SierraUMASSD

Activism Idea 

I wanted to challenge myself to find a way of activism that supports gender environmental issues. I normally would attend a rally, meeting or women’s organization conference but I wanted to do something I haven’t done before. I started to think what resources I had, and how I could use them to my benefit. I work at an elementary school where I am a reading aide and 5th grade science teacher. I couldn’t help but notice in our agenda earth day is coming soon. Our school does an annual earth day celebration where we celebrate earth day for a full week. The week is full of activities and lessons that inform the students about our environment and encourages them to do their part to take care of our planet. I thought to myself this is perfect! I can use this week as an opportunity to introduce an eco-friendly project to my 5th grade science class. As a class we will choose a project to complete that will help our eco footprint. I will teach a lesson on sustainability and let them decide which project they would like to complete. I believe that education is the first step towards the solution. Most people are not aware of the dangers and damages placed on nature because of our own human desires. Ultimately both nature and the human race suffers.

Activism Plan 

Our plan is to have our own classroom compost. During our lesson we talked about trash and waste and how it affects our environment. We talked about the trash in the ocean and the damages it has on the marine life. We discussed global warming and the amount of fresh water available to us. We decided to create a classroom compost and use it in our school garden. The project will be a compost in a bottle. I found some instructions for the project on Plantnatural.com where it explains how to complete to project step by step. I also showed the class a YouTube video of other schools doing similar projects in their classrooms. They were very inspired by the videos and excited to start working on their project. The 5th graders will observe the compost and add foods from their left over lunches. They will go around the cafeteria during lunch and collect left over fruits and vegetables that students did not eat and add it to the compost. Over the next following weeks we will discuss and document the changes observed in our classroom compost in a bottle.

Soda Bottle Composting for Kids

The Oppression of Nature and Women

When you look at feminism you have to look at it from all angles.

It’s important to consider all perspectives because women studies or issues are not limited to just one type of women. We know that feminism started off from the middle class white women perspective. Women movements catered to their views and issues.

Now, many women waves and movements later we are now able to see that the web for women’s issues intersect in multiple webs. In the last post we talked about Intersectionailty in women’s studies and how women have multiple intersections that make their individual experiences unique to them. Well if you add this concept of intersection to women you can also add it to nature.

Nature and women have been connection for as long as humans have been on earth. We hear terms like “mother nature” or when applying a pronoun to earth we hear “she” or “her”.

For many years women have been the care takers, laborers, and farmers of the lands. When we look at the deprivation of women we can see that it is very similar to the deprivation of nature. In the same way women face oppression, so does the environment and the two are highly connected.

Almost every culture has a deep connection to nature. Starting back to before the times of colonization in the U.S. the natives had a rich connection with the land. Over the years environment activist groups have formed to help protect the lands that is sacred to them.

When we look at American history as such events like the Trail of Tears, we have to consider what this meant for the native people and culture. They were forcefully removed from their land, many killed and the remaining force to split and live on new lands. For them this is horrifying , not just because they are being removed but because their religion and spirituality is based off the land itself. Indian women are deeply connected to the land. They lose traditional knowledge and culture practices that affects identity and culture. These effects lie beneath the material deprivations and oppression of a humankind, this is loss of identity they suffer.

There is also a deep connection between resource extractions and violence against women. When companies come in and take land there is more violence against indigenous women.

For example when mine sites are creating it causes a man dominated work force that make women more subjective to violence and sexual harassment.

The Native American women have made stand against the deprivation of their land and people. They are leading the movement against the Dakota Access pipeline, but they say they face cruel and inhumane treatments from the police.

The picture below shows a Native women protesting at a rally against the Dakota Access Pipeline behind the 128th Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 2, 2017.

There is also The Chipko Movement that is lead out of South Asia.

It was organized in 1970’s to resist the destruction of forest spread throughout India.

“In 1973, women of the area under the leadership of an activist, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, went into the forest and formed a circle around the trees preventing the men from cutting it down. ”

The success achieved by this protest led to similar protest all over the world.

“The leaders encourage the development of local industries based of the conservation and sustainable use of forest wealth for local benefit”.

It makes sense that women feel like it’s their job to protect the forest/ land because they hold primary responsibility for working the fields. Their livelihoods depend on it. This is how they provide shelter, food, and resources for their family. They are the first to be aware of the environmental damages.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/31/512763500/administration-orders-easement-for-construction-of-dakota-access-pipeline

https://indianexpress.com/article/what-is/what-is-the-chipko-movement-google-doodle-5111644/

Start of Intersectional feminism 

Intersection is the feminism is a concept first explained by Kimberle Crenshaw 30 years ago as the experience of intersection that is beyond racsim and sexism. On Friday, during a panel discussion at the annual Netroots Nation conference in Atlanta, she gave a gloss on intersectionality in a way that made clear the immense value of the concept.

“There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions ― not just black women, but other women of color,” Crenshaw said. “Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.”

“The way we imagine discrimination or disempowerment often is more complicated for people who are subjected to multiple forms of exclusion,” she continued. “The good news is that intersectionality provides us a way to see it.”

Crenshaw noted some of the ways in which intersectional feminism helps activists advocate for women of all backgrounds and identities.

Crewnshaw realized that there was a gap in the feminist theory that excluded the intersections of black women. She developed intersectional feminism to allow those gaps to be viewed from a feminist stand point. “The development of Crenshaw’s intersectionality, originated from the failure of both feminist and anti-racist discourse; to represent and capture the specificity of the discrimination faced by black women. This failure resulted from an inability to identify the multiple grounds which constitute an individual’s identity; meaning that well-intentioned scholarship was unable to acknowledge and address the specific ways in which race and gender could mutually reinforce discrimination against black women (kings)”.

Intersectionality theory viewed at the micro or individual level, is a concept that helps us think about the ways that a person might be oppressed in one category, and be privileged in another. A person is likely not simply an “oppressor” nor simply “oppressed.” It is the idea that we all hold multiple categories of identity within each of us.

Understanding Eco-Feminist principle 

The goal of ecofeminism is to have a healthy balanced eco-system, including human and non-human inhabitants. We must maintain diversity and renew our understanding of the relationship we (humans) have with nature.

Building western industrial civilization in opposition to nature, ecofeminist take on life-struggles of all nature as our own.

Eco feminism and Intersectionality 

A.E. Kings describes it as “using tools of intersectionality to help illuminate the interconnectedness of race, class, gender, disability, sexuality, caste, religion, age, and the discrimination, oppression, and identity of women and the natural environment”.

Because women and nature face similar oppression, intersectionality helps open up a better understanding to define the inequalities between both.

Here is an example of the two connections. “For black women there is a lack of recognition for combating environmental  racism within the environmental justice movement. Black women are involved with environmental justice movements because environmental racism often directly affects their homes, families, and communities. For example the Flint water crisis. It’s impact created a higher miscarriage rate and a reduction in fertility for black women in that area (BFT)”.

 

What does intersectional feminism actually mean?

http://aapf.org/media/2017/12/kimberl-crenshaw-explains-the-power-of-intersectional-feminism-in-1-minute

https://medium.com/black-feminist-thought-2016/the-necessity-of-black-women-s-standpoint-and-intersectionality-in-environmental-movements-fc52d4277616

https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.umassd.edu/article/660551

In the article Gender Equality and State Environmentalalism Kari Norgarrd and Richard York connect women in power and the state environment. They theory that “women are more environmentally progressive in the inclusion of women as equal members of society- as voters, citizens, policy makers & social movement participants should positively influence state behavior”.

Some of their Key ideas are…

Women are more likely than men to support environmental protection.

Nations with greater gender equality may be more prone to protecting the environment.

More representation of women in parliament means more being done for the environment.

Gender discrimination and environmental degradation to a common hierarchical social structure that devalues both women and nature.

Sexism and environmental degradation reinforce one another, parallel to developments in feminist theory that link types of oppression based on race, class, and sex.

They are able to conduct multiple studies and research on how the degradation of women directly effects the environment and also when women are in political power they are more likely to help protect the environment.

Norgarrd and York state in their article that “gender is implicated in many facets of the state including gendered division of labor within the state apparatus, gendered structures of power and the interplay between social movements and state policies (Carvey 1998)”.

In this photo women are coming together and forming a human barrier around the tree to protect it from being cut down.

It’s a gender gap forced upon them by the patriarchal system that characterizes societies today. As ecofeminists put it, the historical connection between women and the treatment of soils is endangered by oppressive systems that discriminate women and fail to recognize their important role in caring for the Earth (manu).

More women work in agriculture over 70%. This is why women in policy are more likely to protect the environment because this has been women’s primary source of work and also a way for them to provide for their families.

Women and the Environment

Women in Policy

 

Margot Wallstrom states that today only 1% of spending on security sector reform is allocated to initiatives that consider gender equality and significant objective (Wallstrom).

https://pages.uoregon.edu/norgaard/pdf/Gender-Equality-Norgaard-York-2005.pdf

http://www.contramare.net/site/en/chipko-women-protecting-the-environment/

Have you ever looked at abortions form an ecological standpoint? 

Honestly, I haven’t giving it much thought before now.

 

Today I here to discuss abortions from a eco-feminist perspective, and in comparison to traditional accounts. First I would like to say that I do understand that this may be a sensitive topic which leads me into a good quote I like by Marvin Olasky.

 

When we hear about abortions in politics and the media we usually hear it from the feminist standpoint or tradition standpoint where there are three major views pro life, pro choice, and a middle point. Churches, religions, and extremely conservative groups are associated with anti abortion campaigns and pro life. On the opposite had we have extremely liberal folks for pro choice, and then there is the majority or everyone else who seems to fall in the middle as moderate.

Before considering the traditional standpoints its important to understand the major agreements of abortion between them. The main argument is when someone is considered a human being or person. Pro life considers this to be at conception, pro choice considers this to be after birth, and moderate is somewhere during the developmental process (zygots,fetus,infant) which is also heavily debated.

The developmental stage is the point where the abortion can be morally justifies before it’s viewed as a human being.

Ronnie Zoe Hawkins takes a look at abortions from an eco-feminist view which is not considered in the traditional reason for abortions.

There are two kinds of order of reasons of abortions. “There are first orders like rape, endangerment of the woman’s life, or mental and physical disabled fetuses. Then you have second order of reason like career choices, life journeys, and by virtue of financial or social grievances”.

Hawkins formally introduces the idea to consider the ecological standpoint when considering abortions. She views abortions eco-logically because of the growing population and lack of resources. She states that : abortions limit the ecological damaging effect of the human population in all parts of the globe”. She would like to bring ecological concerns to the abortion debate and I agree with that. Looking at it from a eco-feminist standpoint you have to consider the effects we as humans have on the environment. She leaves us with this something to consider, she states that eco-feminism provides additional ground for pro choice.

One thing I will note is that even though I agree with Hawkins that ecological concerns need to be brought into the abortion debate I don’t suggest them to be considered as first order reason.

Abortion

https://izquotes.com/quote/marvin-olasky/on-sensitive-issues-talk-isn-t-cheap-it-takes-real-courage-to-pry-open-topics-nailed-shut-138689

file:///C:/Users/rhondajackson/Downloads/Scanned%20from%20a%20Xerox%20multifunction%20device001(2).pdf

In The Politic of Meat  Carol J. Adams explains the connection between animal and human sexualization along with concepts of anthropronography and the intersections between objectification between women and animals.

 Looking at this picture at first glace my attention goes to the man that I recognize. This is hip hop artist Ludacris. In this chicken advertisement he is clearly pouring salt on a woman’s leg with a plate of fried chicken in front of him. Growing up I’ve seen many photo’s similar to this where  women’s body’s are used in comparison to food. We all are aware of the sexualization of women, but what about animals. The concepts addressed today  challenge the idea that women sexualization and non human sexualization aren’t related. In fact, they are much more related than anything else. Adams breaks down how the objectification of women and animals are the same and even used to influence the oppression on one another. For example, when women are objectified by their bodies and then when animals are objectified in the same way to look like the woman’s body. A good visual for this is the picture below where the pig has a woman’s body with curves, lip stick, and a big butt. This kind of advertisement is called Antropornography. Much like pornography the images are used to appeal to the male audience. The animals are seen as sex objects like the women. Adams coins the term ‘anthropornography’: “the depiction of nonhuman animals as whores” (p.109). We have all seen anthropornographic ads, but for most of us, we didn’t register what we were looking at. A cartoon with a cow standing like a sexy lady; a pig drawn with lipstick and a voluptuous rump; a chicken lifting her miniskirt to reveal her tasty feminine legs. Such ads, Adams notes, suggest that not only do women promiscuously want sex, but the same desire is applicable to others in the ‘Not A’ category – nonhuman animals (p.111). Adams holds no punches in her analysis of how these ads sugar-coat the flesh industries. “Anthropornography gives you a hooker on your plate. Nonhuman animals are whoring for you. Nonhumans want you, too. Suffering? Slaughtering? Inhumane acts? No. They want it” (p.111). I’ve never thought of my food sexually but after analyzing these photos I know see that i’ve been subjected to these kids of pictures my whole life and have not once stopped and thought about the comparison between animal sexualization in relation to women sexualization. One point Adams makes is also that social and political stands are also used to oppress animals and women. The same oppression women face with face, class, and gender are the same for animals. African Americans are subjected to more degradation because the oppressors are the white middle class. The sexual exploitation of women is to appeal to that specific type of person, at least for the western cultural. Heterosexual politics is dominate so in animal sexualization it’s also a factor. It is clear who the primary consumers are, the intended audience of these advertisements, but who are the consumables? Adams provides an insightful quote: “Meat is like pornography: before it was someone’s fun, it was someone’s life.” Those in category ‘Not A’ are the consumables: women, people of color, and animals. Adams analyzes advertisements with African American women, revealing African Americans as more likely to be linked with animals and nature, available to white men, and insatiable. She offers examples of African American men being linked with beasts, portrayed as savage (p.53), and as of less worth than their Caucasian counterparts (p.134).

Also female animals are the ones who are abused the most because they have more demand to reproduce for the consumers. The feminized animal is the animal who is violable, able
to be marked upon, the domesticated animals who
become “meat.” In meat eating, as I argue in The Sexual
Politics of Meat, all animals become symbolically female.
(And humane welfare laws often don’t apply to animals
used as meat.) Conventions include fragmentation (“are
you a breast man or a leg man”?), consumable females
(barbecued pigs as sexy females with thrusting hips and
pendulous breasts), and strip teases (animals in various
stages of disrobing), rendering all domesticated animals
being consumed as female. Moreover, female animals
are the ones who are the most abused in the
production of meat which can only exist because female
animals are enslaved reproductively to produce more
“meat” for consumers (and artists) page 16. In this last picture from Adams it states “free range grass fed strippers”. Now when I looked at this picture aka advertisement I had to really think about this. There’s big talk in the media now about cruelty free products and how animal lovers are now seeking rights for animals to live a cruelty free life before they are consumed for food. Many meat lovers have switched over to products who provide a better quality of life for the animal. This is cage free, no harmful chemicals added, and killed humanely. More strives have been made over the years to hold farmers and major food production companies accountable for the quality of life provided for these animals.  I myself thought this was great. I know I would feel so much better eating some chicken if I knew it had the opportunity to live a happy life before becoming my dinner versus being caged it’s whole life and miserable. Adams totally disagree, he believes this whole idea opens up a door that is taking away from the point that an animal shouldn’t be eaten for the pleasure of someone else. Her points are valid.

The focus on suffering creates a new
category “humane meat” that helps people reduce the
issue to “they aren’t suffering, so it’s okay to eat them.”
Of course, there is something insidious in the way the
dominant culture incorporates critiques and makes them
digestible (just decrease the suffering), but something
else obtains here as well. We have to remember that
some people get off on the suffering of others and that
for others, their pleasure narcissistically outweighs any
consideration of another’s suffering.
Why, in the end, do we parse another’s
suffering and try to calibrate what is acceptable and
what is not acceptable for them to experience on their
way to becoming dead flesh? Why not stare what we
actually are doing in the face — causing another’s death
for our own pleasure? Avoiding confronting this is
symptomatic of one aspect of The Sexual Politics of
Meat — it is hard to eliminate one’s dependence on the
instrumentality of another being. p 14

 

African women and African-American women already bear such an association with “wild” sexuality, uncontrollable (again why they are often shown as wild animals), if a darker pig were used, it would have overwhelmed the anthropornographic staging of the photo. Because of the race hierarchy that still is inscribed so strongly in Western culture. I chose this picture because it’s shows a perfect example of how women are dehumanized by animals and also how African American women are the most common to be compared to animals.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54792ff7e4b0674c74cb719d/t/55dc8dace4b0ad76d7277cb7/1440517548517/ANTENNAE+ISSUE+14.pdf

https://caroljadams.com/examples-of-spom/

https://goo.gl/images/g4CxF4

 

Let’s start with this image. To me this image is a pure representation of how meat is mad masculine. In contextual moral vegetarianism author Deane Curtin explains how there are ideological pressures that men face which encourages the consumption of meat. Men’s masculinity is compared to the food choices they eat. The more meat they consume the more “manly” they are. When I look at this picture it reminds me of this idea. Meat is advertised to attack the ego and esteem of men. I see thick slices of meat being cut up by a chef. My first instinct in that it’s being served to some hungry man. Food association advertising is the reason why I would assume these slices are for men. Women are compared to vegetables and salads. Women are suppose to eat petite while men eat large and “heavy”.

Gendered Foods 

Here are some images of advertisement use to attract a certain  gendered consumer. Can you guess who would pick up this very masculine looking yogurt? I placed a similar product below with a completely different marketing strategy. Well we can clearly see the different between the two. Since yogurt is normally associated with women, this company decided to switch up their advertisement. They used darker colors like black and red. They added the word “powerful” on the label with a nice little animal with horns to add some more masculinity. This would totally make a man feel much better about eating yogurt. What do you know, they even added more protein because men need lots of protein.

https://goo.gl/images/myqUqW

 

https://goo.gl/images/H84tUZ

https://goo.gl/images/UncC5U

https://goo.gl/images/MDbj5v

We all know that meat is associated with men. Meat is also one of the only foods that is sexualized. Yeah! That’s right! Isn’t that weird. We eat this food, yet it’s okay to be used as a sex reference? Yep, that’s unfortunately correct. Take a look at this burger king advertisement above. Women are often looked at as objects so it doesn’t surprise me that they would use an image that dehumanizes both women and animals (meat), in order to attract men.

Human & Animal Relations

Greta Gaard has a good understanding on human and animal relations. She believes that there is a connection between species-ism and class-ism. Species-ism is defined as the oppression of one species by another, This is why women are able to connect with animals because they as well are being oppressed. Cutrin believes reasons for vegetarianism may differ by gender locale, and class. She states that contextual relations are major influences such as geographical context.

I do agree with Kingsolver that because of nature we are able to appreciate things in life that would otherwise be forgotten. Nature allows us to feel, explore, create, relax, indulge and feel free. There is a huge connection between humans and nature. The world human nature means “is the natural qualities and ways of behavior that most people have”. Everything can be related to nature. The way we live. The elements that make up nature and our environment determines our lives. It determines the way we eat, live, behave, etc…nature surrounds us. The place we live in is ultimately a part of us and we are a part of it. Our world was created before we lived in it, at least everyone alive today. No matter what theory of evolution you believe in the elements that surrounds us where long there before we came. That’s what makes the connection so magical. We are able to use our “place” to build our lives around. What makes your “place” a place is the connection that you have with it. That thing that makes it special, or meaningful to you is what connects to two together. One thing that Kingsolver stated that resonated with me  was “People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully”. She right. With the devastating consequences of our ecological footprint we are reminded everyday that what we have here on Earth is limited.

What I got from Williams bed rock of democracy was that all of us belong to a certain landscape. This landscape is where we hold our values, memories, family roots, history, and ultimate where we feel the sense of belonging. Because of that, we are each responsible to make sure all of what’s left doesn’t get destroyed. Taking a look at what we contribute and how we can preserve.

This is a picture of a ranch. I chose a ranch because it’s apart of who I am which has lead to my values and beliefs that I now hold as an adult. I live on my grandparents ranch in New Mexico as a child. Coming from a busy city in Sacramento and moving to a ranch was a huge jump for me. The culture itself was a shock. There were no lights on the streets and no pavement on the roads. Everyone in the city knew everyone, it was like a huge family. I had the experience of raising animals and working on the ranch. The memories I made there I hold very close to my heart. As an adult when ever my heart is filling heavy or overwhelmed I think about the ranch and how hard my grandfather work to build it and the sacrifices her made for our family. It reminds me daily of how lucky I am everyday to have the opportunities that I have. I was a city dweller myself before the move and I can say that it change my perspective on life and nature. I had a bigger respect for the wild and even the way food was produced and made for commercial and non commercial produce. I was able to directly experiences the challenges workers faces working on ranches and farms and was able to gain a greater appreciation because of that. I believe that everyone experiences reflect their connections to nature, it’s not to say that one landscape allows a deeper connection then the other. They all serve a meaning and can be used to inspire those around it to take care of it.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/human-nature

http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_smallwonder_print.html

http://wildcountryoutfitters.com/utahranch/

https://www.thegreenfuse.org/plant.htm

Women In Nature

First, what is the connection between women and nature. In a article I found by Judith Plant, she states “Women have long been associated with nature – metaphorically, as in ‘mother Earth’, for instance. Our language says it all: a ‘virgin’ forest is one awaiting exploitation, as yet untouched by man. In society too, women have been associated with physical side of life. Our role has always been ‘closer to nature’, our natural work centred around human physical requirements: eating, sex, cleaning, the care of children and sick people. We have taken care of day-to-day life so that men have been able to go ‘out into the world’, to creates and enact methods of exploiting nature, including other human beings. Then to return to a home-life which waits in readiness. (A man’s home is his castle.)”

To me I see this a women being associated with nature and men being associated with material things like own a house, wife, family, wealth. Women are associated with gardens, roots, family, food ect.

Surreal Portraits Celebrate “Mother Earth” With Women Made Out of Nature

What Agarwal talks about is the connection between women and the environment. Going back  to Warren and Hobgoods western perspective it does not focus primarily on  the connection between women and nature. That is why it is important to study women globally.

When you look at the issues that women are dealing with in places where they are being deprived from basic resources like medical, food supply, water, education, etc. you have to take in consideration the magnitude of gender degration. Agarwal mentions that the struggle to survive in developing worlds has everything to do with environmental feminism.  The western perspective and non western perspective on eco-feminism is both equally important when you are trying to understand women issues at a global level. Women have been seen as closer to nature since the beginning of time so its inevitable that the relation between women and nature detects how women live.