: Nature Law and Gender, pp. 59-60, JMak]
Environmental law as a field is dynamic and alive and very much in the process of
development. It is an area of social life in which we can see active evidence of the
human struggle to understand our moral and ontological relationship with nature.
Although environmental law is largely founded on the same instrumentalist
assumptions about nature that characterize the scientific worldview , at this
moment in historical reality a space is being held open, by postmodern science and
environmental philosophy, for a reconceptualization of the relationship between
humans and the natural world. Such a reconceiving, expressed through
ecofeminism, views the self as neither completely separate from and (thus superior to)
human and more- than-human others, nor as completely, amorphically subsumed,
but rather, as has already been noted, embedded in relationships ; as existing socially
and physically in webs of relationality. This ontological perception, this embodied knowing, can be reflected and
manifested through law. A jurisprudence, says feminist legal theorist Catherine MacKinnon, is a theory of the
relation between life and law.... Law actively participates in [the] transformation of 60 perspective into being.94
Law is one powerful medium by which human societies translate values and beliefs
into material reality; it can provide institutional approval and support for particular
perceptions and activities, while withdrawing nourishment from undervalued others.
In a society structured and determined largely through legal discourse,
environmental law and policy should be viewed as a necessary and important
means of addressing the state of ecosocial crisis being faced by the planets
inhabitants. Environmental law has been influenced by a variety of sources,
especially standards of science as they emerge through the dialectical interplay of
history, nature, and culture. It is a construct of language, which is not to say that it
is not real; rather stating that law is a linguistic construct implies that language is
that through which our claims to know reality can be stated and carried. Language, for
human beings at least, thus becomes the interface between our own individual consciousnesses and the rest of the
It is this capacity to express multiplicity, along with its openendedness and malleability, that I believe gives law its power and promise as a means
of promoting the spread of ecological ideas throughout society. But as I have noted, the
law can tell stories which impair the project of creating environmental sustainability
as well. This complexity and multi- faceted functioning of law is reflected in the words of feminist legal theorist
Robin West, who says that while law is to be understood by its content and its precedents,
it is also an ever-present possibility, potentially bringing good or evil into our
blooming, buzzing confusion.95
future.96 West, in her book, speaks of the narrativity of law, and claims that particular laws and stories can be
interpreted by reference to more than one text; that there is more the one source to which we can
refer in order to find the meaning or proper interpretation of a law.9 7 However, under
conventional theories of jurisprudence we rarely do so, instead preferring to see
established interpretations as fixed. Similarly, in environmental matters, we often appeal to only
one textthe atomistic, mechanistic, reductionistic picture of the world given to us by modern science . But
another text to which we might refer would be the one presented by ecofeminism.
This narrative, or way of relating, says that we are ontologically embedded; and it is
a story of human connectedness to the natural world . This is the story which law
must tell about the nature/culture dyad in order to talk- story into being an
existence in which both humans and nature can flourish. The stories about
nature that human beings like to tell have been divided by environmental
philosophers into two general categories: anthropocentric, or human-centered, and
nonanthropocentric. These approaches are mirrored in law . Anthropocentric
approaches typically view nature instrumentally, as a resource to be utilized by
humans for human benefit, and is the sort of understanding that environmental law,
policy, and regulation has typically incorporated and enforced. Nonanthropocentric
or ecocentric approaches, in contrast, view nature as something possessing intrinsic
worth, and thus an entitlement to have its interests count in our moral and legal
doctrines. But before exploring the narrative efficacy of one particular promising new notion, that of a
partnership ethic, developed by the ecofeminist environmental historian Carolyn Merchant, we must briefly review
present conceptions/narratives of nature held and expressed through law.
**1AC V1**
The ocean is a symbol of birth and rebirth and our smallness in
this infinite universe ecofeminism recognizes this link
between women and nature. Only by affirming the ocean as a
space in which all life intersects can we hope to combat the
violation of nature and the life within it.
Sorensen 2013 (Abigail Sorensen, editor. We Are All Stardust:
Reflections of an Eco-Feminist Feminspire.
http://feminspire.com/we-are-all-stardust-reflections-of-an-eco-feminist/
//MG)
feminism is that it emphasizes the interconnectivity of individuals
through its focus on intersectional social justice. Because we as feminists recognize
that we are part of something larger than ourselves, it would be ludicrous to only
focus on one particular problem that plagues society. Now, eco-feminism takes the
intersectional way of thinking to the next level. Eco-feminism emphasizes how
important it is that we work for the well being of the natural world that we are a part
of. Eco-feminism proposes that there is a direct link between women and nature.
Women are exploited and damaged by patriarchal forces, as nature is exploited and
damaged by humans. Women are often seen as the more natural sex because of
their ability to create life. Some even say that the menstrual cycle of a woman puts her more in sync with
One thing I love about
the natural rhythm of the world. Its theorized that because women are perhaps more in touch with nature, women
The interconnectivity of humans and the natural world is

a subject that is often brought up with great urgency by the environmentalist
movement, with good reason, as earth is our home. Eco-feminists say that this
should be a topic of particular concern for feminists because of both the
intersectional nature of the movement and the unique way that women are
connected with nature. I was reminded of the eco-feminist way of thinking as I began a beach vacation . I
walked along the ocean for the first time in more than a decade and swam in the
ocean for the very first time. I was struck by how profound an experience it was . I
was reminded of the vastness of our universe and the smallness of myself . I was
reminded of these facts in the best possible way. As I walked along the ocean,
letting the waves break around my ankles, I thought of the evolutionary theory that
life originated from the ocean. Our world and our very being were born from the
womb of the sea. In both literature and film, the ocean is used as a symbol of birth and
rebirth. Characters often must travel to the ocean (the birthplace of life) to discover
something crucial about life or themselves in order to being life anew . I also thought
of the words of the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He often speaks of the theory that the
have the capacity to care for it more.
very first cells from which life grew originated on the planet Mars. Tyson expresses his love for this theory because
it means that We
are all stardust. What a beautiful thought. So, for the sake of a
poetic view of life, we can merge these two scientific theories together in a very
eco-feminist way. If our natural lives have grown out of both interstellar material
and the great womb of the ocean, we are so much more interconnected than we
can ever truly realize. As I swam in the ocean for the very first time and looked up
at the sky, I could see a sliver of the moon as the waves were pushing my body. I
was at the very center of life. As I walked out of the ocean , I could see my footsteps
in the sand disappearing as the waves hit the Earth over and over. I was leaving my
mark on this planet and it was almost instantaneously disappearing. We are all such
a small, small fragment of this infinite universe. Yet the smallest of us still leaves a
mark, for however short a time, and then is repossessed into the great womb of the
ocean, back to where we came from. We are all part of a life cycle that is so
expansive, we cannot even fathom it. In the midst of all the chaos of our world, in
the midst of all the laws that we dont agree with, all the trials that we care about,
all the people we want to help, we must remember that it is all part of a bigger
picture, a universal picture that we all play a part in. Sometimes, no matter your
thoughts on green activism, we must take to heart an Eco-feminist ethic and
surrender ourselves to the ocean. We are all stardust, indeed.

been associated with nature are devalued and exploited. This
is not to say that women are more connected to nature
through biology or whatever else rather, the forces of
patriarchy and environmental destruction are co-constitutive
those hierarchies that justify the oppression of women and
tightly intertwined with those that justify environmental
degradation.
That view of the ocean manifests in imperialist development
discourse concepts of development and resource utilization
that emerged in the context of colonialism have been raised to
the level of the universal thus continuing this process of
colonization, and displacing the lives and cultures of millions
all in the name of progress

Luxemberg has pointed out, early industrial development in western Europe necessitated
'development' was not the cause for women's increasing under-development ; it was
management and water use become productive activities. Natural forests remain
Women,
This ought to be rejected as a model of development as it is

better termed as maldevelopment it is a violation and
interruption of organic and interconnected systems that sets
in motion a process of inequality and exploitation.
maldevelopment becomes a new source of male female inequality.
'Modernisation' has been associated with the introduction of new forms of
dominance. Alice Schlege17 has shown that under conditions of subsistence, the
interdependence and co of work is the characteristic mode, based on diversity, not
inequality. Maldevelopment militates against equality in diversity, and superimposes
the ideologically constructed category of western technological man as a uniform
measure of the worth of classes, cultures and genders. Dominant modes of
perception based on reductionism, duality and linearity are unable to cope with
equality in diversity, with forms and activities that are significant and valid, even
though different. The reductionist mind superimposes the roles and forms of power
of western male-oriented concepts on women, all non-western peoples and even on
nature, rendering all three 'deficient', and in need of 'development' . Diversity, and
unity and harmony in diversity, become epistemologically unattainable in the
context of maldevelopment, which then becomes synonymous with women's
underdevelopment (increasing sexist domination), and nature's depletion (deepening ecological
crises). Commodities have grown, but nature has shrunk. The poverty crisis of the
south arises from the growing scarcity of water, food, fodder and fuel, associated
with increasing maldevelopment and ecological destruction. This poverty crisis
touches women most severely, first because they are the poorest among the poor,
and then because, with nature, they are the primary sustainers of society.
Maldevelopment is the violation of the integrity of organic, interconnected and
interdependent systems, that sets in motion a process of exploitation, inequality,
injustice and violence. It is blind to the fact that a recognition of nature's harmony
and action to maintain it are preconditions for distributive justice . This is why Mahatma
In this analysis,
Gandhi said, 'There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for some people's greed.'
Maldevelopment is maldevelopment in thought and action. In practice, this

fragmented, reductionist, dualist perspective violates the integrity and harmony of
man in nature, and the harmony between men and women. It ruptures the cooperative unity of masculine and feminine, and places man, shorn of the feminine
principle, above nature and women, and separated from both. The violence to
nature as symptomatised by the ecological crisis, and the violence to women, as
symptomatised by their subjugation and exploitation arise from this subjugation of

the feminine principle. I want to argue that what is currently called development is
essentially maldevelopment, based on the introduction or accentuation of the
domination of man over nature and women. In it, both are viewed as the 'other', the
passive non-self. Activity, productivity, creativity which were associated with the
feminine principle are expropriated as qualities of nature and women, and
transformed into the exclusive qualities of man. Nature and women are turned into
passive objects, to be used and exploited for the uncontrolled and uncontrollable
desires of alienated man. From being the creators and sustainers of life, nature and
women are reduced to being resources' in the fragmented, anti-life model of
maldevelopment.

increase its development of the Earths oceans through a
feminist environmentalism based on a notion of nature as
Prakriti. Well clarify.
Prakriti is an everyday concept that differs radically from
western conceptions of the environment as a resource for
exploitation and breaks down traditional dualisms between
nature and humanity. It is a view of nature that is
characterized by creativity, diversity in knowledge and ways of
life, the connectedness of all beings, the continuity between
the human and natural world, and the sanctity of life itself.
Only within this principle can we stop the death drive of
modern development and adopt more sustainable development
practices.
Women in India are an intimate part of nature, both in imagination and in practise. At, one level nature is
symbolised as the embodiment of the feminine principle, and at another, she is nurtured by the feminine to produce
life and provide sustenance. From the point of view of Indian cosmology, in both the exoteric and esoteric traditions,
the world is produced and renewed by the dialectical play of creation and destruction, cohesion and disintegration.
The tension between the opposites from which motion and movement arises is depicted as the first appearance of
dynamic energy (Shakti). All existence arises from this primordial energy which is the substance of everything,
pervading everything.
The manifestation of this power, this energy, is called nature
(Prakriti).1 Nature, both animate and inanimate, is thus an expression of Shakti, the feminine and creative
principle of the cosmos; in conjunction with the masculine principle (Purusha), Prakriti creates the world. Nature
as Prakriti is inherently active, a powerful, productive force in the dialectic of the
creation, renewal and sustenance of all life. In Kulacudamim Nigama, Prakriti says: There is none
but Myself Who is the Mother to create.2 Without Shakti, Shiva, the symbol for the force of creation and
destruction, is as powerless as a corpse. The quiescent aspect of Shiva is, by definition, inert . . . Activity is the
nature of Nature (Prakriti).'3 Prakriti is worshipped as Aditi, the primordial vastness, the inexhaustible, the source of
abundance. She is worshipped as Adi Shakti, the primordial power. All the forms of nature and life in nature are the
forms, the children, of the Mother of Nature who is nature itself born of the creative play of her thought.4 Hence
Prakriti is also called Lalitha,5 the Player because lila or play, as free spontaneous activity, is her nature. The will-tobecome many (Bahu-- Syam-Prajayera) is her creative impulse and through this impulse, she creates the diversity
The common yet multiple life of mountains, trees, rivers, animals

is an expression of the diversity that Prakriti gives rise to. The creative force and the
created world are not separate and distinct, nor is the created world uniform, static
and fragmented. It is diverse, dynamic and inter-related. The nature of Nature as
Prakriti is activity and diversity. Nature symbols from every realm of nature are in a
sense signed with the image of Nature. Prakriti lives in stone or tree, pool, fruit or
animal, and is identified with them. According to the Kalika Purana: Rivers and mountains have a dual
of living forms in nature.
nature. A river is but a form of water, yet is has a distinct body. Mountains appear a motionless mass, yet their true
within
the apparently inanimate rivers and mountains there dwells a hidden
consciousness. Rivers and mountains take the forms they wish.6 The living,
nurturing relationship between man and nature here differs dramatically from the
notion of man as separate from and dominating over nature. A good illustration of this
form is not such. We cannot know, when looking at a lifeless shell, that it contains a living being. Similarly,
difference is the daily worship of the sacred tulsi within Indian culture and outside it. Tulsi (Ocimum sanctum) is a
little herb planted in every home, and worshipped daily. It has been used in Ayurveda for more than 3000 years,
and is now also being legitimised as a source of diverse healing powers by western medicine. However, all this is
incidental to its worship. The tulsi is sacred not merely as a plant with beneficial properties but as Brindavan, the
symbol of the cosmos. in their daily watering and worship women renew the relationship of the home with the
Nature as a creative expression of the feminine principle

is both in ontological continuity with humans as well as above them . Ontologically,
there is no divide between man and nature, or between man and woman, because
life in all its forms arises from the feminine principle . Contemporary western views of
nature are fraught with the dichotomy or duality between man and woman, and
person and nature. In Indian cosmology, by contrast, person and nature (PurushaPrakriti) are a duality in unity. They are inseparable complements of one another in
nature, in woman, in man. Every form of creation bears the sign of this dialectical unity, of diversity within
cosmos and With the world process.
a unifying principle, and this dialectical harmony between the male and female principles and between nature and
Since, ontologically, there is no

dualism between man and nature and because nature as Prakriti sustains life,
nature has been treated as integral and inviolable. Prakriti, far from being an
esoteric abstrac- tion, is an everyday concept which organises daily life. There is no
separation here between the popular and elite imagery or between the sacred and
secular traditions. As an embodiment and manifestation of the feminine principle it
is characterised by (a) creativity, activity, productivity; (b) diversity in form and
aspect; (c) connectedness and inter-relationship of all beings, including man; (d)
continuity between the human and natural; and (e) sanctity of life in nature.
Conceptually, this differs radically from the Cartesian concept as 'environment' or a
'resource'. In it, the environment is seen as separate from man: it is his surrounding,
not his substance. The dualism between man and nature has allowed the
subjugation of the latter by man and given rise to a new world-view in which nature
is (a) inert and passive; (b) uniform and mechanistic; (c) separable and
fragmented within itself; (d) separate from man; and (e) inferior, to be dominated
and exploited by man. The rupture within nature and between man and nature, and
its associated transformation from a life-force that sustains to an exploitable
resource characterises the Cartesian view which has displaced more ecological
world-views and created a development paradigm which cripples nature and woman
man, becomes the basis of ecological thought and action in India.
simultaneously. The ontological shift for an ecologically sustainable future has much
to gain from the world-views of ancient civilisations and diverse cultures which
survived sustainably over centuries. These were based on an ontology of the
feminine as the living principle, and on an ontological continuity between society
and nature -the humanisation of nature and the naturalisation of society . Not merely did
this result in an ethical context which excluded possibilities of exploitation and domination, it allowed the creation
The dichotomised ontology of man dominating woman and nature

generates maldevelopment because it makes the colonising male the agent and
model of 'development'. Women, the Third World and nature become
underdeveloped, first by definition, and then, through the process of colonisation,
in reality. The ontology of dichotomisation generates an ontology of domination,
over nature and people. Epistemologically, it leads to reductionism and
fragmentation, thus violating women as subjects and nature as an object of
knowledge. This violation becomes a source of epistemic and real violence - I would
like to interpret ecological crises at both levels - as a disruption of ecological
perceptions of nature. Ecological ways of knowing nature are necessarily
participatory. Nature herself is the experiment and women, as sylviculturalists, agriculturists and water
resource managers, the traditional natural scientists. Their knowledge is ecological and plural,
reflecting both the diversity of natural ecosystems and the diversity in cultures that
nature-based living gives rise to. Throughout the world, the colonisation of diverse
peoples was, at its root, a forced subjugation of ecological concepts of nature and of
the Earth as the repository of all forms, latencies and powers of creation, the ground
and cause of the world. The symbolism of Terra Mater, the earth in the form of the
Great Mother, creative and protective, has been a shared but diverse symbol across
space and time, and ecology movements in the West today are inspired in large part
by the recovery of the concept of Gaia, the earth goddes s.7 The shift from Prakriti to
'natural re sources', from Mater to 'matter was considered (and in many quarters is still
considered) a progressive shift from superstition to rationality. Yet, viewed from the
perspective of nature, or women embedded in nature, in the production and
preservation of sustenance, the shift is regressive and violent. It entails the
disruption of nature's processes and cycles, and her inter-connectedness. For
women, whose productivity in the sustaining of life is based on nature's
productivity, the, death of Prakriti is simultaneously a beginning of their
marginalisation, devaluation, displacement and ultimate dispensability. The
ecological crisis is, at its root, the death of the feminine principle, symbolically as
well as in contexts such as rural India, not merely in form and symbol, but also in
the everyday processes of survival and sustenance
of an earth family.
This must be paired with a feminist environmentalism we

must change notions of how people relate to the natural world
as well as change the ways in which resources are actually
extracted this necessitates an understanding of the way in
which gender, class, and race structure peoples interactions
with nature and their responses to it.
structure the effects of environmental change on people and their responses to it.
of their everyday interactions with nature, they acquire a special knowledge of
species varieties and the processes of natural regeneration. (This would include knowledge
destruction of nature and as repositories of knowledge about nature , in ways
impulse for their resistance and response to environmental destruction. The latter

Thats critical in shifting our understanding of what constitutes

valuable knowledge and our concepts of wealth and economic
value otherwise environmental destruction and exploitation
becomes inevitable.
The two central shifts in thinking that are being induced by women's ecological
struggles relate to economic and intellectual worth. The first relates to our
understanding of what constitutes knowledge, and who the knowers and producers
of intellectual value are. The second involves concepts of wealth and economic
value and who the producers of wealth and economic value are. Women producing
survival are showing us that nature is the very basis and matrix of economic life
through its function in life support and livelihood, and the elements of nature that
the dominant view has treated as 'waste' are the basis of sustainability and the
wealth of the poor and the marginal. They are challenging concepts of waste,
rubbish and dispensability as the modern west has defined them. They are showing
that production of sustenance is basic to survival itself and cannot be deleted from
'economic calculations; if production of life cannot be reckoned with in money
terms, then it is economic models, and not women's work in producing sustenance
and life, that must be sacrificed. The intellectual heritage for ecological survival lies with those who are
experts in survival. They have the knowledge and experience to extricate us from the
ecological cul-de-sac that the western masculinist mind has manoeuvred us into.
And while Third World women have privileged access to survival expertise, their
knowledge is inclusive, not exclusive. The ecological categories with which they think and act can
become the categories of liberation for all, for men as well as for women, for the west as well as the non-west, and
By elbowing out 'life' from being the

central concern in organising human society, the dominant paradigm of knowledge
has become a threat to life itself. Third World women are bringing the concern with
living and survival back to centre stage in human history. in recovering the chances
for the survival of all life, they are laying the foundations for the recovery of the
feminine principle in nature and society, and through it the recovery of the earth as
sustainer and provider.
for the human as well as the non-human elements of the earth.
**1AC V2**
The ocean is representative of the interconnectedness of
humanity and nature it is creative and life sustaining.
Exploitation of the ocean and the environment is coconstitutive of the exploitation of women. Both are seen as
passive, unproductive, and open to to exploitation, as women
have historically been seen as themselves linked to nature
through biology or some other essential characteristic. This
perpetuates the destruction of both as they are seen as the
same and inferior, with man raised above them both. Only by
affirming the ocean as a space in which all life intersects can
we hope to combat the violation of nature and only by
affirming the feminine as productive and valuable can we hope
to combat the violation of women.
Sorensen 2013 (Abigail Sorensen, editor. We Are All Stardust:
Reflections of an Eco-Feminist Feminspire.
http://feminspire.com/we-are-all-stardust-reflections-of-an-ecofeminist/ //MG)
[Sorenson mentions that some ecofeminists believe in a
biological link between women and nature. Neither she nor the
affirmative team advocates this view. Rather, it is a descriptive
statement of certain ecofeminists unrelated to our aff and we
apologize for any offense it may have caused.]
feminism is that it emphasizes the interconnectivity of individuals
through its focus on intersectional social justice. Because we as feminists recognize
that we are part of something larger than ourselves, it would be ludicrous to only
focus on one particular problem that plagues society. Now, eco-feminism takes the
intersectional way of thinking to the next level. Eco-feminism emphasizes how
important it is that we work for the well being of the natural world that we are a part
of. Eco-feminism proposes that there is a direct link between women and nature.
Women are exploited and damaged by patriarchal forces, as nature is exploited and
damaged by humans. Women are often seen as the more natural sex because of
their ability to create life. Some even say that the menstrual cycle of a woman puts her more in sync with
One thing I love about
the natural rhythm of the world. Its theorized that because women are perhaps more in touch with nature, women
The interconnectivity of humans and the natural world is

a subject that is often brought up with great urgency by the environmentalist
movement, with good reason, as earth is our home. Eco-feminists say that this
should be a topic of particular concern for feminists because of both the
have the capacity to care for it more.
intersectional nature of the movement and the unique way that women are
connected with nature. I was reminded of the eco-feminist way of thinking as I began a beach vacation . I
walked along the ocean for the first time in more than a decade and swam in the
ocean for the very first time. I was struck by how profound an experience it was. I
was reminded of the vastness of our universe and the smallness of myself. I was
reminded of these facts in the best possible way. As I walked along the ocean,
letting the waves break around my ankles, I thought of the evolutionary theory that
life originated from the ocean. Our world and our very being were born from the
womb of the sea. In both literature and film, the ocean is used as a symbol of birth and
rebirth. Characters often must travel to the ocean (the birthplace of life) to discover
something crucial about life or themselves in order to being life anew . I also thought
of the words of the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He often speaks of the theory that the
very first cells from which life grew originated on the planet Mars. Tyson expresses his love for this theory because
it means that We
are all stardust. What a beautiful thought. So, for the sake of a
poetic view of life, we can merge these two scientific theories together in a very
eco-feminist way. If our natural lives have grown out of both interstellar material
and the great womb of the ocean, we are so much more interconnected than we
can ever truly realize. As I swam in the ocean for the very first time and looked up
at the sky, I could see a sliver of the moon as the waves were pushing my body. I
was at the very center of life. As I walked out of the ocean, I could see my footsteps
in the sand disappearing as the waves hit the Earth over and over. I was leaving my
mark on this planet and it was almost instantaneously disappearing. We are all such
a small, small fragment of this infinite universe. Yet the smallest of us still leaves a
mark, for however short a time, and then is repossessed into the great womb of the
ocean, back to where we came from. We are all part of a life cycle that is so
expansive, we cannot even fathom it. In the midst of all the chaos of our world, in
the midst of all the laws that we dont agree with, all the trials that we care about,
all the people we want to help, we must remember that it is all part of a bigger
picture, a universal picture that we all play a part in. Sometimes, no matter your
thoughts on green activism, we must take to heart an Eco-feminist ethic and
surrender ourselves to the ocean. We are all stardust, indeed.

been associated with nature are devalued and exploited. That
view of the ocean manifests in imperialist develop pment
discourse, such as policies that would seek to obtain wealth
from the ocean without real consideration to how that may
impact the environment and those who depend on it. This can
be seen in unsustainable and exploitive practices such as
trawling and trash dumping. Concepts of development and
resource utilization that emerged in the context of colonialism
have been raised to the level of the universal. Countries,
cities, and towns are seen as underdeveloped and inferior if
they arent characterized by commercialized resource
harvesting practices, factory farms, sky scrapers, etc., even if
the people there are happier and healthier than those in the
more developed West. This has led to the continuation of
colonization and the destruction of the lives and cultures of
millions all in the name of a patriarchal progress - Western
countries impose environmentally, and socially disastrous
programs that fail to take into account the ways that these
backward societies have been able to advance themselves
on their own terms. Ways of fishing that have sustained
communities for decades are displaced by shrimp farms that
export luxury products to Western countries and leave those
who are most affected poor and starving.
early industrial development in western Europe necessitated

'development' was not the cause for women's increasing under-development; it was
Luxemberg has pointed out,
Women,
management and water use become productive activities . Natural forests remain

increase its development of the Earths oceans through a
feminist environmentalism based on a notion of nature as
Prakriti. Well clarify.
Prakriti is an alternative way of viewing nature. It is an
everyday concept that differs radically from western
conceptions of the environment as a resource for exploitation
and breaks down traditional dualisms between nature and
humanity. It is a view of nature that is characterized by
creativity, diversity in knowledge and ways of life, the
connectedness of all beings, the continuity between the
human and natural world, and the sanctity of life itself. A
clean, stable river, under western modes of looking at nature,
woud look worthless and underdeveloped absent it being
dammed up, polluted, and exploited for its fish and minerals.
Under Prakriti, the river itself would be seen as valuable the
clean, stable river is life sustaining, those around it rely on it
for water for their families and communities. Only within this
principle can we stop the death drive of modern development
and adopt more sustainable development practices that
respect life in all its diversity.
Women in India are an intimate part of nature, both in imagination and in practise. At, one level nature is
symbolised as the embodiment of the feminine principle, and at another, she is nurtured by the feminine to produce
life and provide sustenance. From the point of view of Indian cosmology, in both the exoteric and esoteric traditions,
the world is produced and renewed by the dialectical play of creation and destruction, cohesion and disintegration.
The tension between the opposites from which motion and movement arises is depicted as the first appearance of
dynamic energy (Shakti). All existence arises from this primordial energy which is the substance of everything,
pervading everything.
The manifestation of this power, this energy, is called nature
(Prakriti).1 Nature, both animate and inanimate, is thus an expression of Shakti, the feminine and creative
principle of the cosmos; in conjunction with the masculine principle (Purusha), Prakriti creates the world. Nature
as Prakriti is inherently active, a powerful, productive force in the dialectic of the
creation, renewal and sustenance of all life. In Kulacudamim Nigama, Prakriti says: There is none
but Myself Who is the Mother to create.2 Without Shakti, Shiva, the symbol for the force of creation and
destruction, is as powerless as a corpse. The quiescent aspect of Shiva is, by definition, inert . . . Activity is the
nature of Nature (Prakriti).'3 Prakriti is worshipped as Aditi, the primordial vastness, the inexhaustible, the source of
abundance. She is worshipped as Adi Shakti, the primordial power. All the forms of nature and life in nature are the
forms, the children, of the Mother of Nature who is nature itself born of the creative play of her thought.4 Hence
Prakriti is also called Lalitha,5 the Player because lila or play, as free spontaneous activity, is her nature. The will-tobecome many (Bahu-- Syam-Prajayera) is her creative impulse and through this impulse, she creates the diversity
The common yet multiple life of mountains, trees, rivers, animals

is an expression of the diversity that Prakriti gives rise to. The creative force and the
created world are not separate and distinct, nor is the created world uniform, static
and fragmented. It is diverse, dynamic and inter-related. The nature of Nature as
Prakriti is activity and diversity. Nature symbols from every realm of nature are in a
sense signed with the image of Nature. Prakriti lives in stone or tree, pool, fruit or
animal, and is identified with them. According to the Kalika Purana: Rivers and mountains have a dual
of living forms in nature.
nature. A river is but a form of water, yet is has a distinct body. Mountains appear a motionless mass, yet their true
form is not such. We cannot know, when looking at a lifeless shell, that it contains a living being. Similarly,
within
the apparently inanimate rivers and mountains there dwells a hidden

consciousness. Rivers and mountains take the forms they wish.6 The living,
nurturing relationship between man and nature here differs dramatically from the
notion of man as separate from and dominating over nature. A good illustration of this
difference is the daily worship of the sacred tulsi within Indian culture and outside it. Tulsi (Ocimum sanctum) is a
little herb planted in every home, and worshipped daily. It has been used in Ayurveda for more than 3000 years,
and is now also being legitimised as a source of diverse healing powers by western medicine. However, all this is
incidental to its worship. The tulsi is sacred not merely as a plant with beneficial properties but as Brindavan, the
symbol of the cosmos. in their daily watering and worship women renew the relationship of the home with the
Nature as a creative expression of the feminine principle

is both in ontological continuity with humans as well as above them. Ontologically,
there is no divide between man and nature, or between man and woman, because
life in all its forms arises from the feminine principle . Contemporary western views of
nature are fraught with the dichotomy or duality between man and woman, and
person and nature. In Indian cosmology, by contrast, person and nature (PurushaPrakriti) are a duality in unity. They are inseparable complements of one another in
nature, in woman, in man. Every form of creation bears the sign of this dialectical unity, of diversity within
cosmos and With the world process.
a unifying principle, and this dialectical harmony between the male and female principles and between nature and
Since, ontologically, there is no

dualism between man and nature and because nature as Prakriti sustains life,
nature has been treated as integral and inviolable. Prakriti, far from being an
esoteric abstrac- tion, is an everyday concept which organises daily life. There is no
separation here between the popular and elite imagery or between the sacred and
secular traditions. As an embodiment and manifestation of the feminine principle it
is characterised by (a) creativity, activity, productivity; (b) diversity in form and
aspect; (c) connectedness and inter-relationship of all beings, including man; (d)
continuity between the human and natural; and (e) sanctity of life in nature.
Conceptually, this differs radically from the Cartesian concept as 'environment' or a
'resource'. In it, the environment is seen as separate from man: it is his surrounding,
not his substance. The dualism between man and nature has allowed the
subjugation of the latter by man and given rise to a new world-view in which nature
is (a) inert and passive; (b) uniform and mechanistic; (c) separable and
fragmented within itself; (d) separate from man; and (e) inferior, to be dominated
and exploited by man. The rupture within nature and between man and nature, and
its associated transformation from a life-force that sustains to an exploitable
resource characterises the Cartesian view which has displaced more ecological
world-views and created a development paradigm which cripples nature and woman
simultaneously. The ontological shift for an ecologically sustainable future has much
to gain from the world-views of ancient civilisations and diverse cultures which
survived sustainably over centuries. These were based on an ontology of the
man, becomes the basis of ecological thought and action in India.
feminine as the living principle, and on an ontological continuity between society

and nature -the humanisation of nature and the naturalisation of society . Not merely did
this result in an ethical context which excluded possibilities of exploitation and domination, it allowed the creation
The dichotomised ontology of man dominating woman and nature

generates maldevelopment because it makes the colonising male the agent and
model of 'development'. Women, the Third World and nature become
underdeveloped, first by definition, and then, through the process of colonisation,
in reality. The ontology of dichotomisation generates an ontology of domination,
over nature and people. Epistemologically, it leads to reductionism and
fragmentation, thus violating women as subjects and nature as an object of
knowledge. This violation becomes a source of epistemic and real violence - I would
like to interpret ecological crises at both levels - as a disruption of ecological
perceptions of nature. Ecological ways of knowing nature are necessarily
participatory. Nature herself is the experiment and women, as sylviculturalists, agriculturists and water
resource managers, the traditional natural scientists. Their knowledge is ecological and plural,
reflecting both the diversity of natural ecosystems and the diversity in cultures that
nature-based living gives rise to. Throughout the world, the colonisation of diverse
peoples was, at its root, a forced subjugation of ecological concepts of nature and of
the Earth as the repository of all forms, latencies and powers of creation, the ground
and cause of the world. The symbolism of Terra Mater, the earth in the form of the
Great Mother, creative and protective, has been a shared but diverse symbol across
space and time, and ecology movements in the West today are inspired in large part
by the recovery of the concept of Gaia, the earth goddes s.7 The shift from Prakriti to
'natural re sources', from Mater to 'matter was considered (and in many quarters is still
considered) a progressive shift from superstition to rationality. Yet, viewed from the
perspective of nature, or women embedded in nature, in the production and
preservation of sustenance, the shift is regressive and violent. It entails the
disruption of nature's processes and cycles, and her inter-connectedness. For
women, whose productivity in the sustaining of life is based on nature's
productivity, the, death of Prakriti is simultaneously a beginning of their
marginalisation, devaluation, displacement and ultimate dispensability. The
ecological crisis is, at its root, the death of the feminine principle, symbolically as
well as in contexts such as rural India, not merely in form and symbol, but also in
the everyday processes of survival and sustenance
of an earth family.
This reclamation of the feminine principle is not limited to

women, nor does it rely on biological essentialism. Rather, it
challenges western concepts of masculinity that have
dominated social relations and excluded all defined as
feminine. Masculinity must no longer be seen as destructive.
Femininity no longer seen as passive, and unproductive.
Nature must no longer be seen as a feminine object equally
open to exploitation. It is a trans-gender solution that
recognizes masculinity and femininity as socially constructed
and reclaims the feminine as a creative, positive force. That
would mean seeing nature as a living and continuous with
humanity, the feminine as productive, and would redirect
previously destructive masculinist values to be more peaceful
and life-affirming. It would mean seeing the ways in which the
ocean supports us we get water from it, energy, and food. It
would mean that women are not relegated to unproductive
labor in the home, and if they do choose traditional labor in
the home, that labor ought also be seen as productive,
valuable, and life sustaining. It would mean that men arent
driven to exploit and dominate nature to reap as much profit
from it as possible and instead would be driven to conserve
nature, taking into account the way it supports us all.
We see the categories of 'masculine' and
'feminine' as socially and culturally constructed. A gender-based ideology projects
these categories as biologically determined. The western concept of masculinity
that has dominated development and gender relations has excluded all that has
been defined by culture as feminine and has legitimised control over all that counts
as such. The category of masculinity as a socially constructed product of gender
ideology is associated with the creation of the concept of woman as the 'other'. In
this asymmetrical relationship, femininity is ideologically constructed as everything
that is not masculine and must be subjected to domination. There are two genderbased responses to the process of domination and asymmetry. The first , represented by
Simone de Beauvoir, is based on the acceptance of feminine and masculine as biologically
established, and the status of women as the second sex as similarly determined. Women's liberation is
prescribed as the masculinisation of the female. The emancipation of the 'second sex' lies in its
modelling itself on the first; women's freedom consists in freedom from biology,
from 'bondage to life's mysterious processes'. 9 It consists of women 'battling against
the elements', and becoming masculine. The liberation that de Beauvoir conceives of is a world in
Gender-ideology vs. the recovery of the feminine principle
which the masculine is accepted as superior and women are free to assume masculine values. The process of
liberation is thus a masculinisation of the world defined within the categories created by gender-based ideology. De
Beauvoir accepts the patriarchal categorisation of women as passive, weak and unproductive. 'In no domain
whatever did she create'; she simply 'submitted passively to her biologic fate', while men fought. The 'worst that
was laid upon woman was that she should be excluded from these warlike forays. For it is not in giving life, but in
risking life, that man is raised above the animal. That is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the
sex that brings forth life but to that which kills.'10 De Beauvoir subscribes to the myth of man-the-hunter as a
superior being. She believes that instead of being the providers in hunting-gathering societies, women were a
liability to the group because 'closely spaced births must have absorbed most of their strength and time so that
they were incapable of providing for the children they brought into the world'.11 That traditional and tribal women,
without access to modem contraception, could not regulate the number of their children and the number of births is
turning out to be a commonly accepted patriarchal myth. Similarly, the myth of female passivity and masculine
creativity has been critically analysed by recent feminist scholarship, which shows that the survival of mankind has
been due much more to 'woman-the-gatherer' than to 'man-the-hunter'. Lee and de Vote have shown empirically
how even among existing hunters and gatherers, women provide up to 80 per cent of the daily food, whereas men
contribute only a small portion by hunting. Elizabeth Fisher's studies indicate that gathering of vegetable food was
more important for our early ancestors than hunting.12 Inspite of this, the myth persists that man-the-hunter as the
inventor of tools was the provider of basic needs and the protector of society. Evelyn Reed shows how sexism has
been the underlying ideology of much work that passes as neutral, unbiased science, and has been the cause for
the relationship of
man-the-hunter with nature was necessarily violent, destructive and predatory, in
sharp contrast to the relationship that woman the-gatherer or cultivator had.
much of the violence and destruction in history.13 Finally, Maria Mies has argued that
Humanity, quite clearly, could not have survived if man-the-hunter's productivity had been the basis for the daily
subsistence of early societies. Their survival was based on the fact that this activity was only a small part of
Yet patriarchal ideology has made man-the-hunter the model of human

evolution, and has thus adopted violence and domination as its structural
component. Hunting, per se, need not be violent; most tribal societies apologise to
the animals they have to kill, and their hunting is constrained by nature's cycles of
production and reproduction. It is the elevation of the hunting to the level of
ideology, that has laid the foundation of a violent relationship with nature. As Mies
sustenance.
points out, the patriarchal myth of man-the-hunter implies the following levels of violence in man's relationship with
nature: (a) The hunters' main tools are not instruments with which to produce life but to destroy it. Their tools are
not basically means of production but of destruction, and can also be used as means of coercion against fellow
human beings. (b) This gives hunters a power over living beings, both animal and human, which does not arise out
of their own productive work. They can appropriate not only fruits and plants (like the gatherers) and animals, but
also other (female) producers by virtue of arms. (c) The objective relationship mediated through arms, therefore, is
basically a predatory or exploitative one: hunters appropriate life, but they cannot produce life. it is an antagonistic
and non-reciprocal relationship. All later exploitative relations between production and appropriation are, in the last
analysis, upheld by arms as means of coercion. (d) The objective relationship to nature mediated through arms
constitutes a relationship of dominance and not of co-operation between hunter and nature. This relationship of
dominance has become an integral element of all further production relations established by men. It has become, in
fact, the main paradigm of their productivity. Without dominance and control over nature, men cannot conceive of
themselves as being productive. (e) 'Appropriation of natural substances' (Marx) now also becomes a process of
one-sided appropriation, of establishing property relations, not in the sense of humanisation, but of exploitation of
while the patriarchal paradigm has made man-the-hunter an

exemplar of human productivity, he is 'basically a parasite - not a producer'. With
the reversal of categories, made possible by focussing on the production of life, the
masculinisation of the feminine is no longer a viable option for liberation. Herbert
Marcuse sees liberation as a feminisation of the world: 'Inasmuch as the male
principle has been the ruling mental and physical force, a free society would be the
"definite negation" of this principle - it would be a female society.15 While Marcuse
opposes de Beauvoir's model, both share the assumptions of feminine and
masculine as natural, biologically defined traits which have an independent
existence, and both respond to patriarchy's gender ideology with categories that
have been created by that ideology. Marcuse states: 'Beneath the social factors which determine
male aggressiveness and female receptivity, a natural contrast exists ; it is the woman who "embodies"
in a literal sense, the promise of peace, of joy, of the end of violence. Tenderness,
nature.14 Mies concludes that
receptivity, sensuousness have become features (or mutilated features) of her body features of her (repressed) humanity.16 Gender ideology has created the dualism and
disjunction between male and female. Simultaneously it has created a conjunction
of activity and creativity with violence and the masculine, and a conjunction of
passivity with non-violence and the feminine . Gender-based responses to this
dualism have retained these conjunctions and disjunctions, and within these
dichotomised categories, have prescribed either the masculinisation or feminisation
of the world. There is, however, a third concept and process of liberation that is transgender. It is based on the recognition that masculine and feminine as gendered
concepts based on exclusiveness are ideologically defined categories, as is the
association of violence and activity with the former, and non-violence and passivity
with the latter. Rajni Kothari has observed, 'The feminist input serves not just women but
also men. There is no limiting relationship between feminist values and being a
woman.'17 In this non-gender based philosophy the feminine principle is not
exclusively embodied in women, but is the principle of activity and creativity in
nature, women and men. One cannot really distinguish the masculine from the
feminine, person from nature, Purusha from Prakriti. Though distinct, they remain
inseparable in dialectical unity, as two aspects of one being. The recovery of the
feminine principle is thus associated with the non-patriarchal, non-gendered
category of creative non-violence, or 'creative power in peaceful form', as Tagore stated
in his prayer to the tree. It is this conceptual framework within which this book, and the experiences and struggles
This perspective can recover humanity not in its distorted form

of the victim and oppressor, but by creating a new wholeness in both that
transcends gender because gender identity is, in any case, an ideological, social
and political construct. The recovery of the feminine principle is a response to
multiple dominations and deprivations not just of women, but also of nature and
non-western cultures. It stands for ecological recovery and nature's liberation, for
women's liberation and for the liberation of men who , in dominating nature and
women, have sacrificed their own human-ness. Ashis Nandy says, one must choose the
slave's standpoint not only because the slave is oppressed but also because he
represents a higher-order cognition which perforce includes the master as a human,
whereas the master's cognition has to exclude the slave except as a 'thing'.18
Liberation must therefore begin from the colonised and end with the coloniser . As
discussed in it are located.
Gandhi was to so clearly formulate through his own life, freedom is indivisible, not only in the popular sense that the
oppressed of the world are one, but also in the unpopular sense that the oppressor, too, is caught in the culture of
The recovery of the feminine principle is based on inclusiveness. It is a

recovery in nature, woman and man of creative forms of being and perceiving . In
nature it implies seeing nature as a live organism. In woman it implies seeing
women as productive and active. Finally, in men the recovery of the feminine
principle implies a relocation of action and activity to create life-enhancing, not lifereducing and life-threatening societies. The death of the feminine principle in
women and nature takes place through the association of the category of passivity
with the feminine. The death of the feminine principle in men takes place by a shift
in the concept of activity from creation to destruction, and the concept of power
from empowerment to domination. Selfgenerated, non-violent, creative activity as
the feminine principle dies simultaneously in women, men and nature when
violence and aggression become the masculine model of activity, and women and
nature are turned into passive objects of violence. The problem with a gender-based
oppression.
response to a gender-based ideology is that it treats ideologically constructed

gender categorisation as given by nature. It treats passive non-violence as
biological givens in women, and violence as a biological given in men, when both
non-violence and violence are socially constructed and need have no gender
association. Gandhi, the modern world's leading practitioner and preacher of non-violence was, after all, a man.
The historical creation of a gender divide by a gender ideology cannot be the basis
of gender liberation. And a gender-based ideology remains totally inadequate in
either responding to the ecological crisis created by patriarchal and violent modes
of relating to nature, or in understanding how Third World women are leading
ecological struggles based on values of conservation which are immediately
generalised as the concern for entire communities and regions, and even humanity
as a whole.
This must be paired with a feminist environmentalism we

must change notions of how people relate to the natural world
as well as change the ways in which resources are actually
extracted in a way that takes into account the way gender,
class, and race structure peoples interactions with nature and
their responses to it. For example, we could fund programs to
promote improved traditional forms of fishing, we could
enforce restrictions on multinational corporations that prevent
them from fishing in waters that support indigenous
communities, and we could work to involve feminine bodies
more in the management of resources, rather than relegating
women to the informal sector. Importantly, it would mean
seeking out input from rural communities in order to make
sure that policies reflect their interests, rather than being
soley for the benefit of the Third World elite. Only then can we
achieve an ethical form of development.
structure the effects of environmental change on people and their responses to it.
of their everyday interactions with nature, they acquire a special knowledge of
species varieties and the processes of natural regeneration. (This would include knowledge
destruction of nature and as repositories of knowledge about nature, in ways
impulse for their resistance and response to environmental destruction . The latter

NOTES
Start with prakriti and then slow down and explain it in the long tag and then be like
this overcomes this then youre not stuck with the baggage of presenting the
squo youre just describing the things youre fixing.
Ken not sure if reorganization is necessary, but should clearly give a statement
that gets you out of essentialist args nature isnt women and women arent
biologically close to nature
Need longer, slower tag that explains prakriti
Dont really need to use word prakriti
Dont describe, explain if thats the way it exists, explain WHY it exists that way
Could have version of the aff thats like ocean development policy should be
directed by or increase USFGs development of oceans with blah
States bad now but aff resolves that
Also lets you say moves to MPAs, indigenous fishing rights, are evidence that this
movement is possible and our aff ensures that theres the right notions backing it
up
People do not respect the MPAs and theres a lack of enforcement so aff can be
like ppl change how they see nature.
Shiva would want us to problematize how we go about describing nature and what
is rational example is food chain shiva would not be against fishing and eating
fish but she might be against idea of seeing it as hierarchical chain.
For debate purposes, emphasis should be on hierarchy not rationality because
how do you make an arg about irrationality that is not rational.
If the distinction between rational and irrational is purely the pragmatic without an
appreciation for nature per se thats bad
Values are ultimately intuitive it makes that value judgements are in the natural
category.
Rather, if the hierarchy of values
Put stuff in tag about prioritize this as starting point for value assessment must
rethink who is able to assign value and stuffl
Strong suggestion it would be to your benefit to slow it down, explain more could
have read less cards and gotten just as much out of it. Second card talks about it as
patriarchal capitalist society lets avoid that. Use mom and dad test could
parents understand what this is about
Less suggestion current system is ocean development. Were advocating

development of the ocean. Ocean development sees ocean as object for
development its an adjective there. While development of the ocean focuses on
the ocean. Focus on ocean means make the ocean better while ocean development
is extraction. Then, youre the ones increasing development of the ocean like the
res says and the neg is wrong in talking about ocean development.
Patent laws is a good place to find the shiva stuff in shiva look for patent laws
Our generic answer to government absent government now, worse ones arise
the guys with guns take over.
Now, USFG is the organization responsible for all sorts of bad stuff
Were not saying USFG good saying its bad and we must fix it to ignore it just
means more hierarchies exist through things like multinational companies do bad
things to people and environment.
**2AC**
Root Cause
The root cause of all impacts from environmental degradation
to education crises to extinction is patriarchal domination.
Only Ecofeminism solves.
Spretnak 87 [Charlene spretnak is an American author, known for her writings
on ecology, politics, cultural history and spirituality. She is a prominent ecofeminist and a cofounder of the U.S.
Green Party movement, Feminism our roots and flowering, Ecospirit,
http://home.moravian.edu/public/relig/ecoSpirit/issues/Vol3No2.pdf JMak]
Our society is facing a crisis in agriculture, a crisis in education and literacy, a

crisis in national security and the arms race, a crisis in the international debt
situation, and a crisis in the state of the global environment. For the first time in the
modern era, there is widespread agreement that something is very wrong. The assumptions of modernity, the
faith in technological "progress" and rapacious industrialism, along with the miltarism necessary to support it,
lost indeed. The quintessential malady of the modern era is free-floating anxiety, and it is
clear to ecofeminists that the whole culture is free-floating -- from a grounding in
the natural world, from a sense of belonging in the unfolding story of the
universe, from a healthy relationship between the male and female of the
species. We are entangled in the hubris of the patriarchal proj ect , to dominate nature
and the female. The New York Times recently published a lead editorial titled "Nature
as Demon" (29 August 1986), reminding everyone that the proper orientation of
civilization is to advance itself in opposition to nature. (The rest of that newspaper, as we've
have left us very
noticed during twenty years of feminism, is
loaded with patriarchal reminders that the
proper role of men is to
in opposition to women!) The editorial advised that disasters such as

"Hiroshima, DDT, Bhopal, and now Chernobyl" require simply "improving the
polity," that is, fine-tuning the system. Such smugness, of course, is the common response of
guardians of the status quo: retrenchment and bandaids. But ecofeminists say that the system
is leading us to ecocide and species suicide because it is based on ignorance,
fear, delusion, and greed. We say that the people, male or female, enmeshed in
the values of that system are incapable of making rational decisions. They
pushed nuclear power plants when they did not have the slightest idea what to
do with the plutonium wastes that are generated because, after all, someone
always comes along later to clean up like Mom. They pushed the nuclear arms
race because those big phallic missiles are so "technologically sweet." They are
pushing reproductive technology with the gleeful prediction that children of the
future, a result of much genetic selection, will often have a donor mother, an incubator mother, and a
social mother who raises them making motherhood as disembodied and discontinuous as is
fatherhood, at last! They are pushing high-tech petroleum-based agriculture,
which makes the soil increasingly brittle and lifeless and adds millions of tons of
toxic pesticides to our food as well as our soil and water, because they know how to get
advance themselves
what they want from the Earth -- a far cry from the peasant rituals that persisted in parts of Europe even up until
World War I wherein women would encircle the f LeLds by torchlight and transfer their fertility of womb to the
land they touched. Women and men in those cultures participated in the cycles of nature with respect and
gratitude. Such attitudes have no place in a modern, technocratic society fueled by the patriarchal obsessions of
dominance and
control.
They have been replaced by the
managerial ethos, which holds
efficiency of production and short-term gains above all else above ethics or moral
standards, above the health of community life, and above the integrity of all
biological processes, especially those constituting the elemental power of the
female.
Solvency
Federal Law Key

The negative essentializes the state with their view from
nowhere and dooms us to inaction.
Barry 1999 (John Barry, Reader in Politics in the School of
Politics, International Studies and Philosophy and Assistant
Director of the Institute for a Sustainable World. Rethinking
Green Politics: Nature, Virtue and Progress Sage //MG)
What this chapter has argued is that eco-anarchism is not an essential component of green politics, in that the
values greens espouse may be institutionalized in non-anarchistic ways. For example, the eco-anarchist concern
with autonomy and self-determination is something which as a green value can be realized in non-anarchist ways.
Autonomy is discussed in Chapter 6 where an ecological virtue perspective on human ourishing is argued to
the ecoanarchist utopia acts as a fetter on the future development of green theory,
unnecessarily precluding its positive engagement with the state . It is perhaps not
hinge on the relationship between human autonomy and welfare. Nor is it desirable that, as it stands,
completely contingent that a reassessment of eco- anarchism within green theory is occurring at a time when the
This is not to say that

eco-anarchism is to be ejected from the green political canon: the integration of its
insights within the context of green theory moving from negative criticism to
positive proposals calls for it to become a regulative rather than a constitutive ideal
for green politics - that is, informing and guiding, but not determining its goals . Thus
while eco-anarchism may not have all that much to offer by way of green thinking
about possible institutional structures for a sustainable society, it does have much
to offer by way of what one can call a 'cultural' (including inspirational) contribution to
green political theory, particularly, as Eckersley (1992a: 186) points out, when eco-anarchism shifts from a
utopianism of form to a utopianism of process. Institutional arrangements are thus to be judged
instrumentally in terms of whether they hinder or promote green practices and
values, the 98 RETHINKING GREEN POLITICS sum of which I term 'collective ecological management'. On this
reading it is the 'essentialist' view of the state held by eco-anarchists like Sale (1980) and
Bookchin (1991), who regard the state as intrinsically inimical to the ecological and other
social values espoused by greens, that grounds their rejection of the state as a part
of the green political proiect. A good example of this is Khor's argument that 'under state control the
minds of greens are turning from ideals to principles, and from principles to practice.
environment necessarily suffers' (in Goldsmith et al., 1992: 128). This is especially clear in Bool<chin's thought.
The originating thesis of social ecology is that the ecological crisis is due to
hierarchy. The domination of humans over nature is the first level of this hierarchy
but Bookchin (1991: 2-12) argues that this hierarchical relationship itself stems from the
domination of humans by other humans. For him, as the state is the highest
contemporary expression of social hierarchy, it is the ultimate cause of the present ecological
crisis. Added to this is his view that the 'state' is not just a set of institutional arrangements but also a psychological
According to Bookchin, 'the State is not merely a constellation of

bureaucratic and coercive institutions. It is also a state of mind, an instilled mentality for
disposition.
ordering reality' (1991: 94)." For Bookchin, as for others in the anarchist political tradition, this 'instilled mentality' is
These are extremely strong

claims, to say the least, the plausibility of which really depends upon accepting the
anarchist analysis as a whole, particularly its version of the historical origins and
evolution of the state (Carter, 1993). It is because of their essentialist conception of the
a combination of unreective subservience, apathy and powerlessness.
state that eco-anarchists such as Bookchin (1991; 1992a) argue that the resolution of the
ecological crisis is simply impossible while the nation-state exists. But more than
that, on traditional anarchist grounds the state is also deemed to be unnecessary
as well as undesirable to its resolution. The plausibility or otherwise of the anarchist
position need not detain us, since as argued previously, the eco-anarchist
perspective is to be thought of as a constitutive as opposed to a regulative ideal of
green political theory. It is this 'essentialist' view of the state that explains its
rejection on eco-anarchist grounds. If this view is rejected, then the eco-anarchist
solution does not constitute an insuperable barrier to a positive green engagement
with the state.7 The conclusion of this chapter, that an immanent critique of the state rather
than its rejection is more appropriate to green political theory , is similar to the immanent
critique of the Enlightenment and anthropocentrism suggested in previous chapters. The problem of ecoanarchism's 'utopian' critique is that it is a 'view from nowhere' . That is to say, the
values and principles it represents are not widespread within the existing culture . As
Hayward puts it, 'critique [becomes] mere criticism [when it] appeals to a utopian vision
that others may not share, which is not rooted in the norms and values of the
culture, and so is an abstract "ought"' (1995; 51). The point about immanent critique is
that it starts from where we are now, rather than adopting a view from nowhere, a
view from the past or a View from the future. That is, we can only approach the 'new'
via a critique of the old, rather than simply think up wonderful blueprints for the
future. Immanent critique represents a qualitatively different kind of theorizing from utopian critique. While it
is less 'radical' in the sense that it is committed to the possible and not just the
desirable, it is all the more radical in the sense of being a realizable alternative to
the status quo. One may view eco-anarchism as a permanent reminder of the
dangers and problems involved in the state having a role in social affairs and
ecological management. At the same time eco-anarchism may also be understood as
emphasizing that the state's role in ecological governance is a necessary rather
than a sufficient condition for achieving green goals, i.e. reflecting the state's
instrumental as opposed to intrinsic role and value (Barry, 1995a). However, the argument for
the state having a key role in providing environmental public goods has not been undermined. It is to an
examination of the state that we turn next
Environmental law is the only way to translate a reconceiving

of the natural world into material reality
Environmental law as a field is dynamic and alive and very much in the process of
development. It is an area of social life in which we can see active evidence of the
human struggle to understand our moral and ontological relationship with nature.
Although environmental law is largely founded on the same instrumentalist
assumptions about nature that characterize the scientific worldview, at this
moment in historical reality a space is being held open, by postmodern science and
environmental philosophy, for a reconceptualization of the relationship between
humans and the natural world. Such a reconceiving, expressed through

ecofeminism, views the self as neither completely separate from and (thus superior to)
human and more- than-human others, nor as completely, amorphically subsumed,
but rather, as has already been noted, embedded in relationships ; as existing socially
and physically in webs of relationality. This ontological perception, this embodied knowing, can be reflected and
manifested through law. A jurisprudence, says feminist legal theorist Catherine MacKinnon, is a theory of the
relation between life and law.... Law actively participates in [the] transformation of 60 perspective into being.94
Law is one powerful medium by which human societies translate values and beliefs
into material reality; it can provide institutional approval and support for particular
perceptions and activities, while withdrawing nourishment from undervalued others.
In a society structured and determined largely through legal discourse,
environmental law and policy should be viewed as a necessary and important
means of addressing the state of ecosocial crisis being faced by the planets
inhabitants.
Environmental law has been influenced by a variety of sources,
especially standards of science as they emerge through the dialectical interplay of
history, nature, and culture. It is a construct of language, which is not to say that it
is not real; rather stating that law is a linguistic construct implies that language is
that through which our claims to know reality can be stated and carried. Language, for
human beings at least, thus becomes the interface between our own individual consciousnesses and the rest of the
It is this capacity to express multiplicity, along with its openendedness and malleability, that I believe gives law its power and promise as a means
of promoting the spread of ecological ideas throughout society. But as I have noted, the
law can tell stories which impair the project of creating environmental sustainability
as well. This complexity and multi- faceted functioning of law is reflected in the words of feminist legal theorist
Robin West, who says that while law is to be understood by its content and its precedents,
it is also an ever-present possibility, potentially bringing good or evil into our
future.96 West, in her book, speaks of the narrativity of law, and claims that particular laws and stories can be
interpreted by reference to more than one text; that there is more the one source to which we can
refer in order to find the meaning or proper interpretation of a law.9 7 However, under
conventional theories of jurisprudence we rarely do so, instead preferring to see
established interpretations as fixed. Similarly, in environmental matters, we often appeal to only
one textthe atomistic, mechanistic, reductionistic picture of the world given to us by modern science . But
another text to which we might refer would be the one presented by ecofeminism.
This narrative, or way of relating, says that we are ontologically embedded; and it is
a story of human connectedness to the natural world. This is the story which law
must tell about the nature/culture dyad in order to talk- story into being an
existence in which both humans and nature can flourish. The stories about
nature that human beings like to tell have been divided by environmental
philosophers into two general categories: anthropocentric, or human-centered, and
nonanthropocentric. These approaches are mirrored in law. Anthropocentric
approaches typically view nature instrumentally, as a resource to be utilized by
humans for human benefit, and is the sort of understanding that environmental law,
policy, and regulation has typically incorporated and enforced. Nonanthropocentric
or ecocentric approaches, in contrast, view nature as something possessing intrinsic
worth, and thus an entitlement to have its interests count in our moral and legal
doctrines. But before exploring the narrative efficacy of one particular promising new notion, that of a
blooming, buzzing confusion.95
partnership ethic, developed by the ecofeminist environmental historian Carolyn Merchant, we must briefly review
present conceptions/narratives of nature held and expressed through law.
Law situates us upon the Earth - Exposing the disenfranshized

groups through federal law creates openings for further
change in our relation towards our whole world.
the law can also serve a more subversively liberatory

purpose, de-stabilizing the master narrative of legal liberalism which reifies the
individual as an egoistic, rationally-self interested consumer, separated from
human and earth others. It does so when it acknowledges the rights of
disenfranchised groups, creating openings for voices to be heard that challenge
other streams of the conversation. The law recognizes the importance of this
relationship, it may declare, when it rules in favor of a birthmothers right to raise the
child she bore over the contractual entitlement of the man who in essence rented her womb to be
inseminated by him. You count, it says to the salmon, when a court orders that a dam
release sufficient water that the fish can travel and reproduce. You are connected.
W e are connected, it suggests at times like these. When the law talks about human
beings, it attempts to tell us about our [footnote] 59relationships with other humans,
and with our relationship to power in the form of the state. When the law addresses environmental
problems, it also attempts to tell us of our relationship with other things, other
processes, and about our scientific conception of nature , dialectically weaving a story in
which we must then dwell. The law, in many ways, situates us upon this earth. [footnote] Patricia
Smith remarks, It is surprising to think that what a harm is could be open to interpretation, but it is. Sexual
harrassment, for example, was not a cause of action until very recently. Although
women employees were coerced into sexual relations, it was not recognized as an
addressable harm. Indeed, there was no word for it. There was not way to speak of it. It
was just the way of the world, like breathing or drowning (Smith, Feminist Jurisprudence, p.
Interestingly (and joyously!),
13).
The United States is rooted in atomistic legislation towards the

environment Ecofeminism is key to create change in policy
making. Only a break away from the masculinist privilege of
autonomy can the USFG create meaningful, sustainable,
environmental legislation.
Law is not separate from life; law forms and mediates relationships, and through
various narrative and linguistic mechanisms such as justicability, standing, and
precedent it defines who or what is eligible to articulate a claim , and thus who or what
matters, as I discuss in chapter 4. Law that is predicated on the assumptions of liberalism, as is law in the
United States, is particularly masculinist in that it is founded on a perspective that
has been found by feminists to be a male rather than a simply human perspective:
a perspective in which rationality, objectivity, and autonomy are privileged
while specificity and interdependency are submerged. Liberal legalism as MacKinnon
recognizes, is thus a medium for making male dominance both invisible and legitimate by adopting the
male point of view in law at the not only harm and exclude women, they degrade
nature as well. As discussed above, the political theory of liberalism rose out of the same mechanistic,
atomistic philosophies which gave rise to modern science. These philosophies championed such
notions as reason and objectivity because they gave humans control over the
natural world. The only creatures possessing meaningful subjectivity under this
view are human beings (who are paradigmatically male), who by virtue of
possession of these traits are accorded moral and legal standing. A system of laws
that claims universality and rationality to be its dearest ideals, then, is theoretically
incapable of taking adequate account of the interests of non-humans because harm
to nature as nature remains legally inarticulable." Therefore, what is needed is a
political theory which overcomes the ecological and sexist limitations of the
atomistic ontology of liberalism but at the same time does not posit a human
nature which is biologically fixed and therefore unchangeable. As well, such a theory must
be able to take account of the dynamic relationship between human beings and the more-than-human- world, and
Socialist feminism, which subscribes to a historical,

materialist, and dialectical conception of human biology, is potentially the most adequate grounding
for an ecofeminist environmental jurisprudence because it sees human nature and
the forms of human social organization as determined not by our biology alone, but
rather by a complex interplay between our forms of social organization, including
our type of technological development, between our biological constitution and the
physical environment we inhabit.... For instance, the physical environment does not just set limits to
express the meaning of such relations politically.
human social organization: organized human activity also affects the environment by draining, damming,
clearing, terracing, leveling, fertilizing or polluting. The humanly caused changes in the environment in turn affect
Socialist feminism is
also most helpful to the project of environmental ethics in that it contains an
explicit critique of capitalism, a system which reduces nature to a sink of resources
and constructs people as egoistic, self- interested consumers." In order for environmental
human social life which in turn affects the environment in a new way, and so on.
ethics to succeed in its project of establishing an ecologically and ethically appropriate relationship between
human beings and the natural world, legal reforms must be instituted which directly confront the capitalist
This socialist feminism is prepared to do,

for as well as recognizing the reciprocal interplay of nature and culture, it includes
as a category of analysis the way in which the values and assumptions of
capitalism and liberalism are reproduced through legal and political institutions."
industries which perpetuate environmental degradation.
Example of how development is bad

now
Trawling and overfishing in the status quo are forms of
development we reject.
Shiva 2000 (Vandana Shiva, Indian environmental activist and
anti-globalization author. Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the
Global Food Supply Zed Books //MG)
People and turtles have coexisted along Indias coasts for centuries. But
mechanized trawlers, introduced in the Indian waters over the past few decades
through development financing and in the name of modernization, profoundly
threaten turtles. Industrial shrimp trawlers are capable of scraping one square
kilometer of the seabed in ten hours, and an estimated 150,000 turtles drown each
year when they are caught in the nets of large trawlers. The Orissa Coast--the
world's largest rookery of the endangered Olive Ridley turtles-is now famous for
being their biggest grave. In November 1998, 26 dead turtles washed up on Orissa
beaches. The next month, 652 dead turtles washed ashore, and by January 1999
the number of dead turtles had shot up to 4,682. Most of these were directly
related to mechanized trawlers. In 1998, turtles did not come to the Gahirmata
Beach in Orissa for mass nesting for the second year in a row.' India is the seventhlargest producer of fish in the world and the second-biggest source of inland fish. Its
7,000 kilometer-long coast- line supports the livelihood of millions of fishing and
farming families. Until the end of the 1950s, the marine fish harvest in South Asia
increased at a rate of 5 percent annually, despite the lack of new harvesting
technologies. During this period, between 5,000 and 6,000 tons of prawns from
India were exported to Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia every year, accounting for 25
to 30 percent of the annual export value of the shrimp trade. Bottom-trawling was
introduced to South Asia in the 1960s. In pur-suit of shrimp, which usually are found
in shallow waters, bottom-trawlers continuously rake the seabed, causing murky
and turbid waters, and destroying the habitats of young bottom-dwelling fish and
bottom-dwelling spawners.3 By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the rate of growth
of the marine fish harvest had dropped to 2 percent per year. However, despite the
stagnation of the overall fishing economy, the exports of prawns-all destined for
the Japanese and U.S. markets in frozen form-increased dramatically. Trawler
eets use nets to scoop up whole shoals of fish, many of which are not of
commercial value, although they are highly valuable to the ecosystem. Those
species that do not have commercial value on global markets or are of the wrong
size for standardized marketing and packaging are killed and thrown back into the
sea. These fish are called "by-catch" and "discards." As The Ecologist reports,
annual global discards in commercial fisheries have been conservatively estimated
at 27 million tons, equivalent to over one-third the weight of all reported marine
landings in commercial fisheries worldwide.' A study from Alaska suggests that
Bering Sea red king crab discards amounted to more than five times the number of
crabs actually landed. In the Norwegian cod fishery, the waste over one season in
1986-87 was 100,000 tons. In 1986-87, 2 billion kilograms of fin fish were dumped
overboard. Worldwide, the shrimp and prawn trawler fisheries are reported to have
the highest level of discards of any fishery: about 16 million tons a year. In some
shrimp fisheries, up to 15 tons of fish are dumped for every ton of shrimp landed.
Most of this by-catch, turtles among it, is thrown back into the sea either dead or
dying. These diverse species are the economic base for traditional fisherpeople and
the ecological base that sustains the marine environment. In terms of livelihoods,
species diversity, and future sustainability, the technologies of industrial fisheries,
which aim to maximize the commercial catch in the short run, are rather inefficient.
Over-capital- ized fisheries are collapsing in region afier region. Nine of the world's
major fishing grounds are threatened. Four have been "fished out" commercially.
Total catches in the Northwest Atlantic have fallen by one-third over the past 20
years. In Newfoundland, fishing grounds have been closed indefinitely since 1992.
In 1991, the FAO claimed that global fish catches would continue to increase, but
even it now acknowledges that an estimated 70 percent of global fish stocks are
"depleted" or "almost depleted" and that "the oceans' most valuable commercial
species are fished to capacity."5 As marine ecology has degraded, the shrimp catch
has also declined. In the major prawn-fishing area of southwest India, the catch
dropped from 45,477 tons to 14,582 tons between 1973 and 1979. Trade sources
also point to a shifi in the composition of the export mix of prawns over time from
the large species (naran, kazhandan) to the smaller varieties (karikadi, poovalan).
These factors are widely accepted as indicators of overfishing.
Industrial, unsustainable aquaculture practices that do nothing

to address the growing food crisis is also a form of
development we reject.
According to the lnternational Food Policy Research Institute, "to meet the growing
need for fish, the world will have to rely on aquaculture."8 The two primary
justifications for industrial aquaculture are the crisis of depletion of marine
resources and the crisis of malnutrition among the poor in the Third World. The
World Bank and corporate in- vestors, for instance, have promoted shrimp
aquaculture as a way to meet the growing demand for shrimp in the face of
declining catches from the wild. Cultured-shrimp production has increased from 10
percent of total shrimp production in 1985 to 30 percent in 1992. Cultured shrimp
contributed 12 million tons out of a total shrimp production of 98 million tons in
1989-91, and is expected to reach a production level of 15 to 20 million tons by
2010.9 Though pushed by both national and international organizations as an
answer to world food scarcity, particularly to the scarcity of proteins in the diets of
the poor, in reality shrimp contributes little to the nutritional needs of the world's
population, being a luxury item that is consumed mainly by the rich in the
developed world. Farming for prawn and fish is quite different from capturing prawn
and fish that grow in the wild. The aquaculturist must maintain and run the prawn
farm in the same way as an agricultural farm, paying attention to weather,
nutrients, and feed to ensure a healthy crop. Sustainable aquaculture has been a
part of sustainable agriculture in many ancient farming systems. However, modern
industrial aquaculture, the "Blue Revolution," is of recent origin. As in the case of
crop production, industrial fisheries and aquaculture consume more resources than
they produce. According to Dr. John Kurien, in 1988 global shrimp aquaculture
consumed 1.8 million tons of fish meal, derived from an equivalent of 900,000 tons
(wet-weight) of fish. It is further estimated that by 2000, about 5.7 million tons of
cultured fish will be produced in Asia. The feed requirements for this harvest will be
on the order of 1.1 million tons of feed, derived from a staggering 5.5 million tons of
wet-weight fish-nearly double the total marine fish harvested in India today. Fish
meal provides the crucial link between industrial aquaculture and industrial
fisheries, since the fish used for fish meal are harvested from the sea through
trawlers and purseiners, which are known to deplete marine stocks. This exposes
the illogic of the World Bank argument that aquaculture moves away from hunting
and gathering toward settled agriculture, and will reduce the pressure on marine
resources.
Transgenetic fish are also a form of development we oppose

they needlessly put ecosystems at risk all for the accelerated
production of profit.
About 50 labs around the world are conducting research on transgenic fish. Most of
this research focuses on engineering rapid growth and cold-tolerance. A/F Protein,
based in Canada and the United States, has engineered Atlantic salmon with a
growth hormone gene that reportedly makes it grow to market size in 12 to 18
months instead of the usual three years. The company has patents on the gene and
transformation method, and its genetically engineered salmon is called Biogrow." In
Scotland, Otter Ferry Salmon of Strathclyde is also experimenting with salmon
engineered for faster growth. In Chile, a consortium of business interests wants to
com- mercialize production of transgenic fish, which are supposed to grow ten times
faster than normal. While genetic engineering, like industrial aquaculture, is
promoted to increase fish production, because of its ecological risks, it could in fact
deplete fish stocks. For instance, the faster-growing transgenic fish may require
more feed in order to grow at the increased rate. Transgen- ic fish with anti-freeze
genes meant to tolerate colder sea water than their non-engineered relatives could
displace other species. The introduction of new genes could impact other
physiological processes. For example, when fed a high-protein diet, transgenic pigs
containing human or bovine growth hormone genes exhibited faster 52 srouan
Jfarvest growth. However, females were sterile, and animals of both sexes were
lethargic, exhibited muscle weakness, and had a propensity to develop arthritis and
gastric ulcers." Transgenic fish could ruin aquatic ecosystems by preying on and
outcompeting native species. Engineered fish could breed with wild fish and destroy
diversity. Transgenic fish need to be considered as a special case of exotic fish.
Introductions of exotics can have unpredict- able and serious impact. Peter Moyle of
the University of California at Davis has called the displacement of native species by
the introduction of exotic species the "Frankenstein Efi'ect."29 Examples of the
Frankenstein Effect are the introduction of blue tilapia into Lake Effie in Florida and
the introduction of opossum shrimp in Flathead Lake in Montana. When the tilapia
was introduced in l970, it consisted of less than 1 percent of the total weight
(biomass) of fish in Lake Effie. By 1974, the blue tilapia accounted for more than 90
percent of the fish biomass. Between 1968 and 1975, opossum shrimp were
introduced into several lakes upstream from Flathead Lake to improve food sources
for Kakonee salmon. However, the opposite happened. The shrimp were voracious
predators of zooplankton, which is an important food source for the salmon.
Zooplankton populations declined to 10 percent of their former levels, and the
salmon catch plummeted. Before 1985, the annual salmon catch was 100,000.
Only 600 were caught in 1987. There The release of genetically engineered fish, via
the Second Blue Revolution, could prove equally disastrous socially and ecologically.
Genetically engineered fish, offered as a new miracle in fisheries, in- tensifies the
one-dimensional trajectory of the Blue Revolution to breed fish for higher production
and faster growth. We can therefore expect that the devastation already
experienced in the case of the Blue Revolution will be intensified and accelerated in
the Second Blue Revolution.
The 1996 ruling by the Supreme Court of India that ordered the
removal of all shrimp aquaculture in coastal regulation zones
is the kind of legal reformism we would support - the
reconceptualization of our relationship towards nature,
however, is critical in making sure this kind of reform actually
works and isnt rolled back by elitist groups.
In 1996, in response to a suit filed by Indian environmentalists and coastal
communities, the Supreme Court of India ordered the removal of all shrimp
aquaculture in the coastal regulation zones, comprising the coastal ecosystems of
Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra,
and Gujurat. The court ruled that "no aquaculture industry, whether it is intensive,
semi-intensive, extensive, or semi-extensive, will be permitted. The only activity
which will be permitted is traditional and improved traditional." By the end of March
1997, all aquaculture industries in the area were to be completely removed, and the
aquaculture workers were to be paid retrenchment compensation plus six years of
wages. The farmers of the area were to be compensated for their losses. The court
ordered that the federal government designate an authority to carry out the farreaching, landmark ruling. The court thus upheld the value of life above the value of
dollars earned from shrimp exports. According to one leading financial daily,
undoing the judgement was a major priority for the government. Indeed, the
government, along with business interests, has succeeded in preventing the ruling
from coming into force. Shrimp farms continue to operate in contempt of court
orders. Environmentalists and coastal communities have organized a massive
national and international mobilization to prevent a com- plete undoing of the
historic Supreme Court judgement. However, the fundamental rights and freedoms
of the poor coastal communities are under permanent threat because of the dollar
power of the shrimp industry. It is these communities that are paying the real price
for increased shrimp consumption-with their livelihoods and their freedom. On the
1997 anniversary of India's independence day, August 15, while official India
mouthed empty rhetoric and radicals staged a "Black Flag" demonstration against
government failures, coastal vil- lagers, under the leadership of the National Action
Committee against Coastal Industrial Aquaculture, marched to banned shrimp
farms, proudly carrying the Indian tricolor flag and singing the national an- them.
From the coast of India a new meaning is being given to freedom, both for the
people and the country. For the victims of the aquaculture industry, Independence
Day was a day for celebrating and asserting their sovereignty over their natural
resources and their livelihoods. It was a day for re-committing themselves to
continuing their struggle to free the coast from the destructive aquaculture industry.
It was a day for condemning the attempts by the government, politicians, and
industrialists to subvert the Supreme Court judgement that has defended their
rights and their coast. This new struggle for a free India is appropriately beginning
at In- dia's social and environmental margins-from the coasts, led by women,
traditional fishworkers, the landless, and small peasants. In the margins, a new India
is being bom-an India built on the principles of sustainability and justice, of peace
and harmony, of democ- racy and diversity. This second freedom struggle has just
begun.
AT
AT T DEV
Development means to grow or create
Merriam Webster (development, Accessed 7/27/14.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/development //MG)
Development development noun \di-ve-lp-mnt, d-\ : the act or process of
growing or causing something to grow or become larger or more advanced : the act
or process of creating something over a period of time : the state of being created
or made more advanced
AT Heg/Security
As long as hegemonic masculinity is characterized by
destructiveness and aggression, war and colonization are
inevitable.
Acker 04 Professor Emerita at University of Oregon (Joan, Gender, Capitalism and Globalization, Critical
Sociology Volume 30, issue 1, 2004, 28-29)//AS
Masculinities in Globalizing Capital. In the history of modern globalization, beginning with the expansion of England
agents of globalization, leaders and troops, have

been men, but not just any men. They have been particular men whose locations within gendered social
relations and practices can be captured by the concept of masculinity . Masculinity is a
and other European countries in colonial conquest,
contested term.12 As Connell (1987, 2000), Hearn (1996), and others have pointed out, it should be pluralized as
masculinities, because in any society at any time there are several ways of being a man. Connell (2000) defines
masculinities as configurations of practice within gender relations, a structure that includes large-scale institutions
and economic relations as well as face-to-face relationships and sexuality (p. 29). Masculinities are reproduced
through organizational/institutional practices, social interaction, and through images, ideals, myths or
Hegemonic masculinity is the most desired and

form, attributed to leaders and other influential figures at particular historical times. More
than one type of hegemonic masculinity may exist simultaneously , although they may
representations of behaviors and emotions.
admired
share characteristics, as do the business leader and the sports star at the present time. Connell (2000) identifies
globalizing
masculinities, beginning with the masculinities of conquest and settlement

combined an unusual level of violence and egocentric
individualism (p. 47) among the conquerors. Masculinities of empire cast the male
colonizers as more manly and more virile than the colonized, thus emasculating
colonized others, and, at the same time, legitimating violence in the interests of empire .
Globalizing masculinities organized around violence and domination seems to have been
of the 18th and 19th Centuries that
predominant in these two periods of conquest and settlement. As corporate capitalism developed, Connell and
a hegemonic masculinity based on claims to

expertise developed along with masculinities still organized around domination .
others (for example Collinson and Hearn 1996) argue,
Hegemonic masculinity relying on claims to expertise does not necessarily lead to economic organizations free of
domination
and violence
however (Hearn and Parkin 2002). Hearn and Parkin (2002) argue that controls relying
In todays organizing for

globalization, we can see the emergence of a hegemonic hyper-masculinity that is
aggressive, ruthless, competitive, and adversarial. Think of Rupert Murdoch (Reed 1996), Phil
on both explicit and implicit violence exist in a wide variety of organizations.
Knight (Strasser and Beklund 1993), or Bill Gates. Gates, who represents a younger generation than Murdoch and
Knight, may seem to be more gently aggressive and more socially responsible than the other two examples, with
his contributions to good causes around the globe. However, his actions made public in the anti-trust lawsuits
against Microsoft seem to still exhibit the ruthlessness, competitiveness and adversarialness of hyper-masculinity.
This masculinity is supported and reinforced by the ethos of the free market,
competition, and a win or die environment. This is the masculine image of those
who organize and lead the drive to global control and the opening of markets to
international competition. Masculinities embedded in collective practices are part of the context within
which certain men make the organizational decisions that drive and shape what is called globalization and the
new economy. We can speculate that how these men see themselves, what actions and choices they feel
compelled to make and they think are legitimate, how they and the world around them define desirable masculinity,
enter into that decision-making. Decisions made at the very top reaches of (masculine) corporate power have
consequences that are experienced as inevitable economic forces or disembodied social trends. At the same time,
they symbolize and enact varying hegemonic masculinities (Connell 1998).
AT bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a mess of contradictions incapable of guiding
a social transformation.
Kovel 2007(Joel Kovel, Distinguished Professor of Social
Studies at Bard College The enemy of nature //MG)
an emphasis on place in any realized ecophilosophy is essential. It would be
impossible to construct any adequate notion of an integral ecosystem without such
a ground. It might be added that as someone who has chosen to live in the Catskill
Mountains and Hudson Valley of New York State, and who has had good
relationships with people in the back-to-the-land movement, I personally speak
with affection for this point of view. Nevertheless, the attempt to extend it to
bioregionalism as a ecophilosophy is to be challenged and rejected, because the
idea is incapable of guiding social transformation . Some of these difficulties may be seen in an
essay by the bioregionalist Kirkpatrick Sale, who is led to posit a regime of self-sufficiency for
the bioregion. A consistent bioregionalist has to do so in order to establish his view
as an ecophilosophy. What comes, however, with the territory is the need to
define boundaries. Of this, Sale has the following to say: Ultimately, the task of
determining the appropriate bioregional boundaries and how seriously to take
them will always be left up to the inhabitants of the area. One can see this fairly
clearly in the case of the Indian peoples who first settled the North American
continent. Because they lived off the land, they distrib- uted themselves to a
remarkable degree along the lines of what we now recognize as bioregions .37 There
are three significant problems with this statement. First, what is an area? The
term is vague in itself, but cannot remain that way if boundaries of the bioregion
need to be decided, as must be the case if there is to be a self to be self-sufficient
about. But who is to decide who lives where? Can this conceivably be done without
conflict, given the dif- ferential suitability of different regions for productive development? And who is to resolve the anticipated conflicts, which will involve major
expropriation? The land where I live is part of the watershed for New York City. Are the members of the Catskill
Mountain Bioregion to declare that the city can go dry, and are they prepared to take up arms to
preserve the integrity of the bioregion? Second, the Indian peoples lived
bioregionally because only about 12 million of them inhabited the now-United
States at the time of the European invasion. Todays vastly greater population exists
not in simple relation to place but in an interdependent grid. Remember , too, that the
Indians fell into bitter warfare as their territory became destabilized by the
European intrusion. Third, and most important by far, the Indians bioregional life-world was
predicated on holding land in common, in other words, it was the original
communism. The genocidal wars with the invaders had a great deal to do with the
latters capitalism that required the alienation of land as property, something the
Indians would rather die than submit to (which is pretty much what happened). Capitalism has
definitely not changed in this respect; and no coherent project of bioregionalism
can survive if productive land remains a commodity, to be owned by absentees,
hoarded, rented out, concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and generally
exploited. Sale is fully aware of the plight of the Indians, but ignores the implications of
transforming capitalism. He writes that bioregional institution building can be
Certainly,
safely left to people who live there, providing only that they have undertaken the
job of honing their bioregional sensibilities and making acute their bioregional
consciousness (478) a pretty gross understate- ment of what history shows to be
the need to transform society in a communist direction, without which a people
simply cannot democratically control their bioregion. And if they rose up to take
such control, how much imagination does it take to see what would be the response
of the capitalist state? Even if these problems could miraculously be ironed out, retaining Sales autarkic
concept of a bioregion would be impossible. He calls for self-sufficient regions, each developing
the energy of its peculiar ecology wind in the Great Plains; water in New England; wood in the
Northwest (482). But how on earth are these resources to be made sufficient? I would
be surprised to learn that the rivers of New England could supply more than a tenth
of its energy needs; and as for wood in the Northwest (where there is more hydropower, though
again not enough), how will Sale answer to the environmentalists or the economists, or any
sane person if, say, Seattle is converted to forest-destroying and smoke-spewing
wood-burning stoves? Of course, an ecological society would have greatly enhanced
energy efficiency and reduced needs, but there is something slap-dash in these
prescriptions, which seem deduced from a naturalized ideology rather than
grounded in reality. Self-sufficiency, adds Sale, before I am badly misunderstood, is not the same thing as isolation, nor does it preclude all kinds of trade at all
times. It does not require connections with the outside, but within strict limits the connections must be
nondependent, nonmonetary and noninjurious it allows them (483). We should not misunderstand
badly, or at all, but the understanding is hard. No required connections between
bioregions? Suppose your daughter lives in the next one (or, worse, the one beyond that)
and you want to visit. Can you phone her, and whom do you pay for the purpose?
Are there to be no roads, or rail systems, or airplane travel for the purpose? Are
people only to walk between bioregions on trails through the brush, as the other
means would require some monetary intercourse ? We need take this no further.
Any effort to build society on the basis of strict bioregionalism dissolves in a flood of
contradictions. What is missing are those measures which have to be taken so that
the whole of society is transformed. Bioregionalism can be no more than an
important ancilla to the building of an ecological society.
AT biological determination
Socialist ecofeminism specifically does not include biological
determinism
Salhus 01 [Megan Salhus is a professor of geography at the University of British Columbia Okanagan,
Social Ecology and Feminism: Can Socialist Ecofeminism be the Answer?, pp. 39-40 JMak]
The anti-biological determinism argument against ecofeminism is very similar to the anti-essentialist argument. As
not all forms of ecofeminism rely on

biological determinism. Some forms, such as social and socialist ecofeminism are at
pains to point out that they do not subscribe to biological determinism. Rather, through
the idea of historical materialism, socialist ecofeminists show that gender roles and abilities
are a result of a societys particular historical development , and as such are subject to
such, the socialist ecofeminist response is also parallel. Again,
change, thereby allowing inclusion and participation of men and women in all aspects of life, depending on the
It is important to note as well, I think, that the

ecofeminisms which do use biological determinism do so to a large extent
rhetorically, and this technique should be recognised as such. Thus, even the forms of
individual abilities of the person concerned.
ecofeminism which do use biological determinist methods could possibly be restated such that they did not.
Shiva recognizes gender as socially constructed and rejects

that gender-based ideology as a basis for gender liberation
her ethics is a non-patriarchal, non-gendered category of
creative non-violence that has nothing to do with womanhood
and everything to do with the recognition of the connectivity
and continuity inherent in human relationships and peoples
relationships with nature.
We see the categories of 'masculine' and
'feminine' as socially and culturally constructed. A gender-based ideology projects
these categories as biologically determined. The western concept of masculinity
that has dominated development and gender relations has excluded all that has
been defined by culture as feminine and has legitimised control over all that counts
as such. The category of masculinity as a socially constructed product of gender
ideology is associated with the creation of the concept of woman as the 'other'. In
this asymmetrical relationship, femininity is ideologically constructed as everything
that is not masculine and must be subjected to domination. There are two genderbased responses to the process of domination and asymmetry. The first , represented by
Simone de Beauvoir, is based on the acceptance of feminine and masculine as biologically
established, and the status of women as the second sex as similarly determined. Women's liberation is
prescribed as the masculinisation of the female. The emancipation of the 'second sex' lies in its
modelling itself on the first; women's freedom consists in freedom from biology,
Gender-ideology vs. the recovery of the feminine principle
from 'bondage to life's mysterious processes'. 9 It consists of women 'battling against

the elements', and becoming masculine. The liberation that de Beauvoir conceives of is a
world in which the masculine is accepted as superior and women are free to assume
masculine values. The process of liberation is thus a masculinisation of the world
defined within the categories created by gender-based ideology . De Beauvoir
accepts the patriarchal categorisation of women as passive, weak and unproductive.
'In no domain whatever did she create'; she simply 'submitted passively to her biologic fate', while men fought. The
'worst that was laid upon woman was that she should be excluded from these warlike forays. For it is not in giving
life, but in risking life, that man is raised above the animal. That is why superiority has been accorded in humanity
De Beauvoir subscribes to the myth of

man-the-hunter as a superior being. She believes that instead of being the
providers in hunting-gathering societies, women were a liability to the group
because 'closely spaced births must have absorbed most of their strength and time
so that they were incapable of providing for the children they brought into the
world'.11 That traditional and tribal women, without access to modem contraception,
could not regulate the number of their children and the number of births is turning
out to be a commonly accepted patriarchal myth. Similarly, the myth of female
passivity and masculine creativity has been critically analysed by recent feminist
scholarship, which shows that the survival of mankind has been due much more to 'woman-the-gatherer' than
not to the sex that brings forth life but to that which kills.'10
to 'man-the-hunter'. Lee and de Vote have shown empirically how even among existing hunters and gatherers,
women provide up to 80 per cent of the daily food, whereas men contribute only a small portion by hunting.
Elizabeth Fisher's studies indicate that gathering of vegetable food was more important for our early ancestors than
hunting.12 Inspite of this, the myth persists that man-the-hunter as the inventor of tools was the provider of basic
needs and the protector of society. Evelyn Reed shows how sexism has been the underlying ideology of much work
that passes as neutral, unbiased science, and has been the cause for much of the violence and destruction in
the relationship of man-the-hunter with nature was

necessarily violent, destructive and predatory, in sharp contrast to the relationship
that woman the-gatherer or cultivator had. Humanity, quite clearly, could not have survived if manhistory.13 Finally, Maria Mies has argued that
the-hunter's productivity had been the basis for the daily subsistence of early societies. Their survival was based on
Yet patriarchal ideology has made

man-the-hunter the model of human evolution, and has thus adopted violence and
domination as its structural component. Hunting, per se, need not be violent; most
tribal societies apologise to the animals they have to kill, and their hunting is
constrained by nature's cycles of production and reproduction. It is the elevation of
the hunting to the level of ideology, that has laid the foundation of a violent
relationship with nature. As Mies points out, the patriarchal myth of man-the-hunter implies the following
levels of violence in man's relationship with nature: (a) The hunters' main tools are not instruments
with which to produce life but to destroy it. Their tools are not basically means of production but of
destruction, and can also be used as means of coercion against fellow human beings. (b) This gives hunters
a power over living beings, both animal and human, which does not arise out of
their own productive work. They can appropriate not only fruits and plants (like the gatherers) and
animals, but also other (female) producers by virtue of arms. (c) The objective relationship mediated
through arms, therefore, is basically a predatory or exploitative one: hunters
appropriate life, but they cannot produce life . it is an antagonistic and non-reciprocal relationship.
the fact that this activity was only a small part of sustenance.
All later exploitative relations between production and appropriation are, in the last analysis, upheld by arms as
The objective relationship to nature mediated through arms

constitutes a relationship of dominance and not of co-operation between hunter and
nature. This relationship of dominance has become an integral element of all further production relations
means of coercion. (d)
established by men. It has become, in fact, the main paradigm of their productivity. Without dominance and control
over nature, men cannot conceive of themselves as being productive. (e)
'Appropriation of natural
substances' (Marx) now also becomes a process of one-sided appropriation, of

establishing property relations, not in the sense of humanisation, but of exploitation
of nature.14 Mies concludes that while the patriarchal paradigm has made man-the-hunter
an exemplar of human productivity, he is 'basically a parasite - not a producer'. With
the reversal of categories, made possible by focussing on the production of life, the
masculinisation of the feminine is no longer a viable option for liberation. Herbert
Marcuse sees liberation as a feminisation of the world: 'Inasmuch as the male
principle has been the ruling mental and physical force, a free society would be the
"definite negation" of this principle - it would be a female society.15 While Marcuse
opposes de Beauvoir's model, both share the assumptions of feminine and
masculine as natural, biologically defined traits which have an independent
existence, and both respond to patriarchy's gender ideology with categories that
have been created by that ideology. Marcuse states: 'Beneath the social factors which determine
male aggressiveness and female receptivity, a natural contrast exists ; it is the woman who "embodies"
in a literal sense, the promise of peace, of joy, of the end of violence. Tenderness,
receptivity, sensuousness have become features (or mutilated features) of her body features of her (repressed) humanity.16 Gender ideology has created the dualism and
disjunction between male and female. Simultaneously it has created a conjunction
of activity and creativity with violence and the masculine, and a conjunction of
passivity with non-violence and the feminine . Gender-based responses to this
dualism have retained these conjunctions and disjunctions, and within these
dichotomised categories, have prescribed either the masculinisation or feminisation
of the world. There is, however, a third concept and process of liberation that is transgender. It is based on the recognition that masculine and feminine as gendered
concepts based on exclusiveness are ideologically defined categories, as is the
association of violence and activity with the former, and non-violence and passivity
with the latter. Rajni Kothari has observed, 'The feminist input serves not just women but
also men. There is no limiting relationship between feminist values and being a
woman.'17 In this non-gender based philosophy the feminine principle is not
exclusively embodied in women, but is the principle of activity and creativity in
nature, women and men. One cannot really distinguish the masculine from the
feminine, person from nature, Purusha from Prakriti. Though distinct, they remain
inseparable in dialectical unity, as two aspects of one being. The recovery of the
feminine principle is thus associated with the non-patriarchal, non-gendered
category of creative non-violence, or 'creative power in peaceful form', as Tagore stated
in his prayer to the tree. It is this conceptual framework within which this book, and the experiences and struggles
This perspective can recover humanity not in its distorted form

of the victim and oppressor, but by creating a new wholeness in both that
transcends gender because gender identity is, in any case, an ideological, social
and political construct. The recovery of the feminine principle is a response to
multiple dominations and deprivations not just of women, but also of nature and
non-western cultures. It stands for ecological recovery and nature's liberation, for
women's liberation and for the liberation of men who, in dominating nature and
women, have sacrificed their own human-ness. Ashis Nandy says, one must choose the
slave's standpoint not only because the slave is oppressed but also because he
represents a higher-order cognition which perforce includes the master as a human,
whereas the master's cognition has to exclude the slave except as a 'thing'.18
discussed in it are located.
Liberation must therefore begin from the colonised and end with the coloniser . As
Gandhi was to so clearly formulate through his own life, freedom is indivisible, not only in the popular sense that the
oppressed of the world are one, but also in the unpopular sense that the oppressor, too, is caught in the culture of
The recovery of the feminine principle is based on inclusiveness. It is a

recovery in nature, woman and man of creative forms of being and perceiving. In
nature it implies seeing nature as a live organism. In woman it implies seeing
women as productive and active. Finally, in men the recovery of the feminine
principle implies a relocation of action and activity to create life-enhancing, not lifereducing and life-threatening societies. The death of the feminine principle in
women and nature takes place through the association of the category of passivity
with the feminine. The death of the feminine principle in men takes place by a shift
in the concept of activity from creation to destruction, and the concept of power
from empowerment to domination. Selfgenerated, non-violent, creative activity as
the feminine principle dies simultaneously in women, men and nature when
violence and aggression become the masculine model of activity, and women and
nature are turned into passive objects of violence. The problem with a gender-based
response to a gender-based ideology is that it treats ideologically constructed
gender categorisation as given by nature. It treats passive non-violence as
biological givens in women, and violence as a biological given in men, when both
non-violence and violence are socially constructed and need have no gender
association. Gandhi, the modern world's leading practitioner and preacher of non-violence was, after all, a man.
The historical creation of a gender divide by a gender ideology cannot be the basis
of gender liberation. And a gender-based ideology remains totally inadequate in
either responding to the ecological crisis created by patriarchal and violent modes
of relating to nature, or in understanding how Third World women are leading
ecological struggles based on values of conservation which are immediately
generalised as the concern for entire communities and regions, and even humanity
as a whole.
oppression.
AT Non-inclusiveness
Ecofeminism may have began has noninclusive but it has not
remained so
Social Ecology and Feminism: Can Socialist Ecofeminism be the Answer?, pg. 39 JMak]
Again, the socialist ecofeminist response to the non-inclusiveness argument is parallel to the response against the
to restrict the ability to say anything about anyone to

people of the same demographic background, effectively excludes the very people
that are needed for socialist ecofeminism to be successful in reforming society. Critics
previous two arguments -- namely that
of ecofeminism generally point to the fact that early ecofeminism was produced mainly by white middle-class
Americans. Some, such as Victoria Davion, go so far as to exclude from ecofeminist discourse third world
ecofeminists such as Vandana Shiva, thereby effectively sealing the fate of ecofeminism as non-inclusive. This
Yes, ecofeminism may have started as a white middle-class

Western movement, but it has remained so by no means. Socialist ecofeminism in
particular is committed to the inclusion of all races, orientations, classes and
genders in an effort to undermine the systems of oppression which result in all of
these diverse groups and people failing to recognise their common solidarity . Thus
throwing the ecofeminism baby out with the non-inclusive bath water is not an
appropriate response. Rather, a careful elucidation of the potential conflicts and sources of discrimination
action is by no means necessary.
must be made in order to deal with it, when and where and if it occurs. Creating schisms between types of
ecofeminism (as accomplished by the ecofeminist/ecofeminine distinction which Davion proposes) is not the way to
build a successful movement.
AT Essentialism
Riding the Earth of its female associations does nothing to
combat patriarchy and only risks colluding with the
objectification of the planet and women.
Caputi 1993 (Jane Caputi, professor in Womens Studies at
Florida Atlantic University. Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones: The
Fates of the Earth 46-48 //MG)
Traditionally, the Earth, nature, and matter have been understood as female, usually
in the nurturing sense. The word nature is from the Latin word nasci, "to be born." The word matter is from
the Latin word mater, meaning "mother." All of the English words for Earth beginning with the prefix geo (such as
geology) come from the Greek word ge, which invokes both the Earth and the Earth Goddess. As these etymologies
in Western culture, women and the Earth have long been mutually
associated. Environmental historian Caro- line Merchant traces the implicit sexual
violence of the seventeenth- century scientific revolution as revealed through its
characteristic metaphors of "mastering," "disrobing," and "penetrating" nature as a
female form. Merchant also describes the objectification of the Earth as, during this time, the planetary
body became seen as a mechanism or a corpse, though still a feminized one . Such
indicate,
metaphor rapidly became habitual and provided the basis for much of twentieth-century nuclearist imagery.
Spencer Weart notes: Twentieth-century scientists and journalists who wanted to stimulate public interest in physics
found their most striking phrases in this old metaphor of aggressive pursuit. Atomic scientists investigated "the
most intimate properties of matter," indeed "penetrated" hidden mysteries, "tore away the veils" to reveal inner
secrets, and "laid bare" the structure of atoms. Lan- guage about breaking apart the indivisible atom could be
openly belligerent. Already in 1905 a friend told Rutherford that another physicist was "so anxious to bust atoms
artificially that ... he would have tried it with a cold-chisel before long." A quarter- century later Millikan wrote of the
"satisfaction in smashing a resistant atom."B Weart is being somewhat coy here, for the stimulation he refers to
resides not so much in the metaphor of aggression, but in images of sexual aggression-rape, mutilation, and
A question arises: Wouldn't it be better just to rid the Earth of its female
associations-to simply call the planet "it" and thereby dis- rupt this rapist,
essentially incestuous ("motherfucking") paradigm? Some postmodern thinkers prefer the
pronoun it to refer to the Earth because they refuse allegiance to oppositional
patriarchal categories of sex and disavow any collusion with an ideology of
"essentialism" (a belief in fixed, essential sexual natures).9 Yet I don't think using it will provide
any solutions. Certainly, runaway women, those aban- doning patriarchal world
views, resist essentialist notions of a fixed female nature, since these notions have
been used by patriarchs for millennia to define and construct femaleness as a state
of unchanging and inescapable domestic and bodily slavery. But to counter this
trap, we need not disavow the concept of essential femaleness. Rather, we must
radically refuse sexist constructions of female and male natures and simultaneously
expand our understanding of essences. Essences exist, but, contra the prevailing notions,
they are not fixed but are themselves mutable. Essences, including female and male
essences, are always moving, always transmuting. 10 Many feminists also are rightfully
wary of nurturing, maternal metaphors in a sexist culture in which motherhood is
still not only mandatory but also so pseudo-sacralized and so simultaneously
scapegoated. Nevertheless, the solution is not to deny the planet's femaleness but to
abandon such sexist notions of femininity. Gossips redefine the terms of the argument so that to
be female in no way means being passive, endlessly nurturing, willing to constantly
matricide.
clean up the messes of wasteful and disrespectful dependents, and perpet- ually
open to invasion and possession. Rather, to be female is to be "pregnant" with
Powers-not only Powers of life, but also Powers of death. I also suggest that modern,
technology-dependent Western peo- pIe listen carefully to the many indigenous
peoples who have always spoken of the Earth as female, not only symbolically
female but also in the realm of physical reality. Cherokee/Appalachian poet Marilou
Awiakta, in her poem "When Earth Becomes an It," affirms that the Earth is female and a
mother and cautions that we had best speak of her in that way: When the people
call Earth "Mother," they take with love and with love give back so that all may live.
When the people call Earth "it," they use her consume her strength Then the people
die. Already the sun is hot out of season. Our mother's breast is going dry. She is
taking all green into her heart and will not turn back until we call her by her name .ll
Calling the planet "it," whatever our intentions , potentially col- ludes with porno
technology's objectification and attempted rape of the planet and nature. It, moreover,
can numb us to the awareness that the planet is a sentient, ensouled body with
means and ends all her own.
Prakriti is distinct from Western gendered concepts of

feminine it a transgendered, creative force.
Salleh 1991 (Ariel Salleh, Australian sociologist who writes on
social ecology and ecofeminism. 'From Center to Margin in
Ecofeminist Theory', Hypatia: a journal of feminist philosophy,
1991, Vol. 6, No. 1, 206-14. Review of Vandana Shiva, Staying
Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed. 1989.
http://wenku.baidu.com/view/f411fbfbfab069dc50220185.html //MG)
As Shanti George says: `The trouble is when dairy planners look at the cow, they just see her udder' (p.168). The
same engineering mindset has now brought women into a world where they are being manipulated as reproductive
resources. Our bodies have become an urban dust bowl. Our voices parched echoes in concrete valleys. Recovery of
the feminine breath in social life -- politics and science, economics and agriculture -- is urgent at this time. But what
is meant by `the feminine'? -- It was at this level of inquiry that I anticipated Shiva might get into difficulty. Trained
as a physicist rather than philosopher, I expected her to be awkward in her formulation of cultural processes. Even
Rajni Kothari's foreword suggested that readers might find a certain literalism in Shiva's text. But this is misleading.
The author of Staying Alive is no naive essentialist, as feminists like to call theorists
who would use commonsense understandings of sexual difference ; though I think it would
be fair to say that Shiva is unacquainted with the prodigious debate over essentialism in the West. Drawing on
Shiva introduces the notion of `Prakriti' - as feminine principle or life

force. This is distinct from Western gendered concepts of `the feminine', which work
in a politically oppressive way by equating the feminine with passivity, then
attaching women's work roles and personas to this false objectification. Prakriti, she
claims, is transgendered, an active creative force. Men too can live through Prakriti,
but when men's energy is `gendered', the principle of activity is conflated with
dominating, even destructive behavior, such that creativity is again lost. Prakriti is
proposed by Shiva as an alternative `universal' basis for gender liberation. It will
serve as a corrective to the deformed, socially homogenizing and fragmenting
`universal' principles of the Western bourgeois-liberal order.
Indian mythology,
Ecofeminism is not essentialist their authors ignore diversity

in the community
Social Ecology and Feminism: Can Socialist Ecofeminism be the Answer?, pp. 35-37 JMak]
The argument from anti-essentialism is often entirely blind to the nuances of

ecofeminist positions. Of the at least three separate (but I think complementary) strands of ecofeminism,
some are more essentialist than others. Social and socialist ecofeminism is quite expressly not
essentialist, even though Marxist and cultural ecofeminisms are to some extent. In terms of feminist arguments
against essentialism, it is interesting to note that liberal and Marxist feminisms have large elements of essentialism
in their theoretical structures as well, though these have been recognised in post-modern and post-structuralist
recent writings. Again, as with spiritualism,
not all essentialism is bad, any more than all forms of

spiritualism are bad. Rather, a certain appeal (though it is important that it be recognised as such ) to a
basic identity, be it woman, or race, or sexual orientation, may be necessary to acquire the
mass of people necessary to effect change . Differences recognised once the people
have been motivated, provided that the initial use of essentialism was suitably
deconstructed, can be dealt with through dialogue and communication . Also following the
socialist ecofeminist defence of spiritualism, denying all uses of essentialism is another effective
method for sterilising the ecofeminist movement., It is important, however, to address the
ethics of this kind of strategic essentialism. Is it acceptable to support an essence which is not
necessarily true? In terms of practicality, perhaps it is, however, practicality is not
the sum total of ethical investigation. I think that strategic essentialism can be problematic because
of questions of who chooses the essence to be supported, on what grounds it is chosen, and for what purpose.
Essentialist claims have been used very successfully for a number of unsavoury ends through history (slavery, for
example) and there is unfortunately not a way which I can see to assure that similar uses are not perpetuated now.
Ecofeminist essentialism, however, is more likely to be open to debate and discussion

than previous essentialisms because of the structure of socialist ecofeminist politics
and communities. Therefore, I think that an appeal can be made from socialist ecofeminism to the kind of
strategic essentialism advocated by Martha Nussbaum, without necessarily ending up in moral hot water. Martha
Nussbaum makes an eloquent appeal to the necessity of recognising some sort of
human essence in order to formulate public policy which is sensitive to the capacity
of people to have a flourishing life. She argues for a thick vague theory of the
good in which she identifies several essential qualities for a being to be considered human. This theory
allows for the provision by the state of the means for people to realise the elements of
humanity a goal which I think socialist ecofeminist society would endorse (provided,
of course, that the state apparatus was sufficiently accountable to the people). In addition, the thick vague theory
of the good is less likely to cause division in a society on the basis of particular elements of a person (race, gender,
an appeal to elements of humanity such as

mortality and human infant experience is universal . The use of this type of strategic
essentialism in socialist ecofeminist theory is unlikely , I think, to be unethical, though of
etc.) because the conception is not particular. Rather,
course the risk of irresponsible use remains.
Their critique of ecofeminism is reductionist our advocacy is

not essentialist and any essentialist elements only aid in
creating an effective political movement.
Godfrey 13, Phoebe. assistant professor-in-residence of sociology at the
university of Connecticut. "Ecofeminism Revisited: Diane Wilson, Union Carbide and
the Struggle for Environmental Justice." Paper presented at the annual meeting of
the American Sociological Association, Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel,
Philadelphia, PA, Aug 12, 2005 <Not Available>. 2013-07-26
<http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p20545_index.html>
9-14// MG
Another critique of ecofeminism and the construction of the women and nature ideology comes from the
perspective of women of color and the environmental justice movement. The movement for environmental justice
in opposition to environmental racism is comprises a high percentage of women of color (Bullard 1994; Davis 1998;
Di Chiro 1995; Taylor 1997). However, ecofeminism is grounded in activism by (mainly) white middle-class women
and white working-class women local activism against toxic dumping seems to be the most represented form of
activism. As a result, according to Taylor (1997) ecofeminism does not adequately consider the experiences of
women of color, neither does it fully understand or accept the difference between white and women of color (p.
62). For women of color, the women-nature connection does not necessarily aid in illuminating their lives,
experiences, and activism, (p. 62) although many of them who live in urban areas are also fighting against lead
and asbestos poisoning in substandard housing, toxic waste incineration and dumping and widespread
unemployment(Di Chiro 1995: 301) but perhaps are not receiving the same media attention as white working class
womens activism. Furthermore a key part of the colonial and the slave experience has been the association
between women of color and such adjectives, hence qualities as primitive, natural which have been read as
negative, dark and uncivilized and thus in need of controlling, much like nature herself (Williams 1993). This is
not to say that ecofeminists have not addressed the issue of race (King 1989) or of colonialism, (Plumwood 1993;
Smith 1997), and a central tenet has been to challenge the negative connotations of terms like primitive and
natural, but rather that these issues have not been central, nor have the activist and environmental justice
experiences of women of color in the U.S. In contrast focus has been on women of color in developing countries
(Mies & Shiva 1993). However, some works on Third World women have been critiqued for their construction of an
essential Third World woman who is in need of western feminism to liberate her (Mohanty 1988). Thus, claims
involving all women have not been found helpful in addressing the specific and contextual diversity of
womens experiences as a result of racial, geographical, cultural, social class differencesetc, even though in
most cases the experience of corporate abuse, governmental neglect and community marginalization are similar.
Sturgeon identifies that many feminists reject ecofeminism because of its purported essentialism in arguing that
women and nature can be connected in positive ways (Sturgeon 1997: 6). Equating all ecofeminists with
essentialism or assuming that all of their essentialist constructs are based on biologically determined notions of
sex and reified notions of nature would be to grossly misrepresent ecofeminism, as has often been the case. Kate
Rigby supports the notion that ecofeminism has been misjudged: very few [cultural ecofeminists] have ever
early works of, for

Shiva (1989) Yenestra King (1989) and Carolyn Merchant (1992)
incorporated what has been interpreted as essentialist elements in their analyses of
the connection between women and nature (Sachs 1996), but this has been greatly
exaggerated. As Griffin states, To accuse early feminists of essentialism is oddly
ahistorical, since the work of feminist thinkers in this century created the very
ground on which gender is visible as a social construct (Griffin 1997). In addition, to counter
claimed the womens closeness to nature is biologically determined (Rigby, 2001: 29). The
example, Susan Griffin (1978), Vandana
the accusations of essentialism, many ecofeminists such as Merchant (Sachs 1996) and King (Beihl 1990) began to
promote more directly social constructionism, as had Griffin in Women and Nature (1978), theorizing the connection
between women and nature as a culturally generated ideology and metaphor rather than an outcome of any
ecofeminists like Vandana Shiva (1989) argue that

the essentialist charge is itself based on the critics inability to transcend
reductionist, dualistic epistemologies (Sachs 1996: 3). Thus for Shiva there is not a
divide between the environment and our bodies and as a result the recognition of
this connection is not essentializing (p.3). Other ways in which the essentialist
supposed biological determinism (Beihl, 1990). Other
charge has been rebutted is by putting forth the notion that if women are seen to
have a greater affinity with environmental activism or to have a deeper connection
with nature than men, it is because of their social, economic, and political
conditions as women (Sandilands 1999). It is these conditions which influence the ways
in which womens identities have been shaped by their daily engagement with food
production, child reproduction and care, household maintenanceetc and not just
simply because of their biology (Warren 1997). In other words, if women engage in
environmental activism as mothers, or in the name of motherhood, this role is not
necessarily essential but rather it resonate[s] with many womens socially
constructed material experiences (Roseneil 1995:5). In this manner such activism may
represent a process whereby identities are produced, hence constructed as a result
of material conditions, although the experiences of these identities may still be
articulated in essentialist terms. Nevertheless for some this is still problematic in that the crucial thing
[remains] identity as in being a woman (Sandilands, 1999:5 ) I am not denying that there are
essentialist elements in the expressions of ecofeminist theory and practice, but as
Sturgeon identifies, as in the case of Beihls critique, a reductive description of ecofeminisma
straw-woman, is focused on by those whose critique is based on reducing
ecofeminism to its most biologistic, essentialist, and apolitical manifestations
(Sturgeon 1997:38-9). Griffin also supports Sturgeons assertion by stating that essentialism [does not]
accurately describe any major trend in feminist thought. It is instead a kind of bte,
a creature of dreams who contains the fearsome thoughts and feelings which
belong to the accuser (Griffin 1997) [in Warren]. And once this is achieved, ecofeminism is
easily dismissed as being theoretically reactionary. As a result, ecofeminism and
essentialism have been treated as if they were synonymous and immutable in a
way that has been generally unmerited and yet highly influential (Sturgeon 1997). This
denunciation of ecofeminism is problematic because it fails to address the larger
issue of what ecofeminists, even if potentially essentialist, are trying to accomplish .
Like Sturgeon I recognize that the rejection of the idea that social roles and personal
identities must be and are built on biologically determined, or ahistorical, or
naturalized essences is key to dismantling ideologies of domination but
nevertheless not all essentialist ideologies are rooted in domination (p.9). In short, not
all essentialisms are equal as not all are used to represent and uphold unequal
power relations (p. 9) and in fact many are rooted in and / or used for the exact
opposite. Thus, Sturgeon asserts that essentialism can have the effect of producing an
oppositional consciousness (p.9), which for me should be assessed by its outcomes .
Essentialist positions that result in maintaining or in furthering unequal power
relations should be critiqued and rejected as they stand in contrast to the ethos of
feminism and hence ecofeminism, whereas those that result in greater equality and
justice in opposition to the status quo may be respected as instrumental in
furthering the overall feminist / ecofeminist project . Furthermore, essentialist
categories are not always immutable and are thus open to reinterpretation and
change under analysis, capable of keeping their essences even as they change
their articulation through political action . An example of this process, as will be discussed in relation
to Diane, is when women who engage in political struggle identified as mothers or as housewives or as just
Key
to this transition into feelings of personal and political empowerment is the act of
women undergo a political and personal shift from female to feminist consciousness (Roseneil 1995:5).
giving voice to ones life through political activism (Bantjes & Trussler 1993), no longer
living ones life as a spectator sport (Wilson 2004).
Shivas work is not essentialist it is important to weed out

those ecofeminists that are but Shiva, when referring to
women is not speaking strictly to biology and recognizes
gender as socially constructed.
Lober 2008 (Brooke Lober, PhD candidate in Gender and
Womens Studies at the University of Arizona. Reconciling
Thought and Action: the Question of Essentialisms in
Ecofeminisms History/Analysis of Social Movements //MG)
The works of Merchant and Federici inspired me to learn more about ecofeminism, which developed as a response
to the web of interlocking oppressions and dominations that these writers describe. I soon found the work of
Vandana Shiva and Maria Meis, who collaborated to publish their exhaustive radical book, Ecofeminism, in 1990.
Shiva and Meis build on an analysis similar to the framework of Merchant because they also use the knot of
Shiva and Meis

deepen ecofeminism with an analysis of the Wests domination and pillage of the
third world, and our current global moment of environmental crisis. In their
introduction, they write, In analyzing the causes which have led to the destructive
tendencies that threaten life on earth we became aware of what we call the
capitalist patriarchal world system. This system emerged, is built upon and
maintains itself through the colonization of women, of foreign peoples and their
lands; and of nature, which it is gradually destroying. As feminists actively seeking
womens liberation from male domination, we could not ignore the fact that
modernization and development processes and progress were responsible for
the degradation of the natural world. We saw that the impact on women of
ecological disasters and deterioration was harder than on men, and also, that
everywhere, women were the first to protest against environmental destruction .
Women who are connected to the earth and their environment by virtue of their
subsistence base inspire Shiva and Meis response to the oppressive framework
they describe. Shivas many years of writings, many focused on food production and the destructive impact of
Western agricultural technologies, show the fallacy of the West in its employment of monocultures in Shivas
view, the West depends not only on monocultures of crops, but monocultures of
the mind as well . Shiva writes that traditional food production, work that is still
dominated by women , has its basis in the principle of diversity. Diversity is the
principle of womens work and knowledge. This is why they have been discounted in
the patriarchal calculus. Yet it is also the matrix from which an alternative calculus
of productivity and skills can be built that respects, not destroys, diversity. For
Shiva, this connection to diversity, which forms the historical and current context of
most of the worlds women, is a powerful challenge to the reductive, monolithic
logic at play in practices of the West. She writes, [g]ender and diversity are linked
in many ways. The construction of women as the second sex is linked to the same
inability to cope with difference as is the development paradigm that leads to the
displacement and extinction of diversity in the biological world. To some academic
oppressions at the heart of the modern world-system as a starting point for their critique. But
feminists, the ideas of Shiva and Meis might come across as universalist; to others who have not developed a
critique of universalist or essentialist thinking, this line of thought might be appealing. But although
their
use of the word women can seem to universalize that gender identityI do not
feel that Shiva and Meis work hinges on a logic of essentialism, biological
determinism, or universalism. Rather, Shiva and Meis are using the only language
we have to speak about the ways of people who are life-givers; thus the word
women may be suspect, but it is a term they are using to describe something
larger than just people who are born with female genitaliathey are describing a
culture of life, located in many places in the world, primarily among women. The
work of ecofeminist philosopher Karen Warren is useful for teasing out some of the
details and potential pitfalls of ecofeminist frameworks. Throughout her writing,
Warren gathers a diverse group of ecofeminists under a large umbrella by stressing
the important connections ecofeminists make when thinking about systems of
domination and oppressionwithout pinning down the different conclusions people
come to when analyzing these agreed-upon connections . In her book Ecofeminist Philosophy: A
Western Perspective On What It Is and Why It Matters, Warren does a good job of reviewing the breadth of Western
ecofeminist thought; in doing so, she tracks an important rift between ecofeminist thinkers, centering around the
All ecofeminists agree that there are important

connections between the unjustified dominations of women and nature, but they
disagree about both the nature of those connections and whether some of the
connections are potentially liberating or grounds for reinforcing harmful stereotypes
about women. Many ecofeminists agree in their rejection of the most base kind of
essentialism that could be drawn by superficially interpreting ecofeminist thought;
this kind of thinking quickly arrives at the hegemonic (and false) notions of woman
as marginalized Other, not central to the workings of the world, earth-boundand in
the end, inferior. An essentialist notion that requires women to fulfill this traditional
role also could be seen to deny the subjectivity of women who do not identify
primarily with their connection to the earth or the feminine essence. Here, Warren
question of essentialisms. Warren writes,
elaborates on the pitfall of this tendency towards essentialism. All ecofeminist philosophers to date agree that
women have been falsely conceptualized as inferior to men. This historical conceptualization has been based on
any of three faulty assumptions: biological determinism, conceptual essentialism, and universalism. Biological
determinism incorrectly locates women as biologically closer to nature than men or assumes a biological
essence to women. Conceptual essentialism incorrectly assumes that the concept of women is a univocal,
meaningful concept that captures some cross-culturally valid or essential conditions of women, womanhood, or
Universalism incorrectly assumes that, as women, all women share a set of

experiences in virtue of the fact that we are women. Warren goes on to describe the work of
femaleness.
feminist and ecofeminist critics Victoria Davion, Chris Cuomo, and Val Plumwood, who reject out-of-hand these
limited frameworks within ecofeminist realms of thought, writing, it
is an important project of
ecofeminist philosophy to determine which ecofeminist positions presuppose
biological determinism, conceptual essentialism, or universalism, and which do not.
It is important to me, as it is to Karen Warren, to isolate these limited notions, in
order to refocus our attention on the broader implications an ecofeminist analysis
can provide. However, like Warren, I am interested in retaining ecofeminism in a
non-essentialist frame. While Merchants Death of Nature was published in 1980, and Federicis Caliban
and the Witch was written more than twenty-five years later, neither of these women employs essentialism,
biological determinism, or universalism in their complex synthesis of ecofeminist thought. In her introduction,
It is not the purpose of this analysis to reinstate nature as the mother

of humankind nor to advocate that women resume the role of nurturer dictated by
that historical identity. Both need to be liberated from the anthropomorphic and
stereotypic labels that degrade the serious underlying issues . Federicis historical
Merchant writes,
materialism is also a non-essentialist frame, which expands the singular notion of womanhood by showing its
relation to notions of the working class and colonized peoples, or slaves.
The connection drawn between women and nature is

materialist rather than essentialist, born out of real
experiences of oppression our universalism, likewise, is
distinct from that of Eurocentric patriarchy dealing not with
abstract rights but rather in common human needs
sustained through life-sustaining environmental networks.
While the ecofeminist theorists cited above would agree that there is no essential
connection between women and the earth, for instance, any more than there is an
essential connection between men and the earthall would agree that there are
important connectionshistorically, philosophically, and materially between
women and non-human nature. A perspective inspired by historical materialism
like Shivas workcan come across as universalist. This is a reality for many people
who are feminists and ecofeminists, but who havent necessarily spent time in
feminist classrooms or read contemporary feminist theory. It is common for many
who reclaim the power of women and respect for the earth and all its peoples, to
create frameworks that might seem to reflect the dominant paradigm (the essentialist or
biologically deterministic view), merely flipping the values placed upon these elements. That is, a
belief that women are closer to the earth or more naturally compassionate might be commonplace; instead of de-valuing these feminine aspects as our dominant culture does,
many feminists and ecofeminists reverse the trend by valuing, re-claiming as it were, those naturalized connections. During my interview with Raven Lang, a midwife and doctor of
acupuncture who focuses on womens health, I was able to hear the expression of an ecofeminist assertion from a woman who I consider to be an ecofeminist activist, but who has not
studied feminism or ecofeminism formally. Asked about why birth is such a central aspect of feminism, Raven replied: I think that birth has always been at the heart of womens health,
because there is nothing more feminine than birth and lactation, nothing. And it involves sexuality, and it involves the forbidden word: the vulva. It involves thatthat is the hub of life.
Without that, there is no life. Taken out of context, isolated in this way, this statement might lead us to biological determinism. But within the context of a real life, I think there is an
important distinction to be made, namely that Raven asserts this analysis as the reclamation of life in the face of oppression. Her assertion that the vulva is the hub of life is made
against a culture of violence and death with very real effects. While three-quarters of women are sexually violated in their lifetime and even the UN has admitted that rape and sexual
violence are tactics of modern warfare, the threat of annihilation of womens bodies and sexualities, as well as our life-giving potential, is imminent. Raven said, Since the rise of
patriarchy, which is pre-Christ, that [life-producing] aspect of women has tended to be taken over, suppressed, controlled. If you look at all the patriarchal cultures that exist, being a
woman, and birthing a child, is like, yuck. Okay? Well it isnt yuck. What it is, is the biggest, best, most powerful thing in the world. So if they can change your mind about that, in every
A strong sense of
the oppression of the biggest, best, most powerful thing in the worldour own
connection to our life-forcecompels many oppressed peoples to identify their
resistance with the reclamation of those repressed elements. Rather than an
essentialist connection, this is a material connection, born of the real experience of
oppression. Shiva and Meis confront this problematic head-on when they write, In
dialogues with grassroots women activists women spell out clearly what unites
women worldwide, and what unites men and women with the multiplicity of life
forms in nature. The universalism that stems from their efforts to preserve their
subsistencetheir life baseis different from the Eurocentric universalism
developed via the Enlightenment and the rise of capitalist patriarchy. This
single aspect put it down, belittle it, mock it, control it, scare the bejeezus out of you about it then in fact, they can eventually take it over
universalism does not deal in abstract universal human rights but rather in
common human needs which can be satisfied only if the life-sustaining networks
and processes are kept intact and alive.
Shiva is not asking women to be mothers in the biological

sense, but rather using mother as a metaphor - and her
focus is not limited to women either rather, she asks all
humans to be mothers in that all people must be stewards of
the eraths biodiversity and life-processes
Shiva talks about women as the producers of lifebut she talks
about women who are land-based, small farmers, the keepers of biodiversity; rather
than urging women to be mothers, she asks all humans to be mothers. That is, Shiva
asks us to be the stewards of the earths biodiversity and its very life-processes,
In a recent lecture, Vandana
which she considers to be linked to womens (hegemonically degraded) quality as life-givers and sustainers of life.
There is no part of the world where agriculture, not industrialized, and not
controlled by capital, did not have women as seed-keepers. Women have been the
seed experts, the seed breeders, the seed selectors, the biodiversity conservers of
the world. And if today we have seeds we can save, if today we have communities
who can tell us the unique properties of different crops and different seeds, its
because weve had generations of women not recognized as agronomists, not recognized as
breeders, not recognized in any way as having knowledgebut the ten thousand years of human
expertise in feeding us is a womens expertise. And again, lets say thank you, to all
our ancestors. The reason we need to recognize our debt to them so deeply, is
because the work that was done over millennia by hundreds and thousands of
unknown grandmothers around the worldthat work, as happens so often, is now
being claimed as the invention of a handful of corporations. Shiva eloquently
lectures us on how we must all be mothers, and how we can begin by thanking all
the many women (and I would add, men and children) who have been mothers of life,
keepers of seed, and sustainers of community that can provide life not just today,
but for the futureproviding that mothering can come out of the shadow of its
executioners, and that the mothers of the world can finally be seen and valued
not for the fact that they are born with a vagina that can create a child, but
because, in all the ways we mother, we give life, the most resistant practice we can
employ.
Shiva says,
If our claims seem universalist, its because of the

understandings of gender that arose out of enlightenment era
Europe that have essentialized and condemned women this is
exactly the type of gender construction we challenge.
Mellor 2000 (Mary Mellor, Social Science Professor at
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne UK and Chair of
its Sustainable Cities Research Institute. Feminism and
Environmental Ethics: A Materialist Perspective Ethics and the
Environment //MG)
Although ecofeminists often make generalized statements that seem to refer to all
men and all women, their specific focus is the pattern of dominance that arose in
Eu- ropean society associated with the historical development of science,
technology, industrialism, and capitalism. This is not to ignore the fact that earlier
societies have been ecologically destructive (Ponting 1991) or that ecologically benign
societies can be patriarchal. It could be argued that male domination and women's
oppression have been more ubiquitous in history than ecological destruction . The
interesting question for ecofeminists is the way in which the two have come
together in the present era. Ecofeminists see the origins of the present ecological
crisis as lying in the specific material and cultural developments of the North/West as
reflected in its socioeco- nomic structures, science and technology, philosophy and religion. For many ecofem-
this destructiveness results

from the forms of knowledge and belief that justify and sustain western patriarchy.
particular, the Christian and rationalist rejection of the body and the prioritization of
mind or soul (Ruether 1975, Plumwood 1993). Women are essentialized, naturalized, and
condemned by their association with the body. This association I would argue is
the basis of the materialist analysis that can be derived from ecofeminism.
inists, particularly those with a theological or a philosophical background,
In
AT youre deep ecology

Deep ecology and ecofeminism have distinctly different
starting points while deep ecology begins with a genderneutral Self, ecofeminism recognizes human-human
relationships as a starting point for changing our views of
nature.
Kheel 1991 (Marti Kheel, ecofeminist activist scholar credited
with founding Feminists for Animal Rights Ecofeminism and
Deep Ecology: Reflections on Identity and Difference The
Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy Volume 8 Number 2 //MG)
the most significant distinction between ecofeminism and followers of deep
ecology resides in their respective understandings of the root cause of our
environmental malaise. For deep ecologist, the anthropocentric worldview is
foremost to blame. The two norms of deep ecology are thus designed to redress this
human centered worldview. Ecofeminists, on the other hand, argue that it is the
androcentric worldview that deserves primary blame. For ecofeminists, it is not just
humans but men and the masculinist world view that must be dislodged from
their dominant place. The key to understanding the differences between the two
philosophies thus lies in the differing conceptions of self that they both presuppose.
When deep ecologists write of anthropocentrism and the notion of an expanded
Self, they ostensibly refer to a gender-neutral concept of the self . Implicit in the feminist
Perhaps
analysis of the androcentric worldview, however, is the understanding that men and women experience the world,
and hence their conceptions of welf, in wildly divergent ways. Whereas the anthropocentric worldview perceives
humans as at the center or apex of the natural world, the androcentric analysis suggests this worldview is unique to
womens identities have not been established

through their elevation over the natural world. On the contrary, women have been
identified with the devalued natural world, an identification that they have often
adopted themselves as well.
men. Feminists have argued that, unlike men,
AT CAP
A rejection of patriarchy is critical for any socialist who wishes
to free the world from the scars of capitalism, otherwise
biological explanations for inequality between men and
women will persist.
Medeiros 13 (Trzia Medeiros is active in the World March of
Women and member of National Directorate of the Party of
Socialist and Liberty (PSOL) in Brazil. Feminism and
ecosocialism: a necessary alliance International viewpoint.
6/27/13 http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?
article3020 //MG)
For as long as capitalism and patriarchy have existed as systems linked to each
other, they have made an alliance to establish a relationship of domination over
nature and of appropriation and exploitation of everything that, on this basis, they
stereotyped as beings of an inferior nature, which includes women and their
bodies. At the same time, the condition of blacks, mestizos and the indigenous, and
their ethnic and cultural subordination, became something natural. Everything that
comes from nature and does not match the standard of masculine and bourgeois
social evolution and that does not fit the paradigm of white and Western, exists only
as something of an inferior nature The naturalization of motherhood as womens
function and destiny, as well as the naturalization of their bodies as territory to be
conquered and controlled, should be rejected by all socialists who demand an
ecosocialist, feminist world, free from the scars of capitalism. We cannot permit that
a biological explanation of the inequality between men and women be used to
keep the latter in a an inferior social, political and economic position to that of men.
The effects of the environmental crisis ravaging whole regions of the planet, fall
most harshly on the peripheral countries, on the poorest people, and especially on
women and children. Desertification, the loss of water resources, environmental disasters caused by climate
change (tsunamis, earthquakes, prolonged periods of drought, floods and landslides) have a huge impact on their
When people are forced to leave the places where they live, most
refugees and homeless are again women and children. Climate change is
exacerbating poverty and accentuating inequalities, making women often resort to
prostitution just to get food. The increase in diseases, with the reappearance of
some that were already extinct or controlled (such as cholera and tuberculosis, etc.), also puts
a burden on women, because the care of the sick still falls to them. The neoMalthusian response to the climate crisis points to overpopulation in the world as
the central cause of the climate crisis, and seeks therefore to restrict womens right
to control their bodies. This is a racist approach, because population growth is
higher in the South. But it also diverts attention from the huge gulf that separates
the wasteful consumption of the super-rich from the absolute poverty of the poorest
sectors, and the vastly different impacts each have on Nature. Those of us who
have fought for the expansion of womens rights to control their bodies and their
fertility, reject and denounce this pseudo-solution, because it puts in question
womens right to decide and makes the mistake of ignoring the structural causes of
everyday lives.
the crisis, where capitalism is the central factor. In the South, women are also responsible for
producing 80% of food, including the gathering and preservation of native fruits and seeds. This central role in
ensuring food sovereignty and the preservation of biodiversity as the heritage of humanity gives women a key role
in agriculture and the supply of food. The growing impact of large, capitalist development projects in Brazil, which
are supported by the state through the CAP and the BNDES, has led to a loss of territory and autonomy for small
producers, most of whom are women, indigenous communities or Afro-Brazilian maroon communities. The main
expression of such projects are agribusiness, the re-routing of the So Francisco River and the irrigated areas that
adjoin it, large dams to supply new hydroelectric plants (Belo Monte, Jirau, etc.), the IIRSA, mining, the intensive use
Women play a central role in protecting ecosystems

and biomass against governments (Federal, State and Municipal) who want to sell them off
to multinationals. The actions of the women of Via Campesina, who destroyed the
eucalyptus plantations of Aracruz Cellulose, like the role of indigenous and maroon
communities in defending their ancestral lands, are examples of the victorious
defence of the environment, based on their particular realities. It is vital to
strengthen the alliance between women in the countryside and women in the city. A
feminism that incorporates the ecosocialist struggle will be closer to those struggles
that are today at the forefront of the defence of common goods in our country and
our continent. Ecosocialist and feminist struggles overlap and stand as the great
reference for our work, because they fall, more than ever, within the framework of
the struggle against capitalism and form part of our strategic vision.
of pesticides and the production of biofuels.
AT Spiritualism
No link its not talking about the aff <insert reasons why were
not nature worship>
Spirituality is necessary to the ecofeminist movement 3
reasons.
Social Ecology and Feminism: Can Socialist Ecofeminism be the Answer?, pg. 35 JMak]
To respond to the criticism of the inclusion of spirituality in ecofeminism, there are

several possibilities. The first is a pragmatic point about revolution. In order for there to be a
feminist revolution, a social ecology revolution, or preferably both together, a critical mass
of people is required. As I have outlined above, spiritual approaches can appeal to people
in a way that more rigorous argumentation cannot . Thus, without the acceptance of
some elements of spirituality, or at very least without denying spirituality a place ,
even if not at the centre, socialist ecofeminism runs the risk of becoming a sterile
academic discourse without a popular base . This is not to say that socialist ecofeminism cannot
continue to theorise and refine its deconstruction of the basis for spirituality -- this is very important work but
socialist ecofeminism does not have to exclude spirituality in order to

remain a valid theoretical proposal. 1Secondly, people are spiritual beings in
general. People in all cultures have a need for ritual, which is satisfied in very diverse ways around the world.
The very proliferation of spiritual ways indicates that there may be a deep human
need for connection with something bigger than the individual. As such, by allowing
a place for spiritual expression, socialist ecofeminism actually undermines the
western patriarchal split between mind and emotion , political and personal, possibly to
the advantage of society at large. There will obviously be risks in accepting an element of uncontrollability, but if
socialist ecofeminism is really dedicated to the creation of a society beyond class
and race and sexual stereotyping and oppression, then it may do well to encourage
diversity rather than infighting about whose approach is better. Thirdly, in response to the feminist
position that ecofeminist spirituality merely perpetuates patriarchal stereotype s,
socialist ecofeminism need only maintain that this is not necessarily so . Continued
simply to say that
attention to deconstructing and examination of spiritualities allow the bases to be understood and then
manipulated to the advantage of humanity, rather than to the advantage of one gender to the disadvantage of
Spirituality does not have to entail

blind acceptance, but can rather embody a Bookchinite respiritisation of nature,
which is arguably exactly what many forms of ecofeminist spirituality do. In so doing,
this may provide exactly the critical mass of energy that is required to actually
make a change.
another (as is arguably the case in many mainstream religions).
CUOMO CARDS
essentialism
The problem isnt the use of categories like women and nature,
but rather false universalization. Our approach sees these
categories as complex and even contradictory. These concepts
should be analyzed, but not rejected as the use of these
concepts is useful in recognizing them as discursively
constructed ideas with material consequences.
ethic of flourishing pp. 5-7 //MG)
Although Ive been attracted to thinking at the intersections of feminism and environmentalism for years, I hesitate
to call myself an ecofeminist. Indeed, I prefer to think of my work as ecological feminism, in an effort to keep the
emphasis on feminism, and also to distance my approach somewhat from other work done by self-titled
ecofeminists. Though I share motivations with the authors of such work, I am sufficiently critical to be
uncomfortable with the label. Accordingly, in these pages, ecofeminism is an umbrella term referring to forthright
attempts to link some versions of feminism and environmentalism, and ecological feminism refers to the particular
a large
amount of ecofeminist work has focused too exclusively on the objects of
oppression (such as women and nature), and has not adequately explored the connections
among the various forms and functions of oppressive systems . Throughout this book I
subset of ecofeminist approaches I wish to articulate and endorse here. On the whole, I find that
distinguish between two different approaches to thinking about connections between feminism and environmental
ethics. Some ecofeminists, including many spiritual writers and activists, look primarily at the connections and
similarities among the objects of oppressive and exploitative thought and action. This approach might be thought of
it zooms in on women. Unfortunately, this tight focus too

often results in false universalizations about women, based on the experiences and
interests of women with privilege and power. Of course, it is possible for a more critical
object-attentive approach to take the category woman as referring to a diverse,
multifarious group of differing and complex individuals. The clear and present
commonalities, patterns and connections among womens gendered positions and
experiences necessitate a feminism that focuses on those of us who fall under the
category woman. None the less, it conceives of the category as multiplicitous,
complex, and even contradictory, and realizes that improving the lives of women
therefore necessarily entails working against all oppressions experienced by anyone
in the category woman. As Elizabeth Spelman points out, gender oppression cannot be
sliced out from womens experiences or identities. There is no pure gender, or
instance of sexism, not coexistent with race, class, and sexuality, and
accompanying oppressions and privileges. Feminists stand contrary to womens oppression, and
woman is always formed within social relations other than gender . Any feminism
that aims to deconstruct womens oppression, conceptually or materially, must
recognize that even where aspects of oppression can be identified as being about
gender, they are commonly, intimately, linked with other oppressions . Feminism cannot
as object-attentive, because of the way
therefore merely involve promoting anything that can be characterized as simply in womens interests.
Because other social categories, such as race, class, and sexuality, fundamentally
shape gendered relations and identities (and vice versa), it is incoherent to promote a
feminism that does not address oppressions based on these categories as well. On
this view, connections between woman and nature exist because women are part of
nature, as are all humans, and the suppression and hatred of nature is played out
in specific ways on womens bodies, activities, and conceptual frameworks . These
connections are relevant because both women and nature are categorically
devalued, with their distinct and similar qualities. Another way of noting the interconnections
among oppressions is based on an analysis of the ways oppressions function. Accordingly, ecological
feminism focuses on the links and patterns among the treatment of oppressed,
exploited, or undervalued beings and entities that is, among forms and instances
of oppression and degradation, and common ethical and ontological bases for
maltreatment. This approach is not inconsistent with the insights of the first
approach, which complicates understandings of moral objects, subjects, and agents.
But a focus on oppression employs the notion that different forms and systems of
oppression are interwoven, and they therefore strengthen and fuel each other.
These approaches emphasize the logical similarity and interdependence of various
forms of oppression, the recurrent themes and tools used to harm people and limit
their lives, and the ways that members of oppressed groups are actively
discouraged from noticing these connections and acting in solidarity to fight
common enemies. This approach to interconnection is evident in the work of Karen Warren and Val
Plumwood, who emphasize conceptual and practical connections in defining ecological feminism. Though the work
of many earlier ecofeminist thinkers, as well as a good deal of ecofeminist activist rhetoric, could be described as
strictly objectattentive, more recent ecofeminist theoretical work departs from attempts to articulate similarities
I count my perspective among those voices

critical of ecofeminist appeals to femininity or womens corporeality as naturally and
essentially more closely linked to the nonhuman world, of characterizations of
nature as feminine, or radically separate from culture, and of claims that women are
particularly responsible for saving the earth . Rather, the perspective I present here begins with a
recognition of the connections among various types and aspects of oppression and exploitation. But instead of
rejecting all ecofeminism out of hand, I argue that it is important to recognize that
because entities like women and nature are socially, discursively, historically
constructed, attention to the particularities and mechanisms of those constructions
(seen partially in their treatment) will inevitably result in conclusions about what they are .
Conversely, discussion of what some ecofeminists refer to as bonds or connections
between women and nature are not necessarily rooted in essentialist
understandings of what they are, but can be based on observations of the
meanings, functions, and dispositions of women and natural entities within a given
discursive universe.
between those mythical entities women and nature.
Their evidence is based on an ecofeminism that fails to

question what feminine means in the first place ecological
feminism reclaims femininity as positive, but not without
blindly.
In following chapters, I will be most interested in ecological feminism, a cluster of perspectives that constitutes a
subcategory of the ecofeminist project, and which is noteworthy in its emphasis on the similarities and relationships
Where some ecofeminist

projects focus on similarities between the objects of oppression, say women and
nature, ecological feminists maintain that these similarities are philosophically and
practically significant in so far as they evidence patterns of domination . For example,
some object-attentive ecofeminists see both women and nature as inherently
feminine and therefore oppressed by masculine or phallocratic regimes of meaning
and power. These ecofeminists tend to respond to cults of masculinity by upholding
femininity as the superior mode of being. In contrast, ecological feminists argue that
both women and nature are considered and constructed as feminine, that the
inextricability of masculinity and femininity as concepts and as cultural products
make it impossible to reclaim one without assuming the other, and that femininity
is a potent tool for domination and control in general . Ecological feminists point out that there
is a logical inconsistency in some versions of ecofeminism, because ecofeminists
who cling to femininity fail to question the dualisms which, I will illustrate below, the ecofeminist
project so vehemently rejects. So femininity, and other features (embodiment, mystery, resistance to
reason) supposedly shared by subjugated beings and classes, are problems to be
scrutinized, not qualities to be uncritically celebrated . While ecological feminists
may end up valuing some of those features, they do so because the features are
valuable or useful, not merely because of their associations with the oppressed . In
between and among various forms of oppression, exploitation, and domination.
addition, ecological feminists believe that emphasizing the similarities between women and natural states or
entities maintains a lack of attention to the ways in which men are natural beings, and women are also dominators
and oppressors.
Anti-essentialist arguments, even if true, dont justify a

wholesale rejection of ecofeminism concepts like woman
and nature are necessary and their definitions can be
loosened.
ethic of flourishing pp. 115 //MG)
Even when anti-essentialist arguments against particular examples of ecofeminism
are well-founded, wholesale rejection of the ecofeminist project is an overly
dramatic response, especially given the material truths within the conceptual connections and practical
relationships articulated by ecofeminists and other ecologically-concerned feminists. The fact that these
connections are not immutable or necessary, and are not dependent on the existence of entities
with essential features and natures, is a crucial point, and one which has inspired numbers of
feminists to attempt carefully to map the social, contingent, contextually-embedded
specificities of the relationships among different forms of oppression, different conceptual
entities, and different material beings. But the relationships themselves and the practices,
institutions, and philosophical commitments that affect and preserve them remain compelling. In fact,
these relationships are most compelling when they are understood as providing
clues about the ways concepts like woman, nature, primitive, and body get
written and interwoven, and the ways cultural constructions, practices, and
biological matter are formed and reformed. As scores of feminist theorists are currently working to
maintain the feminist subject in the face of the demise of universal Woman, ecological feminists want to
claim a space in which to discuss the connections among whatever gets labelled
natural and the humans (women, people of color, the poor) who tend to be discursively,
practically, and conceptually associated with the natural, and whose association
with nature is detrimental to them. Like Aristotle, they want to save the appearances
and take seriously the evidence and manifestations of these associations, while
creating and recreating feminism and environmentalism . It is impossible to do this
without discussing women and nature, without using the concepts that refer to the
beings and matter at hand. We are well-advised to note the extent to which defining
gestures endanger plurality, but in the end it is concepts which make talk, and
hence theory, possible. In the spirit of creating and fostering multiple, multiplicitous discourses, we can
expand and loosen the concepts that were supposedly handed to us as self- evident,
unified, and fixed, by Modernity.
Even if concepts like woman and mother are ultimately

rejected, understanding them is central to feminism.
Generalities made about women or femininity are correctible
and do not warrant rejection of the theory.

drawing
attention to the conceptual and practical connections between woman and
mother is important philosophical work because of the discursive and physical
power of their amazingly prevalent association. These associations shape the
economic, reproductive, and political dimensions of lived reality, so even if they are
ultimately rejected, understanding them is central to feminism . Instead of
categorically discounting any discussion of woman/ mother or woman/nature
connections as unimportant because they are constructed, or assuming the validity
of those associations because they appear natural or entrenched, feminist theorists
need to continue to interrogate them with care . As some feminists have tried to make clear
through their rejections of essentialist notions of woman, ecological feminists need not be
committed to the view that there exists some metaphysical or ontological truths
about woman and nature that there is stuff out there that necessarily fits into the categories, or that
Though these possibilities rely on tenuous notions of the connections between gender and practice,
the categories are anything other than fictions that fuel our contingent, historically-bound conceptions of reality.
Ecological feminists are committed to the view that people, beings, and stuff are
defined and made meaningful within discourses which name them as, among other
things, woman, and nature. These are powerful discursive and practical
categories and constructions that we cannot ignore, because the value and
treatment of things and beings depends in part on the ways in which they become
associated with them. Still, our theoretical attentions should not amount to appropriating concepts and
categorizations that have been historically damaging to exactly what we aim to protect. Nor should efforts to
deconstruct influential relationships amount to merely ignoring them theoretically, or leaving them practically
the
so-called problem of essentialism, in ecofeminism and elsewhere, is more often
actually a matter of false universalization of certain conceptions of woman, and a
lack of attention to the diversity of womens experiences and of conceptions of
womanhood that results from feminist theorists racism, solipsism, and tendency to
aspire to the (fallacious) objective view from nowhere modeled throughout much of the
history of Western philosophy. In fact, any object-attentive theoretical approach is likely to run the risk of
untouched. Anti-essentialist critique is probably the most common argument brought against ecofeminism. But
over- generalizing, or attributing false universals to the given object category, or of stating its case in ways that are
easily interpreted as doing so. As Marilyn Frye acknowledges, mistaken
generalities are to be found

in feminist theorizing, and need to be corrected. But they are mundane,
discoverable, correctable; they are not profound and usually do not merit
passionate or paranoid denunciation (unpublished: 6). Problematic generalizations are sometimes the
result of a theorist situating her self, family, or culture as a paradigm case which structures paradigm-case
categorical thinking, la ethnocentrism, though such thinking does not necessarily entail a commitment to any
There is an element of self-as-paradigm cognition in early feminist theories,

but Frye asserts that, condemning these theories as essentialist seems to me to
misdirect our attention and to obscure rather than illuminate, and to leave
unanalyzed the active constructive ethnocentrism implicit in such theories
essence.
(unpublished: 10).
We do not conceive of women or nature as entities with

essences, but the being subsumed in these categories are
concepts that are necessary for theorizing.
ecological feminist theorists who discuss women and nature need not
conceive of them as Entities with Essences, and even those who do may still have a
few valuable things to say. When we consider women and nature, we can assume
that no real universals apply, though patterns may be overwhelmingly apparent and
determining, that the meanings of the terms are historically bound, and that many
features of the meanings we utilize promote mischaracterizations and mistreatment
of whatever falls within the space mapped by the terms. Yet we also know that there
are real social and ecological beings subsumed under the categories, that the con
cepts help us negotiate reality, and that they can be most helpful and
representative if conceived broadly and pluralistically . We cannot ignore the relationships
between woman and women, and nature and the stuff that is considered natural. Likewise, we cannot
ignore the ways in which these and other subjugating concepts and categories are
parasitic and symbiotic upon each other, make sense because of each other, are
enacted upon each other, and become reified through practices, and the ways they
criss-cross in and through peoples lives, conceptual schemas, and political
situations.
To sum up,
Anti-essentialists arguments obfuscate real issues, are

homophobic, and totalizing.
anti- essentialist
arguments, and the feminist essentialist/anti-essentialist debates themselves,
obfuscate the real issues within feminism , and the challenges feminism presents to
Teresa De Lauretis Upping the Anti (sic) in Feminist Theory, lays out ways in which
nonfeminist positions and practices (De Lauretis 1990). In addition to concurring with her
characterization of anti-essentialisms function as a political smokescreen , I agree with
her analysis of the feminist fear of essentialism as homophobic, and particularly antilesbian. Feminist and ecofeminist discourses that typically become labelled
essentialist tend to be lesbian, focused on women (especially womens bodies), normative,
and optimistic about potentials for change while pessimistic about so much current
and historical cultural product. The extent to which thorough anti-essentialist purges
are carried out on forthrightly lesbian theory, and on attempts to articulate conceptual,
epistemic, and physical possibilities that endeavor to fashion themselves as
separately as possible from heterorelational or phallocratic discourses and practices ,
is incredible. More disturbing is how totalizing anti-essentialist arguments can be,
especially at a historical moment seemingly ruled by the enemies of political innovation, creative knowledge-
Even a staunch secularist can see the discourserattling potential of goddess-talk in the heat of a reactionary right wing Christian
power surge. Citing Mara Lugones The Logic of Pluralist Feminism, Frye argues that simplistic antiessentialist critiques make it easy to substitute a theoretical anxiety about essence
for a political concern about domination and injury (unpublished: 1). The lack of political
concern in so much simplistically anti-essentialist work is striking and notorious. For
example in writings denouncing essentialism what is most likely to be problematized
is lesbian naturalism heterosexualism is rarely noted (unpublished: 18n).
seeking, and unbounded sensual curiosity.
Supposed essentialism can be productive and rejecting

essentialist theories outright only prevents an effective theory
from developing.
Ecological feminists desire relationships with nature, and with embodiment, that help shift understandings of what
nature is. To open up the conceptual space to value a devalued entity, the thing must be seen as something other
than what it is supposed to be. Of course it is possible to frame this in essentialist terms: we have been told lies
about what this body is, what nature is, when in fact there is some other immutable truth about what it really is, in
fact what it was all along. There are many examples of lesbian and ecofeminist thought that point in this direction,
the very act of

claiming the power to define entails a deconstructive move. Attempts to represent
lesbian sexuality, and ecofeminist efforts at recharacterizing nature, are often less
fixed and fixing than they may seem at first glance. If we look closely at articulations of
these desires we see that they are not motivated so much by essentialist ontologies
as by the desire to articulate the power of the somatic and connections among what
is supposed to be forever separate. We might think of such attempts, even those we ultimately reject,
that include attempts to carve out fixed, universal definitions. But, Id like to suggest that
as conversational moves, responses to phallocratic mischaracterizations and lies, demands for alternatives, and for
the consideration of our own observations, namings, and evaluations, and the data of experience. Interestingly,
whether one intends it or not, calling for attention to ones own voice opens up the
possibility of its fallibility, and acts as an invitation to other voices, definitions,
conceptual possibilities. When concepts, meanings, definitions are continually
exploded, the real dangers of essentialism become minute. Though there is a growing
impatience with simplistic anti-essentialist arguments, as yet there is insufficient attention to
feminist work that has been castigated as essentialist, or effort to reframe that
work historically, in light of developments within feminist theory and communities,
as well as post-structuralist insights . Such a move must be more than a fervent reclamation of ersatz
essentialist feminist work and insight, and must begin by critically and cautiously assessing the merit, usefulness,
Ecological feminist theory will not sufficiently develop

until we are willing to transgress the hesitancy of feminist theorists to take seriously
work that has been rejected as essentialist an ironic statement given the
seriousness with which many nonacademic thinkers take the intersections of
environmentalism, feminism, and other work for social justice.
and historical significance of such work.
The use of political rhetoric that includes concepts of women

and mothers can effectively mobilize those who identify with
these concepts and these movements can become sources of
questioning assumptions about women.
Several authors have discussed the merits of strategic essentialism as serving
important political functions, such as motivating, identifying, and simplifying social
movements, despite its theoretical limitations. For example, although universal woman
and mother are myths, political rhetoric that addresses women and mothers by
those names can effectively mobilize women who see themselves as having certain
interests or qualities in common to gather together and create ways to fight for
those interests and foster those qualities . A number of such movements which Ann Snitow describes
as motherist, have been the focus of a good deal of ecological feminist thought, and ecofeminist reclamation of
certain movements as ecofeminist (Snitow 1990). Often these movements are not described as feminist or
they are described as efforts to create a means of

survival by women struggling to feed their families and caught in the middle of ecodestructive practices that destroy their traditional sources of subsistence and
livelihood. These movements, even when women coalesce as political actors under
the umbrella of uncritical motherist rhetoric, can in turn become the sources of
questioning presuppositions concerning womens roles and identities. Essentialist
discourses do not necessarily essentialize their subjects . In fact, Snitow argues that, instead of
environmentalist by participants
rejecting motherist discourses as anti-feminist, taking the long view . . . can help feminists include women to whom
a rapid political or theoretical movement forward has usually seemed beside the point poor women, peasant
women, and women who for any number of reasons identify themselves not as feminists but as militant mothers
(1990: 20).
Movements promoting sexual freedom and respect are not

inconsistent with ecological feminism and issues of sexuality
are deeply embedded in the Western concepts of nature that
we challenge.
In discussing provocative examples of multidimensional activisms, I give prominence to lesbian and gay activism for
several reasons. Probably most significant is the fact that this is the sphere of activism in which I have most
thoroughly invested my own personal and political energies in the last several years. Also, the complex nexus of
creativity, urgency, celebration and righteousness evident in lesbian, gay, and queer activism in the US and
elsewhere might be inspiring and instructive to ecological feminist activists, regardless of their sexualities. Finally,
it is worth making connections between movements for sexual freedom and

respect, and movements promoting the flourishing of women and nonhuman life,
because both sorts of movements (despite the incredible variety within each) raise deep
questions about who we are, as humans, as communities, as dependent, and as
complex, embodied selves. Within any human activity are embedded assumptions
about nature and about what it means to be human, social, encultured, embodied,
contingent, matter. As Western conceptions of humans and of cultural life are
founded on beliefs that the human is somehow separate from and superior to
nature, we can trace ways that the devaluation of the nonhuman realm is enacted
in human social practices and institutions. We can also notice the complexity of
responses to the complicated reversals and contradictions that keep the shifting
nature/ culture divide in place. Sexuality is particularly interesting in this regard, as it is a realm
of interaction that is unavoidably bodily, and the body is so strongly associated with
nature. Like nature, sex is characterized as dirty, instinctual, random, uncontrolled, and
mysterious. At the same time, sexuality is unmistakably cultural. It is the space in which
gender is reified, where parts or notions of human bodies interweave with their
cultural and political significations, where uniquely human or human-defined
characteristics and emotions, like romantic love, are enacted. Sexuality is an
incredibly stylized, highly culturally-defined realm of human activity. So sexuality is

considered both very natural, and very unnatural, a particular instance of semiosis
the more general process joining subjectivity to social signification and material
reality, and defining its placement in, and over, nature (De Lauretis 1994: xix). Hence, an
analysis of sexuality is likely to provide a fruitful story about instances of and
responses to constructions of nature and culture and their discursive associates. It is
surprising that environmental philosophers have paid so little attention to this rich, dangerous terrain.
Util/weighng
Utilitarian calculus glosses over oppression their perspective
leads to a world of happy slaves.
Oppression is more than harm, and though oppression is often painful, it is morally problematic
for reasons not accommodated by a utilitarian perspective that is concerned only with
pleasure and suffering, or perceived utility. In other words, oppression is unethical even when it
does not cause pain and even when it could be said to cause some pleasure. A
system that creates happy slaves is unacceptable from an anti-oppressive
perspective. So what is oppression if it is not merely a form of pain, or obvious harm? One dictionary
defines the verb to oppress as to keep down by the cruel or unjust use of power or
authority; to crush; to trample down; to overpower (Websters New World 1994). The
concept of keeping something down, is more subtle, more deep and
comprehensive than pain and suffering. Iris Young defines oppression as consisting
in: Systematic institutional processes which prevent some people from learning and
using satisfying and expansive skills in socially recognized settings, or institutionalized
social processes which inhibit peoples ability to play and communicate with others
or to express their feelings and perspectives on social life in contexts where others
can listen. While the social conditions of oppression often include material
deprivation and maldistribution, they also involve issues beyond distribution.
Ethics of care
We dont advocate a feminist ethics of care thats Noddings
and Gilligan
The idea that women should reclaim aspects of their experiences and perspectives
that have been devalued by patriarchal ethics is certainly worth pursuing as we
construct feminist ethics. Reclamation of historically devalued ways of being might
serve as the basis for an ethic that at once subverts oppressive values and presents
alternative paradigms. For example, although female friendships are ignored or devalued by most
traditional ethics, important insights into the value of bonds of affection, virtues of friends, and political potential of
filial relationships are gained through the analysis and experience of womens friendships and intimate relations.
But despite the potential for reclamation, theorists must remain mindful of the fact
that these potentially fruitful aspects of our socialization are products of the same
oppressive systems that in many sectors promote the devaluation of compassion
and caring. If we assume that there is some logic to oppressive thinking, then it follows that there are
reasons why women are socialized in certain ways (however impossible it may be to determine
things like reasons and intentions behind processes like socialization). That is, there are reasons that
contribute to the social construction of woman and promote the domination of
women. If it is true that female behavior is part of what maintains oppressive
systems, then it is also true that aspects of that behavior and the values and
presuppositions grounding it must be examined or recontextualized before they can
be reclaimed or considered useful . The benefits of caring for other beings are
obvious: caring is necessary for the health, livelihood, and stability of individuals
and communities, and participating in caring relationships is part of what many
people feel makes life worth living. As Hume wrote, Whatever other passions we may be actuated by,
pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, or lust; the soul or animating principle of them all is sympathy (1978: 363). At
face value it does seem as though caring for others as humans care is an attitude as basic as anything else we
might want to label morally important, and an activity at which women tend to be particularly experienced. On
closer inspection, it becomes clear that caring
cannot be fully described without discussing its

agent, its object, and the context in which it occurs. Caring, then, is most
meaningfully evaluated in situ. Talk of caring and compassion in the abstract, devoid of
attention to the object of caring and the context in which the caring occurs, is
ethically uninformative. In constructing an ethic, ecological feminists must ask if caring for
other particular beings or objects is a good activity to engage in when one is trying
to move from subordinate social positions. But caring cannot be evaluated unless
the objects and purposes of care are made clear. It is no secret that complex norms
of female caring and compassion for men and children are cornerstones of
patriarchal systems. Women have forgiven harm, stayed with abusers, and
sacrificed their own desires because of their great ability to care for others, a
supposedly feminine quality that is glorified and encouraged in nearly every corner
of the globe. Claudia Card has argued that in the context of oppression the care ethic actually causes moral
damage and can therefore be an unhealthy moral choice (Card 1996). Put simply, caring can be
damaging to the carer if she neglects other responsibilities, including those she has
to herself, by caring for another. In addition to questions about the effects of caring on caretakers,
questions must be asked about the effects of caring on the object of care, whom Nel Noddings refers to as the one-
Caring for someone can be damaging to the object of care, who

might be better off, or a better person, if she cares for herself. The line between
empowerment and paternalism is as difficult to identify as the boundary between
guidance and domination, although these relations might all be labeled caring,
under certain circumstances. Regarding interactions with the land and nonhuman
species, caring attitudes and actions cannot be assessed without inquiries to
determine if caretaking is in the best interest of those objects of care . Indeed, humans
cared-for (Noddings 1984).
need the care of other humans in ways in which nonhumans, especially nondomesticated nonhumans, do not. Like
advocates of ethics based on care, proponents of stewardship of the land as an appropriate model of ecological
Some ecofeminist
proponents of a care ethic recommend empathy and ego denial as the point of
departure for reframing moral relationships. Judith Plant claims that feeling the life of the other
interaction often fail to consider nonhuman self-directedness as a moral goal.
should be the starting point for ecofeminist decision-making (1989: 1). Deena Metzger, in Invoking the Grove,
writes of the importance of giving up the ego as a necessary prerequisite to living out a compassionate
commitment to the equality of all things, a move similar to Naess calls for the demotion of the individual self
(1989: 122).
But what does Metzger mean when she recommends that women give up
their egos? Some of us spend much of our lives responding to exhortations to ignore
and deny our egos our desires, impulses, self-interests. Female self-denial has
allowed many to live out compassionate commitments to others at great expense to
our relationships with ourselves, our relationships with other women, and our
relationships with our environments, and various forms of feminism have been
instrumental in questioning the sources and manifestations of womens self-denial .
Treading on controversial psychoanalytic ground, even the work of theorists like Nancy Chodorow implies that
stronger ego boundaries may enable women to reject or revise oppressive, damaging roles like motherhood, or as
consumers within the beauty industry, an institution historically destructive both to women and to animals tortured
Given the constraints of gender, race, class, and

womens material conditions, the importance of feeling oneself and identifying
ones own interests in ecological contexts cannot be overlooked . These experiences
might be the most promising point of departure for ethical decision-making and
theory-building. In fact, identifying ones own complicated, conflicting feelings and interests may be a
necessary prerequisite to empathizing with another. If so, then ego denial is contrary to the kind of
empathy that allows one to appreciate the oppression or circumstance of another
living being. Proponents of an unmodified reclamation of ethics based on care and
compassion may be drawing from a conception of female being rooted not in the
actual material and social conditions of women living anywhere today, but from
mythical ideals of femininity and historical woman. Riane Eisler claims that societies with an
in cosmetic testing (Chodorow 1978).
ecological consciousness were rooted in a social structure in which women and feminine values such as caring,
compassion, and non-violence were not subordinate to men and the socalled masculine values of conquest and
even putting aside her romanticized conception of

history, we cannot neglect the fact that the meanings and ethical relevance of acts
of caring and compassion are determined by their contexts and their objects. These
contexts and objects vary according to the historical moment and the society and
culture in which they occur. Individuals who have been socialized or constructed , to
domination (1990: 2324). But again,
to behave or to be certain ways, cannot easily, individually

transform the social meanings and roles propagated by that being . The significance
of values such as caring, mothering, and nonviolence is embedded in their current
meanings, as well as in the genealogy of their meanings. An ecological feminist
ethic that holds caring for other beings as a good, and clearly sets out the
appropriate objects and contexts of ethical caring relationships could certainly be
informative and useful. There are very good reasons to argue that , generally speaking,
men need to learn some ethical lessons from womens experiences as caretakers
and apprentices to feminine practices. As Claudia Card points out, anyones gendered
moral luck might result in damaged capacities (Card 1996). If the construction of
gender in phallocratic societies results in unequal development of ethical skills, we
might argue that, given the historical, social, and cultural contexts, men ought to
develop more caring attitudes, especially toward women and non-human entities .
Note, however, that this contextualist approach also raises questions about what is
lacking in the typical moral development of women and girls.
their moral detriment,
AT Correlation VS Causality
Whether or not we can identify a linear causality between the
oppression of nature and the oppression of women is
irrelevant even if the causal explanation is murky, there has
been so much of a correlation between the degradation of
femininity and the degradation of nature that to ignore these
connections would be unethical and impractical.
By investigating the ways in which negative constructions of femininity and hence
womens subordinate roles, identities, and material circumstances were interwoven
with the devaluation of nature, historical work sets the stage for ecofeminist
philosophical inquiry. It also lends support to feminists long-standing tendencies to draw attention to
connections among male-dominated science, technology, the destruction of the natural world, and the oppression
of women and members of other feminized, naturalized, and subjugated groups whose instrumental use is
any explanatory theory that mines

history for hidden causal connections and conceptual linkages runs the risk of
oversimplifying an impossibly complex story. In any given era, there is rarely a lack
of dissent among philosophers, scientists, or theologians regarding the nature of
existence, the significance of matter, and the norms of moral behavior . But even given
dissent, and the likelihood that no narrative fully represents the whole truth, it is possible to trace the
ways in which some ideas or ontologies have reached prominence, and it is
worthwhile to consider how the ideas of the powerful tend to maintain their power .
Which ideas fell by the wayside? When and how? Why were certain ideas more widely disseminated? Even if
there is no essential Western worldview, it is clear that a group of ideas, values,
and methodologies has been more influential than others in shaping the history of
culture and science in the West. Although the precise causal relationships between
hierarchical philosophical and theoretical views that encourage and justify
domination, on the one hand, and practices, moral systems, and institutions, on the
other, are opaque and controversial, correlation is less difficult to ascertain. As critical
emphasized and abused by men with power. At the same time,
work in science studies emphasizes, theoretical understanding comes at least as much from positing or creating
Much of social and natural science

entails describing perceived phenomena in ways that render them comprehensible
and consumable at least for other scientists. These descriptions emerge from and
into social, discursive, and political spaces, and are credible, persuasive, and
influential only in so far as they fit other aspects of those spaces. Merchants is an
explanatory mechanisms as discovering them (Jasanoff et al. 1995).
important story about the ways metaphors and understandings of nature that emerged with the scientific revolution
fit into an ideological nexus that posited woman as means to the ends of men.
Environmental ethics
cannot ignore critical assessments of discursive and material correlations and

coincidences which point to hot spots in the history of human interactions, even if
the causal story of how associations developed is murky . The similarities among the
current treatment of instrumentalized, feminized, and naturalized entities are
simply overwhelming. Though organic life, its material constituents, and all that supports them are
physically real, firm distinctions between nature and culture are not accurate
ontological markers. Rather, they are discursive creations that shift in response to
political, economic, aesthetic, and epistemic forces and agents and that in turn
create changes in human practices and institution s. As the subtitle of Donna Haraways Simians,
Cyborgs, and Women intimates, attempts to reconsider human relationships with nature paradoxically entail a
reinvention of nature. In fact, Haraways thoughts about nature begin with the acknowledgement that nature
is an invention. The meanings of nature the concept referring to that stuff which is usually neither
human nor human-generated (sometimes humans do count) vary with their uses and contexts, as
do meanings of culture. Yet, even when they are suspect, the universal or near-global
patterns of the significance and significations of concepts need not always be
completely abandoned. Even the most fluid concepts can be useful and meaningful,
and therefore can be theorized. Although relationships between concepts and
practices are not linear causal chains, it is possible to trace to some extent their
influences on each other and on human reality . For example, conceiving of and responding to
natural beings and communities as active, rather than inert, calls to attention qualities and potentialities that will
Philosophical work in environmental ethics requires such

interrogations, especially because as we determine how to reconsider our actions
and relations with nature, we inevitably reinvent nature and ourselves.
otherwise remain unseen.

Ecological Feminism Critiques Exploitation of Women and Environment

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Ecological Feminism Critiques Exploitation of Women and Environment

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1AC ECOLOGICAL FEMINISM

The Western, patriarchal ocean narrative has historically failed

displacement of women from productive activity by the expansion of development

This separation from nature results in overexploitation of

The desire to cut the tether, severing the

Invoking angels, or, as

This is certainly overdue,

marine sciences are often entangled

Therefore, the United States federal government should

Our understanding of ecological feminism includes a

In fact, ecofeminist arguments are meant not only

Ecological feminist emphasis, not on

How, in male-dominated contexts, are women disproportionately affected by the

moral systems based

We must change notions of how people relate to the natural

In this conceptualization, therefore, the link between women and

Environmental law is the only way to translate a reconceiving

The interconnectivity of humans and the natural world is

The Western, patriarchal ocean narrative has historically failed

with the westernisation of economic categories - of needs, of Productivity, of

This ought to be rejected as a model of development as it is

Maldevelopment is maldevelopment in thought and action. In practice, this

symptomatised by their subjugation and exploitation arise from this subjugation of

Therefore, the United States federal government should

The manifestation of this power, this energy, is called nature

The common yet multiple life of mountains, trees, rivers, animals

Nature as a creative expression of the feminine principle

Since, ontologically, there is no

The dichotomised ontology of man dominating woman and nature

This must be paired with a feminist environmentalism we

In this conceptualization, therefore, the link between women and

Thats critical in shifting our understanding of what constitutes

By elbowing out 'life' from being the

The interconnectivity of humans and the natural world is

The Western, patriarchal ocean narrative has historically failed

early industrial development in western Europe necessitated

Therefore, the United States federal government should

The manifestation of this power, this energy, is called nature

The common yet multiple life of mountains, trees, rivers, animals

the apparently inanimate rivers and mountains there dwells a hidden

Nature as a creative expression of the feminine principle

Since, ontologically, there is no

feminine as the living principle, and on an ontological continuity between society

The dichotomised ontology of man dominating woman and nature

This reclamation of the feminine principle is not limited to

Yet patriarchal ideology has made man-the-hunter the model of human

while the patriarchal paradigm has made man-the-hunter an

This perspective can recover humanity not in its distorted form

The recovery of the feminine principle is based on inclusiveness. It is a

response to a gender-based ideology is that it treats ideologically constructed

This must be paired with a feminist environmentalism we

In this conceptualization, therefore, the link between women and

Less suggestion current system is ocean development. Were advocating

Our society is facing a crisis in agriculture, a crisis in education and literacy, a

have left us very

noticed during twenty years of feminism, is

loaded with patriarchal reminders that the

proper role of men is to

in opposition to women!) The editorial advised that disasters such as

They have been replaced by the

managerial ethos, which holds

Federal Law Key