The crux was that we as a society view nature from a sexist perspective. We have a view that it must be dominated, taken control of and used for our benefit. Nature is somehow lower than us and to be used (or abused) in any way we see fit. The reasoning is that it falls outside of what we see as culture (the good) and is just natural & unkempt (the bad). With this point of view we see ourselves as a dominant civilizer of nature and that it is our responsibility to take care of it, because it needs taking care of! Obviously I, and some others, have a divergent point of view. But as I've stated below I take the feminist position in regards to these subjects. Nature is to be loved as an equal and as part of us. My solution: Declare that nature is CULTURE!
And to keep going with my silly pictures to match serious posts theme:
I give you an actual picture from the lecture in class today!
I give you an actual picture from the lecture in class today!
Here is my rambly "things that come to mind when reading this post at 2:54 in the morning" comment...
ReplyDeletethe Feminist Earth Goddess folks.
do you know what I'm talking about? "I believe that women and men are different and women should be proud of their differences! Women are more loving, intuitive, earthy, in tune with themselves...!"
It's kind of sexist (actually very sexist?) but a possibly understandable reaction to exactly this kind of thing. Common society paints women as hysterical, over-emotional, ruled by hormones... And certain women come back with, "Well, that is our wisdom. We know how to express emotions and be in touch with our bodies (etc). We win."
It doesn't come from a HORRIBLE point of view in that it challenges the idea that "natural" and "instinctive" and "intuitive" are synonymous with "overgrown" "unruly" and "unstable". It just doesn't make the fairly obvious leap--that it's not just an area that Women Are Better At Naturally; in fact it's an area that many men have been denied access to for cultural reasons.
This is exactly why the Da Vinci Code pissed me off... "But this book should be right up your alley as a feminist because it's celebrating the female!" It's putting gender into boxes, it's not about equality, it's about more segregation...
This is the thing that your sexist feminists don't get: men have lost out on stuff too. Women managed to change their gender paradigm in leaps and bounds during the second wave--and then the backlash came in part because there was no corresponding change for men. The concept of masculinity needs the concept of femininity to exist. The latter changed while the former remained somewhat stagnant. Uh, duh, perhaps this is causing the males in this society some warranted concern? (The next problem being that many of them were dumb and started stupid "reclaiming masculinity by hunting stuff and talking about banging chicks in the woods together" movements instead of "let's expand our gender role too" movements.)
This is beginning to grow into a familiar manifesto you have perhaps already heard from me. But, um, my point being I guess that this is yet another example of where simply declaring the two sexes equal and continuing with dual gender roles doesn't cut it. Sexism will persist because the rather arbitrary dividing up of "masculine" and "feminine" traits will persist. The "feminine" traits need to be given their proper respect for sure--equally importantly, they need to stop being looked at as the feminine traits.
Oh gosh, I've made a comment longer than the post. This is what you get for nagging me to comment... there are floodgates at play here...
PS, you should check out Stiffed if you haven't because it deals with this stuff we've been talking about about recently. Plus there is football in it! Anti-gender sentiment and football: you said it didn't exist and I'm PROVING YOU WRONG. Ha.
ReplyDeleteYour right, if you leave a small patch of land to be natural, people will perceive it as overgrown and it won't be too long before it's abused with all kinds of rubbish being tipped there. This attitude has evolved because other species, adverse weather and plant poisons can be a formidable foe to both sexes, it's in the approach to those problems that the hunter and dominator, waging wars to win on everything has been the main influence in a patriarch society. Thats changing now tho and your course is part of that.
ReplyDeleteP.S I mean if you leave a small patch of land to go natural in an urban semi urban setting.
ReplyDelete