“This innovative and engaging anthology on women and nature reveals the

ongoing relevance of ecofeminism in today’s global world by emphasizing

postcolonialism, ecocriticism, queer ecology, animality, and feminist material-
ism. Anyone interested in the nuances and complexities of the women–nature
connection across histories, belief-systems, and regions will want to buy this
book.”
— Carolyn Merchant of the University of California at Berkeley,
U.S., has written on the connections between ecofeminism and
feminist theory and is the author of Earthcare: Women
and the Environment, among other books.

“The myriad ways that Earthly bodies—both human and non-human—

continue to be bound by structures of patriarchy and domination requires
sustained analysis. This transnational, transdisciplinary volume brings the lens
of ecofeminism to bear on timely topics, including transgender studies, animal
studies, and the new materialism.”
— Elizabeth Allison is the Program Chair of Ecology, Spirituality, and
Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, U.S.

“This fresh and exciting collection identifies privileges and invisibilities

overlooked in earlier ecofeminist thinking. Authors call for ethical self-reflexivity
and deep questioning of heteronormative assumptions reflecting a wide
range of interdisciplinary, postcolonial, and cross-cultural perspectives. From
ecosickness narratives to borderlands ecofeminism, this set of papers provides a
rich and timely offering by deeply thoughtful scholars across the globe.”
— Stephanie Kaza, Professor Emerita, University of Vermont, U.S.
Women and Nature?

Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment provides
a historical context for understanding the contested relationships between
women and nature, and it articulates strategies for moving beyond the dualistic
theories and practices that often frame those relationships.
In 1974, Françoise d’Eaubonne coined the term “ecofeminism” to raise
awareness about interconnections between women’s oppression and nature’s
domination in an attempt to liberate women and nature from subordination.
Since then, ecofeminism has attracted scholars and activists from various disci-
plines and positions to assess the relationship between the cultural human and
the natural non-human through gender reconsiderations. The contributors to
this volume present critical and constructive perspectives on ecofeminism
throughout its history, from the beginnings of ecofeminism in the 1970s through
to contemporary and emerging developments in the field, drawing on animal
studies, postcolonialism, film studies, transgender studies, and political ecology.
This interdisciplinary and international collection of essays demonstrates the
ongoing relevance of ecofeminism as a way of understanding and responding
to the complex interactions between genders, bodies, and the natural environ-
ment. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecofeminism as well
as those involved in environmental studies and gender studies more broadly.

Douglas A. Vakoch is President of METI International, a nonprofit research

and educational organization devoted to Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(METI) and supporting the sustainability of human culture on multigenerational
timescales, which is essential for long-term METI research.

Sam Mickey is Adjunct Professor in the Theology and Religious Studies

Department at the University of San Francisco, U.S.
Routledge Environmental Humanities
Series editors: Iain McCalman and Libby Robin

Editorial Board
Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK
Alison Bashford, University of Cambridge, UK
Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK
Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia
Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham, UK
Jodi Frawley, University of Sydney, Australia
Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia
Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
Jennifer Newell, American Museum of Natural History, New York, US
Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK
Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, US
Paul Warde, University of East Anglia, UK
Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia
International Advisory Board
William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK
Sarah Buie, Clark University, USA
Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA
Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA
Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of
Edinburgh, UK
Deborah Bird Rose, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of
Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson
Centre, Ludwig-Maxilimilians-Universität, Germany
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA
Kirsten Wehner, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia
The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture
recognising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution
and resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl,
overpopulation, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture.
The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future
environmental challenges has shifted the epicenter of environmental studies away from
an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the
human-focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences.
We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines
for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an
international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership
comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thoughtful
readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change.
Women and Nature?
Beyond Dualism in Gender,
Body, and Environment

Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch and

Sam Mickey
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam
Mickey individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-05342-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-16724-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Notes on contributors xi
Editor’s foreword xix
SAM MICKEY

PART I
Overview 1

Introduction 3
KAREN YA-CHU YANG

1 Françoise d’Eaubonne and ecofeminism: rediscovering

the link between women and nature 10
LUCA VALERA

PART II
Rethinking animality 25

2 A retreat on the “river bank”: perpetuating patriarchal

myths in animal stories 27
ANJA HÖING

3 Visual patriarchy: PETA advertising and the

commodification of sexualized bodies 43
STEPHANIE BARAN

4 Ethical transfeminism: transgender individuals’ narratives

as contributions to ethics of vegetarian ecofeminisms 57
ANJA KOLETNIK
viii Introduction
PART III
Constructing connections 75

5 The women–nature connection as a key element in the

social construction of Western contemporary motherhood 77
ADRIANA TEODORESCU

6 The nature of body image: the relationship between women’s

body image and physical activity in natural environments 96
DENISE MITTEN AND CHIARA D’AMORE

7 Writing women into back-to-the-land: feminism,

appropriation, and identity in the 1970s magazine
Country Women 117
VALERIE PADILLA CARROLL

PART IV
Mediating practices 133

8 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” in environmental

dialogues 135
SHLOMIT TAMARI

9 “Yo soy mujer” ¿yo soy ecologista? Feminist and ecological

consciousness at the Women’s Intercultural Center 154
CHRISTINA HOLMES

10 The politics of land, water and toxins: reading the

life-narratives of three women oikos-carers from Kerala 167
R. SREEJITH VARMA AND SWARNALATHA RANGARAJAN

11 Ecofeminism and the telegenics of celebrity in documentary

film: the case of Aradhana Seth’s Dam/Age (2003) and
the Narmada Bachao Andolan 185
REENA DUBE

Afterword 205
IZABEL F. O. BRANDÃO

Index 216
Acknowledgments

As co-editors of this anthology, we must express thanks to the contributors, for

without their thoughtful work this volume would not exist: Karen Ya-Chu
Yang, Luca Valera, Anja Höing, Stephanie Baran, Anja Koletnik, Adriana
Teodorescu, Denise Mitten, Chiara D’Amore, Valerie Padilla Carroll, Shlomit
Tamari, Christina Holmes, Sreejith Varma, Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Reena
Dube, and Izabel F. O. Brandão. We are grateful for their perspectives and their
contributions to the ongoing development of ecofeminism. We would like to
thank Rebecca Brennan, Kelly Watkins, and everyone else involved with the
editorial team at Routledge. We appreciate their support for this work and their
expertise in ushering it into publication.
Doug Vakoch is grateful to the members of METI International’s Board of
Directors for their friendship and creative collaboration. It is rare to find a
community that sees a natural link between sustainability and the search for
life in the universe, as reflected in a strategic plan that affirms the “ways that
ecofeminism can provide insights into fostering environmental sustainability on
multigenerational timescales.” Doug especially thanks Harry and Joyce Letaw
for their ongoing intellectual and financial contributions to METI. For creating
new publishing opportunities for scholars working at the interface of literature
and environment, he thanks the members of the Advisory Board of Lexington
Books’ Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series. Finally, to his wife, Julie Bayless,
Doug is grateful in more ways than he can or will share here.
Sam Mickey would like to extend particular thanks to family, friends,
students, and colleagues who support this work, including the University of
San Francisco, where Sam teaches in the Theology and Religious Studies
Department and on Environmental Studies program. The learning community
at USF is welcoming and empowering for research committed to more peaceful,
just, and sustainable relationships among genders, bodies, and environments.
Sam would also like to thank the ecofeminists with whom he has been in
conversation personally and professionally, including particularly informative
and compelling dialogue with Kimberly Carfore, Lois Lorentzen, Catherine
Keller, Whitney Bauman, and Donna Haraway.
x Acknowledgments
Finally, acknowledgments must also be given to the nonhuman bodies and
environments that have been part of this book—the life, land, air, and water
that has nourished and inspired the contributors and provided materials for the
publication and distribution of this book.

Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey

Contributors

Stephanie Baran is a Ph.D. student and lecturer at the University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, U.S. Previously, she was an adjunct lecturer at
Kankakee Community College and Prairie State College, teaching several
semesters of introductory sociological theory and race and ethnicity courses.
She received her MA in Sociology from DePaul University in Chicago,
U.S. She is a student, researcher and activist and is an avid student of Marxist
theory. Her academic interests include studying theory, racism, sociology of
the body, feminist and Marxist theory. Her master’s research paper, “Parsing
White Supremacy: An Exploratory Study of Political Thought and Beliefs,”
was published with Heathwood Institute and Press in December 2014.
She also published a personal essay entitled “Scars, Womanness, and
Motherhood” to Feministing.com in May 2014. And most recently, “Access
to Parlay: Freedom of Speech” was published to Heathwood Institute
and Press in February, 2015. Her hobbies include being a fiery feminist, a
gay and trans ally, and working toward total social justice. She currently
resides in Milwaukee with her cat, Harley.
Izabel F. O. Brandão is Professor of Literatures in English, and Contemporary
Brazilian Women Writers at the Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil.
Her publications include A imaginação do feminino segundo D. H. Lawrence
(“The imagination of the feminine according to D. H. Lawrence,” Edufal,
1999), and books on Brazilian women writers and feminist literary criticism
from an interdisciplinary perspective on the body, such as O corpo em revista
(“The body under scrutiny,” 2005), Gênero & outros lugares (“Gender &
Other Places,” 2009, in collaboration). She is currently editing (in collabora-
tion) a feminist anthology in translation (Traduções da cultura: perspectivas
crítcas feministas 1970–2010 [“Translations of Culture: Feminist Perspectives
1970–2010”], forthcoming), and a book provisionally entitled Encontros
feministas com D. H. Lawrence (“Feminist encounters with D. H. Lawrence,”
forthcoming). She is also a poet and has three books published Espiral de fogo
(“Fire Spiral,” 1998), Ilha de olhos e espelhos (“Island of eyes and mirrors,”
2003) and As horas da minha alegria (“The hours of my joy,” 2013).
xii Contributors
Chiara D’Amore holds a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education from Prescott
College, U.S., is the founder and director of Columbia Families in Nature,
and is a Toyota-Audubon TogetherGreen Fellow. Her research is focused
on understanding the effects of time spent in nature on personal, social, and
ecological well-being. She recently received the Howard County Celebrating
Excellence, Successes in Bloom award for her work engaging mixed ages
in educational nature experiences. She currently serves on the Board of
Directors for World House Community Supported Education and the
Audubon Society of Central Maryland. She holds a Master of Science in
Environmental Science and Engineering and works as an environmental
consultant, focusing on voluntary environmental program design, imple-
mentation, and evaluation. Recent publications include: “Thriving Through
Nature: Fostering Children’s Executive Function Skills,” a leadership series
paper with the Children & Nature Network (2015); “Nurtured Nature:
The connection between care for children and care for the environment”
in Pedagogies of Kindness and Respect: On the Lives and Education of Children
(2015); “Cultivating Connection and Care – The Case for Family Nature
Clubs” in the Journal of Sustainability Education (March 2015); and “Family
Adventures in Nature Club Guidebook” for the Izaak Walton League of
America (2015).
Reena Dube is an Associate Professor of Global Literature and Film and
has published two books: Satyajit Ray’s “The Chess Players” and Postcolonial
Theory: Culture, Labour and the Value of Alterity (2005) and a coauthored book,
Female Infanticide in India: A Women’s Cultural History (2005). She has
published articles on film, lyric poetry of Meera, Bhats and Charans, subaltern
resistance, in journals like Postscript, Boundary 2, Works and Days, and Subaltern
Studies. She has been the editor of the journal Studies in the Humanities
published by the English Department at the Indiana University of
Pennsylvania since 2010. Currently she is in the process of putting together
an edited book on cityscapes.
Anja Höing studied English and Biology at the University of Osnabrück,
Germany. She obtained her Master of Education (M.Ed.) in 2011, and is
now employed as a research assistant at the institute of English and American
Studies at the University of Osnabrück, where she is working on her Ph.D.
on religion and culture in English animal stories, and teaches a range of
undergraduate courses on British literature. Her main research interests lie
in the fields of animals in children’s literature, representations of nature and
ecosystems and environmentalism in literature. She presented her research
at several conferences, such as “Cosmopolitan Animals” (2012), “Reading
Animals” (2014), the ASLE “Green Knowledge” conference (2015), and the
1st and 2nd “Global Conference: The Animal and Human Bond” by Inter-
Disciplinary (2014 and 2015). One of her conference papers on the topics
of Richard Adams’s The Plague Dogs has since been published in the edited
volume Who’s Talking Now? – Multispecies Relations from Human and Animals’
 Contributors xiii
Point of View and other papers are soon to follow. She is also a member of
the ASLE-associated postgraduate workshop “Environment, Literature,
Culture” (ELC).
Christina Holmes is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies at DePauw University in Indiana, U.S., where she teaches inter-
disciplinary courses on ecofeminism and environmental justice, women of
color in the U.S., and transnational feminism. She completed her Master’s
degree at Oxford University and earned her doctorate in Women’s, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University. Her current research
explores the intersections between ecofeminism, new material feminisms,
and Chicana studies—a manuscript on this topic won the National Women’s
Studies Association First Book Prize and is forthcoming with the University
of Illinois Press (2016). While working on a draft of this chapter, Christina
was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at
the University of Sydney.
Anja Koletnik is a transfeminist queer activist and freelance academic from
Slovenia. Anja holds a B.A. in Social Work from University of Ljubljana,
Slovenia, and an M.A. in Gender Studies from Central European University,
Hungary. They are particularly interested in the fields of transgender studies,
queer theory, fat studies, embodiments and feminist new materialisms.
They have presented papers at “(Im)possibly Queer International Feminisms,”
the 2nd International Feminist Journal of Politics Conference, sponsored
by Centre for Advanced international theory, University of Sussex, “Body
Discourses/Body Politics and Agency” held by The Gender Research
Office, University of Vienna and “New Materialist Politics and Economies
of Knowledge” held by the Faculty of Law, University of Maribor. Anja has
various years of experience in LGBTQ+ and feminist activism and is the
founder and director of Slovenia’s first transgender specific non-governmental
organization Institute Transfeminist Iniciative TransAkcija. Their current
work is mostly focusing on legitimization and recognition of the genders,
gender identities and transgender/gender variant identities within LGBT
activism, feminisms and academia in Slovenia.
Sam Mickey is Adjunct Professor in the Theology and Religious Studies
Department and the Environmental Studies program at the University of San
Francisco in San Francisco, California, U.S. He is the author of multiple books,
including Coexistentialism and the Unbearable Intimacy of Ecological Emergency
(2016), Whole Earth Thinking and Planetary Coexistence: Ecological Wisdom at the
Intersection of Religion, Ecology, and Philosophy (Routledge, 2015), and On the
Verge of a Planetary Civilization: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (2014). He is also
co-editor (with Sean Kelly and Adam Robbert) of The Variety of Integral
Ecologies: Nature, Culture, and Knowledge in the Planetary Era (SUNY, 2017). He
blogs regularly at BecomingIntegral.com.
xiv Contributors
Denise Mitten is the chair of the Sustainability Education Program at Prescott
College, U.S. She is internationally recognized for her innovative scholarship
in outdoor and environmental pedagogy, ethics, and gender, serves as a
reviewer and/or board member for academic journals such as the Journal of
Experiential Education and Journal of Sustainable Education. She has published
more than 30 papers and co-authored Natural Environments and Human
Health and co-edited Experiential Education Theory and Practice. In 2015
Denise received the Distinguished Researcher Award for her creative and
innovative impacts to research within the experiential education community.
A founder of “Woodswomen” in the U.S., she is a world-renowned adven-
ture guide (Mt. McKinley/Denali, Himalayas) and an early promoter of
ecotourism. Through her leadership, Woodswomen, Inc. offered a venue
for women to heal in nature and develop outdoor living skills. Starting with
the Girl Scouts in the 1960s, she has worked with many populations,
including youth, nuns in recovery, survivors of abuse, and women felons,
and has led trips from SCUBA to mountaineering, rafting, kayaking, rock
climbing, skiing, cycling, and more. She combines the ethic of care with
expert outdoor skills guiding people in ecopsychology and therapeutic
experiences in nature.
Valerie Padilla Carroll is Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and
Sexuality Studies at Kansas State University, U.S., where she teaches classes
on feminist justice movements and environmentalism as well as classes that
explore the intersections of gender, race, class, and nature in film and televi-
sion. Her publications include, “Sustainable Universities: Rhetoric versus
Facts,” in Environmental Policy is Social Policy – Social Policy is Environmental
Policy: Towards Sustainability Policy (2013) and the upcoming “Bridging the
Radical/Mainstream Environmentalist Divide: Affect and Objectivity in
the Writings and Interpretations of Aldo Leopold,” in The Aldo Leopold
Reader (2016). Her current research centers on histories of feminist and other
radical back-to-the-land movements. She is preparing a book provisionally
titled Who Get to go Back-to-the-Land? The Gendered and Racialized Self in in
Self-Sufficiency, which will analyze 20th- and 21st-century popular culture
manifestations of U.S. back-to-the-land movements. She is involved in
developing Transition Towns and promoting permaculture in Kansas.
Swarnalatha Rangarajan is Professor of English at the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras,
India. She was a Fulbright Pre-doctoral fellow at Harvard University
in 1999–2000 and was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of Madras in
2002. She is the founding editor of the Indian Journal of Ecocriticism (IJE) and
has served as Guest Editor for two special issues on Indian ecosophy for The
Trumpeter. She has published articles on ecocriticism in several journals and
serves on the editorial board of ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature
and Environment), the prime journal in the domain of ecocriticism. She
was awarded the Charles Wallace Fellowship at CRASSH (Cambridge
 Contributors xv
University) in 2013 to work on (co-edited) book projects titled Ecoambiguity,
Community, and Development: Toward a Politicized Ecocriticism (2014) and
Ecocriticism of the Global South (2015) published by Lexington Books.
Swarnalatha Rangarajan also dabbles in creative writing and her short fiction
has appeared in anthologies of publishing houses like Penguin, Zubaan, and
Westland, to name a few. Her first novel, Final Instructions, which has a
prominent ecosophical theme, was published in 2016.
Shlomit Tamari is a lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the department
of Interdisciplinary Studies, Sapir Academic College, Israel. She was awarded
her Ph.D. from Ben-Gurion University in the Negev in 2005. Her publica-
tions include two books and several articles: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
Phenomenology of Perception: A Basis for Sharing the Earth (2004, with Haim
Gordon); Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Education (2008, Hebrew);
“Active Environmental Citizenship at the Hebron-Bessor Drainage Basin”
(2015, with Renana Ilan); “The Marcus Family Campus: New Design and
Contemporary Architecture” (2014, with Inbal B. Gitler); “How Merleau-
Ponty Can Provide a Philosophical Foundation for Vandana Shiva’s Views
on Biodiversity” (2011). In addition, Shlomit Tamari is an educator and
environmental activist who led the Hebron Stream High Court petition
and public campaign. She is an initiator and leader of the Forum for the
Hebron-Bessor Drainage Basin and a member of the executive board of
Sustainable Development for the Negev Organization.
Adriana Teodorescu has a PhD in Comparative Literature (2008-2011) and
is a PhD Student in Sociology, Babes,-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca,
Romania (2016-present). She is a member of the American Comparative
Literature Association (ACLA), The Association for the Study of Death and Society,
UK, and the Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER)—the
Literature Research Unit and the Sociology Research Unit, Greece, and
she worked as a Visiting Scholar at The American University of Paris in 2010.
Her latest publications include “The Contemporary Imaginary of Work:
Symbolic Immortality within the Postmodern Corporate Discourse,” in
Postmortal Society. Towards a Sociology of Immortality (2017). She has been
co-organizer of the annual “International Conference Dying and Death
in 18th-21st Century Europe” since 2010. In March 2016, she organized
a seminar at Harvard University (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Death
Representations in Literature: Epistemological, Social, Anthropological and Aesthetic
Aspects), as part of the ACLA’s Annual Meeting. She co-organized “Death,
Dying and the Disposal of the Body Conference: Eastern and Western Ways
of Dying and Death” (DDD12). She is editor of Death Representations
in Literature: Forms and Theories (2015), and co-editor of Dying and Death in
18th-21st Century Europe (2 volumes, 2011 and 2014). Her fields of interest
are death studies, gender studies, sociology of ageing and old age, comparative
literature and cultural studies.
xvi Contributors
Douglas A. Vakoch is President of METI International (http://meti.org), a
non-profit research and educational organization devoted to Messaging
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) and offering programs to the public
and to the scholarly community that foster increased awareness of the chal-
lenges facing our civilization’s longevity, while encouraging individual
and community activities that support the sustainability of human culture
on multigenerational timescales, which is essential for long-term METI
research. His edited books include Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives
on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (2011), Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment,
Women, and Literature (2012), and (with Fernando Castrillón) Ecopsychology,
Phenomenology, and the Environment: The Experience of Nature (2014). He serves
as general editor of the Ecocritical Theory and Practice series (https://
rowman.com/Action/SERIES/LEX/ETAP), published by Lexington
Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.
Luca Valera is Professor of Bioethics and Moral Philosophy at Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Santiago de Chile. Luca completed his studies in
Philosophy at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, before
undertaking a Ph.D. in Bioethics at Università Campus Bio-Medico di
Roma. He has been Lecturer in Fundamentals of Anthropology and Ethics
in the Faculties of Medicine and Engineering at the University Campus
Bio-Medico in Rome, Lecturer in Human Ecology and Sustainability in the
Faculty of Engineering at the University Campus Bio-Medico in Rome
and Lecturer in Medical Anthropology in the Faculty of Medicine and
Surgery at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome. His main interests
are: Moral philosophy, Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Ecology and
Sustainability and Gender Philosophy. His latest publications are: Arne
Næss. Introduzione all’ecologia (2015); Educare al Ben-Essere. Lineamenti di etica
(Aracne, Roma, 2015, co-author M. T. Russo); Ecologia Umana. Le sfide
etiche del rapporto uomo/ambiente, (2013); “Peter Singer and Food; Human
Ecology and Food,” in P. B. Thompson, D. M. Kaplan (eds.), Encyclopedia
of Food and Agricultural Ethics (2014); “Post-Humanism: Still or Beyond
Humanism,” Cuadernos de bioetica, 25/3 (2014), 481–491; “Desarrollo
humano sostenible: una visión aristotélica,” Isegoria. Revista de la filosofia moral
y politica, 51 (2014), 671–690 (co-author A. Marcos); “Un nuovo cancro per
il pianeta? Natura, ambiente ed essere umano nell’etica ambientale
contemporanea,” Teoria. Rivista di filosofia, 2 (2014), 175–192.
R. Sreejith Varma is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Humanities
and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, where
he works on green subaltern writing in Malayalam. He holds M.Phil
in Comparative Literature and M.A. in English from the University of
Hyderabad. He has attended/presented papers in several national and inter-
national conferences on comparative literature and ecocriticism. His publi-
cations include “Comparative Literature and Translation: The Changing
Contours of Relationship” in the journal Scholar Critic (2014), “Writing
 Contributors xvii
Back: Narayan’s Kocharethi as the First Adivasi Novel in Malayalam” in the
journal Luminaire (2015) and a book chapter titled “The Possibilities of a
River and a Dance: An Ecoethnographic Analysis of Kuttan Aarangottu
Vayali’s Bhagavathy aattu” (co-authored with Swarnalatha Rangarajan) for
Ecodocumentaries: Critical Essays, edited by Rayson K. Alex and Susan Deborah
(2016). His Malayalam-English translations of two short stories by Narayan,
the first tribal fiction-writer from Kerala, have appeared in the journals
eDhvani (2015) and Muse India (2015).
Karen Ya-Chu Yang is an Assistant Professor of the Department of English at
Tamkang University, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative
Literature from Indiana University–Bloomington in 2013. Her research inter-
ests include East–West comparative studies, postmodernism and post-
colonialism, contemporary fiction and film, as well as feminist and ecological
inquiries. She has received research grants from Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation
(2012–2013) and Taiwan’s National Science Council (2014–2015). Some
of her publications include “Prince of the Himalayas: A Reconstruction of
Tibetan Cultural Identities through the Meeting of Tibet, Shakespeare,
and China” (2010), “Pig-Women on the Meat-Market: Problems and
Potentialities of Ecofemnist Hybridity” (2013), “Rewriting Canonical Love
Stories From the Peripheries” (2013), “Passionately Documenting: Taiwan’s
Latest Cinematic Revival” (2015), and “Angels and Feathers: Transcorporeal
Morphing in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus” (2016).
Editor’s foreword
Sam Mickey

This book grew out of a shared interest among the editors and contributors in
the ongoing development of ecological feminism, or, as it is more commonly
and succinctly referred to, ecofeminism. The chapters in this book present
critical and constructive perspectives on ecofeminism throughout its history,
from the beginnings of ecofeminism in the 1970s through contemporary and
emerging developments in relationship to critiques it has received and other
fields of study with which it intersects.
First finding explicit expression in the 1970s, ecofeminism began with various
efforts to develop theories and methods for understanding and responding to the
complex connections between gender roles, sexually differentiated bodies, and
the life, land, air, and water that make up the natural environment. Focusing
on intersections of humans and non-humans, ecofeminism thus stands in contrast
to feminism, which views human issues in relative isolation from ecological
concerns, and in contrast to ecological descriptions of non-human organisms and
ecosystems. Ecofeminism accounts for the intimate intertwining of human
and non-human ways of being. Accordingly, ecofeminists are often critical of
the dualistic tendency to treat humans and non-humans as two mutually
exclusive categories. Historically and presently, dualistic categories are used as
justification for the aggrandizing of humans as the sole subjects in the universe
and the subordination of non-humans as mere objects with no agency or intrinsic
value. Not only is the human/nature dualism harmful toward non-human
modes of existence, but it also has disastrous consequences for humans, as quickly
becomes obvious to anyone who attempts to live without regular environmental
inputs of food, clean freshwater, and breathable air.
Although the word “ecofeminism” is a singular noun, ecofeminism is not
simple or homogeneous. It involves a dynamic diversity of perspectives, chang-
ing and developing over time while traversing academic fields and activist forces
across multiple subject positions of race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation,
religion, and nationality. This anthology reflects that diversity, both in the topics
addressed in the chapters and in the backgrounds of the contributors, who
represent a variety of nations, including Brazil, USA, Taiwan, India, Germany,
Italy, Slovenia, Romania, and Israel. This anthology also reflects the shared
commitment of ecofeminists to overcome the dualistic hierarchy that
xx Editor’s foreword
categorically separates humans from the natural environment. Moreover, the
human/nature dualism intersects in various ways with many other dualisms.
One of the crucial insights of ecofeminists is that the human/nature dualism
intersects with the dualism between men and women. Just as the human/nature
dualism is used historically and presently as justification for human subjects
exploiting the natural world as mere objects, the man/woman dualism is used
as justification for exploitative attitudes and actions of men toward women.
Subjectivity is attributed predominantly to maleness and masculinity, while
femaleness and femininity are objectified. Racist and classist hierarchies follow
a related logic whereby differences are reduced to dualistic hierarchies that
grant subjectivity and agency to one pole of the dualism while the other pole
is reduced to an object of control. Dualisms of whiteness/color and rich/poor
are thus also a profound concern for ecofeminists, as are dualisms of reason/
emotion, mind/body, human/animal, sameness/difference, cisgender/trans-
gender, and self/other. Ecofeminists have been critiquing those dualisms and
offering alternatives since the 1970s. However, much more work remains to
be done. Those dualisms pervade modern societies, and their roots go deep into
the history of civilization. The social system oriented around the rule of men
(i.e., patriarchy) is thousands of years old. Dualisms are so deeply entrenched
that it is going to take more than a few decades of ecofeminism to completely
fix the problem.
The anthology aims to further the development of ecofeminist critiques of
and alternatives to dualisms. This entails addressing the shortcomings of earlier
articulations of ecofeminism, some of which tend to treat different dualisms
as symmetrical to one another, as if the objectification of women by men is
exactly parallel to the control of emotions by reason or the exploitation of the
environment by humans. While dualistic hierarchies intersect, it is important to
attend to the differences between them and not overemphasize their symmetry
or continuity. This point has been noted by critics of ecofeminism and by
ecofeminists themselves who embrace intersectional modes of analysis. It has
also been noted in other fields of inquiry that address intersections of human
and non-human modes of existence, including fields like political ecology,
environmental ethics, animal studies, ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism),
and environmental humanities. The chapters in this anthology provide updates
for ecofeminism, responding to critiques of earlier versions of ecofeminism and
articulating alliances between ecofeminism and other related fields of inquiry.
One could say that this volume is facilitating a return of ecofeminism.
However, this is not precisely a come-back or resurgence. Ecofeminism never
went away. Since its inception, it has been multiplying and diversifying in
response to critical and constructive feedback and in response to the emergence
of other disciplines oriented around human/nature entanglements. For instance,
postcolonial studies and queer theory challenged the essentialism of much
ecofeminism, but ecofeminism did not disappear. Instead, ecofeminists began
rethinking their ideas of unchanging definitions or “essences” of women and
nature. Understandings of essences that apply in all times and places were
 Editor’s foreword xxi
replaced with more nuanced understandings of the ways that definitions of
women and nature are constructed and performed across different cultures,
histories, and places. As ecofeminist understandings of women and nature have
changed, new designations have emerged for studies of complex connections
between gender, body, and environment. Ecofeminism is thus closely connected
with areas of study such as feminist ecocriticism, queer ecology, and new feminist
materialism.
The book is divided into four sections, beginning with an overview that
includes an introductory chapter and an analysis of the beginnings of ecofeminism
in the work of the French feminist who first coined the term, Françoise
d’Eaubonne. The second section highlights the contested role of animality in
women–nature connections. The next section explores different conditions
under which women–nature connections are constructed, elucidating the
variously harmful and beneficial consequences of such construction. The final
section considers ecofeminist practices that facilitate mediation and reciprocity
across differences. The book concludes with an Afterword that draws together
contrasts and common themes from all the chapters.
Overall, this volume aims to further ecofeminist thought and practice while
also re-establishing grounds for ecofeminism in light of its critical reception.
The contributors facilitate dialogue between different areas of environmental
humanities and gender studies, representing the diversity of contemporary voices
in ecofeminism, and empowering discourses and practices that critique and
present alternatives to the dualistic hierarchies that typically frame ecological
and social relationships (e.g., masculine/feminine, reason/emotion, native/
foreign, cultural/natural, self/other). This anthology demonstrates the ongoing
relevance of ecofeminism for understanding and responding to the complex
interactions of genders, bodies, and environments in the diverse contexts of a
globalized civilization.
Part I
Overview
Introduction
Karen Ya-Chu Yang

In 1974, Françoise d’Eaubonne boldly coined the term “ecofeminism” in her

foundational text Le féminisme ou la mort. She introduced the idea to raise
awareness about interconnections between women’s oppression and nature’s
domination in an attempt to liberate women and nature from unjust subordi-
nations. Since then, ecofeminism has attracted scholars and activists from various
disciplines and positions to assess the relationship between the cultural human
and the natural non-human through gender reconsiderations. The coalition
of women studies with ecocriticism has incited much controversy among
feminists. After the women’s suffrage movement’s fight for political equality
during the 19th and early 20th centuries, feminist projects of the 1960s expanded
gender rights to social relations such as the workplace as well as to reproductive
rights and problems of domestic abuse. Into the 1980s, an emerging new
generation started to profess dissatisfaction toward the exclusive essentialism and
oppressive universalism of previous feminist movements. Research from various
fields of study, ranging from postcolonial and diasporic decentering attempts
to poststructuralist and queer deconstructions, joined forces with feminist
programs to destabilize and diversify the definition and fixity of binary opposi-
tions and restrictive categorizations. As a result, the rise of ecofeminism or
ecological feminism during the 1980s evoked much concern for fear of a
fallback into dualistic oppressions by realigning women with nature, body, and
the environment. For the movement’s supporters, however, the realignment
between women and nature is not an essentialist return to feminizations of
nature or naturalizations of women that previous feminist movements have
fought hard to dismantle; on the contrary, ecofeminism argues for critical
deconstructions of historical, cultural, and social dominions of women and
nature in favor of a more complex, diversified, and hybrid bridging of the
relationship between women and nature.
Ecofeminism reconsiders nature and environmental issues from a feminist
perspective to uncover the perseverance of androcentric dualist thinking in
society. Earlier writings such as Susan Griffin’s Women and Nature: The Roaring
Inside Her (1978) traced the biased treatment of women and non-humans in
Western history to depict women’s alliance with nature as a result of the
dominance of patriarchy and androcentrism. Into the 1980s and 1990s, scholars
4 Karen Ya-Chu Yang
continued to attack oppressions of women and nature and called for their joint
emancipation from Man’s oppression and subordination (Shiva 1988; Sturgeon
1997; Sandilands 1999). To do so, ecofeminist inquiries took to criticizing and
demolishing the sovereignty of Western dualistic thinking. Some representative
works include Elizabeth Fishers’s Woman’s Creation: Sexual Evolution and the
Shaping of Society (1979), Marilyn French’s Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and
Morals (1985), Carol J. Adams’s The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990) and her
co-edited books with Josephine Donovan such as Animals and Women: Feminist
Theoretical Explorations (1995), Greta Gaard’s edited volume Ecofeminism:
Women, Animals, Nature (1993), Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of
Nature (1993), and Lynda Birke’s Feminism, Animals, Science: The Naming of the
Shrew (1994), Noël Sturgeon’s Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory
and Political Action (1997), and Catriona Sandilands’s The Good-Natured Feminist:
Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy (1999).
Through reflective re-associations between women and nature, ecofeminism
aims to destabilize hierarchal dualisms where men rule as reason, subject, and
master colonizing women as nature, object, and slave. This calls for an “anti-
dualist ecological feminism” (Plumwood 1993, 40) so women can “move to a
further stage in their relations with nature, beyond that of powerless inclusion
in nature, beyond that of reaction against their old exclusion from culture, and
towards an active, deliberate and reflective positioning of themselves with nature
against a destructive and dualising form of culture” (39). Bringing women back
in contact with nature does not suggest reinstalling fixed binaries; rather, such
attempts aim to directly challenge the oppressiveness of dualistic hierarchies
dominating the core of Western philosophy. Critical attention to the inter-
section between women’s oppression and environmental crises raises awareness
to operating power politics which involve the sufferings of various groups
marginalized as subordinate Others. Like Karen Warren contends, “Ecofeminist
philosophy extends familiar feminist critiques of social isms of domination
(e.g., sexism, racism, classicism, heterosexism, ageism, anti-Semitism) to nature
(i.e., naturism)” (1997, 4). The way we treat nature is directly related to and
reflected in the way we treat each other (O’Brien and Cahn 1996; Gaard 2001;
Beyer 2014). The goal is to re-access human’s relationship with our material
bodies and environment in a non-dominating manner so as to evoke more
dynamic interactions with and between other human and biological communities.
Into the new millennium, with the emergence of environmental humanities,
inquiries into women–nature relationships continue to broaden with diversity
via approaches concerning ecocriticism, critical animal studies, queer theory,
vegetarianism, biodiversity, new materialism, care theory, participatory episte-
mology as well as explorations from interdisciplinary, postcolonial, and cross-
cultural perspectives. In underscoring nature and the body, the materialist
turn of ecofeminist studies seeks to reconceive human and non-human relation-
ships by looking into the dynamic interactions between material elements and
social constructions. This material–discursive mangling aims at a “dynamic,
nonessentialist and relational brand of materialist vitalism” (Braidotti 2014, 241).
 Introduction 5
As Serpil Oppermann remarks, “Material feminist epistemologies especially
encourage studies of sociocultural, literary, and ethical dimensions of the new
material paradigm, offering a compelling model which casts matter (all physical
substances) and bodies (human and non-human) not as mere objects of
knowledge, but as agents with vitality of their own, and as interrelated forces
beyond human control, linking human corporeality with non-human life
processes” (2013, 27). Material feminism conceives of our bodies as intimately
connected to the environment, as seen with Stacy Alaimo’s concept of “trans-
corporeality,” which envisions the movement across bodies as revealing “the
interchanges and interconnections between various bodily natures” (2010,
212). Also devoted to deconstructing binaries, feminist care theories criticize
universal judgments abstracted from detached reasoning, and instead practice
participatory epistemology set in context to draw out intersections between
care and justice, emotion and rationality, material and social/cultural/historical,
as well as human and non-human. Acknowledging these “agencies of entangle-
ment” generates the need for humans to develop feelings of care and sympathy
toward the various existences on our planet (Barad 2007, 33). The past few
years have witnessed an increase of collections which manifest interdisciplinary
and international observations produced from various backgrounds. Some
edited volumes of interest include Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View
(Cook 2008), Material Feminism (Alaimo and Heckman 2008), Species Matters:
Humane Advocacy and Cultural Theory (DeKoven and Lundblad 2012), East
Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader (Estok and Kim 2013), International
Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism (Gaard, Estok, and Oppermann 2013),
Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (Adams and
Gruen 2014), and The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the
Centre (Taylor and Twine 2014), A Political Ecology of Women, Water, and Global
Environmental Change (Buechler and Hanson 2015), Contemporary Perspectives on
Ecocriticism (Phillips and Rumens 2015).
Adding to a more multifaceted exploration of women–nature relationships,
this volume includes studies from various disciplines and perspectives to further
contemporary ecofeminism’s development beyond dualisms. The chapters
apply different methods to dismantle hierarchal binaries of disseverance for the
purpose of re-conceptualizing humans as dynamic beings of and participants in
nature–culture environmental systems. As Stacy Alaimo, “I believe that neither
a feminist retreat into nature where we pose as ‘angel[s] in the ecosystem,’
nor a feminist flight from nature is the answer. Instead, we must transform the
gendered concepts – nature, culture, body, mind, object, subject, resource,
agent, and others – that have been cultivated to denigrate and silence certain
groups of humans as well as nonhuman life” (10). Interconnectedness and
diversity constitute the essence of this interdisciplinary and international
collection of essays. This volume joins together researchers from literary, media,
postcolonial, sociology, environmental, gender and sexuality, psychology and
health, as well as theoretical professions to offer varied approaches to the subject
of women and nature. To forward the discipline of ecofeminist criticism,
6 Karen Ya-Chu Yang
selected chapters offer re-examinations of prominent ecofeminist theories by
François d’Eaubonne, Carol Adams, and Greta Gaard from fresh perspectives
such as maternity arguments, transgender studies, and new materialism. In
addition to research from the United States, this book also incorporates multiple
case studies discussing women–nature challenges and activism in Israel, Mexico,
and India. As a manifestation of scholars from various disciplines and national
backgrounds, this collection serves as a collaborative contribution to generating
more hybrid conversation regarding the global move beyond dualism in woman
and nature interrelationships.
The collection begins with Luca Valera’s chapter, which provides background
discussion on core ideas of Simone de Beauvoir and François d’Eaubonne.
In this opening chapter, Valera traces the roots of men’s domination of women
and nature to concepts of maternal dependency and care as well as to the major
theorists of the Scientific Revolution who defined the modern age. Valera’s
chapter discusses the historical and practical justification of ecofeminism and
the need to overcome dualistic thinking in order for humans to flourish in
harmony with nature and each other.
As a combination of feminist and ecological concerns, ecofeminism considers
anthropocentricism and androcentrism as going hand in hand. The rise of
critical animal studies draws attention to intersections between animal cruelty
and other forms of oppression to raise awareness to sufferings and operating
power politics behind human’s treatment of animals. These critiques have
proved highly productive for gender, social, and race studies. In feminist literary
studies, inquiries into animal metaphors and analogies offer insights and criticism
to human history’s and society’s understanding of and relation to animals.
New inclusions of queer studies and new materialism also provide alternative
explorations of bodies and identities under oppression and/or seeking trans-
gression. The following three chapters contribute to this growing concern for
animals in ecofeminist movements. Anja Höing discusses talking animal stories,
Stephanie Baran analyzes animal protection campaigns, and Anja Koletnik
attempts to further vegetarian ecofeminist arguments on animal rights.
Höing’s chapter, “A retreat on the ‘river bank’: perpetuating patriarchal myths
in animal stores,” draws up various talking animal stories from the 1970s to the
early 21st century which problematically perpetuate patriarchal ideologies as
natural myths. Höing argues that most of these stories operate within a Cartesian
dualist framework by gendering talking animal protagonists as male while
reducing female existence to passive objects of biological necessity. These
patriarchal naturalizations reinforce oppressions of essentialist dualism and
master narratives as they deprive females of their agency and materiality.
Turning to magazines, Baran’s chapter raises audience consciousness regard-
ing the problem of campaigning animal protection through sexualized and
racialized images. Focusing on advertisements released by the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Baran criticizes the PETA for endorsing
a “visualized patriarchy” which abuses rather than aids animals and women
along with other marginalized populations. Many of these ads are misogynistic,
 Introduction 7
racialist, and violent, and thus fail to realize environmental justice due to their
complicity to the “sex sells” mantra dominating capitalist society.
In “Ethical transfeminism: transgender individuals’ narratives as contributions
to ethics of vegetarian ecofeminisms,” Koletnik proposes “ethical transfeminism”
as a means to unbind ecofeminist discussions from dichotomous analytical frame-
works. In an attempt to further the study of vegetarian ecofeminism, Koletnik’s
concept builds off of Carol Adam’s and Greta Gaard’s canonical studies on meat
eating and animal suffering but seeks to expand discussions beyond the limiting
usages of gender identity politics. In combing transgender studies with new
materialist concepts, Koletnik’s ethical transfeminism practices transgressing
binary systems in its highlight on ethical self-reflexivity as well as nature and
culture/matter bi-directional causalities.
Adriana Teodorescu’s chapter, “The women–nature connection as a key
element in the social construction of Western contemporary motherhood,” also
takes to nuancing and challenging models of binary thinking. Teodorescu’s
chapter observes the contemporary Western construction of the “good mother”
paradigm, which idealizes women’s connection with nature in an overtly
positive and post-evolutionistic manner. She argues that the current stress on
the naturalness of childbirth, breastfeeding, and motherhood in fact limits
women’s choices and disempowers them from their capacity to reason. Having
children remains an essentialist value which needs to be deconstructed, first of
all, by tearing down the connection between women and a mythologized and
perfect nature.
While Teodorescu’s chapter criticizes the social construction of women–
nature relationships, the next chapter by Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore’s
turns to examining physical interactions between women and nature. Their
chapter discusses the many benefits of women–nature contact, in particular
how participating in outdoor activities can increase self-concept and relieve
women from body image pressures prescribed by society and culture. Their
own survey study supports the growing body of data which stress the physical
and spiritual productiveness of being in active contact with nature.
Also focusing on women’s direct contact with nature, Valerie Padilla Carroll’s
chapter addresses the potentialities and problems of women’s participation in
the U.S. back-to-the-land movement during the 1970s. Padilla Carroll
focuses on the feminist back-to-the-land magazine, Country Women, to illustrate
her arguments. For nearly a decade, Country Women provided a forum for active
feminists to promote self-sufficiency and gender justice. The publication’s
emphasis on embracing heterogeneity and other ethnicities and species,
however, was overshadowed by its fundamental prioritization of the white
Western subject as well as existing tensions between desires for individual
autonomy and feminist collective sisterhood. In the end, the author argues,
these self-writings generated progress but failed to bring about radical change.
The remaining four chapters of this volume expand the scope of environmental
protection propaganda and activism discussions across cultural and national
borders. Shlomit Tamari’s chapter provides a study of female environmentalist
8 Karen Ya-Chu Yang
Bilha Givon, who is a well-known personality involved in the environmental
protection movements in Israel. To examine Givon’s challenging role as a
mediator, Tamari brings in Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories on “reciprocity” and the
dialectics of the “third party” to lay ground for her reading of Givon’s interviews,
writings, and work. Christina Holmes’s chapter investigates various examples
of deep intersubjectivity at the Women’s Intercultural Center (WInC) near
New Mexico’s border with Mexico. Employing theory to action, Holmes
argues for WInC’s facilitation of ecological consciousness through its
practice of intersectional feminist environmentalism and celebration of the
interconnectedness of life.
The closing two chapters concern environmental issues from India. R. Sreejith
Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan discuss the life-narratives of C. K. Janu,
Leelakumari Amma, and Mayilamma from Kerala. They read these texts as
“ecosickness narratives” (Heather Houser 2014) which reveal the “partnership
ethics” (Carolyn Merchant 1995) between economic systems, people, and the
environment. They argue for the significance of “emotions” in promoting environ-
mental ethics and political actions to create a “human-sensitive environmentalism.”
The three grassroots ecotexts they discuss advocate a kind of “Earth Democracy”
(Vandana Shiva 2006) and optimism for active change. The final chapter, written
by Reena Dube, explores the intersection between ecofeminist endeavors
and documentary filming in a postcolonial Indian context. Taking the Narmada
Bachao Andolan movement as an example of ecofeminist struggle, Dube offers
a close reading of Aradhana Seth’s Dam/Age (2003), which features the post-
colonial writer turned transnational celebrity woman activist Arundhati Roy.
Dube’s analysis details the documentary’s innovative and instructive negotiation
with power relations between center and periphery as well as art and activism.
The essays collected in this volume aim to forward ecofeminism’s move
beyond dualism by detailing the intricacies and complications of woman–nature
relationships in a critical as well as compassionate manner. As natural beings,
commitment to nature seems only natural, but after dualism, how women are
to reconnect with nature remains an ongoing challenge and prospect. It is an
open question.

References
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——. 1995. Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explanations, ed. Carol J. Adams
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Alaimo, Stacy. 2000. Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
——. 2010. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Bloomington:
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Alaimo, Stacy and Susan Heckman, eds. 2008. Material Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
 Introduction 9
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement
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1 Françoise d’Eaubonne and
ecofeminism: rediscovering
the link between women
and nature
Luca Valera

It is often said that the exploitation of Women by Men is a reproachable

behavior. Nonetheless, very often we become aware of our destructive capacity
with regard to the environment and the exasperated exploitation we are
perpetrating with regard to natural resources, thanks, in general, to the press
and mass media. These are two different kinds of awareness; they are different
in appearance, but they are connected by a unique matrix, that of dominion,
which Françoise d’Eaubonne (1974, 220) had the courage and lucidity to bring
to light in an explicit manner for the first time in her well-known text
Le féminisme ou la mort. More specifically, it is the dominion over Women and
the dominion over Nature, or to put it better, the dominion of Man over
feminine and natural fragility.1 At the beginning of the 1970s d’Eaubonne
condensed in the term “ecofeminism” the idea that it would have been necessary
to create a movement of public opinion in order to rescue both Nature and
Women. Her intuition was not integrally innovative: the similarity of the
condition of Women and Nature (both denominated Mother) was a theme
already present in Greek mythology, for which the Mother par excellence is
Gaia (or Gea, the Mother Earth), who is generated and auto-generated as the
immortal daughter of Chaos:

In truth, first of all Chasm came to be, and then broad-breasted Earth, the
ever immovable seat of all the immortals who possess snowy Olympus’
peak and murky Tartarus in the depths of the broad-pathed earth, and Eros,
who is the most beautiful among the immortal gods, the limb-melter-he
overpowers the mind and the thoughtful counsel of all the gods and of
all human beings in their breasts. Earth first of all bore starry Sky, equal to
herself, to cover her on every side, so that she would be the ever immovable
seat for the blessed gods; and she bore the high mountains, the graceful
haunts of the goddesses, Nymphs who dwell on the wooded mountains.
(Hesiod 2006, 13)

The epic of Gaia, born beneath the precious mythical clothes told of by Hesiod,
will reappear later under the form of scientific theories; for example, in the
case of the hypothesis of the British scientist James Lovelock (Lovelock and
 Françoise d’Eaubonne and ecofeminism 11
Margulis 1974; Lovelock 1986), who would constitute the theoretic background
to all ecologisms (and therefore also to ecofeminism).
In this way, ecofeminism inherits that common sentiment that antedates its
genesis, just as ecologist ideas precede Haeckel’s formulation (Acot 1988) and
feminist ideas are prior to the birth of the aforementioned movement. In fact,
the thought and historical ground in which ecofeminism blossoms is the French
feminist tradition of the second half of the 20th century; in the middle of the
20th century, Simone de Beauvoir underlined that, in the logic of patriarchy,
Women and Nature were connected as they present themselves as the ‘Other’
in respect to the male:

It is male activity that in creating values has made of existence itself a value;
this activity has prevailed over the confused forces of life; it has subdued
Nature and Woman. We must now see how this situation has been per-
petuated and how it has evolved through the ages. What place has humanity
made for this portion of itself which, while included within it, is defined
as the Other? What rights have been conceded to it? How have men
defined it?
(de Beauvoir 1956, 98)

In the same way, Luce Irigaray brought to light in 1974 the phallocentric logic
that constitutes the theoretical background of all identification of Women
as strangers to the male universe (Irigaray 1987).2 If this is truly the historical
background of the ecofeminist tradition, it seems that it is the feminist element
that prevails over the ecologist one. Ecofeminism, thus, is not characterized as
“a special school of social ecology,” for it “addresses the basic dynamics of social
domination within the context of patriarchy” (Capra 1996, 9). Rather, it is a sort
of feminism that is particularly engaged in protecting Nature. As a consequence,
“ecofeminists see female experiential knowledge as a major source for an
ecological vision of reality” (Capra 1996, 9): the ecologist approach is not
sufficient to sustain a feminist revolution.
In order to defend ecofeminism, we could affirm that it “represents the union
of the radical ecology movement, or what has been called ‘deep ecology,’ and
feminism” (Ruether 1996, 322). If the true approach of ecology helps feminism
to re-contextualize the human being within his own natural environment,
healing the fracture between Homo sapiens and Nature, then feminism enriches
the ecologist prospective through a more aware and complete consideration
of the human being.
It is thanks to d’Eaubonne that the most vehement criticism of the distanc-
ing of Man from Nature is back in vogue. The critique concerns his presump-
tion of omnipotence generated by technological power and his ‘obsession with
domination and control’ of every living being that is considered inferior
(Merchant 1980). Thus, we can say that the tradition of thought inaugurated
by d’Eaubonne deals with the patriarchal domination of Women and Nature by
Men considered as a paradigm of any domination and exploitation (hierarchical,
12 Luca Valera
military, capitalist, industrial, etc.), and with the clear aim of redeeming these
two fragile realities from any type of male subjection.

Roots of an affinity: Women and Nature

The core of ecofeminist philosophy is therefore to make explicit the affinity
between Women and Nature, between the feminine and the natural universe.
In this sense, d’Eaubonne claims that “the relations between the sexes” can be
defined as “humanistic and ecological issues at the same time” (d’Eaubonne
1974, 242–243). The first point of similarity between Women and Nature is
arguably the concept of maternity: both are mothers. This conceptual issue,
which allows us to access the anthropological level of ecofeminism, was
certainly the subject of many studies within the feminist universe and has
given rise to different strands of thought (Diotima 2007); here, I would like
to emphasize the preeminent role that is attributed to the woman as an
“authoritative and primary source of both material and symbolic existence”
(Cavarero and Restaino 2002, 99) of the child, and the analogous task that is
entrusted to Nature.
The most important element of commonality is definitely the analogy of
the structural dependence of the child upon the mother (and therefore upon
Women), with that of humankind upon Nature, the Mother par excellence:
“We are all closely tied to the environment, that our very existence derive from
and depends on a healthy environment, as our existence once depended
on a mother (or mother-figures, almost always female)” (Roach 1991, 47).
Dependence is the first element of similarity, which will introduce the dynamic
of exploitation. Here, then, lies the connection between Women and Nature:
both are mothers; for this reason, perhaps, “the way we think about and treat
the environment is related to the way we think about and treat women” (Roach
1991, 47). If we consider that ecology is the study of the house (oikos-logos), the
relationship with the activity of women becomes more evident: “It is beginning
to dawn on women that they must assume the responsibility for housekeeping
nature” (Peterson and Merchant 1986, 465).
Nevertheless, this link presents a problem of great importance: the equation
of the dependence of human beings on Nature with that of the child on the
mother could, on the one hand, positively remember the debt and the gratitude
of the human being toward Mother Earth, and on the other hand, it

could have the exact opposite effect. Mother in patriarchal culture is she
who provides all of our sustenance and who makes disappear all of our
waste products, she who satisfies all of our wants and needs endlessly and
without any cost to us. Mother is she who loves us and will take care of us
no matter what. The last thing the environmental movement should do is
encourage us to think of the environment in these terms.
(Roach 1991, 49)
 Françoise d’Eaubonne and ecofeminism 13
The assignment of a gender to the Earth is, therefore, a reckless operation,
because, while it succeeds in enhancing the feminine dimension, at the same
time it overloads this responsibility, allowing for the possibility of exploitation
by males. Moreover, as Teodorescu correctly points out, woman’s cultural
perception as mother is still stereotypical:

More than ever, motherhood is a value in itself for contemporary Western

society, not only in what concerns its socio-economic importance (providing
labor force and national prevail), but also in what concerns woman’s cultural
perception as mother. Motherhood tends to be viewed as a necessary stage
in woman’s life which may be subject to delay but which should not be
a non-choice, no matter if it completes other dimensions of women’s
personality or if it represents the ultimate accomplishment (Jong 2010).
Popular culture praises motherhood as a stereotypical, sugary display of
affection towards an angel-like child through various means—films, news
articles, women’s magazines, books about child raising.
(Teodorescu Chapter 5, this volume, 00)

The core of Ecofeminist speculation tends to emphasize the affinity between the
feminine and the natural universe (defined as everything that man has not
modified) and to stigmatize the selfish and utilitarian behavior of men. The
definition of Ecofeminism given by one of the protagonists of the movement,
Karen J. Warren, is therefore telling:

As I see it the term eco-feminism is a position based on the following

claims: (i) there are important connections between the oppression of
women and the oppression of nature; (ii) understanding the nature of these
connections is necessary to any adequate understanding of the oppression
of women and the oppression of nature; (iii) feminist theory and practice
must include an ecological perspective; and (iv) solution to ecological
problems must include a feminist perspective.
(Warren 1987, 4–5)

The common fate of ‘oppression’ of Women and Nature is inscribed from the
beginning in their common essence of being mothers; the generation of
the child coincides with the condemnation to the child’s betrayal: “The child,
every child, lives and feeds on the mother’s sacrifice: the sacrifice of her time,
her body, her space, her sleep, her relations, her work, her career, her affections,
and also loves, other than the love for her son” (Galimberti 2009, 17).
The debt of dependency on the mother is often or almost all the time
repaid by the child with an even bigger debt: the abuse or the indifference. The
reasons for this abuse would be only grounded on gender and would have
encouraged man to claim the right and power to subjugate the Other.
In addition to this dependence, the link between Nature and Women is
made explicit in the concept of care: it attracts and leads immediately to the
14 Luca Valera
idea of a complex network (web) of relations, which are open to the other
living beings, both human and non-human; the network is established by all
the beings that surround us and is identified to some extent with the ecosystem:
here, the inseparable link between ecology and feminism originates, giving rise
to ecofeminism. It is at this level that we find the origin of ecofeminism in the
inseparable link between ecology and feminism. The essential connection
between Gaia and Women is fully realized, ultimately, in the dimension of care.
That issue, however, requires further investigation: it seems that the relation of
care, if established with non-human beings, should always be considered one-
sided, since only a rational being can be conscious of the possibility of realization
of the Other and of the self. It seems impossible then that care could exist at
the level of an inter-specific network. The corollary of this statement is the
recognition of the fact that Mother Earth cannot take care of her children if
not in an ‘analogical’ manner, and any comparison between Gaia and Women
is even weaker. The care given is between humans or by humans.
If, then, we can conclude that “the central thesis of Ecofeminism is the
connection between the social subjugation over women and the domination
over Nature [. . .] the critique of anthropocentrism and that of androcentrism
must go hand in hand” (Marcos 2001, 148).3
The anthropology highlighted by ecofeminism (a connection exists between
the mother and Mother Nature) comes to the ethical dimension, by means
of the formulation (and the consequent disapproval) of androcentrism.
Indeed, it seems that ecofeminism has a different stance from environ-
mentalism regarding the position of Man in the cosmos: the movement has not
the aim to lower human beings as such in the scale of beings, or to raise the
other non-human beings, but to annihilate the logic of domination that embodies
male. This was the message found in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962):
Man and Nature are not opposed but are one reality, and, for this reason, the
destructive and domineering attitude of men cannot bring any fruit. The point
is not to remove the man from the moral summit of the universe because he is
a human being, but rather to place him within the natural context explicitly
because he is a male.
The ecological root of eco-feminism, then, tends to emphasize the exclusively
natural dimension of Man, while, on the other hand, the feminist root aims to
restore the equalities between the sexes within the human species. In this regard,
ecofeminism invites us to overcome Deep Ecology,4 at least with respect to an
essential element: “According to ecofeminists, deep ecologists make the mistake
of fighting ‘anthropocentrism in general’. What is in question is not the Western
world’s ‘human centeredness’, but its ‘male centeredness’” (Ferry 1995, 117).
The Copernican revolution proposed here is addressed against the male,
guilty of progressively establishing the logic of domination in the course
of history, thanks to the ‘struggle for survival.’ This logic of domination,
characteristic of patriarchal societies, evidently brings with it the logic of
exploitation of the living beings considered inferior, first of all Women and
Nature. As Luc Ferry has shown, the motivation for such exploitation has a
 Françoise d’Eaubonne and ecofeminism 15
threefold matrix: “The first traces this double oppression to the appearance of
dualism, the second to that of mechanistic science, while the third base sits
directly on difference, on sexually differentiated personality formation or
consciousness” (Ferry 1995, 118). Let us analyze further the first two elements
mentioned above,5 in order to understand more thoroughly the consequences
of the ecofeminist speculation.

Causes of exploitation: dualism, mechanism,

and sexual difference
The critique of dualism is one of the cornerstones of feminist thought and
appears frequently as a criticism of aggressive oppositions. Man’s conception of
the world, in fact, consists in the dichotomous alternation of elements, useful
to create a hierarchy in the world. Unlike this tendency, the feminist one
seems to be more inclined to glimpse the commonalities rather than the differ-
ences; it is for this reason that Men would be more accustomed to competitive-
ness and contrast, while Women would be more conciliatory and able to
mediate between opposite positions.
For this reason, “Ecofeminism is presented as a form of contextual thinking,
pluralistic and holistic” (Marcos 2001, 148), or as an attempt to stem the masculine
‘dichotomism.’ The value of the holistic thinking for feminism not only is
immediately coherent with the Gaia hypothesis, but also primarily consists in
rejecting a hierarchical view of the world, focusing on the relationships between
the entities of the systems rather than emphasizing the importance and diversity
of individuals and their supposed position in the scale of being. Gaia is not a
hierarchy, as it consists of networks, all of which are positioned at the same
ontological level.
In the holistic thought, every living being deserves the same ethical respect
since it occupies the same position within the system: humans and non-humans
are equally important. This fact explains the profound openness to animal life
that characterizes the ecofeminist thought: if animals deserve as much dignity
as human beings and plants do, it is not clear why rights should be granted only
to humans.
Within this holistic ‘non-hierarchical’ context, there are no dichotomous alter-
nations such as: animated/inanimate, vegetative/animal, non-sentient/sentient,
human/non-human, male/female, rational/irrational, body/mind, etc.; 6 on
the contrary, holism emphasizes the importance of the whole and the inter-
dependence of its parts. In the whole, in fact, there are not differences, as there
is variety and richness. Here, then, ecofeminism once again tends to combine
elements of feminism (the adversity to dichotomies) and ecologism (the holistic
vision of all), creating a more complete picture of reality and thus facing modern
mechanistic reductionism (Warren 1996, xi).
Baconian method has reduced the Great Living Mother into inert matter.
Not only Bacon, however: the modern Scientific Revolution—from Descartes
to Galileo to Newton—instituted without doubt the basis of the next
16 Luca Valera
techno-scientific development, has also reduced the universe to a governable
machine, once and for all separating all the world of thought from the world
of extension:

Exterior reality, under the title of res extensa entirely detached from the
interior reality of thought, henceforth constituted a self-contained field for
the universal application of mathematical and mechanical analysis: the very
idea of “object” was transformed by the dualistic expurgation.

(Jonas 2001, 35)

The profound unity of the human species with other living beings is, thus,
definitively lost in the Scientific Revolution. As Carolyn Merchant writes
in The Death of Nature: “The world we have lost was organic” (Merchant
2001, 274).
The reduction of the res extensa to a mechanical matter has meant, moreover,
that the human body itself has been reduced to ‘matter probed by scientific
instruments’ and to an exhaustible resource. The seed of indeterminacy present
in an organicist vision is completely eradicated from the idea that every little
section of reality can respond to a logic of cause and effect and that, ultimately,
can be technologically manipulated. Here we can hear echoes of the Baconian
mottos.
The decline of the organicist vision of Nature leaves room in the modern
age to a ‘lifeless’ mechanistic view, crucial to the rise of patriarchal society: the
logic of domination and power needs, in fact, a hierarchical view of the living
beings. Descartes’s thought offers, on the other hand, the suitable aid to endorse
the triumph of the cogito over the extended world, of the rational over the
irrational, imposing such a hierarchical view and giving mastery to Man.
The monopoly of the rational knowledge of Nature, brought into being by the
objectification of inert reality, can be extended by analogy to the woman,
who is the bearer of the emotional seed.
However, it would be inappropriate to include also the male within the
mechanistic picture: being a rational animal, he could avoid a reduction of his
status to mere givenness. We must also underline the profound difference that
emerges from the comparison between the human sexual bodies: the creative
activity of man, made explicit in the active force of the sperm, is in contrast to
the woman’s receptive passivity. This would be another element of commonality
between Women and Nature.7 This consideration reinforces the idea of a
supposed superiority of man, allowed to explore and shape inferior bodies for
utilitarian purposes; in this regard, Fritjof Capra writes:

Under patriarchy the benign image of nature changed into one of passivity,
whereas the view of nature as wild and dangerous gave rise to the idea that
she was to be dominated by man. At the same time women were portrayed
as passive and subservient to men. With the rise of Newtonian science,
 Françoise d’Eaubonne and ecofeminism 17
finally, nature became a mechanical system that could be manipulated and
exploited, together with the manipulation and exploitation of women.
(1983, 40)

Through the subjection of Nature, Man establishes himself as a ‘creator’ of the

artificial life, which is the summit of culture, as Bacon writes: “In artificial
things nature is held in subjugation by the empire of man, for without man
these things would never have been made. But through the effort and agency
of man we see bodies in an entirely new guise and as a kind of alternative
universe or theatre of things” (1996, 455).
The Kingdom of Nature becomes the Kingdom of Man. The Kingdom of
the Artificial Life—which is the Kingdom of Man—is profoundly different
from the Kingdom of Nature: it is a function of Man himself, since it manifests
dynamics that Man is able to control (at least in part). Once Woman has
been reduced to Nature (and, therefore, to a resource, to a mere function), she
becomes completely controllable and can be subjugated.
In these reflections we find the ecofeminist critique of the artificial re-
productive techniques guilty of being a symptom of the reduction of Women
to mere “sexual animals,”8 slaves of their function. Here lies the triumph of the
patriarchal societies governed by the male power of science.

D’Eaubonne, the subjugation of Nature and Women,

and the ‘practical’ needs that support ecofeminism
In the discussion of the most relevant issues concerning ecofeminism, we have
gone well beyond Françoise d’Eaubonne’s philosophical speculation: the main
objective of the French activist was, however, to highlight the responsibility of
men in the subjection of Women and Nature:

Practically, the whole world now knows that the two most urgent threats
of death are overpopulation and overconsumption; instead, we are a little
less aware of the entire Male System’s responsibility—precisely because it
is male (and not capitalist or socialist)—in these two dangers, but yet very
few have discovered that both threats are the logical culmination of one of
the two parallel discoveries that gave power to men in the last centuries:
their ability to inseminate the Earth like Women, and their contribution
in the act of reproduction. Until then, only Women had the monopoly of
agriculture and the male believed that the Earth was fertilized by the Gods.
At the same time, from the moment he discovered the farming and
reproductive possibilities, the “great revolution” occurred for the benefit
of Men, as described by Lederer. Once the Earth was taken hostage, and
the same happened for fertility (and, therefore, for industry), and for the
womb of the woman (and, therefore, for fecundity), it was logical that
the exploitation of both would lead to this analogous double danger:
18 Luca Valera
overpopulation, i.e., an excess of births, and the destruction of the
environment, i.e., overconsumption.
(d’Eaubonne 1974, 220–221)

The main reasons that support the emergence of ecofeminism are, therefore,
historical reasons, and makes sense only within a practical horizon—as shown
by Karen Green:

feminism and ecology are then linked, not logically or conceptually, but
practically, for, when women are not forced to reproduce in order to eat,
and when they are given the opportunity to fashion the world that their
children will inherit along rational principles, we will be well on the way
toward solving the demographic aspects of the environmental crisis.
(1994, 133)

Thus, ecofeminism has a historical and a practical justification (just as its

meaning and raison d’être9 are mainly practical): this appears to be a satisfactory
thesis, at least from an analysis of d’Eaubonne’s writings. The main practical
reason of ecofeminism is the following: it is necessary to eradicate all forms of
patriarchy, in order to free both Women and Nature from slavery.10
On the historical level, however, the establishment of patriarchy coincided
with the rise of capital—as a fundamental value of society: “Capital is but the
last stage of patriarchy, just like profit is but the last mask of power” (d’Eaubonne
1999, 180).11 Thus, the patriarchal system is based on the logic of the appropriation
of the capital in the forms in which it becomes available: with regard to Women,
this results in the appropriation of the reproduction and fertility; and, with
regard to Nature, it is expressed in the possible and indefinite consumption of
resources. In this sense, the “suppression of patriarchy is not only women’s
liberation, but hope of salvation for the whole species” (d’Eaubonne 2000,
176). The roots of such thinking can be found, as noted earlier:

in spite of the fecund powers that pervade her, man remains woman’s
master as he is the master of the fertile earth; she is fated to be subjected,
owned, exploited like the Nature whose magical fertility she embodies.
The prestige she enjoys in men’s eyes is bestowed by them; they kneel
before the Other, they worship the Goddess Mother.
(de Beauvoir 1956, 98)

Ecological and feminist liberation must therefore go hand in hand,12 because

there are many structural, historical, and, above all, practical similarities shared
by these schools of thought: “Women are more involved in the ecological
problem than men. [. . .] They are more in touch with life and preservation of
life. Secondly, the problem of demography involves their freedom since the
confiscation of the control of demography means subjection, even slavery”
(d’Eaubonne 2000, 176).
 Françoise d’Eaubonne and ecofeminism 19
If ecofeminism is grounded on a practical need, it will be necessary to identify
operational procedures to ensure that this objective (i.e., the liberation from
patriarchy, under the forms of overconsumption and overpopulation) can
be achieved. In this regard, “this change cannot happen without women
being encouraged to play roles in society beyond those of wife and mother. It
cannot happen without women receiving education, training, and satisfying
careers” (Green 1994, 132). Achieving the ecofeminist goal means, ultimately,
undertaking a political and social revolution.

A non-dualistic thought: beyond d’Eaubonne

The revolution undertaken by Françoise d’Eaubonne has a great importance
in the history of Western ethics and politics, and it still awaits to be fully
recognized. The clear identification of a common logic underlying the two
major problems facing contemporary societies (the ecological crisis and the
denial of the equal dignity of Men and Women) has allowed us to find some
possible political and educative solutions.13 The effort undertaken by d’Eaubonne—
carried out over the years by numerous thinkers and activists of the ecofeminist
movement, such as Val Plumwood, Karen J. Warren, Maria Mies, Vandana
Shiva, and Ariel Salleh—has the great value of having brought to a synthesis,
within a single thought, the intellectual adventures of different philosophical
traditions. Thanks to d’Eaubonne, we can say today that the expropriation of
the female body and Nature fall under a single dominant approach, which has
led to almost irreparable damages.
This dominant attitude is reflected, at the ethical level, by a rationalist
attempt to codify the laws that govern human action, without considering
the importance of the emotional insight and the peculiarities and the “genuine
virtues” (Green 1993, 386) through which males and females interpret the
world of experience; at the political level, the ethical domain is expressed in
the rise of utilitaristic capitalism, which tends to regard the other as a resource
only. For both problems, d’Eaubonne reacts with a revolution based on a
well-codified anthropology:

Capital [. . .] will only disappear with an ecological solution of production

(and of consumption) which will now constitute the only possible elimi-
nation of the outdated structures of dominance, aggressiveness, competi-
tiveness, and absolutism in order to replace them with those of cooperation
and equality between individuals (thus between sexes), and of the species
with the environment.
(d’Eaubonne 1999, 181)

We should also be grateful to ecofeminism for regarding man as a part of nature,

after years of speculation on his mere eccentricity (Plessner 1928). The Man of
d’Eaubonne—and, with him, the Women—is not an “incarnated spirit,” 14 but
a corporeal being. The human being should be grateful to nature both for his
20 Luca Valera
body and instincts and for his rationality and freedom. Furthermore: being ‘a
rational being’ is the greatest form of gratitude manifested to Nature by human
beings, as this is their nature.
In this regard, the most significant attempt made by d’Eaubonne consists in
overcoming the dichotomies—both anthropological and cosmological—that
too often have characterized Western thought. Yet, the attempt does not appear
entirely successful, as Karen Green rightly notes:

Nevertheless, in their own way, they have remained caught within these
dualisms by suggesting that because women are not inferior, men must be,
particularly in their psychosexual make up, and by accepting the ideas that
nature is more important than culture, emotion a better guide than reason,
the body more important than the mind. None of these pairs involve
opposites.
(1994, 133)

It seems that the positive and proactive aspects which ecofeminism covers are
likely to succumb to the dichotomous logic that has been so much criticized:
the same instrument that is put under investigation (criticism) is reused for the
pars destruens of the patriarchal system and for the pars construens. Thus,
ecofeminism seems to abuse the same instrument that it seeks to criticize,
endorsing an ‘anthropocentric’ anthropology and ethics, which is likely to
disqualify the achievements of such a richly intellectual movement.
The recognition of the difference must be—and here lies the interesting
reflection which can be developed to enhance d’Eaubonne’s proposal toward a
non-dualistic anthropology (and ethics)—a motivation to recognize the unity of
the human being. Within this unity, rationality and instinct, feelings and logic,
fruitfully co-exist: starting from this acknowledgment we can imagine an ethic
that is nurtured by the contribution of feelings and passions (and that is not
characterized exclusively as a rationalist analysis of our actions or as a mere risk/
benefit calculation), and which aims at a human flourishing in harmony with
Nature. In this regard, the ethics of care15 that feminism and ecofeminism gave
to our society appears to be the best effort to positively consider the complexity
of the human being and Nature of which humans are a significant part.

Notes
1 On this topic Karen Green (1994, 121) wrote: “The case against the subordination of
women extends to a case against all the relation of subordination; in particular, it implies
a case against the subordination of nature. I call this position the first logical argument
for ecofeminism: feminism implies deep ecology.”
2 For a more precise definition of the concept of ‘Otherness’ by Irigaray and the above
mentioned de Beauvoir, please see Green (2002).
3 This thesis can be read in d’Eaubonne 1999 (180).
4 For a more detailed analysis of the similarities between the two perspectives and of the
originalities introduced by ecofeminism, see Salleh (1984). Underlying the connection
between deep ecology and ecofeminism, Green (1994, 122) writes: “Often ecofeminists
 Françoise d’Eaubonne and ecofeminism 21
make the slightly weaker claim that the adoption of feminist values and a gynocentric
world view is necessary in order for a new ecological order to be established. Accordingly,
only if feminism is adopted will the values implicit in deep ecological thought be
accepted. I call this position the second logical argument for ecofeminism: deep ecology requires
(hence implies) feminism. To defend this position, one needs to show that by adopting the
deep ecologist’s claim that there are values in nature that are not anthropocentric, we
are adopting values that are gynocentric.”
5 We will focus exclusively on the first two elements, as they seem to be more significant
and in need of a more detailed explanation. Regarding the third aspect, however, please
refer to Dodson Gray (1979, chs. 4 and 5).
6 Val Plumwood (1995, 156) thus wrote:“As ecofeminism points out,Western thought has
given us a strong human-nature dualism that is part of the set of interrelated dualism of
mind-body, reason-nature, reason-emotion, masculine-feminine and has important
interconnected features with other dualisms. This dualism has been especially stressed in
the rationalist tradition.”
7 In this regard, De Beauvoir (1956, 175) wrote: “Man expects something other than the
assuagement of instinctive cravings from the possession of a woman: she is the privileged
object through which he subdues Nature.”
8 The picture, certainly strong but effective, is borrowed from Sarti (2006, 208).
9 The demonstration that the most significant raison d’être of ecofeminism is a practical one
is provided by d’Eaubonne (1974, 221) herself, who dedicates much space in her writings
to the promotion of a feminist revolution: “The only mutation to save the world in our
times is that of a ‘great revolution’ of male power that has brought, after the agricultural
exploitation, to a mortal industrial expansion. Neither the ‘matriarchy’, thus, nor the
‘power of Women’, but the destruction of power by Women. And, then, the end of
the tunnel: the equal management of the world for a renaissance (and no more for a
protection, just as the first ecologist still believe).” See also d’Eaubonne (1977, 26–28).
10 In this regard, d’Eaubonne’s (d’Eaubonne 1999, 184) conclusion at a talk in Canada in
1980 is particularly significant:“Only Ecofeminism will put an end to Patriarchy and save
human society from the devastation wrought on the environment, the nuclear threat and
the profit-based system which is at the origin of all war and exploitation of this planet.”
On the same topic, see Archambault (1993, 19).
11 In another significant text, d’Eaubonne (1974, 235) underlines the dynamics of male
power regarding simultaneously the ecological issues and the relationship between the
sexes: “At the base of the ecological problems, there is the structure of a certain power.
Just as in the case of overpopulation, it is a Man’s problem; not only because it is man
who holds the world power [. . .] but also because the power, at an inferior level, is
distributed in a way that Men exercise the power over Women.”
12 As the founder of ecofeminism writes, “ecological liberation is not only a liberation of
Man’s exploitation of Nature but also the liberation of ecology itself from the ‘dictatorship’
of the two main issues: the exhaustion of resources and the environmental devastation:
‘Ecology, the science that studies the relationship between living things within the
physical environment and their evolution,’ comprehends, by definition, the relationship
between the sexes and the birth rate that comes forth from it; its interest is orientated
in reason of the horrors that threaten us, towards the abuse of the resources and the
destruction of the environment. And so we have arrived to the moment to remind
certain other elements that closely intercept the female question and her struggle”
(d’Eaubonne 1974, 223).
13 In an impressive critical piece on the capitalist system, d’Eaubonne (1999, 184) wrote:
“It is impossible, within patriarchy, to suppress a market economy. And it is impossible,
in a market system, to not devastate the planet.”
14 This expression is taken from Lucas Lucas (1993).
15 In this regard, “our obligations to care for others, whether they are children, animals,
species, or ecosystems, are not merely irrational feelings [. . .]. Our moral judgments may
22 Luca Valera
properly be associated with appropriate feelings, so that feeling is by no means irrelevant
to ethics” (Green 1994, 133).

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——. 1994. “Freud, Wollstonecraft, and Ecofeminism: A Defense of Liberal Feminism,”
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——. 2002. “The Other as Another Other,” Hypatia 17(4): 1–15.
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——. 2001. “The Death of Nature.” In Environmental Philosophy. From Animal Rights
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Part II
Rethinking animality
2 A retreat on the “river bank”:
perpetuating patriarchal myths
in animal stories
Anja Höing

Animal stories, especially anthropomorphic ones, are chronically under-

represented in scholarship. Traditional literary criticism disregards them as a
minor side-branch of children’s fiction in which metaphoric animals idle through
Arcadian worlds, teaching lessons on the beauties of nature and the importance
of conservation. Stories, particularly from the second wave of talking animal
stories in English literature, which started in the 1970s and ebbed at the turn of
the century, have rarely been read against another grain other than for their
political correctness in the green cause. Yet when interlinking a traditional
critical approach with an ecofeminist reading, one can see that these stories
deserve far closer attention than they usually get. Using non-human prota-
gonists as a shield, authors can utilize the ambiguity of the ‘animal’ and the
‘natural’ as a protective sandbox that allows hiding patriarchal ideologies behind
biologistic arguments.
As Baker points out in Picturing the Beast, “ours is a culture . . . in which
animals can apparently be used to mean anything and everything” (2001, 4).
True to this claim, the animal protagonists of talking animal stories are used for
a wide variety of purposes. They live model lives of sustainability in unison with
an idealized, Arcadian nature, serve as examples of peaceful co-existence of
species or preach fervently on pantheism and Gaia worship. Yet, one can read
talking animal stories in a different light when using as a lens for the central
claim of ecofeminist theory, namely “that the ideologies that authorize injustices
based on gender, race and class are related to the ideologies that sanction the
exploitation and degradation of the environment” (Sturgeon 1997, 23). I claim
that whilst crying out against the exploitation of nature many talking animal
stories of the late 20th century strongly reinforce the closely related exploitation
of women. By means of gendering the animal as male and patriarchy as ‘natural,’
such animal stories create male universes in which females are objectified and
dangers to the patriarchal status quo are closely associated with dangers to
the environment. In consequence, these stories propagate deeply conservative,
ultra-patriarchal ideologies and construct these as solutions to the current
environmental crisis.
At this point, an aside is necessary. In the following I am going to refer to
dominant tendencies in the genre during the last decades of the 20th century,
28 Anja Höing
but my claims are by no means universal. There are beautiful exceptions in
stories such as Gary Kilworth’s Hunter’s Moon, which presents vixen and fox on
eye level, or in Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone, which deliberately turns the
tables on the pattern sketched above and pointedly reverses traditional gender
roles into a matriarchal society.
A final note on terminology: dualisms are so inherent to Western culture
that they are deeply entrenched into our linguistic structure and sometimes
expression without them becomes overly complicated and in consequence
breaks the flow of reading. Therefore, for the sake of both convenience and
readability, I will retain the classic dualist and anthropocentric terminology of
human vs. animal. I am aware of the problems intrinsic to this dichotomy, yet
convinced that none of these problems could be solved by applying currently
popular alternatives such as human/non-human or human animal vs. non-human
animal, which, in my opinion, rather highlight the opposition they seek to
break up.
As Val Plumwood states in her theory of the mastery model, in Western
ideological constructions the lot of nature is generally cast with the one of
women (1993, 33). Both are contrasted to the ‘superior’ male realm of culture
(43). ‘The animal’ as an abstract concept normally appears as a part of ‘nature.’
By inference the animal, though not explicitly mentioned in Plumwood’s “key
elements in the dualistic structure of western thought” (43) would be placed
on the same side of the dichotomal division as the female. Indeed, with regard
to the cultural construction of the place of animals in Western modes of thought,
one can find ample proof for this connection. Animals generally appear as
‘the other.’ One only needs to remember Derrida’s famous experience of the
ultimate other in the gaze of his cat (2002, 380). While Derrida’s experience,
however, led him to engage with the animal and pose a set of questions to
reach an understanding of this other (418), the Cartesian tradition rejects any
possibility to bridge to the animal. Cartesian thought treats animals as automata
governed by a mechanistic, non-deliberate instinct diametrically opposed to
human, or, in traditional Western dualist structure, male rationality. Additionally
Western sciences generally treat animals as governed solely by necessity, or,
more precisely, the impulse of survival. Animals are cast as primitive in contrast
to civilized man, as concerned with reproduction, not production, and finally
as passive objects instead of active subjects. All these aspects clearly place the
animal on the same side as the female in Plumwood’s mastery model.
Despite this, there is an ongoing tradition of gendering the literary talking
animal as male and thus dissociating it from the real-life animal, which, using
Baker’s terminology, is degraded to “the sign of all that is taken not-very-
seriously in contemporary culture” (2001, 174). The literary talking animal in
contrast is generally the agent of a story and therefore has to be taken seriously
at least by the narrator of its own tale. To enable the implied reader (in general
a white, male implied reader) to identify with the animal protagonist, its
otherness needs to be partly obliterated, and the most prominent way to do so
appears to be gendering the animal as male.
 Patriarchal myths in animal stories 29
The tradition to do so is probably as old as the talking animal story itself.
A well-known precursor is certainly The Wind in the Willows (1908). Kenneth
Grahame’s story is one of the immortal tales of children’s fiction: on the Arcadian
“river bank” (2008, 1), Mole, Rat, Badger, Toad and their friends enjoy a carefree
life full of little adventures and great joys. Although Grahame’s tale was by no
means the first story presenting an all-animal-society, it set the pace for talking
animal stories for a century to come. Even nowadays, many animal stories
are advertised as, for example, “shar[ing] The Wind in the Willows’ charm” or able
to “rival The Wind in the Willows” (Moorhouse 2013, n.pag.).
Despite the book’s lasting success, The Wind in the Willows has long been
notorious for its all-male world. All animal protagonists are males. Female
animals apparently do exist somewhere: the “Otters” (Grahame 2008, 118) are
a married couple and the (male) mice children have “small sisters” (95) at home.
But these females are entirely invisible and of no consequence to the story. Not
unjustly, thus, have critics claimed The Wind in the Willows to be “misogynistic”
(Cosslett 2006, 151; Hunt 1994, 86) and to carry “male dominance . . . to a rare
extreme” (Hunt 1994, 86). As easily as one can detect the “Weasels of the Wild
Wood” as the looming threat of the uprising working class (79), one can read
the exclusion of women from the animals’ happy life as the Edwardian
gentlemen’s longing for a nostalgically oversimplified world of unthreatened
patriarchal power. Grahame himself described his story as “clean of the clash
of sex” (qtd. in Hunt 1994, 85). The Wind in the Willows belongs, as Manlove
contends, to a “threatened conservative culture” (1999, 5). In defence of this
culture Grahame constructs a bubble in time in which patriarchy may continue
in eternal safety.
The cultural frames of the “river banks” of the late 20th and early 21st centuries
might have shifted, yet the basic structure often remains the same. Hardly less
conspicuously than in The Wind in the Willows, sometimes even more so, the
world of talking animals still tends to be a thoroughly male-dominated one.
The first thing that strikes the eye when reading almost any talking animal story
is a distinct shortage of female characters. In Richard Adams’s Watership Down
(1972), the most famous late 20th-century talking animal story, of the eleven
rabbits who set out to seek a new home, not a single one is female and apparently
it does not occur to the characters at a single point to induce any females to
come with them, although their objective is to collect “as many [rabbits] as
[they] can” (Adams 1974, 27). In fact, during the chapters of the book set
in the rabbits’ home warren, one might be induced to think that there are
no females there at all; neither narrator nor characters mention a single one.
‘The rabbit,’ it seems, is male.
It is not only ‘the rabbit’ in Watership Down that is constructed as male, but
also in fact ‘the talking animal’ as a concept. A prime example would be Colin
Dann’s Animals of Farthing Wood (1979). Dann’s animals do not have names,
but species designations; it is ‘fox’ and ‘badger’ who lead their journey to a
nature reserve, and ‘hare’ and ‘rabbit’ who follow—a typical device for animal
stories featuring multispecies protagonists (Cosslett 2006, 175). All the characters
30 Anja Höing
designated as ‘species’ are male. Comparable ways of constructing the talking
animal as male also appear in other, more recent talking animal stories; for
example, Peter Chippindale’s Mink! (1995).
Robin Hawdon’s ant story A Rustle in the Grass (1984) uses another, more
self-aware method of gendering the animal. Every ant of the colony, except for
the Queen, is given a male pronoun and a masculine name. This will deeply
confuse a reader with any basic biological knowledge, yet discourse apparently
demands male heroes, even when these are a biological impossibility. The same
issue can be observed in animated pictures featuring ants—both Disney’s
A Bug’s Life and Dreamworks’s Antz use male ants in biologically female-
only positions. Interestingly, A Rustle in the Grass, as if embarrassed by its own
device of changing the ants’ gender, offers a plot-intrinsic explanation. The ant
protagonists tell stories that their god banned all males from the colonies as a
punishment for misbehavior (Hawdon 1984, 226–227) and the females in
consequence had to assume all male “functions as rulers, soldiers, builders,
hunters and even as ordinary workers” (227) and finally “took their titles away
from the males and became masculine even in name” (227). This explanation
may arrive at the reader’s mind as if, first, the pronoun ‘he’ was just so much more
desirable than ‘she’—why else would the females be so eager to change their
gender designation?—and, second, that one has to be a ‘he’ in order to fulfill
certain functions in a sophisticated society. To achieve power, to, in fact, become
credible when operating in the domains of Western hegemony borders as
traditionally male, characters that can only be female in sex have to usurp male
gender in discourse.
Defined as male, the animal becomes easier to tackle for authors writing
inside Cartesian dualist structures. A male/cultural animal can serve as a subject
without the need for the author to think beyond pre-established categories.
Like Grahame’s Water Rat who becomes physically ill at the sight of new
horizons (2008, 172) and has to turn his gaze back to the river bank in a stream
of romantic poetry to recover after the frightening ordeal (175) such stories
break down the otherness of the ‘animal’ into a blank slate that can be used as
metaphor for the masculine self. As Plumwood states, “in the colonising strategy
of the master, only what is marked as Self is permitted to survive” (1993, 195).
The strategy of many talking animal stories is accordingly one of annexing the
animal into this concept.
As soon as the animal appears as a metaphor for the self, and the self is a
male/cultural one, the literary animal’s association with ‘the natural’ becomes
problematic. The protagonist, however dissociated from the connotations
normally linked to the term, is still labelled ‘animal’ and accordingly ‘natural’
by association, while its male gender links it to the ‘cultural.’ On a first glance,
this appears to be a dilemma unsolvable without moving beyond dualist
thinking, but many animal stories again solve the problem not by widening
the horizon, but by shifting the gaze. In fact, the construction of the animal as
male encounters an equally ideologically loaded construction of ‘the natural.’
 Patriarchal myths in animal stories 31
The definition at work when we nonchalantly label an animal as ‘natural’ is
primarily the one that understands ‘nature’ as “the phenomena of the physical
world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the
earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations” (Oxford English
Dictionary “Nature, n.”). Even the concept of nature in this material definition
is problematic as it perpetuates the dualism between nature and culture which is
deeply embedded in Western ideology, even though this dualism is ultimately
“self-defeating” (Gruen 2011, 48). Yet, as Gruen rightly states, “the concept of
the ‘natural’ is a fraught one” (46). In everyday discourse as well as in talking
animal stories, ‘natural’ also may refer to “a norm against which deviation is
measured” (Morton 2007, 14). When animal protagonists blame another
animal for being “unnatural”—by no means an uncommon accusation in
talking animal stories—this does not primarily refer to physical but to normative
deviations from what is constructed as the right way of life. ‘Nature’ thus
becomes another expression for the hegemonic structures governing the animal
societies, while at the same time still being applied to the physical world.
In consequence, many talking animal stories blur the distinguishing line
between the material and the normative concept of nature up to the point where
the two become indistinguishable. What is materially ‘natural’ is constructed as
normatively ‘natural’ as well—a naturalistic fallacy that allows an attack on any
deviation from the norm as not ideologically and accordingly subjectively prob-
lematic, but materially so, and thus can be used to justify prescriptions. Ideological
structures thus are transformed into essentialist notions. In consequence, bio-
logistic arguments present ideologies and hegemonic structures as “given,
inescapable, and therefore moral,” using Donna Haraway’s definition of the
problem (1991, 8). Haraway rightly states that such “differences seen as natural”
are a major source of domination (8), as the designation as physically natural
renders the differences untouchable by arguments assailing them from the
ideological side.
In talking animal stories, a society in accordance with the ‘natural order’
based on this chimerical concept of nature most often is a local, pre-industrial
androcentric society with a deeply conservative attitude, modeled upon idealized
and overly simplified conceptions of primitive human societies as living in
harmony with nature. The talking animal characters, in certain dimensions,
take the place of what Padilla Carroll (2017) describes as the “ecological Indian
trope” (Padilla Carroll 2017). Although their societies are more often based on
romantic notions of pre-Christian British tribes or medieval communities, the
underlying idea of “indigenous oneness with the land” (Padilla Carroll 2017) is
almost identical. Adams, for example, directly equates his rabbit characters to
“primitive humans” (1974, 169) and the rat protagonists in Robert C. O’Brian’s
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH deliberately model their society on a medieval
monastery which they present as the perfect model of a closed self-sustainable
community (1975, 137). The animals’ life is ‘natural’ in that it takes place in the
non-human physical world, but due to the chimerical concept of nature their
patriarchal society structures are presented as ‘natural’ as well.
32 Anja Höing
The—physically—natural system that sets the framework for animal life is
the ecosystem, and in fact it is this very concept that the stories try to translate
into society structures. But while in other contexts links between women and
nature are translated into the trope of the Ecosystem (Valera 2017), here it is
patriarchal power structures. Not surprisingly, these ecosystem-societies hardly
reflect ecological reality, but rather the myth that an intact ecosystem operates
in “achieved and unchanging harmony” (Colleen Clements qtd. in Garrard
2012, 64). This concept of ecosystems completely disregards the biological
reality of succession and of flow equilibrium, but nonetheless is the most widely
accepted model in Western societies (Garrad 2012, 64). The model cements
the myth of nature as stable and unchanging—as, in a word, conservative.
In an inversion of the argument that applies the chimerical concept of nature
to this misconception of ecological balance, this idea of ecosystems reinforces
the myth that conservatism is ‘natural.’ As conservatism is also patriarchal, ‘the
natural’ operates as a whitewash for ultra-patriarchal animal societies.
The easiest way to keep the ‘ecosystem’ of animal society in eternal patriarchal
stability would be the one used by Kenneth Grahame—to circumvent the
“threat” (Hunt 1994, 87) of females by excluding them entirely. Yet, females
are not a topic that can be eluded without cost. In order to give any chance of
both credibility and continuity to the Arcadian patriarchal retreat of the late
20th century “river bank,” the animal cultures need females for the simple reason
that they need to produce a new generation of male protagonists. Females, in
short, are a biological necessity. Not surprisingly many stories reduce females to
precisely this dimension: “sexual animals,” as Valera aptly borrows from Sarti,
who are “slaves of their function” (Valera 2017). They appear as sexual objects,
trophies and possessions. Referring to Brian Jacques’s Redwall (1986), Holly
V. Blackford states that Jacques’s mouse hero’s “rise to power depends on
the patriarchal exchange of women as a sign of sexual power and economic
status” (Blackford 2003, 97). The hero is given the female mouse Cornflower
“as a reward” (97) for his deeds, much as, as Baran describes, men are promised
women as trophies for a vegan lifestyle in PETA advertisement (Baran 2017).
Yet, Cornflower is most centrally constructed not as trophy for, but as “mate
for the hero” (102, italics mine) and as such she has another even more central
function which I would add to Blackford’s findings: she is there to mother the
hero’s son, who in turn presents the future of the Arcadian Redwall community
(Jacques 2002, 350). As Teodorescu (2017) discusses in the more general
context of Western culture’s “good mother paradigm”, female protagonists in
talking animal stories, just like contemporary Western women, are constructed
through motherhood. To use a talking animal story narrator’s words: they
“fulfil their lives by raising cubs” (Clement 1988, 317). In Clement’s The Cold
Moons, and in many other stories as well, reproduction is the female animals’
sole function.
A prime example of the streamlining of female characters into the role
of mate/mother is Mary Stanton’s The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West
(1988), thus proving that the pattern cannot entirely be attributed to the gender
 Patriarchal myths in animal stories 33
of the author. In what is unquestioningly a scene of a rape attempt—but is
never called one, a reminder of how language constitutes the world—the
rebellious female protagonist of the story, Duchess, has to learn the hard way
“that stallions have their Rights” (117), “granted by Law” (117). The capital-
letter law in question is a divinely ordained “Balance” (10) that subjects Duchess
to her biological function as mate to the stallion. Poetic justice follows on
foot when she rejects his mating attempts. Duchess finds herself continuously
suffering until the moment she happily submits herself to her sole function: she
bears the stallion’s child, the, of course, male scion to his line (306).
Richard Adams’s Watership Down shows the ideological foundations behind
such patterns. Having finished their journey, the rabbit heroes laze on a sunny
hillside, when one is suddenly struck by what has escaped all of them until
that moment: that their brand-new warren is “as good as finished” (1974, 195)
because they have “no does—not a single one—and no does means no kittens
and in a few years no warren” (195). Again, there will be no new generation of
male protagonists without females to reproduce them. As in the “good mother
paradigm” (Teodorescu 2017), the importance of the mother virtually evaporates
behind the one of the child. In talking animal stories she is only a means to an
end: the focus is on the continuity of the patriarchal community. Adams appears
to be aware that this entirely functional approach to females might be
uncomfortable for some readers and adds the following explanation:

The kind of ideas that have become natural to many male human beings
in thinking of females—ideas of protection, fidelity, romantic love and so
on—are, of course, unknown to rabbits, although rabbits certainly do form
exclusive attachments much more frequently than most people realize.
However, they are not romantic and it came naturally to Hazel and Holly
to consider the two Nuthanger does simply as breeding stock for the warren.
(256)

Here one can see at work what Barthes in his Mythologies refers to as
“naturaliz[ation]” (1974, 129). Watership Down presents romantic protective
notions as a culturally constructed myth, yet the patriarchal dualistic opposition
between male subjects and female objects—nothing but another cultural
myth—is taken for granted. This myth has, to use Barthes’s words, been
transformed from “history into nature” (129). While the stories naturalize that
males are agents, females are naturalized as breeding and mothering machines.
This is precisely the same mode of naturalization one can see at work in
the PETA advertisements discussed by Baran (2017). Even the ants of Robin
Hawdon’s A Rustle in the Grass (1984) longingly look back to an Arcadian past
when “they lived and progressed together, male and female in harmony, the
females breeding and caring for the young, and the males doing the hunting
and fighting and the heavy work” (226).
While the male animal thus becomes a metaphor for the masculine self, the
female is constructed as the Cartesian automaton. This is further reinforced by a
34 Anja Höing
technique of de-individualization: secondary female characters are often refused
a name and referred to only as a group. In a raid on another rabbit warren in
Watership Down, most does the heroes take with them remain unnamed, while
not a single male rabbit does. The same pattern can be observed in The Cold
Moons (Clement 1988). The badgers are joined by “Gnos and two of the sows”
(316) or leave “ten senior female badgers all under the supervision of Harvey”
(71) to take care of the young. Leaving the female characters unnamed and
referring to them only in plurals deprives them both of their agency and of their
identity as characters and in consequence eases treating them as mere attachments
to the males.
The same objectification of females is implicit in the possessive denomination
of female animals in The Animals of Farthing Wood, where they are reduced
to their sexual function as the male’s “mate.” But even denominations such
as “Hare’s mate” (Dann 2008, 34), which at least grant a clear designation to
the female, albeit a possessive one, are rare. Far more frequently the females
occur as afterthoughts attached to the male animal, as in “Pheasant and his
mate” (9). When the hen pheasant is shot shortly after her mate, the animals do
not even comment on her death. The moment they remark that “Pheasant’s
done for” (99), she appears to drop out of existence—she in fact does not exist
once she can no longer fulfill her reproductive function. This also explains one
of the logical breaks of the story: how vixen, from the moment she meets
fox being entirely dependent on his protection, could have survived on her
own prior to his appearance. The answer is a simple one: she didn’t. She did
not exist, cannot, in fact, exist, without being attached to a male.
The protagonist in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH similarly exists only
through the connection to her deceased husband. Unlike all other major
protagonists in the story, she has no first name, but only is “Mrs Jonathan
Frisby” (O’Brian 1975, 66). Ratelle argues that “for O’Brien . . . this absence
[of a given name] is not a site of subjugation but a signification of non-
subjectivity that defines the female mouse as the de-individuated nucleus of a
trans-species collective” (2015, 109) and concludes that O’Brien “employs
traditional gender and species expectations to extend a posthumanist model of
subjectivity to all animals” (109). I would argue for a much simpler reading.
Everything the rats do for Mrs. Frisby they do in memory of her husband—in
fact, they categorically refuse to help until she is brought into connection
to the heroic deeds of “Mr Jonathan” (66). Mrs. Frisby, though certainly de-
individuated, does not appear as a mash in a net of trans-species subjectivity,
but as an object through which the help of the rats is transferred to both the
memory and the genes of her husband in form of her son Timothy.
The objectification of females in talking animal stories goes so far that they
sometimes drop out of existence altogether while they are not needed for
the plot. This is prominent in the final scene of The Animals of Farthing Wood.
Fox “allow[s] the male animals forward to sample” a puddle of beer they come
across (Dann 2008, 300). While they do so, speak various toasts and get drunk,
the female spectatorship virtually fades out of the scene. When the story ends
 Patriarchal myths in animal stories 35
a few pages later, it appears as if the “animals [who] unconsciously draw together
into one group as the priceless feelings of friendship and loyalty enter[s] again,
and for ever, into each heart” (302) were all of them. But they are not: they are
the males only. The same occurs in The Cold Moons. At the beginning of the
story the narrator explains that “all boar badgers over four years old” (Clement
1988, 37) are allowed to vote in the community, but shortly after one of the
heroes remarks that “all mature badgers” (47) do so. At this point, sows have
dropped out of the concept of ‘badger’ altogether. In contrast, once females
morph into the concept of badger, they lose their sex. When the evil badger
Kronos deserts from the main group, he takes male and female badgers (145),
but the next time they meet, Kronos’s group suffers from “the lack of caring
females” (256) and to remedy this they entice some of the main group’s females
to join them. So what happened to the females who originally went with
Kronos? The moment they became part of a group of ‘badgers’—a male
concept—they dropped out of existence as ‘females.’
In addition to their central function as reproduction machines shelved when
not needed, female animal characters often appear as the traditional ‘angel
in the house.’ Many female characters are “shy” (Dann 2008, 172), “gentle”
(Clement 1988, 89) and “kind” (Horwood 1980, 49), looking up in “admiration”
(Clement 1988, 87) to their “gallant” (Dann 2008, 172) mates. Often they are
entirely domestic and blissfully content in this role. As Blackford pointedly
remarks, the job of Cornflower in Redwall is “to serve the food” (2003, 102)—
and this is it, even while the community is under siege and every hand, or
rather paw, would be needed to fend of the attack. Similarly, in Watership
Down, none of the female rabbits ever joins in the adventures of the males or
in defending the warren against aggressors. Vixen in The Animals of Farthing
Wood likewise stays put in the earth while fox hunts (Dunn 2008, 176, 294).
In The Cold Moons, the two females of the badger family even keep house for
the patriarch of the family, prepare his bed (Clement 1988, 54) and provide his
food, licking off the slime of snails to make them more palatable for him
(87). Through their mildness and soft character these domestic females give
psychological support to the males (e.g., Clement 1988, 106; Dann 2008, 244),
and remain as a passive, but strengthening shadows at the backs of the brave
heroes. Rebecca in Duncton Wood literally drains her life force into the hero
Bracken to give him strength on his quest (Horwood 1980, 666), proving
herself to be nothing but an extended part of him, perhaps his Jungian anima.
Again, one can see at work the colonizing strategy of the master as identified
by Plumwood (1993, 95): not only the animal, but also the female is absorbed by
the masculine self. While the animal is assimilated as part of the self, the female
is “commodified” (193) and all the parts that can “be made use of ” by the
male/master are ultimately “devour[ed]” (193). “Devouring,” states Plumwood,
“seeks to create a slave-world, a ‘terra-formed’ landscape which offers
no resistance, which does not answer back because it no longer has voice
and language of its own” (193). Nameless, voiceless, deprived of identity and
agency, the female animal protagonist finds herself entirely dependent on the
36 Anja Höing
male without whom she drops out of existence. The stories act out patriarchal
Utopian visions of “the implementation of the Cartesian dream of complete
control over the other of nature” (193).
A framework of reallocated dualisms justifies the act of devouring the female.
The male/animal is both natural and cultural, while the female/object in
consequence can only be defined by negatives: she is un-natural and un-cultural.
Indeed, left to their own devices, female characters in talking animal stories
tend to do the wrong, the ‘unnatural’ thing. Dann’s vixen only takes “a few
seconds” (2008, 180) to come to the decision that she “want[s] to go wherever
[fox] led” (180), yet these are sufficient “to put her life, and that of fox, in
the gravest danger” (180), as her indecision exposes them to a fox hunt. The
message is straightforward: if she would have submitted immediately, they
would have escaped the danger. A similar construction can be seen in Tad
Williams’s Tailchaser’s Song (1985). The cats who fall for the temptation of an
‘unnatural’ life under human care or in imitation of humans are the Queen of
cats (152) and her court, as well as the hero’s first love (360). That there is one
female who does not fall for the temptation of the unnatural is self-evident:
there needs to be a worthy mate to the hero. In The Cold Moons, the male
badgers also have to protect a group of “weak-willed” (Clement 1988, 265)
and “frail” (265) females, who, in best tradition of Eve, follow the lure of the
unnatural Kronos.
“Reclaim[ing]” (266) the lost sows from Kronos is presented not as a super-
imposing of patriarchal power, but as an act of mercy, saving the ones that
have “lost their way” (266). In plot constructions such as these, the “logic of the
master” (Plumwood 1993, 190) comes full circle. In The Cold Moons, the un-
natural female not yet devoured by the male/master almost shatters the badgers’
dream of reaching their “Elysia” (Clement 1988, 56). In consequence, Clement
presents it as an act of duty for the female others to pass agency to the male
master as in their inherent unnaturalness they otherwise would become a threat
to the community of animals as a whole—and thus, as the community is equated
to an ecosystem, a threat to the environment. Other stories also present an
unnatural female as a threat to the greater good of a self-constructed natural
order appropriated to the hegemony of the master. This is a situation already
pre-shadowed in The Wind in the Willows. As I stated above, there are no female
animals in Grahame’s world, but female humans do appear—and these, to the
Riverbankers, “are even more threatening than the Wild Wooders” (Hunt
1994, 87).
To more thoroughly examine the nature of the “threat” (87) of the un-
absorbed female in talking animal stories, it is necessary to take a step back and
first view the political systems in the animal worlds. In consequence of the
ultra-patriarchal society structures of most talking animal cultures, these are
male-only domains, and additionally non-democratic ones. Democracy might
appear as a temporary state, but the stable political solution is an elder council
with a single male leader or a single male head animal in the position of an
absolute ruler. Most stories take this for granted, employing the naturalization
 Patriarchal myths in animal stories 37
technique already sketched above: the political system is presented without any
alternative or ideological struggle against it; it comes ‘natural’ to the animals.
As Blackford remarks, discussing Brian Jacques’s Redwall, “peace [in the
animal community] derives from stable gender roles” (2003, 102). In some
stories, however, the stability of the system is threatened by females usurping
power, an act of uprising of the other that is presented as so disturbing to the
natural order that it even threatens the male/animal self with castration. Tailchaser’s
Song may again serve as an example. The cats are governed by a “Queen”
(Williams 1985, 152) who has long given in to the lure of the unnatural. Her
rule is opposed by the proud all-male “First-walkers” (88) who constantly
reassert their masculinity through mock-fights and rough language (89) while
they displace the fear of the consequences of the Queen’s rule into their
mythology. Their mythological hero—a deeply masculine extension of the
self—meets a cat that defies classification in the either/or-structure of the male/
female dualism. The cat turns out to be a castrated tom who is not only “half-
fela,” that is, half female (174), but in consequence also half-natural. Directly
responsible are humans, not females, but as humans are the power behind the
Queen’s rule the story becomes an allegory for the consequences of female
unnatural otherness gaining power over the masculine natural self. Defending
masculinity thus is directly transformed into protecting the natural.
The connection between a threat to the natural and castration is even stronger
in David Clement-Davies’s Fire Bringer (2000). The story is of deer—animals
whose life can easily be rendered as a patriarchal society. Yet the heroes on their
journeys come across a herd ruled by vicious and ruthless hinds who force
their stags into slavery while they assume all ‘male’ duties (335), including
politics (336). In fact, even those females do not act on their own but follow
the doctrines superimposed on them by another herd of males acting as eminences
grises, but inside their own herd they reduce the stags to precisely the function
normally given to female characters: they are put aside until “needed for mating”
(335–336). The females have to continuously reinforce their power by ‘un-
natural’ means: they force the males to remain in a location where the poisoned
water of a copper mine cripples their antlers (335). The act of castration
executed by destroying the phallus-symbol of the antlers merges with a threat
to the environment originating from the same source—the poisoned water
simultaneously pollutes the deer’s habitat.
Naturally (another chimerical use of the term) it is the task of the hero and
his friends to set right the ‘natural balance.’ This is achieved once the formerly
crippled stag Haarg, now proudly bearing his restored phallus-symbol on his
head (403), complacently nods to himself when observing the earlier lead hind
as a compliant part of his harem (404), while all the traditionally male functions
have been reassumed by the stags (403). The situation is almost exactly the
mirror of the former one—only that the male rule, unlike the female one, needs
not be reinforced by means threatening the environment. It is constructed as
‘natural’ and therefore right.
Peter Chippindale’s Mink! (1995) follows a similar line. Animal Farm-like, the
animals in his story are clearly metaphors for humans. The book understands
38 Anja Höing
itself as a witty satire on British politics of the 1990s. With the single exception
of the rook Raka, female characters are either entirely domestic, plain stupid,
or immensely annoying due to their feminist stance. Their influence in wood-
land politics is devastating. Fighting in absurd causes like “Worm’s Lib” (85)
females ‘dabbling’ in politics keep the animals (i.e., male animals) so busy that
they are at first unable to cope with an invasive species overrunning their wood.
When the invasive mink are finally defeated, the story makes it appear as if
females virtually have to be stopped from having a voice in politics, as otherwise
the wood would be exposed to new attacks threatening its balance. Boris Badger
does away with the “threat” (Hunt 1994, 87) of the female with a hearty
bite into the rabbit doe Cowslip’s “prominent posterior” (Chippindale 1995,
543)—both a sexually loaded act and a demonstration of physical power. Mink!
appears like a representation of the existential anxiety of androcentric Western
ideologies exposed by the late 20th-century’s challenge to patriarchal power
structures.
The consequences, however, go beyond political systems. The restoration
of the patriarchal hegemony also has immediate effects on ecological stability
and the animals’ connection to nature. Once the patriarchal system is restored,
the threat of an ecological catastrophe is banned as well and the hero Owl
suddenly experiences his wood as an epitome of peace and natural beauty and
an eternal source of joy (564). In Mink!, but also in other stories such as The
Cold Moons or Fire Bringer, patriarchy is thus directly linked to ‘the natural’ and,
by means of employing the double-faced concept of nature, its normative
goodness. Restoring patriarchy is equated with restoring the natural order,
while restoring the natural order saves the environment from destabilizing
factors. The stories present males as positively duty-bound to keep females
in their place in order to keep the “river bank” in its Edwardian time bubble
of eternal stability, both politically and, so the stories try to make believe,
environmentally.
This connection between conservation and conservatism appears to be in a
process of naturalization too. When Cosslett writes that there is environmental
concern in The Wind in the Willows (2006, 180), it is precisely this natural-
ization which is at work. Neither Toad’s motor cars nor any other technologies
of the “Wide World” ever threaten the river bank environmentally. The threat
is one to conservative culture, to patriarchal hegemony—and even Cosslett,
in her otherwise admirable study, equates the two without questioning the
connection.
Such presentations of females appear to stand in stark contrast to the women/
nature analogy and the idea of the “angel in the ecosystem” (Plumwood 1993, 9)
that Plumwood, writing in the 1990s and thus at the high time of talking animal
stories, identified as “a popular contemporary green vision” (9). In this myth,
the late 20th-century version of the ‘angel in the house,’ women appear as
owning “special powers and capacities of nurturance, empathy and ‘closeness
to nature,’ which are unsharable by men” (8). Several animal stories employ
this concept and in doing so present a picture of the female animal that is vastly
 Patriarchal myths in animal stories 39
different from the dominant one sketched above, but equally serves to split the
concept of nature into a male and a female domain. In William Horwood’s
Duncton Wood the character Rebecca appears not only as an angel, but also
virtually as an avatar of the Ecosystem. Like in the image of women in Country
Women that Padilla Carroll (2017) discusses, the “trope of the Goddess” is at
work here. Rebecca is “personified Mother Earth” (Padilla Carroll 2017).
Instinct-driven, naively innocent and able to even listen to the language of
plants (William 1980, 137) the female mole is the connecting power between
the male hero Bracken and the pantheistic energy underlying their world (664).
Losing all subjectivity, she becomes a vessel for a universal Gaian love that needs
to be transferred to the hero. Similarly, the she-wolf Larka in David Clement-
Davies’s The Sight is gifted with a form of super-instinct that allows her to
touch pantheistic nature (2001, 396). Her brother is introduced as sharing her
powers, but one never sees him using them in any comparable way. While she
feels the pain of nature suffering under humans (475–476), he demands a
pact with the humans to “protect the wilderness from [their] own power”
(492). Again, she is the vessel, he acts. In both these cases nature appears as a
double entity. There is a female nature, a Gaian spiritual power that is numinous
and strange—the other—and a male nature, the material natural world as we
experience it, an extension of the self. The latter is the one at which, in the
ideology of the stories, environmental concerns should be directed, as the Gaian
female sphere appears as unprotectable as it is unreachable.
When Baker claims that “something in the structure of the talking animal
story makes it inherently subversive of patriarchal culture” (2001, 137), this
unfortunately does not meet the facts for all talking animal stories. As, true to his
introductory statement, “the animal can apparently be used to mean anything
and everything” (4), it can also mean ‘patriarchy.’ Indeed, as the discussion
above has shown, many talking animal stories transform the Arcadian idea of a
unison of nature and culture into a patriarchal myth set in an idealized past. ‘The
animal,’ as exclusively male as the concept of ‘man,’ continuously struggles to
eradicate all challenges to the status quo, as the patriarchal system and an intact
environment merge into one in a chimerical normative/materialist concept of
‘nature.’ The female is constructed as part of the problem, as an unnatural force
invading from the outside, perhaps because emancipation of women and the
environmental crisis began to stir patriarchal society around the same time and
thus came to be associated by mere temporal coincidence. Through means of
merging the normative and materialist dimensions of ‘the natural,’ some stories
even make it appear as if the emancipation of women caused the environmental
crisis, and, the other way round, that restoring Western patriarchal hegemony
to its full strength would also restore the world’s ecological balance. Other stories
create visions of the ‘angel in the ecosystem.’ Again, females are not constructed
as able to remedy the crisis—their connection is one to mystical, not to material
nature. Agency again has to be passed to the male.
The genre with its high metaphorical potential and level of abstraction
thus allows a platform to propagate values which are nowadays shunned in
40 Anja Höing
mainstream literature: patriarchy, in short, searches for a retreat on the river
bank. Instead of attacking the foundations of the environmental crisis by a
deconstruction of essentialist dualisms as Plumwood suggests in her ground-
breaking Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993), the majority of talking
animal stories operate inside Cartesian dualist thinking, seeking to dissociate
nature from its connection with the female and instead associating it with the
male, thus reinforcing the master narrative. Culture, too, remains firmly in male
hands, or, in this genre, paws. Only the mystical, ungraspable sides of nature—
those which material environmentalism cannot touch—are allowed to remain
in the female sphere. The consequence is an even deeper trench between the
dualist notions of male and female, whereby the latter category is stripped of
almost all its contents. It may either remain an empty shell defined by negatives,
whose sole purpose is reproduction, all its other meanings “devour[ed]”
(Plumwood 1993, 192) by the totalizing self/master and “incorporated into the
empire of the self” (192), or the female becomes an unreachable mystical ‘other,’
so alien that it does not have an identity but merges with a universal, but
formless Gaian power. I follow Plumwood in her claim that such a restructuring
of the content of Cartesian dualist boxes is not where any solutions to the
environmental crisis will be found. Instead, Plumwood contends that one
needs to go beyond dualism and recognize “both continuity and difference.”
In order to come to any understanding of the other, be it animal or female, the
other needs to be “acknowledge[ed] . . . as neither alien to and discontinuous
from self nor assimilated to or an extension of self” (6).
All these stories were written from the 1970s to the earliest years of the
21st century, in decades when feminist movements gained pace. It is certainly
possible to argue that they reflect the male anxiety of the time, an anxiety which
perhaps reaches its peak of expression in William Horwood’s Seekers at the
WulfRock (1997). In this Deep-Ecology-vision post-WWIII-Europeans in a
dystopian year 2013 follow the examples set by the story’s talking animals and
return to a ‘natural’ life in unison with “our Earth, our Mother” (Horwood
1997, 7) which is highly praised by the narrator. These human characters
live in “tribes” (7), ruled by “shaman[s]” (33), “elders” (37), and a “headman”
(37) and women, silent, compliant, utterly passive creatures that are not even
granted dialogue, are traded as objects among the men (39, 40).
As the genre virtually died with the beginning of the 21st century, it is
difficult to discern a trend, but the tendency is at least hope-inspiring. In the
isolated talking animal stories published during the last decade, one can see
female characters invade plot structures as individual protagonists and gain
cultural power as well as some leadership functions. But still the vein of utilizing
‘the natural’ remains in equal strength. While now more frequently including
females, even contemporary talking animal stories simply elude other topics
(females appear to be a very challenging one already). In all my readings, I have
never come across a single talking animal story with a queer character. Talking
animal stories apparently try to evade entering into a discussion of queerness,
but in fact achieve the opposite: by ignoring queerness to the point of pretending
 Patriarchal myths in animal stories 41
it does not exist, the genre once again makes use of the blended physical/nor-
mative concept of nature. The stories present what they state to be (physically
and normatively) ‘natural’ worlds. If in these worlds, queerness does not exist,
the underlying implication is that it is unnatural—both physically and nor-
matively. In this, talking animal stories reaffirm homophobic discourse even
more drastically by evading the topic. The fight in the arena of ‘the natural’ has
not stopped when finally granting more power to female characters—it simply
shifted to other contestants.

References
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Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Baran, Stephanie. 2017. “Visual Patriarchy: PETA Advertising and the Commodification
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Environment, ed. D. A. Vakoch and S. Mickey. New York and London: Routledge.
Barthes, Roland. 1974. Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers. London: Jonathan Cape.
Blackford, Holly V. 2003. “The Writing on the Wall of Redwall.” In Utopian and
Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults, ed. C. Hintz and E. Ostry. New York
and London: Routledge.
Chippindale, Peter. 1995. Mink! London: Simon & Schuster.
Clement, Aeron. 1988. The Cold Moons. London: Penguin.
Clement-Davies, David. 2000. Fire Bringer. London: Macmillan Children’s Books.
——. 2001. The Sight. London: Macmillan Children’s Books.
Cosslett, Tess. 2006. Talking Animals in British Children’s Fiction, 1786–1914. Aldershot:
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Dann, Colin. 1979. The Animals of Farthing Wood. London: Egmont UK.
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Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. New York and London:
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3 Visual patriarchy:
PETA advertising and
the commodification
of sexualized bodies
Stephanie Baran

Advertising is a multifaceted idea that is utilized by every single group, company,

organization and institution to get their product out to the public. The goal is
to get the public thinking about the message or product and hopefully buy-in
and support. Capitalism is the driver of the advertising world, because it does
not matter if the organization is for-profit or not, money is the major component.
And most advertisers rely on the old adage, ‘sex sells.’ For example, any perfume/
makeup/clothing advertisement is selling an emotion, feeling, or self-presentation
or image to the viewer. However, if we shifted our thinking to social justice
organizations, and more specifically environmental justice organizations, one
would think that these same ‘sex sells’ mantras would not exist.
Advertising has been utilizing the frame of ‘sex sells’ for some time. This
often incites a knee-jerk reaction, or gets the viewer to stop and examine their
work for a few seconds. In relation to animal rights advertising, researchers
find that the particular imagery of ‘sex sells’ has a purpose: to get people thinking
about animal cruelty by putting women in the place of animals to highlight the
mutual connection (Lunceford 2012; Olson and Goodnight 1994). However,
this analogy fails because in patriarchal culture women are meat and are to
be consumed in a variety of ways. Therefore, advertising is, in a sense, visualized
patriarchy—the actual visualization of patriarchal ideas and social norms.
Therefore, Adams (2010) finds that positing women in the place of animals
makes violence the ‘absent referent,’ which acts as the disconnect between the
beginning and end. In sum, in both situations, women and animals experience
a similar violence within humanity. While PETA wants to show the horrifying
treatment that animals receive, using women to do it is a failed analogy because
under patriarchy, women are meat.
However, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals act in a paradoxical
nature when considering this very issue. This organization prides itself on
protecting animals and showing the trauma and violence that animals face, and
yet uses women and men to accomplish those goals. However, when considering
the difference of presentation of the ads that feature men and women, there are
cultural scripts infused into these ads. For example, PETA advertising desires
“rebelliousness” from meat-eating but also values conformity to cultural
desires—like being a certain body type, look, etc. (Bordo 1997). Often when
44 Stephanie Baran
we think about patriarchy, it is in a manner, such as the gender pay gap (solely
represented as between men and women and never considering within-gender
gaps) or the way that men and women are differently treated by Instagram, etc.,
and often the visualized aspects of patriarchy in advertising are not examined.
Many of these ads feature men and women pictured differently. For example,
men are usually photographed in positions of power and, conversely, women
are photographed in positions of sexualized vulnerability. The visual patriarchy
used by PETA within their images does not just use gendered scripts about men
and women, but also transphobia, fatphobia, racialized scripts, and ableism.
Visual patriarchy most directly fixates its position on how women,
and in many cases men, feel about their bodies and their own body image
(Mitten and D’Amore 2017). Therefore, this works to detail how patriarchy is
multifaceted. And by trying to elevate the position of animals, it denigrates the
positions of routinely victimized populations.
Advertising uses women in the same way in which the food and clothing
industries use animals: as commodities. Advertising uses the capitalist frame to
posit women as consumable objects for the consumption of others—in this
case, the cismale, heteronormative gaze. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter
is to illuminate the ways that all advertising utilizes these frames and gazes, and
as scholars, activists, and humans existing under a variety of conditions, we
should be aware regarding the ways in which intersections of oppression
function under the capitalist tendencies that are exhibited through advertising.
PETA uses imagery and cause to incite a reaction, but not in a revolutionary
way or as a counter to the established frame. PETA’s states their mission as
“animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or
abuse in any other way” (PETA.org n.d.). While this statement is their mission
statement, in order for it to get to the public, they must manufacture the con-
sumption of sex to sell their products and also motivate people to support their
mission. Furthermore, to communicate with the general populace, PETA
must use the language of the dominant group: the established patriarchal male
gaze (Julius 2012). More importantly, in order for PETA to be present in the
collective minds of the general populace, they must ‘sell’ women in order for
people to even give a thought about animals (Deckha 2008).
Does the messaging and visual patriarchy used by PETA detract from their
purpose and harm women in the process? The paradoxical nature of a seemingly
leftist organization such as PETA would assume that they would understand
this positionality; however, this is an incorrect explanation. To dive deeper, the
basis of this exploration stems from a content analysis of 100 photos from
the PETA.org website from five different media campaigns, including ableist,
trans and fat phobic PETA ads and videos. The videos are an avenue for animal
rights outreach by celebrity activists, and the videos use women to tantalize
and lack a serious discussion, information or any visual representation of animal
torture, etc. In contrast, videos featuring individuals who identify as male
celebrities involve a clothed man informing the public, with violent images
and facts. In these videos, all femininity is removed and the videos are explicitly
 PETA advertising and sexualized bodies 45
serious and masculine. Therefore, PETA posits men as having facts and
information and women being available for sensual titillation, visual pleasure
and no real substance to why caring about animals and being vegetarian/vegan
is important.

Women as consumable objects

Debord (1994) illustrates that the spectacle in this case advertising, is the
“outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of production [emphasis added]”
(13). More in-depth, Debord continues by stating that no matter the mode—
news sources, marketing or the entertainment industry, “the spectacle is the
[epitome of] the prevailing model of social life.” To understand advertising and
the use of women in those particular images, it is important to remember that
all oppressions are interconnected, which at its base is the foundation for conflict
theory. For example, Patricia Hill Collins (1993) notes that while existing in
this particular society, we are at once oppressors and oppressed.
The intersectionality of race, class, sexuality, and gender oppression all
converge within the advertising world. Collins explains that because we do
not live in a vacuum, the intersectionality of race, class, sexuality, and gender
construct the different ways in which we view the world. For example, Collins
explains “how sexualities constructed in conjunction with an unquestioned
heterosexism become manipulated within class, race, and nation as distinctive
systems of oppression” (2000, 132).
Advertising campaigns of all kinds construct class and racializing distinctions
within their outreach. The essence of advertising is to give the public the need
to have the product that they are selling. For example, perfume ads do not have
anti-social people ignoring each other because they do not want to talk to them.
These ads feature a high-class statuses and lifestyles that people can desire. These
products create a fetishism that connects consumers to the want and potentially
the connection to that lifestyle. This fetishism then extends to the people that
appear in the ad. Therefore, not only are products fetishized but also the people
in the ads are further fetishized and essentialized.
Essentialism assumes that in relation to any concept, there are a set of character-
istics that must be possessed and whatever that is must belong to the essence of
that concept (hooks 1991). Therefore, the essential qualities of women include
the placement of their bodies and all women must have those essentializing
qualities, and if they do not, then their bodies are somehow different. Advertising
therefore creates essentialized bodies for consumption by society within
patriarchy and therefore extends these characteristics to every woman. For
example, advertising often features parts of women and therefore makes them
consumable parts—an arm with a perfume bottle, or a leg with a pair of shoes.
As Julius states, women are more likely to be featured ‘in pieces’ and a woman
becomes ‘parts’ versus a whole woman (Julius 2012; Ward, Merriwether, and
Caruthers 2006). The male gaze presented in patriarchal society only sees
women as pieces and not whole people; therefore, it is far easier to treat women
as second-class citizens only existing to please heterosexual, cismen.
46 Stephanie Baran
Other research has found that this dual representation, both woman and
pieces of women, reasserts speciesist ideology and reinforces both anti-woman
and anti-animal sentiments (Glasser 2011). This visualized patriarchy is the mantra
of sex sells within the capitalist system. As hooks (1997, 8) notes, “issue is not
freeing ourselves from representation. It’s really about being enlightened witnesses
when we watch representations, which means we are able to be critically vigilant
about both what is being told to us and how we respond to what is being told.”
Representations hold a social value and often maintain that value. For example,
sensual-looking women posing for perfume advertisements or a passively
dominant man posing for Calvin Klein advertisements all blend to culturally
manufactured images (Bordo 1997). Both hooks and Bordo build on Lorde’s
power of the erotic to explain the influence that the manufactured body holds
within media (Bordo 1997; hooks 1991, 1997; Lorde 1984).

Body policing as consumption

For advertising to remain profitable, a continual source of consumable objects
is necessary. Therefore, body policing becomes as suitable avenue for a highly
profitable revenue stream, which includes shaving, facial, skin and weight
loss products. Continuing with the social justice paradox and how we think of
‘left leaning’ organizations, we might assume that PETA would be above
body policing ads. Collectively, throughout all the ads and videos under the
PETA brand (because ostensibly, that is what PETA is), there was a connection
to body policing in relation to grooming, shaving, and general ‘attractive
appearance.’ For example, ciswomen and LGBTQAI men were depicted
as unattractive if they did not shave their bikini area or their underarms. These
ads advocate for no fur trim on coats and other apparel in order to protect
animals that usually see violence—minks, foxes, and other small furry animals.
In connection to policing body hair, a few of the ads feature women who
are not perceived as the ‘skinny standard.’ For example, in an ad that featured
a woman outside the normalized ‘skinny’ body type within current society, her
body was placed in such a way that her placement hid her stomach and
Photoshop was used to disguise her body with highlights and shading. This
body positioning is different from the featured models in the other campaigns
where their bodies and silhouettes are clearly visible. While there was an
attempt to use a model that was different than a majority of their other advertis-
ing campaigns, there was still a conscious attempt to hide that body. Therefore,
the paradox of a left-leaning organization to be somewhat body positive, but is
perhaps not, signifies another concern within this particular social justice
organization.
Continuing with problematic body policing, a number of ads that feature
meat eating compare fatness to physically embodying a pig. Therefore, this
creates the illusion that all vegans and vegetarians are skinny and sexy and that
is the only acceptable body, thereby erasing all other body types. This erasure
couples fatness with meat eating, excess and shame and as something that should
 PETA advertising and sexualized bodies 47
be shaded and hidden (Bordo 2004). These ads promote ablest thinking
by equating fatness to lesser intelligence and outright stupidity. Therefore, by
trying to get their message out that we as humans should not be using animals
for our benefit, they actually oppress humans in the process.
The desire to reaffirm what people think is ‘sexy’ or attractive or how to
appear as such is explicit within advertising and sadly is no different in regards
to PETA’s advertising. The ads for men focus on sexual prowess and that being
vegan would result in an easier time finding women. The lifestyle of vegan/
vegetarianism is viewed as ‘sexy’ in PETA’s eyes and therefore women will find
you sexually appealing if you identify with this lifestyle. In opposition to that,
ads featuring women use the premise of sexual availability under the guise of
veganism. It’s about bodies and being a certain type of sexy. The focus is on
sexual interest and desire and the side benefit is that you might help an animal
or two if you went meat-free.
The body policing continues with ads that focus on facial acne, specifically
using ads featuring women. Therefore, the attention to bodies and how people
present themselves to the world and the ways in which PETA thinks vege-
tarians and vegans should look is problematic. Instead of the focus being on how
one can best help animals, the focus is the continued preoccupation with being
the ‘best’ self—which culminates in a good-looking self as a good-doing
self (Brumberg 2010). Thus, the focus on the body continues the problematic
struggle that women and men face with body issues and the social controls on
those bodies. PETA continually focuses on what society deems as presentable
and does not challenge the established social norms about how people should
present their bodies. Understanding intersectionality requires that PETA and
society realize that human rights are animal rights and vice versa.

Sexualized shock and awe advertising and

the male gaze
Capitalism effectively sells the bodies of women for consumption for the
masses. Debord notes that “[b]y the means of the spectacle the ruling order
discourses endlessly upon itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self-praise.
The spectacle is the self-portrait of power in the age of power’s totalitarian rule
over the conditions of existence” (1994, 19). Therefore, this is an expansion
that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of the age (Marx and Engels
1965). Therefore, the ideas regarding advertising and the consumption of bodies
in media are representative of how the ruling class views these particular
participants in society.
In regards to creating a media frenzy, the idea of the public spectacle is
important in order to solidify an attention-grabbing technique (Donovan 1990;
Julius 2012; Lunceford 2012; Matusitz and Forrester 2013; Olson and Goodnight
1994; Simonson 2001). Lunceford (2012) examines the variety of media tools
that PETA uses to engage the public. For example, he focuses mostly on
PETA’s “Running of the Nudes” event every year in Spain. This correlates
48 Stephanie Baran
with the Pamplona running of the bulls. Lunceford claims that the collection
of naked bodies is the moment where “humans cast off their humanity and
stand as one with animals” (2012, 8). The problem with this assumption is at
no point in the current era are bodies not seen in a sexualized manner (except
of course, during and after pregnancy).
Whenever women’s bodies are nude, the representation of their body is
protected. In contrast, topless men never are depicted with blue ribbons across
their chests. Therefore, this compounds the idea that the female body is some-
thing special and treated differently. For example, the campaign “Free the
Nipple” seeks to end the gendered oppression and inequalities that women
experience given the overt patriarchal policing of women’s bodies which differs
from male bodies in present society. In more academic research, Ward et al.
(2006, 704) finds that “dominant gender ideologies, as exemplified by the
media, consistently paint women as sexual objects, highlighting their bodies
as being mainly for the pleasure of men instead of as multidimensional
(i.e., including both reproductive and sexual functions).” Further, this research
found that exposure to the media’s sexualized images of women led men to
hold more sexist and gendered views about women and their bodies.

Sexualized imagery
Advertising relies on sexualized imagery and extends visual patriarchy, and
based on the extensive research that has emerged about PETA, we would be
remiss if we thought PETA was any different. There is no problem with women
being sexy, but there is a problem if men do not equally share that same
sexualized nature, which will be unpacked shortly. Many of the images relied
on overt sexual innuendo or mostly naked women to sell the slogans of PETA.
These images use women to associate male sexual performance with meat eating.
For example, if you eat meat, you have a higher likelihood of being impotent
by some unconfirmed research. These images also explicitly detailed that meat
eating would have men more likely to experience less energy during sex
and have less energy during the experience. The key to all of these images is
that they use women and put the focus on heteronormative, cismale sexuality.
The women in these ads are only present for male enjoyment.
Similar to the advertisements, videos used by PETA depict women as a solely
sexualized being as the foil for male enjoyment and male sexuality. The video
“Veggie Love” depicts three models in lingerie rubbing a variety of vegetables
on their bodies. These white models depict one particular body type—skinny.
It appears that the PETA objective was to pose these particular models in
a similar way to a Victoria’s Secret advertisement. The main focus of the
video is script that says, “Studies show that vegetarians have better sex.” Here,
the idea is not to become a vegetarian for the animals’ sake, but to become a
vegetarian so that there might be better sex.
In connecting visual patriarchy with the spectacle, PETA takes the crude idea
of jelly wrestling, changing it to tofu which makes it far more animal friendly.
 PETA advertising and sexualized bodies 49
The reason that this connects to animal rights is due to gelatin being an animal
by-product. The women in this advertisement are wearing bikinis and wrestling
in tofu to bring awareness to animals! The advertisement notes how many
people are stopping and gawking but the idea of the spectacle is really what is
drawing the focus. More deeply, people stopping are not particularly interested
in the fact that these women are dedicated to the cause of animal rights, but
that they are wrestling in bikinis in the middle of a busy intersection. All these
spectators are viewing is a spectacle and not the meaning behind the spectacle.

Sexualized violence
PETA uses images of women being beaten, abused, and disturbingly sexualized
to elicit a response that would connect this violence to the violence against
animals (i.e., look at this beaten woman, how could you let this happen to an
animal?). However, this is a faulty analysis because this violence happens
to women on a daily basis. For example, in real life women are beaten, stabbed,
or murdered for rejecting male advances. Therefore, PETA wants us to view
the image of the woman, but in the context of animals, but never challenges
that women also experience similar violence on a daily basis. For example, one
ad showcases a woman in a fancy dress out to a nice dinner and a man with
a glove is choking her while imitating how the process of foie gras is completed.
There are also images of women as the varieties of meat cuts, displayed as
hanging meat, in meat trays, etc. Here, women are no longer whole people,
but just pieces of flesh that are removed from their humanity.
Women can experience violence on a daily basis: from walking away from
an annoying catcaller to screaming for her life from someone attacking her
because she said no. Women can recount a variety of these experiences over
their lifetime. Instead of highlighting the violence that women experience,
PETA decides to take a different approach to sexual violence. This video begins
with a woman in just a bra, pair of panties and a coat, walking down the street,
looking sad and walking as if in pain and in a neck brace. The woman walks
into the apartment and the boyfriend is fixing a hole in the wall. The voice-
over indicates that her boyfriend went vegan and knocked the bottom out of
her and this was okay because she liked it—which is apropos in rape discourse.
Therefore, in this video, PETA highlights that paradoxical nature—you do
not have to be conscious of violence within humanity to be a vegan. The idea
of consent is missing here as well. For example, the woman may have consented
to sex in this video, but perhaps not the style. PETA uses rape discourse to high-
light that you can have rough sex as a vegan. This video continues to highlight
the heteronormative men’s sexuality at the loss of woman’s. It displays still
men as predatory and women as harmless bystanders available for male consump-
tion. The video never looks at the woman as sexually empowered only as an
innocuous victim. The video frames sexual abuse as normal and therefore a
glorification of domestic violence.
50 Stephanie Baran
Violent images
PETA relies on shock value—which seems so easy and often is questionable to
their cause. For example, these images of shock value include women and
some men in situations that exhibit death, are violent, and include murderous
acts. Images include women being dismembered and hanging on meat hooks,
on a coroner’s table, complete with a toe tag, and the tagline reads, “I’d rather
be dead, than wear fur.” Other images categorized as violent are images where
naked women appear to be dismembered and disfigured in Styrofoam containers,
like how meat is sold. Other images include naked women, painted red, in
an ‘oven’ with the tagline, ‘McDonald’s Burns Chicks Alive,’ as a play on words
for ‘Chicks,’ that is, women to stand in for baby chickens. Here there is a multi-
plicity of things being demonstrated. Not just the idea that these women
are naked to ‘make a point’ but that women are referred to as ‘chicks’ which
has the connotation of being innocent and infantile. Therefore, women have
the dual role of innocent baby animal and at the same time sexualized woman.
While all of these images are horrifying and are related to ways that animals are
handled in order to be consumed by the general public. It also is related to how
women are viewed as objects to be preyed upon.

Racialized systems
PETA often intersects gender and race, often with a racialized discourse. For
example, for a PETA ad condemning wild animals, the ad features a muscular,
naked black man, with his mouth open in a roar, trapped in a cage in a very
animalistic body positioning. PETA uses several racial tropes, first with the
black and brown men as animals—therefore not human. This should really give
us pause given the recent, but not new revelations regarding the treatment of
black men and women. What is important about this is that white men do not
appear in the same way as the men of color. One ad depicts a boa wrapping
themselves around someone, but white men by and large are not pictured
in the same manner. Given the way that black men are demonized in society
by white supremacy, this image should initiate an immediate response.
Another ad featuring a woman of color included the tagline, “Dogs need
birth control too!” For example, as Roberts argues in Killing the Black Body:
Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty (1997), that black and brown women
have had their reproductive choices limited for them and in many cases chosen
for them. However, this image is completely problematic given the history of
eugenics and racist reproductive rights policies for women of color—in relation
to Clinton’s welfare ‘reform’ women of color, particularly black women, in
legislation that tried but ultimately failed to have the Mirena and Norplant
(IUD) implanted to receive welfare benefits (Collins 2000; Roberts 1997).
Images like this thereby treat women of color as second-class citizens and are
rather insensitive to women who have had to endure reproductive violence.
For example, in one such media campaign, a model of color was placed as an
“Eve-esque temptress,” which correlates to the idea of black women as jezebels
 PETA advertising and sexualized bodies 51
or Latinas as ‘hot-blooded’ or overly sexual (Collins 2000, 2004; Roberts
1997). It also reduces women to stereotypes that have been used by white
supremacy to control women of color—jezebel, baby producers, overly fertile,
sluts, etc. (Collins 2000, 2004; Roberts 1997). Because PETA is using the
language of the dominant (white, heterosexual cismales) group, the images and
videos produced by PETA use subordinate members of society in a particularly
marginalizing way.

Pieces of ‘woman’ and the heterosexualization

of the body
Lee (1994, 343) explains that “the body is a ‘text’ of culture; it is a symbolic
form upon which the norms and practices of society are inscribed” (cf. Fraser
and Bartky 1992; Haug 1999; Jaggar and Bordo 1989). As stated previous, the
positions that bodies encompass within advertising illustrates how the dominant
frame understands those bodies within society. This dominant norm gives
meaning to these particular bodies, and if they are in pieces, then the people
attached to those bodies lose their meaning. PETA creates a type of ‘state of
exception’ on women’s bodies when presenting them to men (Agamben 1998).
They accomplish this by making the visualization of violence of animals
on women and thereby acting as a sense of state—animals should not by hunted
for game, but we will display ‘women as game’ by using women in violent
positions. For example, PETA opposes hunting but actively uses women for
sport (in advertisements, tofu wrestling, pillow fights, etc.) to garner visual
spectacles and interest from heterosexual men.
PETA tried two different marketing techniques. One of their marketing
campaigns used visual images of animal torture, but of course, no one wants
to confront or be confronted with the threat of humanity upon animals (Julius
2012). The opposite was to use two women in bras and panties engaging in
a pillow fight to get the attention of men to “Go Vegetarian” (Matthews 2007;
Julius 2012). Matthews, the senior vice president of PETA, finds that “women
are often the only ones with the ‘cojones’ to put themselves on the line for their
beliefs” (Matthews 2007, 215). This statement is using a euphemism for male
genitalia which is rather interesting when discussing the ‘empowerment of
women’ from a male perspective (Julius 2012).
Audre Lorde’s power of the erotic comes to mind in reference to Matthews’s
quote. Ad campaigns are facilitated from an internalized male gaze, not from
the power of the erotic. He also lacks the ability to recognize where the idea
of women joining these nude photo shoots are in relation to their subconscious
or conscious pressure to fit within the ideals of the male gaze, hence suppressing
the erotic for the substitution of the pornographic. Lee (1994) notes that the
male desires of woman and about women have been encrypted onto their
bodies. Lorde states that “the erotic has often been misnamed by men and used
against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic,
the plasticized sensation” (1984, 54). So the women in the photos may be
52 Stephanie Baran
loving what they are doing with intense passion, but that is what Lorde is
arguing is the erotic. For example, Alicia Silverstone exhibits Lorde’s notion of
the power of the erotic best in her PETA video. Silverstone is a well-known
vegan and has posed for PETA in previous ads. Here, she is seen swimming
naked in a pool advocating for animal rights, because somehow those things
make sense. The main connection here to animal rights and bodies is that ‘she
feels better’ and the only way to get this across to the public is to emerge out
of a pool, naked, with a slow beat in the background.

Patriarchy and men

This analysis used images that featured men as well. The interesting aspect
of these images is that all the men had trusting expressions. Therefore, there is
a disconnection that men are ever part of a system that might hurt women.
Another aspect was that most of the images that featured men pictured them
as fully clothed and with live animals. In the ad campaigns analyzed, women
were almost never pictured with live animals. Also, the taglines were also very
benign, which differed completely from the taglines that featured women.
For example, these ads had statements like, “I’m Tom Higgenson and I’m
a vegetarian.” The ads feature men within a heteronormative lens which is
focused on attracting female attention, with taglines such as, “Chicks dig men
who are vegetarians.” The comparison of women and animals with the word
‘chick’ should give us pause.
PETA effectively reaffirms socially constructed and gendered norms
about food consumption, particularly regarding meat and vegetables. Their
positing for ‘strong men eat veggies’ technically reaffirms the masculine identity
associated with meat (Adams 2010; Luke 2007). Connected to that are images
of women becoming vegetables or being hung like meat—both a consumable
object, subconsciously reminding the viewing public that these images, food,
and women are to be consumed by men. Their argument is framed in a way that
when taken together, creates a hostile comparison for women.
While some of the ads did include naked men, the position of the body is
extremely important. The torso is the most vulnerable part of the body for
humans and animals alike. Therefore, when animals show you their torso, it
shows trust or submission. In the ads that included naked men, they differed
from the ads with women in a considerable way. In ads that include naked
women crouching, their skin was branded, scratched, and bleeding with
the tagline “beaten, shackled and abused.” In similarly positioned men’s ads, the
tagline was “no animal belongs on chains” and the male model was not featured
with any scratches or open wounds, and was standing up, demonstrating strength
and resilience. These ads were very focused on strength and a particular type of
hegemonic masculinity. There are many types of masculinities and these ads
focus on strength and the ability to attract women in a specifically cishetero-
normative way and disregards the multitudes of masculinities that can exist
(Connell and Connell 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Hennen 2008).
 PETA advertising and sexualized bodies 53
Meat is socially constructed as manly, therefore PETA runs ads that focus on
vegans who are strong and work body builders to assure men that if they stop
eating meat they would not be seen as weak (Adams 2010; Luke 2007). Therefore,
the focus is still on the identity of cis, heterosexual hegemonic masculine
strength. Another key piece found in the analysis is that men of color over-
whelmingly make up the proportion of naked and exotified advertisements for
PETA. However, if ads do include naked men, they are never depicted in a
sexual nature. For example, in ads for “Ink not mink,” sports stars have strategically
placed footballs, but are not positioned in a sexual way, but in a position of
strength. In order to get this across, vegan Casey Affleck talks seriously about
the issues around animal torture—specifically the dehorning of animals. Here,
Affleck discusses the severity and utter cruelty that animals endure at the hands
of human beings. He talks seriously to the camera, fully clothed as violent
images detailing this process scroll behind him. The tone is serious, filled with
information and facts about the dire situations in which humans place these
animals. Therefore, in contrast to the Alicia Silverstone video and aligning with
all of the other images and videos, again, men have information and are serious.
The interesting thing is that all of images and videos of men are also complicit
in patriarchy. While working differently on men, specifically white men benefit
from patriarchy. White men are photographed as smiling, looking fresh, and
never enacting violence. White men, in particular, are not used in a manner
that does nothing if not reaffirm the hegemonic white heteropatriarchy. Black
men, however, do not benefit from patriarchy in the same manner. Black and
brown men are depicted as super strength, reacting or in animalistic position.
The reason why this is related to patriarchy is that they do not benefit from
patriarchy in the same way that white men do.

Intersectional environmental justice: beyond depictions

of ableism and transphobia
One of the more surprising finds of this project are the ads that include ablest
and transphobic messages. These messages include a false connection between
dairy consumption and autism and transphobic messages with men and
body types—specifically included the tagline “Dude looks like a lady,” not only
negatively referencing a man who is fat and also condemning transgender
people in the process. Again, within these advertisements there is a dedication
to normalized heterosexuality. There are no other deviations from gender,
solely men and women and people are taut, skinny, and not fat.
Other ads by PETA advocate that meat eating reduces intelligence; one
might become ‘a vegetable.’ Unsurprisingly, PETA also has advertisements
where women become vegetables. These ads create a thought dissonance—you
can be ‘manly’ by eating vegetables and you can have better sex (but your
partner might suffer) and eating meat is ruining your intelligence. When viewed
together, these ads are making a statement that reaffirms ‘meat as manly,’ but
don’t lose your masculinity by becoming a vegetable if you eat meat. Conversely,
54 Stephanie Baran
PETA has ads where women already are/are becoming vegetables. In this instance,
women can only be feminine. If men become vegetables, they lose all their
essential qualities as men, and therefore become effeminate, which for PETA
and generally accepted social norms—is bad.
In order to build a better organization, we must bridge the gap between
more radical organizations and PETA. As social justice activists, scholars, and
people existing under a variety of conditions, we should always remember that
our commitment is not just to human beings, but also to all beings and it must
be truly intersectional. Being congruent and conscious is not easy and there
are all sorts of aggressions that take place in our lives that make thinking
about social justice and our place in the world difficult. Gorski (2014) notes
that macro-aggressions are the ways in which larger structures impact lives
in different ways and construct our decisions. And as always, as activists, we
must remember that we as people do not operate in a vacuum and that all of
our actions must be as conscious and congruent as possible.
PETA actively excludes individual people from engaging within their cause
due to its problematic messaging. If you fail to fit into PETA’s image of skinny,
able-bodied, heterosexual and white, you are their target. PETA’s messaging
erases the visibility of marginalized communities and potentially makes them
feel unwelcome in the vegetarian and vegan community.
While not all of PETA’s ads are misogynistic and violent, the fact that even
one of these ads exist should give us pause. Therefore, while PETA claims to
be ridding the world of oppression against animals, it uses women to frame that
oppression. The problem with this analogy is that patriarchy does kill and
does treat women as pieces to be exotified. PETA does not reclaim ‘sexy,’
counter hegemony, or anything of that nature. PETA plays to these issues that
women are to be overtly sexualized and objectified because in our culture
that will give them some press. Given the oppression and domination over
women and their image, displaying women in shackles, beaten, dismembered,
and displayed in meat packing trays actually hurts women because these things
actually happen. Therefore, the message that PETA tries to send is lost because
patriarchy actually creates this system of oppression upon women in the same
way that capitalism and factory farming create a system of oppression on animals.
The advertising of PETA therefore reaffirms patriarchy by presenting it in full
view and by society not being able to connect that what happens to animals,
happens to women and to some men.
PETA and other organizations like it must fully realize their position to
challenge patriarchy and fully engage with environmental justice. They must
understand the positionality of women and men in their advertisements and
be fully committed to intersectional environmental justice.
 PETA advertising and sexualized bodies 55
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A Perspective on Shock Advertising,” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 12(1): 85–100.
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Image and Experience in Nature.” In Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender,
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Routledge.
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Cruelty, Privacy, and Fashion: The Social Controversy over Fur,” Quarterly Journal
of Speech 80(3): 249–276.
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Roberts, Dorothy E. 1997. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of
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Sex Roles 55(9–10): 703–714.
4 Ethical transfeminism:
transgender individuals’
narratives as contributions
to ethics of vegetarian
ecofeminisms
Anja Koletnik

This chapter will stress feminisms as being primarily commitments and projects
of ethical and political inclusivity and solidarity, rather than forefronting them
as projects of advocacy for binary gender categories and gender identity politics.
Exemplification of my argument will be built upon Carol J. Adams’s canon
of vegetarian ecofeminisms, who appropriate diet as their essential resource of
political work with which they contest speciesism, cissexism, and patriarchy.1
‘The personal is political’ is a resonation present more or less distinctively
within all feminist discourses, vegetarian ecofeminisms, and their conceptual-
izations of food being no exception. ‘Food viscerally connects individuals
and social bodies,’ claims Belasco, and suggests the ‘politics of food, culture, and
society is an increasingly important area for social inquiry’ (Belasco 2008 in
Cherry 2006, 233). Cherry (2006) implies that consumption identities tran-
scend the initial understanding of the concept of identity as being what some-
one is, and build upon what someone does. Discursive realms are thus being
transcended with considerations of identifications based on the materiality of
lived experiences—a central stance of my argumentation, which will correlate
diet and gender as analytical categories manifested upon the example of trans-
gender and cisgender non-conforming individuals’ meat non-consumption.2
Modern animal rights movements advocate for the deconstruction of the
human/animal dichotomy, challenging speciesism, and recognizing animals
as inherently valuable beings (Regan 2003; Singer 1990; Francione 1996 in
Freeman 2010). The term ‘vegetarian’ describes a diet which excludes all forms
of animal flesh, while decisions whether to consume meat or not are usually
ingrained within one’s philosophical, ethical or religious beliefs (Kheel 2004).
DeSolier (2013) signifies that in post-industrial societies the morality of production
is immense; it has power over (re)shaping consumption. One’s moral deliberation
on what they ingest is ethical consumption.
The political importance of meat non-consumption is not possible without
acknowledging the inherent political matter of animals themselves. Overall
(2012) argues that whether an individual, human or non-human animal, counts
as a person is partially dependent on how they are treated by others. An
individual’s significance derives not only from who they are, but also from
58 Anja Koletnik
how they are being engaged by others and how they engage with others.
Considerations of multidirectional socio-political engagements should thus be
central to all projects of feminisms.
Ecofeminisms are subfields of feminisms, which introduce and problematize
the equivalencies of human and non-human animals being exposed to oppression.
But valid considerations that should be taken are how far do ecofeminisms
reach in regards to not abiding to identity politics, whilst aiming to be ethically
and politically considerate of (every)one’s significance?
Ecofeminisms emerged from collisions of cultural feminists, advocates of
animal liberation movements, and anti-violence and/or peace protestations. The
oppression of non-human animals, known as speciesism, is central to projects
of ecofeminist analysis (Gaard 2002). Ecofeminism’s central argument is that
speciesism functions like other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism,
classism, heterosexism, and naturism (Gaard 2002). However, amidst eco-
feminists’ indications that speciesism, sexism, racism, and homophobia must be
considered and appropriated into analysis (Kemmerer 2011), some ecofeminists’
discourses regarding gender are discussed solely on the level of the cisnormative
gender binary system. This chapter will show how considering gender as an
analytical category enables transcending limiting binary gender systems.
Ecofeminist theories arose from debates on nature among radical and cultural
feminists in the 1970s and 1980s, indicates Sandilands (1999). Radical feminism
argues for a feminist approach which centralizes the interrelations of sex and
gender, depicting these interrelations as women’s oppression by men (Sandilands
1999). Radical feminisms’ conceive gender as cisnormative; one’s gender identity
is expected to be in accordance with their designated sex at birth, resulting in
their argumentation deploying a reiteration of the gender binary system
logic. Koyama (2006) claims radical feminism holds the belief “that women’s
oppression is the most pervasive, extreme and fundamental of all social inequali-
ties, regardless of race, class, nationality, and other factors.” Such rankings of
oppression and simplistic usages of identity politics are inherently oppressive to
people who are marginalized due to their intersections of multiple differential
factors/categories, adds Koyama (2006). In accordance with Koyama, I am
arguing that canons of vegetarian ecofeminisms delineate their argumenta-
tion for vegetarianism while manifesting the limiting usage of gender identity
politics.
Vegetarian ecofeminisms are an active form of the feminist notion ‘the
personal is political’ which explore and re-act to political contexts with dietary
choices (Gaard 2002). They argue that only by acknowledging and acting upon
our sympathies for animals, humans are able to prevent immense amounts of
animal suffering, claims Gaard (2002). But, like all emotions, one’s ability to
be ethical and sympathetic is encaptured within social and political contexts
(Gaard 2002). Vegetarian ecofeminisms argumentations thus seem to some-
how not comprehend everyone’s multifold encapturement in socio-politically
(constructed) contexts. Let me elaborate; meat non-consumption involves
material manifestations of contestations toward oppressive socio-political
 Transgender ethics and vegetarian ecofeminisms 59
hegemonies. Within Western contexts, individuals therefore consciously make
decisions about their food consumption, and manifest their decisions with
actions fueled by their ethical and political values. So far vegetarian ecofeminists
would agree. Where the logic of vegetarian ecofeminisms’ argumentations
seems to plunge into self-contradictions is throughout their conceptualization(s)
of gender(s). Whilst seemingly critical of various hegemonic social categories,
they seem not to engage in critical analysis of notions of genders. Rather, their
argumentations appropriate everyone’s gender as being in congruence with
their sex desginated at birth.
The Sexual Politics of Meat was first published in 1990 and re-published with
an additional preface in 2010, for its 20th anniversary. Adams is considered
one of the most significant theorists of vegetarian ecofeminisms (Gaard 2002).
The book is seen as one of the most prominent works of vegetarian ecofemi-
nisms and resulted in serving as a primary source of reference for a canon of
vegetarian ecofeminist scholarship (Donovan 1995; Lucas 2005; Donovan
and Adams 2007; Nath 2011; Kemmerer 2011). Consequently, various works
of vegetarian ecofeminisms appropriated Adams’s arguments; my analysis of her
text can thus be expanded to a canon of vegetarian ecofeminisms.
Permeated by emotional charge, Adams’s work appropriates arguments for
vegetarianism by presenting animal-derived food, meat in particular, as gendered
female, and claims their consumption is a form of reinforcing oppression
toward (cisgender) women and animals.3 Adams’s theoretical stance is positioned
between feminism and animal liberation theories, and considers connec-
tions between sexism and speciesism through portrayals of how women and
animals are conceptualized in the Western culture (Gaard 2002). Adams argues
that important connections exist not only between women and nature, but also
between women and animals, and argues for a feminist theory and practice
which includes ecological perspectives in accordance with animals’ well-being
(Gaard 2002). Adams (2013) posits meat as a food item indicating power
symbolism: “Meat eating measures individual and social virility” (48). She claims
that dietary habits proclaim patriarchal distinctions: “Women, second-class
citizens, are more likely to eat what are considered to be second-class foods in
patriarchal culture: vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than meat” (48). For
Adams, meat consumption is a male activity which manifests sexism, and the
removal of meat is a threat to the structure of the patriarchal culture.
Adams directly correlates meat and dominance: “The male prerogative to
eat meat is an external, observable activity implicitly reflecting a recurring
fact: meat is a symbol of male dominance” (56). She links gender inequality
with species inequality; obtaining meat and its consumption was primarily a
male performance (58). Women, she continues, were/are gatherers and consumers
of vegetable foods, which are associated with passivity, femininity (60). Adams’s
statements lead me to question her appliance of gender as an analytical category
to argumentation. Adams’s argument does not acknowledge the fact that if meat
non-consumption is seen as powerful enough to fuel resistance to patriarchy, it
can also contribute to analysis and de/re/construction of all notions of genders,
60 Anja Koletnik
not only those bound by the cisnormative binary. Adams’s claims, arising from
work that was “charged with gender essentialism” (Stange 1995, 18 in Gaard
2011, 34), remain within the gender binary system and do not acknowledge
the agency that meat non-consumption has in correlation to oppression
stemming beyond the patriarchal matrix.
Animals and women are made to be absent referents; this allows forgetting
their existence as individual entities, claims Adams (2013). She depicts the
absent referents as following:

Metaphorically, the absent referent can be anything whose original meaning

is undercut as it is absorbed into a different hierarchy or meaning; in this
case the original meaning of animals’ fate is absorbed into a human-centered
hierarchy.
(67)

Linking (sexual) violence upon women and violence upon animals within
processes of meat production, Adams highlights how men dismember and
objectify women and animals for their enjoyment and consumption (2013). She
claims the values of patriarchy become institutionalized through the structure
of the absent referent. Adams’s absent referents has developed from within
feminist stances, yet solely appropriating arguments to cisnormative notions of
gender implies a construction of other women (e.g., transgender women) taking
place. I suggest othering cisgender non-compliant individuals consequently
disables one’s meat non-consumption from consideration as a resource for
critiquing gender identity politics and unacknowleges the political contentions
toward patriarchy of transgender and cisgender non-conforming individuals’
meat non-consumption.
Twigg (1986 in Nath 2011) argues that abstaining from meat is a rejection
of dominant masculinity. Adams claims meat removal is hazardous to the
structure of the patriarchal culture (2013, 62–63), adding that “men who
become vegetarians challenge an essential part of the masculine role.” Again,
I question: What do such arguments imply about Adams’s and vegetarian eco-
feminism’s comprehensions of gender(s)? Due to Adams’s self-proclaimed
positioning within the “radical feminist arena” (Tyler 2006, 123), my question-
ings in regards to her argumentations should not come as a surprise. Reducing
genders to essentialist dichotomous notions, as Adams deploys in her argu-
ments, disables analytical consideration of any form of gender identification
except for those constructed as cisnormative. With forwarding transgender
as an analytical category, I will aim to expand the ethical potentials of her
arguments.

Transgender as an analytical category

While transgender individuals’ fluidity and subversive embodiments contest
hegemonic discourses of fixed identity categories, vegetarian ecofeminisms
 Transgender ethics and vegetarian ecofeminisms 61
engage with identities as relationalities solely between cisgender men and
women. Adams (2013) indicates the role of meat non-consuming embodiments
as contesting hegemonic masculinity:

Perhaps women’s meaning is spoken in a different way at that point when

they find themselves muted. Is it possible that food becomes the spoken
language of dissent? Since women are the main preparers of food in Western
culture and meat is defined as men’s food, vegetarianism may carry meaning
within a female language which seeks to escape its own mutedness.
(213)

Juxtaposing diet and gender as analytical categories within vegetarian ecofemi-

nisms would enable expanding such argumentation to the disidentifications of
all other non-hegemonic genders whose meat non-consuming embodiments
have agency. Confining argumentation within identity politics diminishes
agency arising from material forms of contesting social hegemonies; for example,
meat non-consumption. Claiming a man’s vegetarian diet challenges instances
of his masculinity and thus threatens patriarchy implies that men are essentially
masculine. I question if argumentations based on forefronting females’ experi-
ences of oppression, which are instances Adams appropriates as enablers for
women’s ethical meat non-consumption, consider the possibility of female
masculinity. And beyond this, would decoupling the linkage between cisgender
women and animals, solidified within arguments that re-appropriate the
patriarchal matrix, and transcending these linkages to social groups exposed to
oppression due to various identificational categories, endanger vegetarian eco-
feminisms’ argumentation or add to its analytical depth and ethical and political
solidarity? Ecofeminisms’ queer critiques and feminist new materialisms will
provide theoretical support for this elaboration.
Gaard’s Ecofeminism Revisited (2011) depicts the downfall of ecofeminisms
from a very promising theoretical and activist stance in the 1990s, to receiving
harsh critiques and being avoided from scholars and activists by 2010. Due to
over-intensely presenting women as embodied nature and cultural ecofeminisms’
forefronting patriarchal notions, all ecofeminisms’ were portrayed as essentialist
by post-structuralists (Gaard 2011, 31). This can be related to ecofeminisms’
tendency of conflating sex and gender categories. I am suggesting applying
transgender as an analytical category to vegetarian ecofeminisms might be
contributional to regaining their critical acclaim.
While ecofeminisms consider human and non-human animals central to
their argumentation, their usage of gender as an analytical category seems to be
onefold. Twine (2010) claims ecofeminists receive suspicions of essentializing
identity categories, which supports my critique of readings of Adams’s canon.
Ecofeminisms as a movement links feminist and ecological struggles, claims
Sandilands (1999), yet adds that these links need considerable unpacking,
especially within their questionings of gender and nature. Sandilands elaborates
her apprehension with forefronting that not only does nature have an important
62 Anja Koletnik
role in feminist discourses, but gender also has an important role in the social
and political creation of the concept of nature (1999). Amidst indicating that
both nature and gender work as discursive constructs, Sandilands exposes eco-
feminisms’ inadequacy with critically questioning the fundamentality and
consequences these constructs have within discourse in Western contexts (1999).
My readings of Adams’s canon have produced similar observations, which can
be attributed to the emergence of ecofeminisms from radical and/or cultural
feminists.
Gaard (2010) suggests feminisms’ theoretical legitimacy could be at risk, if
there would only be advocacy for one group of females and ignorance toward
intersections of their race, class, nationality, sexuality or species. I am adding
gender to this list of individuals’ intersections, and suggesting that vegetarian
ecofeminisms withhold immense critical power with which the notions of
genders can be analyzed and re-constructed to transcend exclusionary binary
logic. Sandilands (1999) argues for more open and flexible explorations of
identities and subjectivities, and places these processes within discourse, rather
than denoting one’s compulsory oppositional identificational factors prior to
their presence in discourse. As I will now delineate, similar discourses in
regards to notions of (gender) identifications and subjectivities have taken place
within feminist new materialisms and transgender studies. I will connect those
discourses with the notion of ethical meat non-consumption, upon which an
ethically self-reflexive notion of transfeminism will develop.
The concept of nature is essential to (vegetarian) ecofeminists’ theories. Some
also echo essentialism—dichotomous divisions of natural and cultural. Kemmerer’s
(2011, 15) claim exemplifies dichotomies of vegetarian ecofeminists: “In Western
patriarchal culture, both women and nonhuman nature have been devalued
alongside their assumed opposites – men and civilization/culture.” New mater-
ialisms intersect into these essentialist discourses. Feminist new materialisms
emphasize the inclusions of “the biology of the body in cultural and political
analysis” (Frost 2011, 69). Grosz (2008, 23) emphasizes that biology does not
refer solely to “the study of life,” but also to “the body, the organic processes
or activities that are the objects of that study.” Vegetarian ecofeminist analyses,
especially those which appropriate radical feminism, are thus contested by new
materialisms in regards to their usages of dichotomous divisions between nature
and culture, sex and gender, body and mind.
Argumentations of Adams’s canon are encaptured within binary logics
of sex/gender, body/mind, nature/culture. Frost (2011, 76) claims that while
feminists have been engaging in denaturalizing nature, they have not been
“deculturalizing culture”: assigning matter also to biological and material
instances. Frost signifies that this very reluctance of feminists binds them to
binary systems, which they are otherwise aiming to deconstruct. Exposing
cisnormativity and usages of gender identity politics within Adams’s canon
provides grounds upon which I show that transcending binary logics can be
only contributional and not detrimental to vegetarian ecofeminists’ ethical and
political solidarity.
 Transgender ethics and vegetarian ecofeminisms 63
Frost argues that within “calling for feminists to acknowledge that matter
and biology are active in their own right, new materialists push feminists to
relinquish the unidirectional model of causation in which either culture or
biology is determinative” (2011, 71). Rather, feminists are exposed to demands
of rethinking causation as complex and multilinear, and called to assess the
possibilities for and toward socio-political transformations (Frost 2011). It is
these calls that I am applying to Adams’s canon, specifically their usages of
gender identity politics amidst political projects of overcoming oppression,
primarily speciesism, and cissexism. With the usage of transgender as an
analytical category, cisnormativity of their argumentation in regards to gender(s)
is depicted.
Transgender studies ask why does the fact that people experience and express
their gender in fundamentally different ways ethically and morally matter,
indicates Stryker (2006). The field also concerns itself with what can be done
politically about the injustices and violence manifested upon individuals whose
genders are non-normative and atypical (2006). Ethical values are thus of great
importance for projects of transgender studies, in line with which I am arguing
for the possibility of broadening vegetarian ecofeminisms’ ethical projects
by transcending usages of gender identity politics. Rather, openness and self-
reflexivity is posited as central for ethical and politically solidary feminists’
projects, building upon Stryker’s (2006, 7) claim, that confronting topics of
transgender studies “requires that some feminists re-examine, or perhaps
examine for the first time, some of the exclusionary assumptions they embed
within the fundamental conceptual underpinnings of feminism.” Analytically
critical feminisms, which I will present as ethical transfeminisms, consider
transgender as an analytical category.
Conceptualizations of genders and their applications within research and
analysis are means through which cisnormativity of vegetarian ecofeminism
is being delineated. They are also a postulate upon which arguments for
feminisms’ capabilities to transgress gender identity politics and expand their
ethical manifestations are applied through my argument. In Imagining Transgender,
a critical ethnography of the category transgender, Valentine explicates
transgender as an analytical category:

I want to argue that “transgender,” rather than being an index of marginality

or “an out of the way category” (to paraphrase Tsing 1993) is in fact a
central cultural site where meanings about gender and sexuality are being
worked out.
(2007, 14)

Valentine applies transgender to elaborate upon its political, theoretical, and

ethical possibilities and limits. Rather than locating transgender at the margins
of social intelligibilities of genders, transgender is being forwarded as a category
which lies within the very constitution of gender as a social and analytical
category. Transgender as an analytical category therefore has the capability of
64 Anja Koletnik
exposing how gender as a social category and hegemonic normative has
been constituted. It is this capability of transgender that urges for its application
and consideration to be included in analytical projects concerning genders and
feminism.
Considerations of feminisms as ethical projects are thus inextricable from
usages of gender as an analytical category. I am suggesting transgender be
applied as an analytical category, which functions as committed to ethical and
critical analysis. Transgender as an analytical category implies awareness
and recognition of transgender identifications, yet does not analytically consider
solely these identifications. Rather, transgender variance is emphasized, and
accompanied with commitments not to abide constricting gender binary
systems. Amidst contesting ultimate free rein for self-ascertaining of gender,
Heyes (2003) indicates that one’s gender expression might limit possible mean-
ings and opportunities for others’ genders. Ultimate individual freedom of
gender expression would thus sidestep important ethico-political questions
arising from gender relations and communal demands (Heyes 2003). My usage
of transgender as an analytical category forefronts ethical considerations of
others as an instance of gender expression, with aims not to hamper others’
agency and social intelligibility within their gender expressions and identifi-
cations. This notion will be referred to as ‘disidentification’, inspired by José
Esteban Muñoz.
“Disidentification is a performative mode of tactical recognition that various
minoritarian subjects employ in an effort to resist the oppressive and normalizing
discourse of dominant ideology,” elaborates Muñoz (1997, 83). Disidentification
offers individuals possibilities to reclaim and regain command of themselves
within social spheres, without engaging in superiority of relations of excluding
Others. Through disidentification resistance is enabled without mandatorily
forming a counteridentity, it is rather a third term which resists the binary of
identity and counteridentity. My usage of disidentification will follow Muñoz,
yet also signify there are not always deliberate or primarily contentious processes
of contesting mainstream ideologies taking place within individuals’ performative
acts. In other words, my usage of disidentification implies there is a possibility
of the presence of transgressing social hegemonic ideologies within certain
acts of performativity, however, there is no certainty of disidentification taking
place. Rather, certainty of individuals’ commitments to ethics can be traced
within my application of the notion of disidentification. Resistance to normalizing
and oppressive discourses is accompanied by ethical re-questioning of oneself
in regards to others and with dedication not to take part in reiterating or re-
creating exclusionary binary identities. Disidentification is therefore an instance
of both matter and discourse, realms which are now to be entangled within my
analysis and argumentations for ethical transfeminism.

Transfeminisms and new materialisms

Emi Koyama’s “The Transfeminist Manifesto” introduces transfeminism as
a movement primarily by and for trans women, and “open to other queers,
 Transgender ethics and vegetarian ecofeminisms 65
intersex people, trans men, non-trans women, non-trans men and others [. . .]
who consider their alliances with trans-women as essential for their own
liberation” (2003, 244–245). Koyama explicitly notes that transfeminism has no
intentions of overtaking existing feminist movements. Rather, transfeminism
seeks to advance feminism as a whole, and do so by embodying feminist
coalition politics within which each individual has the right to define their own
identity and make decisions regarding their body. The notion of ethical trans-
feminism will build upon Koyama’s conceptualization of transfeminism, whilst
incorporating material notions of non-normative diets, embodiments, and
gender disidentifications. Koyama’s (2003) explicit indication that no one is
completely free from the socio-cultural dynamics of the hegemonic gender
system we all are embedded in will be continuously reflected upon. In other
words, I will not present an argument which will call for formations of a
utopian version of vegetarian ecofeminisms, but rather appropriate the cisnor-
mativity of vegetarian ecofeminisms to exemplify how ethical self-reflexivity
can be beneficial when analyzing and expanding incorporations of notions of
genders, even though they are bound within hegemonic regulatory regimes.
Crucial political work of transfeminisms is their tackling the concept of
privilege. Koyama claims that any individual, who has a “gender identity and/
or an inclination toward a gender expression that match the sex attributed to
her or him has a privilege of being non-trans” (2003, 246). Like other privileges,
the privilege of being non-trans is invisible to those who possess it, while
suffering due to its absence is severely familiar to those who are experiencing
its lack (2003). Challenges of Adams’s canon of vegetarian ecofeminisms’ will
be elaborated with regards to their un/acknowledgments of privileges, exposed
based on their argumentations being solely in alignment with cisnormative
gender concepts. I will follow Koyama’ claims that essentializing gender identity
is just as dangerous as omitting to biological essentialism in regards to the notion
of sex (2003), and such work is not in alignment with transfeminism. Projects of
transfeminism dismantle the essentialist assumptions of normativity of the
sex/gender congruence and call for challenging ways through which socio-
political factors influence our gender expressions and embodiments (2003).
Transfeminisms thus contest the naturalness of biological sex or biologically
sexed bodies, which is in agreement with conceptualizations of feminist new
materialisms.
Manifesting contentions toward speciesism is central to politics of projects of
vegetarian ecofeminism. As diets are political, their contestations take form
through meat/animal byproduct non-consumption. Vegetarian ecofeminists
are very meticulous and sympathetic in acknowledging the objectification
and suffering animals are exposed to, and it is through these very “sympathetic
connections” (Gaard 2002, 120) that self-reflexivity with regards to one’s own
stance toward oppression takes place. Vegetarian ecofeminists actually argue
that it is not solely reason, but rather the combination of sympathy and critical
analysis of cultural and political contexts which provide a reliable guide to
66 Anja Koletnik
ethics and their manifestations, elaborates Gaard (2002). Since their projects
emerged, vegetarian ecofeminists have recognized the conceptual and structural
similarities among sexism, speciesism and racism. With these indications in
mind, I then question how has the notion of genders beyond cisnormativity
seemed to bypass Adams’s canon of vegetarian ecofeminists analyses and ethical
self-reflexivity?
Manifesting expectations of acknowledging all intersecting personal
identifications and categories are challenging to achieve. I suggest that the notion
of ethical self-reflexivity, at minimum, calls for self-critical and self-reflexive
theoretical analysis of all notions and concepts which are included in a certain
analysis. Sandilands claims that women in movements of environmental justice
and ecofeminism have not made issues of gender central to their political
practices (1999). Gaard’s (2002, 128) depiction of “feminism’s commitment to
inclusiveness” suggests that broadening inclusivity, and subsequent theoretical
transformations, take place through recognitions of groups or individuals,
who are being considered as socially unintelligible. However, a critique of eco-
feminisms that Gaard (2011) considers as legitimately grounded was the exposing
of essentialism of their notions.
There is a presence of gender essentialism within Adams’s canon. Nowhere
in The Sexual Politics of Meat (2013) does Adams analytically interrogate the
concept of binary gender, within which her arguments are encaptured. When
explicating what the sexual politics of meat refer to, Adams (2013) states:

What is “the sexual politics of meat”? It is an attitude and action that

animalizes women and sexualizes and feminizes animals. [. . .] The Sexual
Politics of Meat is also the assumption that men need meat, have the right to
meat, and that meat eating is a male activity associated with virility.
(4)

The book’s omnipresence of dichotomously dividing humans among women

and men does not enter the discourse of questioning this division’s construction.
Rather, Adams’s statements, such as “Men who decide to eschew meat eating
are deemed effeminate; failure of men to eat meat announces that they are not
masculine” (57), “One’s maleness is reassured by the food one eats” (58), “Men
who become vegetarians challenge an essential part of the masculine role” (63),
are supportive of her essentialistic appropriations of gender identity to sex
(gender designated at birth). This could be explained by the fact that Adams
situates herself within radical feminism (Tyler 2006). Queer eco-criticisms, new
materialisms, and transgender studies all contest essentialistic dichotomous
notions of body/mind, nature/culture, sex/identity, which are appropriated
to the cisnormative binary gender system. They do so by engaging in analyses
which argues for applications of multiple material and discourse analytical
categories.
I will now delineate possibilities for increasing the realm to which one’s
ethical self-reflexivity is applied by juxtaposing transgender as an analytical
 Transgender ethics and vegetarian ecofeminisms 67
category and Adams’s concept of absent referent. It is through such an increase
that vegetarian ecofeminisms can transcend rooting their argumentation in
cisgender normativity, and apply ethical commitments to contest gender
identity politics. Transgender, when applied as an analytical category, highlights
how formations and meanings about gender and sexuality are developing,
claims Valentine (2007). Adams’s conceptualizations of developing a feminist-
vegetarian critical theory indicate that overlapping experiences of oppression
render women and animals absent referents (2013). An absent referent allows
forgetting about a human or non-human animal as an independent entity.
When becoming an absent referent, that humans’ or non-human animals’ “fate
is transmuted into a metaphor for someone else’s existence” (2013, 66–67).
Adams explicates the concept of absent referents as following:

The absent referent is both there and not there. It is there through inference,
but its meaningfulness reflect only upon what it refers to because the
originating, literal, experience that contributes the meaning is not there.
We fail to accord this absent referent its own existence.
(67)

Being considered an absent referent therefore indicates one’s original existence

is no longer of value, or is only of value to indicate the value of hierarchically
higher positioned beings. Animals, for instance, become meaningless, only
providing meaning when considered within an anthropocentric hierarchy—
giving value to humans, who consider consuming animal flesh as an indica-
tion of value, wealth, higher social positioning, health, and, in accordance with
Adams, hegemonic masculinity.
How do Adams’s deployments of cisnormative gender notions hamper
her canon’s manifestations of ethics? I am suggesting that individuals, who are
not compliant with cisgender normatives, can be considered as being indicative
of becoming an absent referent within Adams’s canon. For one to become an
absent referent, they must first be present. Animals become absent referents
through butchering, and women become absent referents through cultural
violence, rape, in particular, claims Adams (2013). Transgender/cisgender non-
conforming individuals, who are neither mentioned nor discussed in Adams’s
canon, can thus solely indicate their stance would be that of an absent referent.
Transgender individuals are not present—and so become absent. However,
such absence, which stems from cisnormativity of Adams’s canon, hints to
Butler’s claim, that oppression can also work covertly” “Oppression works
through the production of a domain of unthinkability and unnameability”
(2004, 126). She indicates that being unthinkable within a realm that “regulates
the real and the nameable” also disables one’s possibilities of disrupting political
contexts (126–127). I am thus suggesting that appropriating argumentations
solely to the cisnormative gender binary system, as Adams’s canon partakes in,
contributes to transgender individuals being conceived as socially unintel-
ligible. Transgender individuals are thus not absent referents within vegetarian
68 Anja Koletnik
ecofeminisms, yet their absence still has implications for vegetarian ecofeminists’
ethical and political commitments. “Thus, normative social spaces are structured
around the presumed absence of disabled, queer, trans, and other marginalized
subjects,” claims Enke (2012, 75). Applying transgender as an analytical category
to vegetarian ecofeminisms discourse could contribute to transcending these
implications of invisibility and enhance ethical and political solidarity of Adams’s
canon. This very invisibility consequently also disables transgender individuals’
meat non-consumption to be considered as agency of ethics within vegetarian
ecofeminisms. Adams’s appropriations of meat non-consumption solely as a
contestation of patriarchy, thus present merely a limited array of political
implications arising from meat non-consumption.
Potential for re-formations of vegetarian ecofeminist theories may therefore
be hidden within approaching essentialist gender notions with usages of ethical
self-reflexivity in juxtaposition with transgender as an analytical category.
Agency of transgender individuals’ meat non-consumption is an exemplifier
of the possibility of ethical feminist projects to constantly be in a mode of
re-constituting their theories and of re-questioning the scope of their ethical
self-reflexivity. This notion can be contributional to re-constructions of feminist
projects: distancing themselves from essential notions of gender identities and
rather than reiterating concepts of gender identity politics, providing political
work permeated with commitments to ethics and solidarity when re-considering
genders. This will enable transgressing essentialist cisnormative notions of
gender with interactional ethical self-reflexivity arising from considering meat
non-consumption as agency of ethics. Vegetarian ecofeminist ethics, which are
already being applied to considerations of non-human animals and cisgender
women, could thus be transferred to an array of diverse disidentifications,
creating a visceral form of ethical feminism: ethical transfeminism.
Agency is inseparable from relationality; no individual can view themselves
solely as an entity without regards to intra-relations with and among others.
Meat non-consumption as agency enables individuals to develop ethical self-
reflexivity with regards to acknowledging others’ experiences of injustice and
oppression. Adams’s canon of vegetarian ecofeminisms is ethically self-reflexive
in regards to acknowledging the mutuality of (cisgender)-human and non-
human animals’ experiences of oppression. Their contestations toward oppres-
sion are manifested by ethical meat non-consumption—diet is thus a resource for
political work. I argued for juxtaposing diet and transgender as analytical cate-
gories, which both have immense power of exposing oppression arising from
socially constructed hegemonies and normativities. Rather than perpetuating
discourse of cisnormative binary gender notions, vegetarian ecofeminisms
can deploy ethical self-reflexivity to re-thinking the notion of genders, and thus
transcend usages of gender identity politics. This would enable agency of trans-
gender individuals’ meat non-consumption to be contributional to enhancing
vegetarian ecofeminisms’ ethics when considering genders.
Transgender embodiments must be understood as having agency, for the
possibility of arguing for their ethical and political impacts on vegetarian
 Transgender ethics and vegetarian ecofeminisms 69
ecofeminisms. Various feminist delineations of the categories of sex and gender
have provided a dichotomy between the physical signifiers of sexual attributes
and identificational notions of gender. West and Zimmerman (1987) indicate
people do not expect discrepancies between individuals’ biological sex and
gender presentations. Rather, they assume gender reflects biologically sexed
bodies, which is in alignment with arguments of Adams’s canon. This is inevitable;
the canon is appropriated to the cisnormative gender binary system, which
considers the dichotomy between sex as mandatory signifiers of one’s gender,
and gender identity as the compulsory identity attributed to a biological sex
as inextricable. Adams discusses vegetarianism and binary notions of bodies as
follows:

If the body becomes a special focus for women’s struggle for freedom then
what is ingested is a logical initial locus for announcing one’s independence.
Refusing the male order in food, women practiced the theory of feminism
through their bodies and their choice of vegetarianism.
(2013, 213)

While bodies are thus seen as having agency to manifest critiques of patriarchy,
Adams’s argumentation does not apply ethical self-reflexivity to analyzing
genders. I suggest applying transgender as an analytical category can contribute
to re-thinking genders within discourse. Transgender studies would disagree.
Noble (in Enke, 2012) explicitly notes that trans bodies have always been
present in feminism, even if these bodies have been ghosted by a belief that
their presence has not been a part of feminisms or women’s studies. Noble’s
statement correlates with Nagoshi’s following elaboration. Feminist theories
and analyses have widely questioned gender as a social construct, and its
attributing of gender roles, indicates Nagoshi, Brzuzy, and Terrell (2012), yet
points out that questioning of embodied female and male identity binaries has
not undergone the same scrutiny. This means that concepts, which deploy
cisgender identities as inextricably placed within the sexed body they appropriate,
have not yet been broadly contested. Noble (2012) indicates that processes of
trans illiteracy take place, and elaborates these processes as folding trans entities
into non-critical binarized sex systems, which are only capable of making sense
of bodies that are viewed as either female or male.
Central to projects of new materialisms are contestations of the naturalization
of the body/mind and sex/gender dichotomies, which were widely embraced
within various feminists’ argumentation for women’s equality—vegetarian
ecofeminisms being among them. New materialisms forefront the notion that
material bodies and their representations are not separate, and rather suggest
there are bi-directional causalities between culture and nature/matter (Grosz
1994 in Lane 2009).4 Within new materialisms, matter and the body are considered
not only as they are constituted by language, discourse, and politics but also as
being constitutive, having a distinctive kind of agency, claims Frost (2011).
Meat non-consumption can be considered as agential also within Adams’s
70 Anja Koletnik
canon, but solely within the realm of patriarchy/cisgender normativities.
“Women may code their criticism of the prevailing world order in the choice
of female-identified foods. In this case, women’s bodies become the texts
upon which they inscribed their dissent through vegetarianism,” claims Adams
(2013, 213). Due to agency of transgender meat non-consuming embodi-
ments, they can contribute to disrupting feminist project enclosed into gender
binary systems.
Applying notions of new materialisms to Butler’s conceptualization suggests
that both sex and gender are not merely given or assigned to the body, but are
rather material representations of both cultural and biological power forces.
While Butler locates all production of materialization and deployment of sex
and gender normativities in cultural and linguistic discourse, new materialisms
signify the inseparable and non-hierarchal intertwining of nature and culture.
Participants’ cisgender non-conformity and meat non-consumption can be
seen as political progressive instances of bodies’ materiality and matter. Bodies’
agency thus stems beyond limits of discourse. This stance supports that transgender
individuals’ meat non-consumption, acts of producing bodies’ as ethical and
political materialities, can be contributional in ethical re-configurations of
vegetarian ecofeminisms. Ethics of feminisms’ theorizing transgender need to
recognize the discursive limits in regards to individuals’ self-transformations and
aim not to deny agency to gendered subjects, claims Heyes (2003). Transgender
meat non-consuming embodiments, constituted both of discursive productions
and material bodies’ agency, can be influential in contesting gender identity
politics within vegetarian ecofeminisms, and offer a source upon which their
ethical commitments can be expanded.
Transgender studies and new materialisms contest conceptual dichotomies—
present in social constructionist arguments of vegetarian ecofeminisms.
Following transgender studies and new materialisms, usages of identity politics
within vegetarian ecofeminist projects can re-create discursive binaries, and not
consider complexities of embodied experiences within analysis. My analysis
thus forefronts considerations of arrays of expressions, experiences and
disidentifications. This focus on being calls for feminist projects to be contentious
toward usages of identity politics within conceptualizations and argumenta-
tions, which have expectancies of unitary experiences of identity. Rather, I am
arguing for feminists’ analysis to be committed to ethical self-reflexivity with
regards to notions from material and discursive realms, as such feminisms are
more consistent with ethical values, rather than feminisms based on identity
politics. Transgender individuals’ meat non-consumption in juxtaposition with
cisnormativity of vegetarian ecofeminisms exemplifies this argument.
Participants’ narratives included their yearnings for future developments
and achievements of genders and feminisms. Almost all participants explicitly
said there should be no essentialism, regarding embodiments/identities.
Drawing upon theoretical notions and participants’ narratives I have shown
and/or argued for, the concept of ethical transfeminism has developed.
Ethical transfeminism incorporates and intertwines instances of discourse and
 Transgender ethics and vegetarian ecofeminisms 71
materialities in order to contribute to feminist projects committed to ethical
self-reflexivity and critical analysis. Intertwinings of matters, which are both
discursive and materialist, show that feminisms need not enclose their political
projects to notions of identity politics. Rather, receptiveness to re-formations
of oneself and others are pursued, and these ethically oriented processes are not
based on abiding to binary identitarian notions.

Conclusions
Ethical transfeminism posits ethics as the central postulate upon which trans-
feminist projects are constituted. The notion of ethics stems from one’s
manifestations of ethical self-reflexivity—exemplified by a diet of ethical meat
non-consumption and its implications for meat non-consumers. Ethics are thus
manifested in relation both to oneself and to other human and non-human
others. Ethical transfeminism does not argue for individuals to be meat non-
consumers. Rather, ethical meat non-consumption is an exemplification of
how material instances can be of great importance for expanding feminist
discursive notions based on ethical values, and overcoming feminist usages of
identity politics. The exposing of cisnormativity of Adams’s canon was also
used as an example of how appropriating argumentations to identitarian notions
and the gender binary system can only impede ethical commitments of feminist
projects. Ethical self-reflexivity forefronts self-critique and self-analysis to be
applied to feminists’ considerations of genders.
Ethical transfeminism in no way intends to imply that other projects of
feminisms are not in accordance with ethical values, but rather forward ethical
self-reflexivity as central to feminists’ political work, and highlight how juxta-
posing materialities and discourse enhance ethics and solidarity. Openness to
re-conceptualizations of identitarian notions are sought for feminist argumenta-
tions to be as ethically self-reflexive as possible. “Transfeminists confront our
own privileges” notes Koyama (2006, 247). Ethical transfeminism argues for
re-formations and re-appropriations of discursive notions to take place with
regards to personal and communal well-being. Recognitions of individual and
communal lived experiences are enabled through ethical transfeminism being
constitutive of intertwining discursive and material instances. Material instances
imply taking individuals’ tangible embodied doings and beings into analytical
and theoretical considerations.5 As Enke claims, trans theories insist that we
challenge a cultural logic that believes that “the physical body is a site of identic
intelligibility” (Ginsburg 1996, 4 in Enke 2012, 75). The power of material
instances and embodiments being considered as agency is a postulate upon
which cisgender non-conforming gender performativities have potential to
contribute to re-negotiations of discursive notions of gender concepts. It is
through recognitions of genders and gender disidentifications as material and
embodied agency that constricting identitarian gender notions are transgressed.
To sum up, ethical transfeminism argues for transgressing binary systems and
usages of gender identity politics to enable enhancing ethical commitments
72 Anja Koletnik
within feminist projects. Recognitions of the importance of applying ethical
self-reflexivity to comprehensions of personal socially non-intelligible categories
are forefronted. Ethical self-reflexivity arises from any form of embodied agency
of ethics: material manifestations of ethical being or doing, which aim to contest
social hegemonies. Comprehensions of anyone’s experiences of oppression can
give fuel to contribute to formations of politically solidary ethical transfeminism,
which are committed to being ethically self-reflexive and analytical within their
political work. Within such contexts transcendence of the dichotomous gender
system is possible. Complexities of intra-related social categories, and arrays
of gender disidentifications, are exposed to ethical self-reflexivity and self-
critical analysis, which enables ethical transfeminism to be contributional in
re-negotiations of socio-cultural intelligibilities of genders. Ethical transfeminism
therefore argues for correlations of discursive notions and lived embodied
experiences to be constitutive of feminist concepts and political projects. Such
intertwining enables overcoming the usages of essentialism and gender identity
politics, and broadening ethical and political solidarity within feminisms.

Notes
1 Hereafter referred to as ‘Adams’s canon,’ indicating vegetarian ecofeminist works by
Adams and authors befitting her line of argumentation.
2 Hereafter referred to as ‘transgender individuals,’ yet including all arrays of gender
identifications, embodiments, and expressions, not merely those whose identification as
transgender, but rather all who contest and/or are not in alignment with socially
hegemonic cisnormativity. Cisgender originates from the Latin prefix cis-, which means
‘on the same side’. A cisgender person is someone whose gender identity is in accordance
with social norms posited for either women or men within the hegemonic gender binary
system. Cisnormativity refers to norms, which assume and prescribe that individual’s
gender identity are coherent with the sex they were assigned at birth.
3 When addressing meat non-consumption, I am referring to flesh of all animals killed
for food consumption. As Adams (2013, 111) claims: “People who eat fishmeat and
chickenmeat are not vegetarians; they are omnivores who do not eat red meat. Allowing
those who are not vegetarians to call themselves vegetarians dismembers the word from
its meanings and its history.”
4 New materialisms challenge the fact that matter is being depicted as passive, with reasons
to undo the oppositions between reason and passion, self and world, nature and culture.
Biological instances are constituted to have active, transformative forces of and within
themselves, and don’t rely on culture to prescribe them power.
5 These instances can include diet, dis/ability, gender, sexuality, body weight, ethic and/or
cultural expressions.

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Part III
Constructing
connections
5 The women–nature
connection as a key
element in the social
construction of Western
contemporary motherhood
Adriana Teodorescu

Having children may seem so natural that the very fact follows the grain of
human civilization. On the contrary, motherhood is simultaneously a personal
feminine dimension, as well as a socio-cultural dimension which has always
been influenced by power discourses and disciplinary strategies. Like any other
socially anchored dimension of human life, motherhood is always socio-culturally
constructed (Berger and Luckmann 1966).
Nevertheless, there is also a salient constant in perceptions and representa-
tions of motherhood through time, a constant that has shaped, and, as we will
see, continues to shape the cultural representations of womanhood in general:
motherhood seen as a natural expression of women’s dominant features: a
purely biological feature, namely the reproductive capacity (fertility, pro-
creation, maternal instinct), and a bio-cultural feature derived from the first,
namely the relational identity (care for the others, self-sacrifice). This powerful
naturalist construction of motherhood had engendered social and literary
narratives and, in turn, they have contributed to the enhancement of this con-
struction. Ecofeminism, starting with Françoise d’Eaubonne, who coined the
term in 1974 (d’Eaubonne 1974), has intensively reflected upon the numerous
bio-anthropological and socio-cultural connections between women and
nature. Both elements have suffered patriarchal domination, exploitation,
and domestication (Mitten and D’Amore Ch. 6, this volume). But there is no
consensus (Warren 1987; Cuomo 1998; Carr 2011) between ecofeminist schol-
ars concerning the number and the specific content of cultural benefits for
women, benefits that stem from the alleged women–nature similarity.1 If there
are scholars that emphasize the renewed need of the mother-earth rhetoric
(Shiva 2005), with an emphasis on woman as nature goddess (Sjoo and Mor
1987), there are also scholars who contend that embracing the women–nature
connection may lead to an idealized figure of nature, reifying the position that
women are irrational and intended for reproductive purposes only (Cronan
Rose 1991).
In this context, it is interesting to think that biology, as a manifestation or
law of nature, was perceived as oppressive by real women, forced to bear
multiple pregnancies, outcast in the realm of domestic chores and duties,
78 Adriana Teodorescu
educated in the spirit of fragility and of the body which constitute her greatest
asset, but which have lessened a woman’s autonomous potential. Despite
discourses and practices in virtually all eras, unlike animals, women attempted
to control their pregnancy in terms of number, outlook, and significance
(De Angelis 2007). In other words, women have made a great effort to control
motherhood, to separate it as much as possible from natural laws and to disrupt
the connection between women and nature, even before the rise of the birth
control pill, of the abortion movement, or of the feminist movement.
What I seek to point out in this chapter, embracing a constructivist perspec-
tive, is that the contemporary Western construction of motherhood is still
underpinned by a strong emphasis on the connection between women and
nature, but that this connection has its own cultural specificity that makes it
somehow new compared with older versions of the same connection. I argue
it is of utmost importance to acknowledge that the contemporary configuration
of the women–nature connection plays the central role in the dissolution of
motherhood ambivalence. By analyzing some of the social and cultural mecha-
nisms that are building the submerged logic of this connection, I strive to under-
line the fact that envisioning nature in a positive light entails not only a naturalist,
but also an idealized construction of motherhood. After a rather theoretical
section, I explore two specific occurrences of the contemporary women–nature
relationship within the discourse of what can be defined as the ‘good mother’
paradigm.

The ‘good mother’ paradigm and its social and cultural

mechanisms
Postmodernity, and its inner relativity, leaves room for the idea that there is a
plurality of experiences and feminine ideals (Hakim 2000), a fact which stands
out in the conceptual foundation of post-feminism (Faludi 2006). However,
motherhood is more uniform in what concerns socio-cultural representation,
working as a diminishment of feminine differences. More than ever, motherhood
is a value in itself for contemporary Western society, not only in what concerns
its socio-economic importance (providing labor force and national prevail), but
also in what concerns woman’s cultural perception as mother. Motherhood
tends to be viewed as a necessary stage in a woman’s life that may be subject to
delay but which should not be optional, no matter if it completes other
dimensions of personality or if it represents the ultimate accomplishment (Jong
2010). Popular culture praises motherhood as a stereotypical, sugary display of
affection toward an angel-like child through various media—films, news
articles, women’s magazines, books about child raising. The child is more
important than the mother. As a result, while the father is more or less in the
shadows, the mother consents to giving up her job (Brown 2004, 239) to raise
and educate her child following closely the advice of specialists in child rearing.
She embraces the natural birth movement (Brown 2004), opting for a vaginal
birth, and, for a very long time, breastfeeds the child upon request, in accordance
 Women–nature connection in Western motherhood 79
with the attachment parenting ideology (Warner 2006) and the strong advice
of La Leche League International (Badinter 2012).
This unprecedented (Thurer 1995) obsessive focus on children, on meeting
their needs, together with mother’s desire to continuously improve as a mother
based on an idealized perception of motherhood gave birth to a social pheno-
menon that scholars often place under the name of good mother/mothering2
(Gotlib 2010; Thurer 1995), but alternatively employ also other terminologies
such as intensive mothering (Hays 1998), new momism (Douglas and Michaels
2004) or extreme parenting (Dunnewold 2007).

A double and intertwined lack of ambivalence:

motherhood and nature
The social imagery of the good mother paradigm displays a strong tendency to
cast out any sort of ambivalence3 from the way motherhood is represented
(Brown 2010). At least a partial powerful explanation for this is the active
presence—triggering new representations, not just ornamentally reiterating the
old ones—of the connection established between women and nature, a nature
imbued with highly positive, post-evolutionistic meanings.
Post-evolutionism refers to the unilateral way of perceiving and representing
nature as an instrument which spreads life and as an endless reservoir of meaning.
This vision on nature is specific to the culture of the last decades, tributary
to a broken, spiritualizing reality, tributary to the moralist underpinnings of
Darwinian scientific theory. Darwinian theory discusses the biological similarity
between the human being and the animal, and evolution seen as a process of
both perpetuating and differentiating the genetic endowment of mankind, a
process governed by natural laws.4 Yet, while sociologists like Norbert
Elias underline that nature should not be forced to make sense and should not
be considered intentional, on the basis of a tradition which endows nature with
maternal symbolisms (Elias 2001), and while famous Darwinists like Richard
Dawkins discuss the fact that the natural world contains no rhyme, no reason, no
justice, while nature is claimed to be driven by indifference (Dawkins 1995),
popular culture nurtures its need for meaning and order, in an unbothered way.
Natural evolution is a kind of eternal celebration of life, entailing the totally
necessary presence of death in evolutionism. Moreover, the post-evolutionist
perception of contemporary popular culture associates nature with morality,
and nature becomes, at an essential level, at least, good and fair. When nature
is correlated with motherhood, nature becomes implicitly good, as will be seen
from our second case study. Post-evolutionist nature suffers from an intense
process of mythical transformation.
Indeed, the fundamental trait of the good mother paradigm is the glorious
revival of the women–nature connection in the light of a post-evolutionistic
grasp on nature, while women become, through childbirth and mothering, the
agents that restore the ideological dominance of nature over culture. The post-
evolutionist nature, which has lost its ambivalence, contributes to the dissolution
80 Adriana Teodorescu
of contemporary motherhood ambivalence. That is to be observed in several
instances.

Raising an idealized child

In our contemporary Western era, ugly, nasty children are to be seen only in
movies or artistic productions which deconstruct the classical image of mother-
hood and childhood. The cultural history of the meanings attached to children,
that were not always so bright, is forgotten (Ariès 1965). The child is seen as a
perfect product of natural laws, their most sheer biological expression. In this
context, it becomes clear that a mother must always have good feelings toward
her child. Motherly love is supreme love and stems from within, it is an instinct,
a natural fact, which the woman experiences since pregnancy and which enables
her self-sacrificial spirit. Also, because of the child’s perfection, motherly love
brings joy and happiness that helps her to cope with what Hays (1998) described
as the cultural contradiction5 between motherhood and femininity.
By rediscovering Liedloff’s attachment parenting theories (1986) which
are based on an evolutionistic background, the good mother encourages and
cultivates the constant physical contact with the child, from birth onwards,
when the child willingly leaves his parents’ bed. She understands that eliminat-
ing the social expectations and rigor applied to the small child represents the
natural and the best way to have a happy and mentally healthy child, a child for
which the mother and not the school or any other institution is primarily res-
ponsible. The subsequent idea is that imitating the natural, animal, and especially
primatological motherhood is the best thing to do concerning child rearing.6
Because children are perceived as part of nature, and nature is the equivalent
of life, the good mother paradigm lays stress on a child’s potential to ensure
a parent with symbolic immortality (Lifton and Olson 1974; Van Tongeren
1995). Good mothers understand that their purpose in life is to have one or
more children that will continue them after they will die. Moreover, the child
is designed to offer society a carnal image of existence on the dark background
of non-existence. Because of this, any child is better than no child, and having
children at all costs is better than having none at all. However, the immortality
substitute that a mother finds in her child is nothing but an illusion. According
to Roy F. Baumeister, the medium duration that a child’s symbolic immortality
can offer a parent is seventy years (Baumeister 1991). Furthermore, the good
mother paradigm seems to ignore the fact that through motherhood not only
is life perpetuated, but also death (De Souza 2004).

Giving birth as the core moment of motherhood

By choosing to give birth, the woman resembles a godly figure, since she
creates life out of nothing. The good mother paradigm insists on presenting the
biological capacity of giving birth as a form of social empowerment, as an
ontological advantage over men. What is tackled here is not just any kind of
 Women–nature connection in Western motherhood 81
birth, but a specific type of birth, the natural, vaginal birth, which actually limits
the number of surgical interventions involved: the epidural injections, the pain
killers, and the C-section (Lamaze 1984; Odent 1994; Leboyer 2009). Women
are advised to trust nature, because births have always happened in nature (a
quantitative reason) and because nature is the mother which can take care of
her own children—the environmentalist reason, which capitalizes on the tradi-
tional mother–nature metaphor (Hrdy 1999). On the contrary, women must
reject medicine, a patriarchal science, which manipulates a woman’s body,
depriving mothers of the authentic experience of motherhood. One of the
main arguments against the medically driven birth is the fact that it intervenes
in the birth process, which is seen as the essential pillar of the mother–child
bond. The more natural the bond, the better that bond remains.
The fact that pregnancy is a difficult time in a woman’s life and that giving
birth, no matter how, places women in close proximity to death is veiled in
the good mother discourse by placing death entirely upon the shoulders of
medicine. Thus, for mothers-to-be, fighting death implies fighting medical
interventions.

The bad mother and the childless woman

What it is also characteristic for the good mother is that she knows to identify
and sanction bad mothers. The bad mother (Lad-Taylor and Umansky 1998;
Gotlib 2010) is egotistic, career-oriented and chooses everything that seems to
go against nature: anaesthesis, C-section, even falsifying time of delivery, which
leads to a traumatic separation of the child from the mother. She entrusts her
child with a nanny, keeps the baby in a baby carriage instead of keeping the
baby close to her body, and feeds the baby according to her own schedule,
refusing to breastfeed for too long (if at all).
According to the good mother paradigm, the childless women must
do everything they can to fix their condition. Those who are biologically able
to have children must not postpone their pregnancy because it is not a natural
gesture and the infertile ones must restore their natural ability to conceive, in
the name of their natural-born wish to have children (Leyser 2010). Infertility
is not considered natural. This is why medically assisted human reproduction
becomes ethically justified. Leaving aside the economic reality that the fertility
industry is quite prosperous, gathering around $3 billion each year, assisted
human reproduction is solely based on the idea that nature is associated only
with life, only with birth. Death, understood as non-existence which surrounds
existence, is outcast from nature. The impossibility to give birth is deemed
accidental and infertility is not considered to be nature’s grasp on reproduction
control. However, accidents would not be enough to justify the intervention
of medical and pharmaceutical industry. An accident is, therefore, considered
pathological.
The fertility industry overwhelmingly capitalizes on the female body (Le
Breton 1990). The hormonal treatment involved in assisted human reproduction
82 Adriana Teodorescu
may be dangerous for a woman’s health, in view of the side effects (multiple
gestation, Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome, ectopic pregnancy, ovarian
cancer, breast tumors, etc.). Actually, medically assisted human reproduction
sets the maternal sacrifice instinct against a consumerist background. In order
to have the desired child, the woman must sacrifice herself, but her sacrifice is
relative to the cost-benefit equation. Having a child will always be better than
having none. A benefit which can also diminish a mother’s sacrifice sensation
is the sense of woman’s empowerment. A woman may overcome her natural
resources (e.g., her diminished ovarian function) and her reliance on her partner
(e.g., when donor sperm is needed).
That the woman’s freedom of choice is socially manipulated is disturbing and
it signals the contradiction between the medical aspects involved in assisted
human reproduction and the naturalization hailed by the Western good mother
paradigm. Compared to the cultural mother–woman paradox (Hays 1998), this
contradiction does not stem from the co-presence of non-maternal and maternal
femininity. The contradiction actually stems from birth itself, the thin line
before the moment birth takes place. Up to reaching this line, everything is
permitted to have children, thus including the overuse of medical intervention,
aggressive as it may be, risky as it may be, facts which are rarely pointed out in
specialized literature (Hansen et al. 2013).
A woman’s wish and desire to have children and also her pregnancy are
subject to intensive medical care, while in the socio-cultural imaginary delivering
babies is associated with the realm of the natural. The natural birth discourse
highlights the advantages of natural birth for the babies who are healthier and
more intelligent if born the natural way, while being prone to allergies, obesity,
diabetes, or deficient immune system if C-section delivered. There is a wealth
of studies vouching for this difference, while there are significantly fewer studies
dealing with the health differences in naturally conceived children vs. those
conceived via assisted human reproduction.

Breastfeeding images: the war against clothes, time

tables and other social constructions
In recent years, motherhood has become a very popular theme for Western
photographic albums. Both the pre-partum and the post-partum periods are
subjects of interest for contemporary photography professionals. While, in the
prenatal period, the images focus on the mother’s large, exposed belly, often
covered in colorful drawings of smiles and little eyes, indicative of the life
residing therein as well as of the mother’s happiness, in the postnatal period, the
most frequent theme is breastfeeding. Events such as World Breastfeeding
Week, celebrated during the first week of August in over 150 countries since
1992, overemphasize, especially in recent years, the role of the photographic
products devoted to breastfeeding (Liao 2015; Bologna 2014).
I intend to discuss some of these very recent photographs which portray
breastfeeding mothers, by focusing on the way in which the woman–nature
 Women–nature connection in Western motherhood 83
connection contributes to the definition of the contemporary motherhood
profile in the West. More exactly, I will refer to the photos taken by American
Ivette Ivens and to Women in the Wild, the album of American Erin White
(Erin White Photography 2015), who currently lives in Germany. White’s
album is still an ongoing project, as she is taking photographs in the USA,
seeking, in the near future, to shoot photos of women breastfeeding in Europe
(alone or in a group). Ivette Ivens gathered all her photographs of breast-
feeding mothers in a book entitled Breastfeeding Goddesses. Some of the images
which make up the book can be accessed on the artist’s Facebook page (Ivens
2015) and in the papers (Ifeanyi 2015; Purcel 2015; Dainius 2015), which all
praise the artist’s project and initiative.
The rhetoric on which these breastfeeding images are constructed, as well
as the texts which accompany them, is one meant to set this reality free from
the artificial bonds of Western society, a society characterized by a massive
repudiation of nature from the inter-human relations and by the rejection of
what is understood as natural. This revolutionary rhetoric draws an alarm signal
regarding the postmodern condition of motherhood—precarious at the level of
public, inter-body means of expression (mother–child), subjected to censorship
especially in the baby’s first months of life—and a strong advice emphasizing
the necessity of not only contesting, but also transcending the social norms
which are restricting for the woman who becomes a mother. Beyond the
aesthetic ambitions of the albums (the photography as work of art) and beyond
their practical functions (the photography which serves the community wishing
to capture motherhood snapshots), the major objective of these images is to
raise awareness regarding the normality of breastfeeding, especially in the public
space, in a world where, as Krista Zurn explains commenting on the album
Women in the Wild, we are, as society, explicitly open to everything sexual and
violent, but we maintain the taboo on breastfeeding as far as visual representations
are concerned (Zurn 2015).
For both artists, nature is the main element which disintegrates contemporary
bias at the level of mentality and imaginary. The underlying logic is that
motherhood in general,7 and breastfeeding especially, is a natural component of
femininity. Therefore, exterior nature, the surrounding environment, little
polluted by human intervention, and many times wild, becomes the best
scenery for women who breastfeed alone or in a group, at any time, during the
day or the night, on the brink of a waterfall, in a hammock, in a sunny meadow,
on the sea shore or near a river bank behind which a city can be seen, while
travelling, etc.
The major trait in these albums, in terms of both exterior nature and feminine
nature, is that nature is a construct, first, because the natural, negative dimension
of nature (nature is also equivalent to cruelty, ugliness, nurtures competitiveness
instead of cooperation, there are mothers which abandon their offspring, etc.)
is completely eliminated, and, second, because the authors resort to the
glamorization of external settings and of the woman’s feelings regarding her
own motherhood. As can be noticed, following a brief examination of the
84 Adriana Teodorescu
photographs, all the natural environments are friendly, and some are even
spectacular—red dawn, lavender fields, etc.—and all mothers, irrespective of
whether they breastfeed one or more children, irrespective of whether they
are accompanied by other women or not, are glowing with happiness, are
overjoyed. There is nothing regarding the torment many women go through
when breastfeeding, nothing regarding the conflict generated by the desire to
breastfeed the child and the necessity or desire to have a life which does not
include the baby, for instance, a professional life.
An interesting aspect which must be mentioned is that some photographs
insist on the similarity between human motherhood and animal mother-
hood, establishing an evolutionary line and connection, between women and
female animals in general.8 For instance, in one of the photos by Ivette Ivens,
a woman breastfeeds, on the ground, in an interior setting, a rustic room,
similar to a chalet in the middle of nature. During this time, the woman pets a
cat surrounded by her offspring. This similarity becomes more apparent as
we can notice even in other photographic albums by Ivens: the tendency to
gather toddlers and young animals side by side, the attraction toward the
women who breastfeed one or two children of different ages, while being
surrounded by even more children who are too big to be breastfed. The hidden
narrative which can be identified here is one which fully de-culturalizes
motherhood by positioning it not only in the middle of nature, but in its very
animal center.
Coming back to the glamorization of external nature and of feminine nature,
it can be noticed that the process is twofold, and that its directions many times
overlap. One direction casts a romantic light on motherhood, while the other
casts an erotic light on the woman. Romanticism simultaneously belongs to
external nature and to the woman who exerts her mother role through breast-
feeding. The clearest signs of romanticism feature the flower crowns and
the leaves which adorn the braided hair or the lavish hair let loose (for Ivens), the
long dresses, some blowing in the wind, the deep cleavage despite the winter
outside (for Ivens), the women’s intensely dreamy expressions. Nature, irrespec-
tive of how wild, functions, at the level of visual suggestion, as an immense cradle
for the mother and the child. Nature is only a formal barrier at times, meant to
better underline the symbiotic body of the mother and the child as in one of
Ivette Ivens’s photographs, where the woman is lying on the sand, surrounded
by vegetation. Erin White shows preference for a diffuse, tender, soft light at
dawn or filtered by the tree branches.
The second trend in the glamorization of nature is the erotic light shed on
the woman. Eroticism should be understood as an intended overemphasis
of the woman’s erotic nature. Both artists want to heal the damage motherhood
inflicts on feminine eroticism by resorting to nature, as if nature would offer
even the benefit of re-sexualization, of rediscovering the erotic dimension.
In most cases, the woman’s body is unveiled, and not only in terms of the breast
used to feed the baby. Both Ivens and White capture women dressed only in
their underwear. Sometimes the underwear is not present, but full, frontal
 Women–nature connection in Western motherhood 85
nudity is avoided in such cases. In some photographs women wear a scarf, a
skirt or a dress, but there are other even less likely items of clothing in a realistic
setting: a pullover over a completely naked body or a light summer dress in
the winter season, clothes which, together with the makeup stand as proof
for the artificial way of constructing nature. Eroticism first stems from the
unexpected meeting between motherhood and the display of the body.
Motherhood, breastfeeding in particular, presupposes the unveiling of the
body. However, this does not automatically lead to the fact that every re-
presentation of motherhood should be based on unveiling the body. Yet, this
is exactly what the two photographic albums promote. Moreover, there are
mothers for whom the joy of breastfeeding is presented under the form of an
ecstasy at the border between religiousness and eroticism, an orgasmic ecstasy
which is best reflected by the facial expression: the gentle open mouth, the head
bent backwards, etc.
The shape of a woman’s body no longer necessarily respects the excessive
standards of Western slenderness.9 However, fat, cellulite, the natural body
imperfections do not prevent the erotic filter cast over the woman’s body. The
greatest achievement of these albums is that, from the point of view of
the feminine body, they give rise to a feminine, plural, non-restrictive eroticism,
focusing on non-phallocratic eroticism. Men are very rarely present in the
photographs belonging to the two photographers, being obvious that breastfeeding
mainly concerns the mother and her children. When they do appear, men are
mere witnesses of this biological wonder, glancing the perfect bond between
mother and child with awe, as if a goddess would be born from the foamy
waters of motherhood.
Up to a point, these albums sympathize with a war declaration against the
social constructs of Western motherhood understood as a means of dominating
the woman and the relations she entertains with nature through her mother-
hood. The benefits that any social deconstruction includes are present here as
well: a benefit which is specific to the relativization of the patriarchal discourse
of a motherhood hidden behind clothes and peripherals, if we think that, at
the level of visibility, motherhood cannot yet compete with a woman’s non-
maternal eroticism—and the general benefit of training one’s critical thinking
regarding social reality, which is always capable of concealing the mechanisms
via which it articulates itself as cultural construct. However, beyond this point,
there is a risk that the war declaration which these photographic albums entail
contributes in a large measure to supporting the happy motherhood ideology
within the Western cultural paradigm of the good mother. This is because
such albums promote a biological Messianic aspect: the woman (she is a goddess,
according to Ivens) is excessively confronted with her reproductive and life
support functions up to a point where their denial is impossible. Breastfeeding
can no longer be discarded or rejected if we fully accept the cultural narratives
of such photographic albums. Any form of disinterest in the face of motherhood
is no longer an option. This point is even more valid since motherhood is
associated, through nature, with eroticism, coming to terms, at least on the
86 Adriana Teodorescu
surface, with the cultural contradiction of motherhood. By returning to a
nature, which is understood in perfect synonymy with normality and simplicity,
but paradoxically, with a paradisiacal beauty, motherhood atones the woman,
purifying her from the burden of Western civilization, rendering her available
to a biological essentialism (there is a kernel of womanhood called mother-
hood), by its reductionist portrayal (motherhood is reduced to exerting bio-
logical functions, which, since they are natural, they are considered good and
beautiful), and its generic, stereotypical depiction (all women breastfeed and
all are thus happy).
Another problem can be noticed by analyzing the goal of these photographs.
The photographs are meant to render public opinion more sensitive to the
normality of breastfeeding, and implicitly to encourage the rise in the number
of women who breastfeed in their private environment, and in the public
settings, in particular. This sensitive way of approaching things is established on
a principle of transitivity of consumption. To be more precise, what is targeted
here is the fact that seeing images of women who breastfeed automatically
leads to a greater acceptance of the presence of women who breastfeed as such,
in non-artificial ways or settings. While some of the portrayed women can be
easily identified through their natural traits, others look more like celebrities.
This might prevent imitation, or, at least, make it less immediate or predictable.
Moreover, the majority of the settings where women who breastfeed are placed,
despite their pretence of being natural through the quasi-paradisiacal atmosphere
they emanate, seem rather constructed, again risking the dissuasion of mothers-
to-be from breastfeeding or, at least, from the manifestation of such a gesture
in the public space characterized by socio-functional ambiguity and
unpredictability. It is difficult to assess how many women will feel encouraged
by these images10—as noticed after Erin White’s campaign, when many women
met the photographer, in various locations, to be photographed breastfeeding—
and how many will assess the situation as a movie in which they are not prepared
to play.

Cesarean awareness month: there is no cancer

and no C-section in paradise
The fundamental ideological pillar of the “good mother” is natural birth
and this remains a necessary moral imperative even when it is accepted and
encouraged that women who cannot have children should resort to the
procedures of reproductive medicine. Women thus tamper with a nature which
is considered good, in principle (since it involves birth), and flawed in some
circumstances (when the woman cannot remain pregnant or suffers from
miscarriage). The more natural birth is wanted, the more is C-section perceived
as a threat, being seen as the agent with the highest dissolution power over the
motherhood universe. Moreover, while in the good mother paradigm natural
birth is the general means of validating the mother’s identity, the C-section calls
this identity into question.
 Women–nature connection in Western motherhood 87
In what follows, I will analyze some of the manifestations and a portion of
the socio-cultural goals of a phenomenon which took on a large media
importance. It stirred the creation of an organization which leads an ample
campaign against C-sections. The organization I refer to here is The International
Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN), which perfectly integrates with the natural
birth movement, an organization which defines itself as:

a nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve maternal-child

health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing
support for cesarean recovery, and promoting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean
(VBAC).

The organization admits to the fact that the C-section is necessary in some
situations, but fails in rigorously delineating what ‘necessary’ means. However,
it is clear that necessity can be calculated only considering a strict medical
agenda: saving the mother and the child. ICAN anchors its campaign in the
recommendations of the World Health Organization, which has repeatedly
expressed its concern for the increase in the number of C-sections which are
not medically necessary, in developed countries especially. The following
statement from April 10, 2015 argues that:

Since 1985, the international healthcare community has considered the

“ideal rate” for caesarean sections to be between 10% and 15%. New studies
reveal that when caesarean section rates rise toward 10% across a population,
the number of maternal and newborn deaths decreases. But when the rate
goes above 10%, there is no evidence that mortality rates improve.
(World Health Organization 2015)

The mortality rates are the ones which are taken into consideration when the
decision for C-section is made. Other criteria, like the pregnant woman’s
comfort, are not considered. Moreover, the potential negative effects of C-
section are always mentioned, even the serious complications, like disability or
death, which are more common in medical establishments which do not have
the necessary facilities for surgery. If we consider that there are high chances that
these establishments, incapable of offering infrastructure for surgery, are found
in less developed countries, where C-section is not so common, a brief con-
clusion would be: the pain is here, but the wound is elsewhere. The problem is
that the number of C-sections is on the rise in developed countries, even if the
mortality rates are higher in less developed countries. A similar situation can be
found in the case of the ICAN discourse: with the exception of a sound medical
reason,11 there should be no other type that would determine a woman to
choose C-section.
It can be understood that, from their perspective, an emotional, affective
choice of C-section, in agreement with personal criteria, to the detriment of
natural birth would be a serious stray from the good mother model. The ICAN
88 Adriana Teodorescu
discourse and the many articles which support the Cesarean Awareness Month
underline that C-section should be chosen for medical reasons only. Also, the
organization stresses the differences between natural and C-section birth, so that
the reader feels the profound conflict on which this discourse is built. Natural
birth is safe medical-wise; natural social-wise, a chance for women to be actively
involved in the child’s arrival in the world, a unique moment that women will
remember all their life. On the flipside, C-sections are fraught with medical risk,
are not natural and are socially stigmatized. ICAN does not want endorse this
stigma, but does not strive to criticizing it, as it is considered inevitable somehow.
From a personal standpoint, C-section is traumatizing for the mother. ICAN
uses the confessions of some mothers who went through C-section and who
later became supporters of Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC), mothers
which portray C-section in bleak terms:

Many women who have had these unnecessary C-sections struggle to find
support and outlets that help them deal with the sadness they feel over their
birth. [. . .] Birth creates a new life as a tiny baby, but a mother is also born
that day as well. She deserves to have her feelings validated. [. . .] I do not
remember much about the operating room, just feelings and sounds: the
clanging of metal instruments, banter of the staff, and wanting to move my
arms which were spread out and strapped down. The hospital staff were
the first people to see my daughter as she was pulled from my sliced
abdomen. [. . .] I was the last person in the room to see my baby.
(Jaclyn 2014)

My scar still hurts/I was separated from my baby/I failed the one thing I’m
supposed to be able to do as a woman.
(Terreri 2015)

On the other hand, the organization does not want to lose the ones, who, at a
certain point in their lives, opted for C-section, but wishes to persuade them
not so much that natural birth is superior to C-section—as these can be easily
understood—but that natural, vaginal birth can occur after a C-section. ICAN
presents itself in an altruist light, as it is willing to forgive, understand, and offer
support for the women who were led astray. Basically, these women make up
a significant portion of the target segment of the ICAN organization and of
its supporters (Lamaze International 2015). The supporters want to save the
women who were socially stigmatized for giving birth through C-section,
without manifesting their intention of contesting the stigmatization
process. Women must be helped because C-section is something bad and they,
the women, are only partially responsible, the main fault being attributed,
through impersonalization, to the medical system (Vireday 2014; Muza 2015),
to postmodernist society, or to anonymous factors.
The symbol of Cesarean Awareness Month is a dark red ribbon. The symbol
is explained in the following way:
 Women–nature connection in Western motherhood 89
The burgundy color of the ribbons represents birth and the wearing of the
ribbon upside down symbolizes the state of distress many pregnant women
find themselves in when their birthing options are limited. The loop of the
inverted ribbon represents a pregnant belly and the tails are the arms of a
woman outstretched in a cry for help.
(International Cesarean Awareness Network 2015)

The fact that people talk about the limited options women have regarding birth
is a euphemism for laying the blame on the existence of C-section as option.
The problem of the organization is not that there are not too many options,
but that C-section is one of these options. Here we get at the heart of the
campaign ICAN runs: casting a pathological shadow on C-section. From their
perspective, it can be understood that resorting to C-section, despite being a
medical act, implies becoming ill, letting the body be filled with signs of disease.
The symbol of cesarean awareness month, the dark red ribbon, is constructed
in an analogy form with the pink ribbon used to symbolize breast cancer
awareness. This dialog between symbols is very dangerous because it draws
on the similarity between cancer and C-section too much, even when the
differences are obvious. Cancer is not the result of a conscious choice. Cancer,
unlike C-section, cannot save lives. There is a common element between the
two, though. Both showcase the fragility of human beings seen as products of
nature and the ambivalence of nature per se. On the basis of this common
element, ICAN’s imagery placed cancer and C-section side by side.
What is still to be discussed is the double, schizoid standard, applied by the
contemporary society which praises the naturalist model of the good mother
over the conception and birth of children. While, in terms of conceiving
children, everything should be done to remedy infertility, through the possibili-
ties of medicine, childbirth should be as natural as possible, since the medical
community generates malicious comments, blame, and criticism. The risks the
woman exposes herself to when resorting to medical assisted human reproduc-
tion, and the inherent risks of any natural childbirth are not set in the collective
memory of society and contemporary mass culture. In stark contrast, the risks
of C-section are promoted, debated, and fought against. Sometimes, when
these risks are discussed, popular culture counteracts with another narrative
of motherhood: the necessary human sacrifice of the mother. Birth pain is
particularly considered an essential component of the sacrifice the mother must
endure to bring a new life into the world. The fact that contemporary Western
society maintains, on an imaginary level, the necessity of sacrifice cannot be
solely explained as traditionalist reminiscence,12 as it is largely determined by
projecting motherhood onto a naturalist and evolutionist setting.
We must admit to the fact that, as in the case of photographic albums showing
women who breastfeed, there is a benefit to this campaign. It draws attention
toward using surgery to bring babies into the world as a phenomenon with
numerous negative implications, contributing to a rise in women’s awareness
and to an encouragement in looking up information. But the benefits do not go
90 Adriana Teodorescu
beyond this awareness because the ICAN discourse is restrictive and manipula-
tive. The discourse is restrictive because it wants to steer women toward the
good path of natural birth. The discourse is manipulative because the method
by which ICAN understands manipulation is hiding a general truth about all
births. Any birth, whether natural, vaginal, or surgical implies a series of risks
for both the mother and the child, the highest risk being death (World Health
Organization 2015). The risks install during pregnancy.13 Admitting to this fact
would entail that nature offers no guarantee, no form of automatic superiority.
As such, the woman cannot be obliged to accept the path nature offers, as it
may not be the royal path of her social and personal destiny.
Whether in newspaper articles (Curtis 2014, Feinmann 2011) or blogs
(Tuteur 2011), the Internet is filled with opinions which reflect the conflict-
ing, manipulative rhetoric of ICAN, which advocates in favor of the moral and
social superiority of vaginal birth. This idea of vaginal birth strengthens the
good mother portrait, a mother biologically devoted to her child, contributing,
by opposition, to the creation of the bad mother profile. For example, a young
woman blogger argues against the fact that the birth story is so important in
defining the maternal identity of women, and argues in favor of the private
nature of birth, seen as the first, biological step of motherhood, and not as its
essence. She is appalled by the ICAN campaign:

Yes I do believe there are too many unnecessary C-sections in this country,
but who am I to judge how another woman brings new life into this world?
It’s none of my business. It’s also unfair that women who have medically
necessary cesareans need to preface their birth with this fact so that they aren’t
judged [. . .] We are immediately judged and given the side eye. I’m done
being judged and I’m ready to stand up for other women who are being
judged and feeling bad about themselves because of it. No more. Yes I know
it’s dangerous, yes I know recovery is hard, yes I know that most people
think the C-section rate in the US is too high, but you know what I don’t
care. And it isn’t for anyone to judge how another woman became a mom.
Also let’s be real here, it doesn’t matter how you give birth . . . the next week
or two is hard regardless of how the baby came out. No one should ever be
ashamed or embarrassed about their birth story. Whether you delivered your
baby vaginally or by a cesarean congratulations on becoming a mom.
(Growingupawife 2013)

Recently, Eliane Glaser (2015) noticed that natural birth functions as a positive
stereotype in our contemporary society, and that women do not have a real
possibility to choose between several birth procedures, being compelled by a
strong anti-medical naturalist trend to embrace natural birth. She doubts the
real empowerment engendered by the naturalist discourses, observing that
the focus on the female body undermines women’s capacity to reason:

Natural childbirth has mistakenly come to be regarded as automatically

woman-centred, with midwives portrayed as helping women—in the teeth
 Women–nature connection in Western motherhood 91
of the white-coated male establishment—to achieve the authentic
experience they supposedly really want. But being bullied or cajoled into
having a natural birth because of trumped-up risks to “baby” is not what
I call feminism [. . .] It is right that a woman should have control over her
own body. But in the cult of natural childbirth, the body is everything.
Telling women to “just let go” can be liberating, but it’s also a command
to switch your brain off.

Conclusions: for a healthy farewell to motherhood

essentialism—breaking the women–nature connection
The idea of having children might be the last essentialist value of the Western
world. Researchers (Hernandez 2010) speak of the fact that idealizing
motherhood, by using elements pertaining to a romantic view upon nature like
feeding, caring and self-sacrifice, tends to compensate the sense of capitalism’s
economic instability. Ecology blends with cultural Christian heritage to
engender a liminal space, at the border of reality and illusion: the heavenly
realm of good motherhood. But revenge from the negative side of motherhood
insinuates itself perfidiously. Mothers who give up their jobs in order to
appeal to the requirements of the good mother do not re-instate a natural lost
world, but instead manage to capitalize on and increase women’s poverty,
poverty being a corollary of women anyway (McLanahan and Kelly 2006).
Moreover, the feeling of personal happiness diminishes (Baumeister 1991), the
risk of depression grows (Evenson and Simon 2005; Rochman 2011) because
of the responsibilities involved in raising children and the social pressure to be
a perfect mother (Crittenden 2001). Let’s not forget: in a good mother para-
digm happiness is mandatory. But when real women cannot be good mothers,
happiness falls apart, while frustration and blame settle in, highlighting the dark
side of a naturalist construction of motherhood.
God is dead, said Nietzsche. As Foucault would say, Man is just a sand figure,
soon dissolved by the sea. Marriage is an emotionally overcharged social
configuration that sociologists warn is headed for extinction (Klinenberg 2013).
The time of grand absolutes and essentials is long gone. Western society must
prepare to say goodbye to motherhood essentialism. And for this it is necessary
to acknowledge and to tear down the connection between women and a
mythologized, perfect nature.

Notes
1 As Luca Valera (Ch 1, this volume) points out, the works of Françoise d’Eaubonne still
have so much to offer to those interested in both nature and women’s liberation, mainly
because d’Eaubonne has the willingness (even if not always the power) to overcome
the traditional dichotomies that characterize Western thought. These dichotomies
(e.g., women–nature/men–culture) are expressions and triggers of patriarchal domination
over women’s bodies and sexuality as well as over nature.
2 When I refer to the good mother, I refer to an emblematic symbol of Western society, a
rhetorical and ideological figure, not to the women who more or less approach this symbol.
3 Although ambivalence characterizes human reality. See Durand (1960).
92 Adriana Teodorescu
4 More about the post-evolutionist perspective on nature, and for a critical approach on
the subject, see Teodorescu (2012).
5 A woman’s values, as praised by mass culture—eroticism, freedom, individuality, slim
body, career—are rendered invalid by the cultural imperative of the good mother.
6 A very insightful analysis of how endorsing primatological narratives generates an
essentialist interpretation of human motherhood is to be find in Sowards (2011).
7 Attachment parenting and those inspired by these trends/organizations do not restrict
themselves to considering breastfeeding the only natural gesture, although they assign it
special importance, focusing on the idea that breastfeeding fundamentally sets the bond
between a mother and her child. For them, motherhood itself, as a whole, is the living
proof that women belong to nature, and, conversely, that nature is written in feminine
genes, transgressing the cultures in which women live.
8 For other contemporary representations of the analogy between women and animals and
for an astute discussion of some of the major consequences concerning the social
perception of gender roles, see the incisive study of Stephanie Baran, “Visual Patriarchy:
PETA Advertising and the Commodification of Sexualized Bodies” (Chapter 3, this
volume), who debunks the apparently well-intentioned advertisements that associates
women with animals in order to fight for the animals’ rights. Baran contends that insisting
on the similarity between women and animals, more specifically using staged images of
women as symbolic substitutes for animals’ conditions reinforces the commodification
of the female body, without being useful in really drawing attention on animals’ issues.
9 For an eco-feminist critique of the Western standards of unrealistic feminine beauty,
see Mitten and D’Amore (Ch 6, this volume).
10 Not every visual narrative that technically emphasizes the connection between women
and nature becomes automatically successful in re-establishing a genuine encounter
between women and nature. For an analysis of such a narrative, which seems to rather
put distance between women and nature, see the study of Valerie Padilla Carroll,“Writing
women into back-to-the-land: feminism, appropriation, and identity in the 1970s
feminist magazine Country Women” (Ch. 7, this volume).
11 The organization and its supporters admit to the fact that, in many instances, C-section
can save lives, but that the procedure is justified only when life is threatened. It is as if in
such discourses, the collective imagery of surgery-driven birth is blocked in the Middle
Ages, when, indeed, because of the lack of anaesthetic and professional instruments,
C-section was an almost barbaric practice, performed on dead rather than living mothers.
See Brown (2004).
12 Everywhere, in all the cultures, the mother’s self-sacrifice is an important component of
the imaginary domain and of motherhood’s discourse. In the capitalist world which
praises individualism and career, self-sacrifice remains a necessary baptism for the woman
who wants to assume a mother-type function. This happens even if physical sacrifice
becomes blurred in favor of the non-material, spiritual sacrifice (sacrificing personal time
and relations etc.).
13 A similar approach happens when pro-life/pro-vita organizations discuss the health risks
which may occur in the case of women who have abortions. It is true that any abortion
has risks, but what is being omitted is the fact that any pregnancy has risks. Therefore,
the pregnant woman is prone to greater risks than the non-pregnant woman.

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6 The nature of body image:
the relationship between
women’s body image and
physical activity in natural
environments
Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore

Body image is a significant personal and societal issue, especially for women.
Numerous studies have shown that the substantial majority of adult women have
a negative relationship with their bodies, an area of concern that starts early in
childhood for many girls. Not only are there detrimental personal emotional,
psychological, and physical effects of such pervasive negative body image,
but there are also numerous societal and even ecological implications of this
epidemic. People who are indoctrinated by cultural norms to feel like their
bodies are inferior to beauty ideals invest tremendous mental and emotional
energy as well as time and economic resources toward trying to achieve often
unattainable expectations. Therefore the achievement of a positive body image
frees up those resources to be put toward greater personal and societal good.
As powerfully shared by Sally McGraw (2012):

Learning to love your body may seem small or selfish or pointless at times,
especially when compared to fighting for larger causes and reaching out
to help others. But to fashion yourself into a powerful, effective, whole
being, you’ve got to come at life from a place of strength. Your body is
your home. If you hate your home – if you flee from it, disrespect it, and
wish it were fundamentally different – your strength will be diminished.
Whether you want to help others or simply find your way to happiness in
your own life, loving yourself is absolutely vital. And loving yourself
includes loving your body. Your body is integral to yourself.

This chapter begins with an overview of body image—what it is, how it has
evolved, and why it is a significant personal and societal issue. It proceeds to
briefly describe the relationship between humans and the natural environment,
the effects of lifestyles that are increasingly ‘disconnected’ from nature, and the
increasingly well-understood importance of direct experiences in nature for
human well-being. Bringing these two topics together, the discussion hones in
on how being active outdoors has a positive effect on women’s body image.
The results of recent and ongoing research conducted by the authors on the
effects of being physically active in natural environments on women’s
 Women’s body image and physical activity 97
perceptions of their physical effectiveness and attractiveness are presented as
offering important insight into this topic. For example, our research has found
that women who spent more than three hours a week engaged in nature-based
activities had a significantly more positive body image than their counterparts.
The discussion uses ecofeminism scholarship to suggest that patriarchal beliefs
contribute to the diminishing and objectifying of women and nature and that
both women and nature would benefit from an ecofeminist paradigm. Through
time in nature some of the negative impacts of patriarchal beliefs about women
can be healed and women gain new perspectives. Time in nature, including
time in women’s groups, helps women achieve the characteristics that other
research has determined to contribute to sustaining positive body image.
By healing our internal relationship through time in nature, we are better able
to help heal the human–nature relationship.

Women’s body image

Body image refers to the way people perceive their own body: their perceptions
about how other people view their body, and the complex relationship between
these internal and external perceptions (Robinson 2003). Body image is an
aspect of self-concept—the global and multidimensional perception of who one
is—including one’s actual experiences and the interpretations about those expe-
riences (Kaiser 1997). The construct of body image contains both positive and
negative elements and includes features related to perceptions (cultural stand-
ards of beauty and the way in which a person does or does not match these
standards), attitudes (the relative personal and societal importance placed on that
match), and behaviors (efforts made to adhere to standards of beauty) (Fallon
1990). Body image can be a basic litmus test of self-affirmation, self-worth,
self-efficacy, and self-love.
In most recent cultures, women have been told to reshape their body or
to wear garments, such as corsets, that hide or bind some parts of the body
while accentuating other body parts. In contemporary history these unrealistic
standards for women’s bodies have intensified—both in physical expectations
and in the saturation of messages around what constitutes beauty. Until the
early 1900s, in Western cultures it was often considered to be a sign of health
and wealth for a woman to have a Rubenesque body type. Around this time
consumer, culture began to increasingly influence standards of beauty for
women’s bodies through cosmetics, fashion, cinema, and advertisements. As a
result, the preference in the United States shifted from a more voluptuous
female form to a thinner frame with fewer curves. Exercise began to be viewed
as an activity necessary to achieve the level of thinness that had become the new
sign of wealth (Cash and Pruzinsky 2004). The global reach of Western media
has a pernicious effect on women’s body image around the world. A Harvard
Medical Center study in Fiji found that, in a culture that long considered robust
girls and women healthier and stronger, three years after the introduction of
TV shows such as Beverly Hills, 90210, 74 percent of Fijian teenagers described
98 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
themselves as fat, with those who watched TV three or more time a week being
30 percent more likely to go on a diet (Becker 2004).With this focus on thinness
came an increase in the practice of dieting for the purpose of losing weight.
In the 1960s the waif-like look became popularized by the supermodel
Twiggy Lawson, who was arguably the first underweight woman to become
the standard for the ideal body. It was also at this time that Barbies, with their
impossible body proportions, became a popular toy for young girls. Since the
1980s, and continuing through today, the ideal female body type popularized in
the media is ultra-thin and toned. To illustrate how unattainable the current
thinness ideal is for most women, consider that the average U.S. female model
is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds while the average woman in the U.S. is 5’4”
and 140 pounds—only two percent of women in the U.S. are model sized (Katz
2004). Thinness has come to represent beauty and a higher socio-economic
status as well as to symbolize success and self-control (Forehand 2001).
Many women have internalized society’s thinness ideal, and when they
cannot achieve the standards set for the female body, they often develop
a negative body image. A number of authors (Coker and Abraham 2014;
Matthiasdottir, Jonsson, and Kristjansson 2012; Peat, Peyerl, and Muehlenkamp
2008; Sinclair 2006; Tiggemann 2004) have reported that body dissatisfaction
is present in the majority of women in developed countries, including women
at normal weights. Body dissatisfaction is defined as the negative and dys-
functional beliefs and feelings about one’s shape and weight (Garner 2002).
Such poor body image starts at disturbingly young ages, with 51 percent of 9
and 10 year old girls in the U.S. reporting that being on a diet makes them
feel better about themselves (Spake 2004). By the time they reach adulthood,
approximately 80 percent of women in the U.S. are not satisfied with their
bodies (Katz 2004).
Over thirty years ago the term normative discontent was coined to describe the
Western cultural norm for women who have negative views of their bodies
(Rodin, Silberstein, and Striegel-Moore 1984). Negative body image has far
reaching consequences—impacting many aspects of women’s self-concept and
wellness, including self-esteem, self-efficacy, personal growth, positive rela-
tions, and purpose in life; all of which have implications for personal, family,
community, and environmental well-being (Cash 1998). For example, female
adolescents in Poland who were extremely critical of their bodies were found
to have fewer life skills because of a lower trust in their possibilities, a desire to
be someone else and change their appearance, and less frequently perceived
happiness (Laudanska and Bronikowski 2013). This dissatisfaction seems
consistent for all ages of women, though the negative effects for some women
on their self-concept lessens with age (Webster and Tiggemann 2003). A nega-
tive body image can lead to or exasperate a variety of mental health problems,
including depression, anxiety, body dysmorphic disorder, and eating disorders
(Buddeberg-Fischer, Klaghofer, and Reed 1999; Coker and Abram 2014). For
example, when comparing adolescents with psychiatric illnesses, it was found
that the individuals with negative body image tended to be more depressed,
 Women’s body image and physical activity 99
anxious, and suicidal than those without the same dissatisfaction about their
appearance (Dyl et al. 2006).
Body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia
nervosa, are conditions defined by abnormal eating habits that may involve
either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of the individual’s
physical and mental health. These chronic mental illnesses can be life threatening
where the afflicted individual has excessive concern about and preoccupation
with a perceived defect of their physical appearance. Body dysmorphic disorder
often co-occurs with depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and isolation.
Negative body image and the often-accompanying mental concerns affect
physical, social, and emotional domains in life and may cause problems in home,
social, and work environments.
Theories about how females are influenced to have internalized body
dissatisfaction and strive for the thin-ideal include social comparison theory
(Festinger 1954) and objectified body consciousness theory (Fredrickson and
Roberts 1997; McKinley and Hyde 1996). Social comparison theory says that
humans strive to assess their opinions, progress, and standing in life through
comparison with others. Wheeler and Miyake (1992) found that social com-
parisons on the dimension of physical appearance tend to be upward rather than
downward and that comparisons often result in a decrease in self-perceptions
of attractiveness. Morrison, Kalin, and Morrison (2004) found that social
comparison is a powerful predictor of body image evaluation for female
adolescents. Objectified body consciousness claims that the “feminine body is
socially constructed as an object to be looked at” and contends that when sexual
objectification is experienced, women become socialized to engage in this kind
of objectification toward themselves and others (Sinclair 2006, 50). This theory
argues that as a woman internalizes the social ‘demands’ on her body, she begins
to see her own physical body as an object that is measured, evaluated, and
valued through the lens of another person’s view of her. Sinclair (2006, 51)
explained the results of objectified body consciousness as follows: constant
monitoring of how one’s body looks (body surveillance); internalization of
cultural body standards (body shame); the belief that one’s appearance can
be controlled (appearance control beliefs). Another example of objectified
body consciousness is what Maine and Kelly (2005) refer to as the body
myth. Body myth describes the widely held belief that one’s self-worth and
worth to others is, and should be, determined by how we look, how much we
weigh, and the food we eat.
Thus far we have articulated precipitating factors and problems related to a
negative body image. Now using a reparative approach to relate to nature, we
turn to how one might help create a positive body image. More than merely
mitigating the effects of negative messages about one’s body image, time in
nature may promote a positive body image and may provide inoculation against
media messages of the thin-ideal. Tylka and Wood-Barcalow (2015) commented
that, if we focus on eliminating negative body image without understanding
how to promote positive body image, then clinicians and others may be less
100 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
able to help women attain health in this area. They said, “Helping clients adopt
a positive body image may help them appreciate, respect, celebrate, and honor
their bodies, which may make treatment gains more effective and lasting”
(Tylka and Wood-Barcalow 2015, 118).
Recent studies focusing on characteristics and causes for positive body image
found that women who enjoy physical activity, have increased social support,
appreciate their body functioning, have unconditional acceptance from others,
and broadly conceptualize beauty are likely to experience positive body
image (Avalos, Tylka, and Wood-Barcalow 2005; Williams, Cash, and Santos
2004; Wood-Barcalow, Tylka, and Augustus-Horvath 2010). Many women
experience these sources of positive body image when in the outdoors.

The human–nature relationship

People have spent over 99 percent of their evolutionary history in close
proximity to and in relationship with nature. This intimate relationship with
nature was based on what Flinders (2003) described as a values-of-belonging,
which means that a society’s core values include intimate connection to and
empathetic relationship with all beings, generosity, egalitarianism, and non-
violent conflict resolution. Although some cultures never entered an agrarian
lifestyle and thus remain hunter-gathers (such as the Bushmen of the Kalahari
and the Betek people living in forests of Peninsular Malaysia), and although
some have remained predominately peaceful groups, overall, the last few hundred
years have wrought an extraordinary disengagement of humans from the natural
environment. This shift is especially pronounced for people in Westernized
and/or industrialized countries—those that have the greatest historical
culpability for environmental issues. Significant historical shifts in human culture,
such as the domestication of plants and animals, monotheism, the 18th-century
European Enlightenment, and the industrial revolution, played particularly
significant roles in the strengthening of a patriarchal ideology that created a
duality in which “women are treated as inferior to men, ‘nature’ is treated as
inferior to ‘culture’, and humans are understood as being separate from, and
often superior to, the natural environment” (Harris 2015, 1). The result has
been tremendously damaging for the well-being of both the natural environment
and women.
Today people in the U.S. spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors,
a level of constraint rare even in recent generations (Clements 2004). As our
lived experiences in direct contact with nature rapidly wane, evidence is
mounting of the critical connections between human well-being and time
spent in a healthy natural world. Contact with nature is essential for our physical
health, as well as for our optimal cognitive, psychological, and emotional well-
being (Ewert, Mitten, and Overholt 2014). Research has examined the impact
of exposure to nature in a variety of forms, from mere images, to views from a
window, to neighborhood play, to educational settings and wilderness programs.
The populations studied have been from a wide range of demographics,
 Women’s body image and physical activity 101
socio-economic groups, and countries, and have included the general public as
well as clinical populations. The specific outcomes examined have been diverse
as well, including physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development.
The outcome of positive findings from studies employing different popula-
tions, research designs, and measures suggests that the benefits of time in
nature are pervasive and generalizable. The following is a brief summary of the
evidence on the positive effect of contact with nature for human health and
well-being.

Physical benefits
The physical benefits of time in nature are increasingly well documented
and frequently linked with the increase in physical activity that comes with
time spent outdoors (Cleland et al. 2008; Potwarka et al. 2008) as well as
uneven trails that help increase balance. For example, Lee and colleagues (2014)
found lower heart rate and systolic blood pressure levels for people walking in
the forest verses people walking in urban environments. Li and colleagues
(2008) found that a forest bathing trip (walking in the forest) can increase
human natural killer NK activity, the number of NK cells in female subjects,
which is seen as aiding the immune system. Conversely, a decrease in time
spent outdoors has been found to contribute to physical ailments such as obesity,
hypertension, and myopia.

Cognitive benefits
Cognitive benefits from time in nature include creativity, problem-solving,
focus, and self-discipline. Walking in nature for fifteen minutes (in comparison
to walking in an urban environment) has been found to increase an individual’s
subjective connectedness to nature, positive affect, attentional capacity, and
ability to reflect on a life problem (Mayer et al. 2009). In five studies, Ryan
and colleagues (2010) found that nature exposure relates to both physical and
mental vitality.

Psychological benefits
Nature relatedness has been found to be significantly correlated with the six
dimensions of psychological well-being—autonomy, environmental mastery,
positive relations with others, self-acceptance, purpose in life, and personal
growth for children and adults (Nisbet, Zelenski, and Murphy 2011). As noted
by Weinstein, Przybylski, and Ryan (2009), nature can bolster autonomy
directly by affording opportunities for introspection and a coherent sense of self
(Walker, Hull, and Roggenbuck 1998) and providing an alternative to the
pressuring elements of everyday life (Stein and Lee 1995). Nature connectedness
is associated with mindfulness (Howell et al. 2011), which is in turn supportive
of self-awareness, self-esteem, and resilience (Coholic 2011) and reduces
102 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
maladaptive rumination (Heeren and Philippot 2011). An effective connection
with nature has been found to foster an overall sense of psychological well-
being (Korpela et al. 2009).

Emotional benefits
Emotional benefits include stress reduction, reduced aggression, and increased
happiness (Chawla 2006). Kuo and Sullivan (2001) found that levels of aggres-
sion and violence, including domestic abuse, were significantly lower among
individuals who lived near some natural elements than among their counter-
parts who lived in barren conditions. Chiesura (2004) found that people visiting
an urban park perceived regeneration of emotional equilibrium, relaxation, and
the stimulation of a spiritual connection with the natural world as key benefits
from their experience. Hug and colleagues (2008) compared the restorative
effects of physical activities in forest and indoor settings. While the respondents
viewed physical exercise in either location as beneficial, those exercising in a
forest landscape reported a greater improvement in their mental balance and
release from everyday hassles.
Taken together, the aforementioned studies demonstrate the positive
relationship between time spent in nature, feeling connected to nature, and
human health and well-being, all of which have positive implications for the
ability to heal or inoculate against negative body image. The following section
presents research about the relationship between outdoor activity and women’s
body image.

Women’s body image and outdoor activity

For twenty years Dr. Mitten ran Woodswomen, Inc., an organization that
offered outdoor trips for women and children. In this role she witnessed the
journeys of more than 7,000 women as they experienced one day to four weeks
in the outdoors. She heard many stories from women who felt healed or
experienced a sense of coming home when traveling and living in the natural
environment and who had positive, life-changing experiences, including increases
in self-esteem, empowerment, personal control, self-efficacy, physical strength,
and self-care (Mitten 1992).
In 1997, West-Smith (2000) began surveying women who had gone on
outdoor adventures with Woodswomen to study the effect of participating
on outdoor trips on body image. Her study demonstrated that women who
participated in outdoor adventures at least monthly for a year had more positive
body image compared with those who were not active in outdoor adventures.
Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, West-Smith
discovered that most active outdoorswomen are satisfied with their physical
attractiveness and their bodies’ physical effectiveness to a greater degree than
the general U.S. population.
Woodruff (2009) surveyed women over forty years old who participated in
a five-day outdoor trip in a different program and found that they had an
 Women’s body image and physical activity 103
increased positive body image as compared with a control group of women
not engaging in activities in the outdoors. Specifically, as their level of outdoor
activity increased, the more important it was for these study participants to be
physically effective. The participants defined physical effectiveness as having
intrinsic motivation and physical capability. Participants indicated that, for
them, attractiveness and effectiveness were interconnected, and being physically
attractive meant that one possessed a combination of physical ability, inner
confidence, expressed self-assuredness, and physical proportion. This broader
definition counteracts the societal norm of preferring an ultra-thin body
and objectifying the physical body. These results echo other research demonstrat-
ing that outdoor experiences can help women create a positive body/self-
relationship in part because active outdoorswomen are able to rebuff cultural and
stereotypical definitions of beauty and, as a result, maintain a more positive
body image (Hornibrook et al. 1997; Kiewa 1996, 2000; McDermott 2004;
Mitten 1992; Pohl, Borrie, and Patterson 2000; Whittington 2006; Mitten and
Woodruff 2010).
There may be an added impact when women are in the natural environment
with other women. Both the West-Smith (1997) and Woodruff (2009) studies
reported that women perceived benefits from being in women’s groups.
Fredrickson and Anderson (1999) found in their study of two women’s
groups that both the natural area and being in an all-women’s group were
important for women’s positive feelings:

Many testified to having grown both physically and emotionally from

having had the opportunity to share their life’s joys and sorrows with other
women who were willing to “really listen” and to be nonjudgmental, and
who were also actively supportive of what they had experienced both
physically and emotionally while on the trip.
(29)

Additionally, they specifically mentioned the non-competitive atmosphere,

group trust and emotional support, sharing common life changes, the opportu-
nity for direct contact with nature, periods of solitude, and the inherent physical
challenges. They reported that the wilderness setting had a major influence on
more contemplative aspects of the participants’ experiences and that the social
dynamics between and among group members contributed to the spiritually
beneficial aspects of the experience. Furthermore the strong group cohesion
and emotional safety between participates were paramount to most participants’
experiences which in turn influenced the spirituality inspirational qualities of
the place setting.
The aim of the study recently conducted by the chapter authors was to build
on existing research and develop a more robust understanding of the relation-
ship of women’s body image and their time spent being active in the natural
environment. This study brought to this area of inquiry a larger and more varied
population of women than preceding studies and honed in on various aspects
of outdoor activity, such as time, frequency, and duration in order to relate these
104 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
factors to body image. The study utilized a self-report questionnaire developed
from an instrument created by West-Smith (1997) and modified by Woodruff
(2009). The core of the questionnaire was the Body Cathexis Scale (BCS),
developed by Secord and Jourard in 1953 and still a widely used tool to assess
the degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with various parts and features of the
body (Grogan 1999). Subjects evaluate forty-six body parts and functions
according to a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1, ‘strong negative’, to 5,
‘strong positive’, resulting in a total score that indicates overall body satisfaction.
The BCS has been established in reports of a test-retest coefficient as having a
reliability of between .84 and .91 and .96 for the current study.
Using the online survey tool, Survey Monkey, the forty-four-item question-
naire used in this study was divided into four parts: Section 1 asked for outdoor
activity information; Section 2 sought body data including the BCS and questions
about physical attractiveness and physical effectiveness; Section 3 focused on
women’s life experiences, such as relationship status, child-bearing, and history
of eating disorder/cosmetic surgery; and Section 4 gathered demographics.
The questionnaire was distributed during the spring of 2013 to the 625 women
that were enrolled at Prescott College, a small liberal arts college in Arizona that
has an emphasis on adventure education and field-based courses. A total of 186
women completed the survey sufficiently for analysis, which was a 30 percent
response rate. The women in this study ranged in age from nineteen to sixty-five
years old, with an average age of thirty-four, and were studying in undergraduate
or graduate programs. Means were computed for the BCS followed by a t-test
for equality of means for a variety of variables such as age, education, quantity
and duration of outdoor activity, importance of being physically attractive and
effective, and self-rated level of physical attractiveness and effectiveness.

BCS mean
The women that participated in this study had a higher perceived body image
(BCS mean=3.45) than the expected average U.S. population of women (2.5)
and of the control group in Woodruff’s study (3.31). This study population’s
BCS mean results were not statistically different than in West-Smith’s group of
active outdoor women’s (3.42) or Woodruff’s group of short-term adventure
program participants (3.51) as illustrated in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1 A comparison of BCS mean results for three studies about women’s body
image

Study Population BCS Mean

Woodrufff’s (2009) Control group (n=17) 3.31

West-Smith’s (1997) group (n=86) 3.42
Females at Prescott College (n=186) 3.45
Woodrufff’s (2009) Short term adventure group (n=39) 3.51
 Women’s body image and physical activity 105
No statistically significant correlation between the respondent’s age and their
BCS mean was found, which is congruent with other research results (Webster
and Tiggemann 2003). Analysis of the respondent’s education level also found
no statistically significant correlation with their BCS mean.

Quantity of outdoor activity

When asked, “About how much time do you spend in outdoor activity in a
current typical week?” the responses ranged from zero to fifty hours per week
with an average of ten hours per week. Table 6.2 illustrates the thresholds of
time spent active in the outdoors that had a statistical significance on the BCS
for this study population, demonstrating a correlational trend that as the amount
of time spent participating in outdoor activities increases so does a woman’s
positive perception of her body image.

Duration of time outdoors

In this study, 96 percent of the participants had spent at least one overnight
outdoors and 63 percent of respondents had spent more than two weeks out-
doors one or more times. For participants in this study, the impact of time spent
outdoors on body image was a positive trend in the BCS mean as people
experience greater duration of concurrent overnights outdoors, number of
overnight trips, and total number of overnights outdoors. Further, the average
BCS was lowest for people who have never experienced an overnight outdoors
and increased with the experience of one to three nights outdoors and with the
experience of four or more concurrent nights outdoors. Similarly, the BCS
average trend was higher the greater the number of overnight trips reported as
well as the total number of nights the women reported spending outdoors.

Physical attractiveness and effectiveness

For participants in this study, there was a strong positive correlation between
perceptions of personal physical effectiveness and their BCS mean (i.e., r of
.00097 for effective vs. all ineffective categories). This indicates that as the
women’s level of participation in outdoor activity increased, the more important
it was for them to be physically effective. This correlation remained whether
or not the woman believed that physical attractiveness or physical effectiveness

Table 6.2 Thresholds of significance for time spent in outdoor activity for a
population of women students in higher education

< 3 hours (3.26 BCS) vs. > 3 hours (3.5 BCS) = r(0.024)
< 4 hours (3.29 BCS) vs. 4+ hours (3.5 BCS) = r(0.037)
< 8 hours (3.36 BCS) vs. 8+ hours (3.55 BCS) = r(0.023)
< 10 hours (3.38 BCS) vs. > 10 hours (3.63 BCS) = r(0.010)
< 15 hours (3.38 BCS) vs. 15+ hours (3.67 BCS) = r(0.008)
106 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
were important. There also was the expected significant correlation between
a woman’s perception of her physical attractiveness and her body image.
In other words, the women who believe they are physically attractive have a
higher body image as evidenced by their BCS mean. The following are select
quotes from study participants:

When I am able to do the things I want to do I feel more confident. I think

that people who exude confidence are more often perceived as attractive
regardless of their physical attributes.

When I feel healthier and more effective, I feel more positive and engage
in life more freely. This impacts my relationships and connections to
others. I feel stronger and more attractive therefore more willing to be out
in the world.

I used to have an eating disorder and considered myself hideous. This

prevented me from being active because I couldn’t see my body as any-
thing but useless and ugly. I believed working out was a waste of my time
because I didn’t think my body could be anything other than what I per-
ceived it as. After months of counseling, I took a trip to Peru. While there,
I did a 30 kilometer hike over two and a half days and hiked above 8,000
ft in altitude. When I returned to Cuzco after the trek, I viewed my body
in a whole different light; while I hadn’t lost significant weight, I suddenly
viewed my “fat” thighs as strong and supportive, my tool that carried me
through that experience. Being outside and pushing my body physically
changed how I viewed it mentally.

The results of this study support that through outdoor activity, self-concept
may increase, beliefs about attractiveness change, and psychosocial variables
about the ideal body may be mitigated. This means that the external influence
of the socially or culturally preferred body type had less influence on this popu-
lation of women than their internalized desire for engaging in outdoor activities
and their self-determined need for physical effectiveness to do so. In previous
studies, the same relationship was found (Mitten and Woodruff 2010; West-
Smith 1997). Specifically, as women’s level of participation in outdoor activities
increased, the more important it was for them to be physically effective and
the less they worried about culturally prescribed physical attractiveness.

An ecofeminist discussion
Throughout history, the Earth has been described in the feminine. Both
physiological (i.e., menstrual cycles linked with lunar cycles, the act of creation
that is pregnancy and childbirth) and psychological (i.e., nurturant, cooperative)
attributes of women are linked with the ways of nature and in many ancient
and some current cultures these attributes are revered. However, with the
 Women’s body image and physical activity 107
advent of patriarchal beliefs, relationships have fundamentally changed from an
ethic of valuing all people to valuing some people, behaviors, and resources
more than others.
Patriarchal thinking, rooted in a dualistic world view, splits mind from body,
spirit from matter, male from female, culture from nature. One concept in
each pair is deemed superior to the other. This paradigm has caused people
in industrialized parts of the world to steadily become more physically, mentally,
and emotionally estranged from the nature, perceiving it as a commodity solely
for human use; there has been a concurrent continuation in the diminish-
ment of the inherent worth of women and the feminine. In such societies the
commodification and objectification of nature and of women are similar and
come from giving entitlement to what is labeled or considered masculine,
which leads to domination and power and control over others.
Sexism as well as many aspects of racism, classism, imperialism, speciesism
and other forms of prejudice operates through this hierarchy. Baran (Chapter 3,
this volume), using Collins’s (1993) work, describes the effects of the inter-
sectionality of these prejudices in more detail. Causes of negative body image
can be traced to dualistic thinking and prejudice, which allow for objecti-
fication and the devaluing of what is labeled feminine. In contrast, ecofeminism
fosters a sense of our belonging to, rather than being in control of, the com-
munity of life. As a scientist, pragmatic feminist, and early ecofeminist, Ellen
Swallow Richards intended to accentuate interconnectedness when, in 1882,
she introduced the name “ecology” to the English language (Clarke 1973). She
understood the connection between the environment and human health and
that we needed to change the way we related to the environment in order to
maintain our health as well as the health of the environment of which we are
a part. She recognized that we are entangled with nature and that human
quality of life is dependent on society’s capacity for teaching its members how
to coexist harmoniously with their environment, including their family, com-
munity, and world. However, ecology as a discipline became less about humans’
relationship to our environment and more about a mechanical interpretation
of nature.
Françoise d’Eaubonne (1974), a French activist, who coined the term
‘ecofeminism,’ recognized, as Swallow Richards did, that by externalizing and
treating the environment in ways that were violent, uncaring, and destructive
we actually hurt ourselves. She understood how impacts on the biosphere and
women’s reproductive rights were concrete manifestations of the intersections
of feminism and ecology. She and others urged people to see the link and to
change the patterns of violence, which means changing our relationships.
Eco, from the Greek word oikos, denotes the whole household of life; the
term ‘ecofeminism’ therefore means to care for all life. Valera (Chapter 1, this
volume) said, “thanks to d’Eaubonne, we can say today that the expropriation
of the female body and Nature fall under a single dominant approach, which
has led to almost irreparable damages.” Valera concurs with Swallow Richards
and d’Eaubonne, stating, “Ecofeminism once again tends to combine elements
108 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
of feminism (the adversity to dichotomies) and ecologism (the holistic vision of
all), creating a more complete picture of reality.”
Ecofeminism and ecology reflect how our relationships are intertwined with
all beings and natural systems as an ecology of relationships (Mitten 2016).
Relationships are central to every dimension of our lives and shape our lives
because we are social, relational beings and because feedback loops continually
operate in relationships. Relationships govern our lives because we are entangled
with the whole cosmos from the microbes that live in our guts to the sun on
whose light we depend. Our understanding of relationships and skill in developing
and maintaining healthy relationships is central to maintaining personal and
societal health and well-being. This includes relationships with others as well
as the natural world, and a healthy relationship with self.
Being in nature offers women new or different perspectives and opportuni-
ties to explore these perspectives in relationship to self, others, and the natural
environment. It offers women different information than they have had access
to and different ways of knowing. These experiences can lead to transformations
in relationships with self, others, and the more-than-human world. Re-discovering
how to be in healthy relationships, including being in relationship with our-
selves through our body image, is key to the overall health and sustainability of
individuals, societies, and Earth.
Being outside transforms relationships in many ways. Women are socialized
to be relational and these authors postulate that helping women spend time
outdoors in comfortable and safe-feeling environments will help transform the
patriarchal culture through changes women may have with their relation-
ships with their bodies and nature. As women become more comfortable with
themselves and nature, they can return home ready to have agency and make
changes. They can feel a renewed purpose in life; all of which have implications
for personal, family, community, and environmental well-being.
Thus far the studies have demonstrated that spending time in natural areas
likely contributes to a positive body image for women. There is likely an
intersection of causes to both rebuff negative factors and to develop characteristics
that may lead to women increasing their positive perception of their bodies.

Social comparison theory

Social comparison theory may still be in affect during time spent in nature.
When women are part of an organized outdoor trip (as in two of the studies)
or part of summer camp (as many study participants were) then the study
participants may have been using the women guides or leaders who are likely
comfortable in the outdoors and comfortable with themselves in a social
comparison. Women outdoor leaders are physically capable and usually like
their bodies and appreciate it for how it helps them function in the outdoors.
Women may also do social comparison with nature and notice that nature is
filled with beautiful imperfect beings. In this case they see many shapes and
sizes of trees, other vegetation, and animals, learning that there is beauty in
imperfection and that functionality is key.
 Women’s body image and physical activity 109
Objectified body consciousness
Objectified body consciousness is possibly countered when in nature. Women
tend to appreciate their bodies for what they can do and through that apprecia-
tion redefine what beauty looks like. What society may label as large thighs
become ‘thunder thighs’ able to climb high mountains. As women relate to the
natural area, they often appreciate and feel drawn to the natural world and
therefore do not objectify it. They see many examples of vegetation in nature
not able to control its appearance and the women see beauty in these trees and
plants. This experience counters basic beliefs in objectified body consciousness
that appearances can be controlled and that one’s self worth and worth to others
is determined by how we look. If women do not objectify themselves, it can
have powerful repercussions when returning to their city or town environ-
ments. As women strengthen their body image, they may spend less time pluck-
ing, polishing, painting, toning, etc. themselves, resulting in more time and
resources to use elsewhere. They may become more involved in environmental
and other social actions, specifically because they now have a caring relationship
with the natural environment.

Intrinsic health benefits of being in nature

Spending time in nature has been shown to have physical, psychological,
spiritual, and emotional benefits, therefore some of the benefits women receive
may be due to effects of the natural environment and some benefits may be
due to being active. During time in nature, negative messages about women’s
bodies may be mitigated, and there is not the constant bombardment of media.
When in natural environments, part of the rediscovery is understanding and
feeling our sense of belonging. Many women travel in outdoor environments
in order to feel a sense of coming or being home (Mitten 2010).

Positive body image

Wood-Barcalow and colleagues (2010) define positive body image as an over-
arching love and respect for the body that allows individuals to: (a) appreciate
the unique beauty of their body and the functions that it performs for them;
(b) accept and even admire their body, including those aspects that are in-
consistent with idealized images; (c) feel beautiful, comfortable, confident, and
happy with their body, which is often reflected as an outer radiance, or a ‘glow’;
(d) emphasize their body’s assets rather than dwell on their imperfections;
(e) have a mindful connection with their body’s needs; and (f) interpret incoming
information in a body-protective manner whereby most positive information is
internalized and most negative information is rejected or reframed.
Combining the work of Wood-Barcalow and colleagues (2010) with
what women report after participating on all-women outdoor trips, it seems
that women often gain characteristics of positive body image while participating
110 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
on these outdoor trips. Wood-Barcalow and colleagues (2010) reported that
women who have an appreciation of shape, function, health, and features have
positive body image. A major finding in the three body image studies reported
about here was the appreciation of functionality of their bodies. Another
finding from Wood-Barcalow and colleagues (2010) was that women with
positive body image broadly conceptualized beauty and felt unconditional
acceptance from significant others. As a metaphor in the more-than-human
world, we see all sorts of shapes and sizes of trees and other vegetation, as well
as animals. This signifies a level of acceptance and tolerance of differences; there
are many ways to be beautiful. Many women commented that they felt at home
or relaxed in nature. There is a feeling of acceptance from the natural world.
Wood-Barcalow and colleagues (2010) noted that women with positive
body image tend to feel love and acceptance through their spirituality and by
consciously choosing to associate with people who are accepting of themselves.
Many women comment that they feel spiritually uplifted when in nature or that
nature is their higher power. Fredrickson and Anderson (1999) reported
that the women in their study appreciated the commonalities and said the group
time helped them feel spiritual.
Often on outdoor trips women take care of their bodies by being physical,
eating well, and sleeping well relating to the finding from Wood-Barcalow
and colleagues (2010)—that women who have positive body image take care
of their body via healthy behaviors. In the case of outdoor trips, the act of taking
care of themselves could create a positive feedback loop about their body image
that could carry into their city or town life.

Personal effectiveness
There is an important link between perceptions of personal physical effective-
ness (increased through outdoor activities) and positive body image (increased
when perceptions of personal effectiveness increase). A positive feedback loop
can be created when women are pleased with their effectiveness—ability to be
active in nature—and therefore feel positive about themselves and spend more
time active outdoors.

Social and ecological impacts

The impact of a more positive body image through time in nature can have
many implications for society. The act of spending time in nature is often seen
as stepping out of prescribed societal norms. If a woman takes this step, she
may take other steps outside norms. The act of healing oneself in nature gives
one a closer relationship with nature. Women may advocate for environmental
protection, clean water, and safe food sources. If women spend less time and
money on fussing with their body, this time and the resources will go toward
other endeavors. This might include more family time, creek cleanups, or other
community service. The more positive women feel about themselves and the
 Women’s body image and physical activity 111
more they feel a sense of belonging, then the more we as a culture will go
toward ecofeminism and a respect for all life.

Conclusions
An ecofeminist lens aids in our understanding about how the subjection of
women and the environment are linked, as well as how encouraging a positive
relationship with women and the environment can improve conditions for
both. The consequences of a negative body image are far reaching—impacting
many aspects of women’s physical health as well as their emotional and psycho-
logical self-concept including self-esteem, self-efficacy, personal growth, and
positive relationships. However, time in nature can be co-healing for both
nature and women.
Newer research focusing on characteristics of positive body image provides
information for clinicians and practitioner in health professions about direc-
tions for supporting women achieving and maintaining a positive body
image. Research presented here strongly suggests that the positive body image
characteristics described in this literature are promoted when women engage
in outdoor activities on a regular basis.
Enabling women to achieve a positive body image can help women spend
less time, energy and resources trying to achieve an unhealthy and unrealistic
body ideal. Women are able to rebuff the patriarchal beliefs that contribute
to diminishing and objectifying women and nature. Basically, some of the
probable causes for a negative body image are moderated, including aspects of
objectified body consciousness because women often stop monitoring how
their body looks and thinking of themselves as an object to be looked at. While
spending time in nature, women avoid the bombardment of media messages
objectifying women, and if they engage in social comparison, they often have
women who are comfortable with their body to which they can compare
themselves. Women outdoor leaders, often comfortable in the outdoor environ-
ment as well as fit and able to engage competently with the outdoors, would
be positive role models for other women to cue from in terms of lifestyle and
self-acceptance.
Along with a decrease in factors that lead to negative body image, the
characteristics of positive body image are reinforced, including broadly
conceptualized beauty, and feelings of acceptance and of spiritual contentment
while in the nature.
The study conducted by the chapter authors had two particular findings that
have practical implications:

s 'ETTING MORE THAN THREE TO FOUR HOURS OF OUTDOOR ACTIVITY A WEEK SEEMS TO
make a significant difference in women’s body image.
s ,ONGER DURATION OF OUTDOOR ACTIVITY IN THE FORM OF NUMBER OF CONCURRENT
overnights, total overnight trips, and total nights outdoors seems to have a
positive impact on women’s body image.
112 Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore
Results thus far reinforce the need to provide opportunities for women of all
ages to engage in outdoor activities on a regular basis and to have opportunities
during their lifespans to spend periods of time of one to two weeks outdoors.
Young girls and their families can spend daily or weekly time together in nature
or attend overnight camps as a family or individually. Women can be encouraged
and supported in maintaining a lifestyle that includes regular time in nature.
Using these findings in this area of inquiry has the potential to be preventive
for individuals and populations who may be at risk for poor body image and
related issues. For example, young girls can be encouraged to play outdoors in
order to help them create and maintain positive body image and using three
hours as a dosage gives girls and caregivers a target.
Becoming aware of the physical and psychosocial variables surrounding
body image may support the development of nature treatment programs for
certain disorders, such as anorexia or body dysmorphic disorder. For women
with negative body image, outdoor activities and time spent in the outdoors
may help cause an increase in a woman’s belief that her body is physically
effective and that becoming physically effective feels good psychologically.
Therefore a positive cycle could ensue of a woman spending time being active
in the outdoors because it feels good, while receiving the many other health
benefits from time in nature (Ewert et al. 2014), and perhaps not succumbing
as easily to pressures to conform to unhealthy cultural standards of beauty.
Women can return to their city or town life better able to engage in social and
environmental actions.
Ecofeminism, or caring for all life, can be actualized through the benefits
received from spending time in the natural world. The women may be able to
forge a reparative relationship between women and the natural environment,
leading to mutual healing. The combination of being physically active and
feeling spiritually alive helps many women feel positive about their bodies
and their being. Women who have been trapped in commodification and
objectification just as nature has been commoditized and objectified may then
find agency and come back renewed or transformed, ready to help transform
the rest of the world to move toward more ecofeminist beliefs, which are
inclusive of all and help everyone belong.

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7 Writing women into
back-to-the-land: feminism,
appropriation, and identity
in the 1970s magazine
Country Women
Valerie Padilla Carroll

During the 1970s, U.S. back-to-the-land movement proponents advocated

what they saw as a radical break with the American mainstream: the rejection
of modernity in favor of the rural ‘simple life’ of environmentalist smallholder
self-sufficiency. Promoted in magazines like Mother Earth News as well as a
variety of books, back-to-the-land offered itself as a solution to the perceived
economic, political, environmental, and cultural problems of the times.
Problematically, but rarely mentioned as such, this radical response still rested
on hegemonic assumptions that perpetuate heteropatriarchal power, such as the
promotion of binary gender roles and devalued female labor. Indeed, women
were generally absent in back-to-the-land literature. However, the emergence
of Women’s Liberation and more radical feminist thought offered a chance to
write women into back-to-the land through self-published texts. This chapter
explores these attempts in the feminist back-to-the-land publication Country
Women (1973–1979) along with the editors’ compilation how-to book
Country Women: A Handbook for New Farmers (Tetrault and Thomas 1976). At
its peak, Country Women magazine had gained a readership of over 10,000
with the publication’s heady mix of feminist politics and DIY articles for the
female back-to-the-land farmer. By exploring the many female voices in
the thirty-three newsletter run of Country Women as well as the how-to book,
we can see how women, so often left out of the back-to-the-land narrative,
attempted to write themselves into the movement not merely as participants
but as activist critics seeking to dismantle heteropatriarchy and define new
empowered identities. However, such analysis will also show how these
feminists, even as they sought equality, remained complicit in the oppression
of Others via a reinforcing nature and racial/ethnic appropriation. This story,
though, is not only one of privileged women gaining freedom on the backs of
Others. Instead a more complicated, if not disheartening, story of women
and nature emerges from the pages where multiple voices come together,
explore possibilities, and seek guidance even as they miss the opportunity for
truly radical change.
118 Valerie Padilla Carroll
Writing women into back-to-the-land
In the U.S., the back-to-the-land movement has roots in 19th-century
nature writing, but did not blossom as a popular movement until in the early
20th century. Back-to-the-land literature promoted an emancipatory narrative
selling the promise of liberation via the story of everyman smallholder self-
sufficiency. At its core, the back-to-the-land movement was, as agricultural
historian David B. Danbom explains, “rooted in a critique of modern urban-
industrial society and that society’s effect on human happiness and right living”
(1991, 2). Such writings tend to follow a similar story arc. They begin with the
problems—unemployment, urban pollution, impure and unhealthy food, and
a general discontent. The root causes vary: modernity, political corruption,
industrialism, consumerism, or immorality. Yet the solution prescribed is the
same: a retreat to the countryside where an agrarian self-sufficiency of gardening,
animal husbandry, and self-built shelters offers meaningful work, autonomy,
and security. These anti-urban narratives were an “over-arching antimodernist
appeal to middle-class urbanites concerned with unchecked industrial growth,
urban sprawl, and the fast pace of modern living” (Potts 2011, 820). Thus, these
retreats to the countryside were a potent fantasy for many and were sold to the
public as such. From the beginnings of the back-to-the-land movement, in
books like progressive activist Bolton Hall’s A Little Land and Living (1908),
specialty magazines like Country Life, and more general magazines like Colliers,
back-to-the-land was written as idyllic narratives wrapped in a “how-to” of
self-sufficient agrarian living.
Such fantasies of independence and autonomy were, as Dona Brown (2011)
explains in her comprehensive book, Back-to-the-Land: The Enduring Dream of
Self-Sufficiency in Modern America, promoted as utterly masculine endeavors.
Books and magazines alike promoted self-sufficiency as a method that would
reaffirm and rebuild manhood and the traditional heteropatriarchal family that
was perceived as threatened by modern, urban industrial life. Indeed, most early
20th-century back-to-the-land proponents rarely included women beyond
the helpmate category. In the rare instances of female characters, like David
Grayson’s sister Harriet in his incredibly popular Adventures in Contentment
(1906) or Ralph Borsodi’s wife in Flight from the City (1933), the woman
reads merely as the domestic labor support for his self-sufficiency adventure.
Even so, women too sought the “very independence and self-sufficiency—
the “manhood”—reformers thought they were safeguarding for men” (Brown
2011, 11).
By the 1970s, the back-to-the-land movement continued to rely on earlier
20th-century constructions. Typifying this focus can be seen in the flagship
back-to-the-land magazine Mother Earth News where, in the inaugural issue, the
editors assume a male audience and used the language of heteromasculinity to
describe back-to-the-land asking, “is it actually possible to tell the boss to shove
it, square your shoulders, and step out a free man?” (quoted in Brown 2011, 211).
When women were included, the primary prescription offered naturalized
gender roles. For example, in “Homesteading and Women’s Empowerment”,
 Back-to-the-land feminism in Country Women 119
author Caroline Robinson (1970) unhesitatingly promotes naturalized binary
gender roles when writing her follow-up letter to a series of articles written by
her husband Ed Robinson. While Ed was careful to use the pronoun “they” to
refer to his family’s “have-more” plan for an urban retreat into the countryside,
Caroline focused on defining gender roles when she wrote, “Mr. Robinson
naturally does the heavy work in the garden and with the animals, while I take
care of canning, freezing and household jobs” (Robinson 1970). Even when
she assumes the language of Women’s Liberation such as “women’s empower-
ment,” she equates support as empowerment, advising, “Your husband can’t
“Have-More” alone – he needs all your interest and help. But isn’t that the way
you want it?” (ibid.).
For the female back-to-the-landers seeking more than a helpmate role,
advocating for women as homesteaders was aided by the nascent Women’s
Liberation movement as well as more radical feminist thought (Brown 2011,
212). Country Women as a feminist magazine emerged as an important forum
for women seeking participation and visibility for themselves in back-to-the-
land. Self-published out of Albion, California, the collectively written and
edited journal covered a variety of feminist and back-to-the-land topics in its
thirty-three-issue run. Half of each issue focused on practical DIY articles
providing step-by-step instructions on a variety of subjects like chicken coop
building, goat vaccination, and plumbing. Many of these articles along with
some new ones were collected in the volume Country Women: A Handbook for
New Farmers (Tetrault and Thomas 1976) offering a practical, how-to resource
for all back-to-the-landers. The other half of each issue was devoted to a
single theme, such as “Homesteading” (March 1973), “Food” (July 1976), and
“Animals” (December 1977) and counter cultural explorations such as “Living
Alternatives” (June 1973) and “Spirituality” (April 1974). Themes also included
straightforward feminist subjects like “Women’s Movement in the Country”
(October 1973), “Women Working” (June 1975), and “Politics” (January
1976). Finally, other issues offered more radical and inclusive explorations
such as “Children’s Liberation” (August 1974), “Older Women” (July 1974),
and “Sexuality” (April 1975).
While little scholarly work has been written on Country Women, Scott
Herring’s “Out of the Closet, into the Woods: ‘RFD,’ ‘Country Women,’ and
the Post-Stonewall Emergence of Queer Anti-Urbanism” (2007) provides
an excellent exploration of Country Women’s “critical rusticity” visual culture
(359). Herring connects the lesbian separatist politics of the journal to the rural
gay magazine RFD and its rejection of the metronormativity common in other
gay liberation magazines of the 1970s. While Herring reads Country Women as
lesbian separatism referring to its explicit promotion, it is important to remember
separatism was expressed as part of a multiplicity of possible feminist identities
and practices. Indeed, the manifesto printed in the first four issues offers the
publication as a resource for all women:

We see Country~Women as a feminist country survival manual and a

creative journal. It is for women living with women, with men, and alone,
120 Valerie Padilla Carroll
for women who live in the country already and for women who want
to move out of the cities. We need to learn all that women can do in the
country and learn to break out of oppressive roles and images. We need to
reach out of our isolation from one another, to know that we aren’t alone,
that we aren’t crazy, that there is a lot of love and strength and growing to
share. Country~Women can bring us together.
(1973, 1)

Consequentially then, while Country Women did promote lesbian separatism, it

was offered as one of many methods of centering women’s relationships. The
female-to-female relationship was promoted as a feminist practice whether
manifesting as life partners, lovers, or as friends. Because Country Women was
aspirationally inclusive, “for women living with women, with men, and alone,
for women who live in the country already and for women who want to move
out of the cities,” it could house multiple voices with multiple perspectives
centered around feminist issues of back-to-the-land. It was a site where women
could help women and develop community. Further, because Country Women
was composed of a multiplicity of authors, editors, and artists, each voice contri-
buted to an ongoing dialogue seeking to define new social and cultural roles,
values, and identities.
Country Women provided much important feminist and female-centric infor-
mation and analysis for women back-to-the-landers, including the promotion
of body positivity, step-by-step instructions on self-defense, and open and frank
discussions of sexual assault and domestic violence. In ways both similar and
different to Adriana Teodorescu’s assertion that “women have made a great
effort to control motherhood, separate it as much as possible from natural
laws and disrupt the connection between women and nature” (Chapter 5 this
volume), Country Women offered information on reproduction that at times
separated motherhood from nature and at other times defined birth control and
reproductive choice as natural. Some of the strongest feminist analyses though
attacked the entrenched heteropatriarchy both inside and outside the back-to-
the-land movement and its literature. For example, articles like “Building
a New Foundation” (Volkhausen 1975, 7–8) questioned back-to-the-land
couples’ unthinking dependence on gendered labor, while “Housewifery:
A Historical Perspective” (Curtis and Bye 1975, 18–19) explored the ways that
housework, while vital, need not be gendered.
Even the DIY articles provided astute feminist critiques intertwined with the
instructions. Next to directions for the maintenance and use of chainsaws, for
example, the power saw is written as, “a sacred male tool” that transforms in
the hands of women to become a radical act of resistance and empowerment
(Ross 1976, 72). Essentially, the confident use of tools was seen as a feminist
act that challenged masculine power and allowed women to develop as self-
sufficient individuals. In another example, author Sherry Thomas explains that
after learning to build a shed, “I stood in the middle of that dirt-floored, low-
ceilinged, plywood shed and knew that where-ever I went after that, I would
 Back-to-the-land feminism in Country Women 121
always be able to provide myself with shelter. And since then I have had a new
sense of possibility fear does not paralyze me anymore when I know I need a
lean-to for milking or a cabinet to hold my tools” (1972, 25). Sally Bailey in
“Fisherwomen” (1972) explains the same feeling by connecting the learning of
masculine skills to personal empowerment, “Learning new skills and being back
on the ocean I gained a new self-respect” (20). Harlene Amberschild (1976)
explains her confidence grows with the use of tools, “As a woman, I feel especially
good about learning how to work with the land and with tools and machines.
I feel good about my body growing strong along with my confidence to
do things necessary to my existence” (19). Such feminism in the practical skills
section of each magazine and in the compilation is important because how-
to can often appear apolitical. Yet these step-by-step instructions in Country
Women offered access to a hidden world of masculine skills and information
thereby providing fertile ground for feminist analysis of female labor and tool
use outside of gendered roles.
Some of the most forward thinking feminist work in Country Women was a
kind of intersectional analysis and critique of class and gender connected to
capitalism. While covered in many of the magazine’s issues, the best examples
come from February 1977’s aptly titled theme issue, “Class.” From the beginning
of the issue, critiques of social position and the promotion of lived knowledges
were in the forefront. Importantly, the editorial collective named their social
position and potential bias before embarking on their discussion of class and
gender. Much like Kimberly Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality a decade
or so later, they “name their perspective” with a clear statement: “This magazine
is produced by predominantly white, middle class women” (Crenshaw 1991,
1244; Collective 1977, 1). More so, they recognized their position of ignorance
and the process of self-education when they wrote, “The consciousness raising,
the reading, the interpersonal struggles, and the soliciting of material culminate
in a magazine before a lot of the new ideas and feelings are digested and/or
integrated into our lives. Our struggle with class is a continual process” (ibid).
While the editors may have been unsure of their place in the class struggles, the
article submissions clearly came from a site of lived knowledge coupled with
astute socio-economic analysis. This included, for instance, a woman’s personal
experience tied with an exploration of how socio-economic position impacts
the family relationships and interpersonal violence (Ashe 1977, 6). Another
article considered, from a particularly Marxist stance, how class was tied to
“the amount of vested interest we have in maintaining the present order, the
domination by the tiny ruling class” (together-almost-a-year study group 1977,
2). In a rare focus on the intersections of gender, class, and race, the article
“Land as a Means of Production” explored one woman’s experience with land
ownership as power as well as the historical and contemporary ways that women
and people of color have been both denied land ownership and had their
labor appropriated in the interest of the ruling class (Terry 1977, 28–32).
Indeed, outright calls for solidarity across class, race, and nation can be found
in “Target: Capitalism” which calls for “international solidarity,” explaining,
122 Valerie Padilla Carroll
“in the struggle to over-throw ruling class oppression, working classes through-
out the world share common bonds. It is necessary to understand how the
capitalist system exploits people at home and abroad” (Weed et al. 1977, 17).
As a whole then, Country Women offered women a way to write themselves
into self-sufficiency, grow as an individual, fight for gender justice, and develop
strategies of change. It also provided some real proto-intersectional analysis by
questioning the connections between gender and classism and gender and
imperialism even calling for the dismantlement of capitalist hegemony. Such
solidarity often tried to avoid homogenization as the women still recognized
(some) difference, especially in class and sexual orientation. Such multiple and
even oppositional perspectives can be a vital to the evolution of a movement.
It is here, however, that I return to the complicated and disheartening story
promoted by Country Women. Even as they sought equality and recognized the
importance of class position bias, other oppressive constructions remained
unquestioned. The aspirational inclusiveness of these feminists rarely extended
to nature or even to people of color who are stereotyped as more “natural.”
Instead nature and people of color are used as tools for the development of the
individual white feminist self. That is, like the more masculine back-to-the-
land movement they were writing women into, Country Women still maintained
an unquestioned acceptance of the primacy of the individual, in their case the
white Western female back-to-the-lander.

Othering others: the ecological Indian and nature

as a tool for identity
Otherness not only constructs particular groups as marginalized but is also
based on an unquestioned hierarchical assumption that locates and defines
the powerful as standard and the less powerful as outsider. Country Women was
in many ways a response to the Othering of women in back-to-the-land. By
questioning and exposing heteropatriarchal assumptions and power, these
feminists demanded to be seen and treated as full and equal human beings. They
went beyond just writing women into the back-to-the-land movement—
Country Women was feminist activism and resistance. Nevertheless, coming
from race, global location, and species privilege, many of the writers, editors,
and artists in Country Women also othered Others by appropriating both real and
imagined non-Western and non-white cultures as well as nature via the trope
of the ecological Indian and a human/nature hierarchical binary. In fact, both
were constructed as tools for the development of the Western white female
identity.
Throughout Country Women there were numerous articles, poems, stories,
and images, which used people of color as tools of feminist self-empowerment.
For example, there are Western interpretations and selective use of Eastern
mysticism including yoga and t’ai chi as well as the culturally unmoored use of
icons like the yin/yang or the symbol that, “helps us get into who we are right
now and lets us see our own preciousness, helping us to accept ourselves
 Back-to-the-land feminism in Country Women 123
as whole worthy persons” (Purple 1974, 2). Such interpretations remove the
practices and symbols from their cultural context and are reinterpreted to
the benefit of the Western individual, in this case the female back-to-the-lander
seeking to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance. Additional ways that
Country Women Othered non-Western cultures and people was to fetishize
them as uncontaminated by civilization. Hence non-Western people were
claimed to have extraordinary human abilities because they are uncorrupted by
Western civilization such as in “A Holistic Approach to Contraceptives” which
claimed that in India there is a, “seemingly fantastic ability among the unmarried
who use mind control as a contraceptive” (Kernis 1977, 52). Indeed, the author
explains, the non-Westerner is an almost supernatural object in relation to the
Western subject:

When we read anthropological studies of tribal people who demonstrate

outstanding acuity in hearing or smelling over great distances, we are
surprised that the human ability is so vast. Then we begin to realize the
limitations we have placed upon ourselves.
(Ibid.)

Thus, the Westerner has much to learn from “tribal people” who can free the
Western subject from “the limitations we have placed upon ourselves.” While
such descriptions seem positive, they exact boundaries separating the us or
“ourselves” from the generalized Others, as the article says, “we” learn from
“anthropological studies of tribal peoples.” Aside from this generalized Othering,
such descriptions also point to a major theme throughout the magazine’s run:
the idea that non-Western and non-white peoples are tools for use by the white
subject.
More than any other people of color used as tools, the Native Americans,
especially the imagined Native Americans, are offered repeatedly as the guides
for self-empowerment and even redemption of whiteness. As Dakota scholar
Phil Deloria explains in his foundation work, Playing Indian (1998), from the
early days of European encounters with the Americas, indigeneity has been
constructed and appropriated to represent and build the white American
identity. The 1970s back-to-the-landers were no different, simply following
“their cultural ancestors in playing Indian to find reassuring identities in a world
seemingly out of control” (Deloria 1998, 158). Like other countercultural and
even mainstream environmental groups in the 1970s, the activists of Country
Women looked to the “ecological Indian” for guidance. This imagined Native
person embodied the supposed inherent ecological sensibility of Indigenous
peoples. He is a trope constructed as a wise teacher who understands “the
systemic consequences of his actions, [he] feels deep sympathy with all living
forms, and takes steps to conserve so that earth’s harmonies are never imbalanced
and resources never in doubt” (Krech 2000, 21). According to ecofeminist Noël
Sturgeon (2009), the ecological Indian trope had its “decisive entry . . . onto
the contemporary popular cultural stage” in the famous early 1970s anti-littering
124 Valerie Padilla Carroll
television advertisement where “Indian” actor Iron Eyes Cody shed a single
tear at the littering and pollution of modern America (65). Sturgeon continue,
“The powerful image of the crying Indian convinced many that littering
was wrong, that environmentalism was important (and not too radical), and,
not incidentally, that Indians were natural ecologists” (ibid.).
In Country Women a similar deployment of the ecological Indian was used
to condemn aspects of Western culture that the feminists named imperialist
aggressions. For example, the article, “Would You Like to Buy Rhode Island?”
explained, “Indians lived on this very ground centuries without claiming owner-
ship of it. The land ‘belonged’ to those who used its plants, animals, streams,
wind, until all were displaced by white men’s greed” (Thomas 1973, 4). Here
is an acknowledgment of the imperialism and oppressive nature of Western
culture, the wrongdoing (attached to ‘white men’) which, it is implied, can be
cleansed by learning from the wise Native who can offer connection to the
land and a better way of life. Even more explicitly in its condemnation of
imperialism and its use of the ecological Indian as a tool, Pelican in “Purification
in the Nuclear Age” (1979) calls for “us” to be aware of “Native American teach-
ings and prophecy because there is a message in it for all people about the future
of the earth and how to proceed. The traditional Native American cultures are
living examples of a practical alternative to the suicidal white man’s Western
Civilization” (20). Here traditional Native American cultures like the Hopi
are seen to offer guidance to whites. Their prophecies are for all people,
white people included, and they offer examples of a practical alternative to the
“suicidal white man’s Western Civilization.” Pelican continues:

We need to look to Native people’s traditional way of life and values for
guidance and inspiration. They are the original people of this continent.
Guided by their spiritual principles, they have lived a way of life that is in
harmony with Mother Earth for a very, very long time. Ancient spiritual-
based communities in harmony with Nature and Mother Earth, such as the
Hopi, must especially be protected, and not forced to abandon their way
of life and the natural resources which their lives depend on. The rights of
the traditional peoples to survive as a people must be recognized and
supported. The policies of cultural and physical genocide must be stopped,
by first stopping all further uranium and other mining, and industrial
development, on their land
(23)

In this paragraph we can see how the complications of appropriation and

solidarity intersect. Pelican deploys the ecological Indian, the idea of Indigenous
oneness with the land, “living in harmony with mother earth” and she includes
a moment of social justice solidarity, calling for the end of uranium mining on
Native lands for example. Yet that call for solidarity is not exactly in the service
of the Native peoples but of critical importance to the future of white people,
for example, “We need to look to” the Hopi. The “we” in this statement is the
white Western subject; the Native is the Other who is offered as a tool.
 Back-to-the-land feminism in Country Women 125
Another way that indigeneity gets deployed in Country Women is through
what Deloria explains as the misuse of “ symbolic Indianness,” which includes
the imagined and real artifacts and symbols of Native peoples (1998, 154). The
feminist back-to-the-landers in Country Women appropriated these imagined
artifacts and symbols of indigenousness to construct self-identity. Thus, Medicine
Wheels, sun dances, and totem poles provided concrete expressions of enact-
ing the guidance of imagined Indigenous cultures (Jacobs et al. 1974, 7–10;
Goodyear 1973, 32–33; Woodsorrel 1974, 51–55). Above all, it was the tipi
that was the most common cultural artifact that various Country Women authors
appropriated. The tipi was seen as a kind of Native spiritual guide, a physical
representation of the ecological Indian. As an illustration, in the article “Consider
the Circle” an author named River (1973) explored the ways the tipi itself acted
to help her discover the truth of life and nature. She wrote, “Knowing deep in
my White Anglo Saxon Protestant bones that the tipi itself, the very structure
I’d hastily chosen, was acting on my psyche, my spirit, as no structure ever had
before” (28). She continued to discuss how the tipi and by extension “Indians”
allowed her to release the dead weight of mainstream whiteness and embrace a
spiritual connection with the earth:

After living a short while in my tipi as a totally unreconstructed white

woman, I began to feel the heavy pulls of heritage and history. The two
wooden chests I’d moved in for storage of clothing and treasure seemed
pompous, ungainly, un-Indian, and they were. I moved them out again.
Kept a small pile of garments near my bed, put possessions in a few Indian
baskets I’d happily inherited, and sat on a rug, on a tarp, on the earth.
On the earth! A new, bright astonishment at how far I’ve lived from the
earth in my life.
(Ibid.)

Here River connects to the earth and meaning through the tipi, which
functions as her spiritual teacher who influences her growth as a self. This ideal
lifestyle where she finds meaning is something she sees as inherited and right-
fully owned. While River seems to be admiring “Indian-ness,” such admiration
manifests as romantic conceptions divorced from history and actual ethnic
cultures. Gone is the colonization and genocide. Instead, like the “Indian
baskets she happily inherited,” this idealized culture is employed for the indi-
vidual woman’s self-empowerment and to alleviate her “heavy pulls of heritage
and history” of mainstream whiteness. Such cultural appropriation of the Other,
as bell hooks reminds us, “assuages feelings of deprivation and lack that assault
the psyches of radical white youth who choose to be disloyal to western
civilization” (1992, 26). River’s disloyalty to mainstream whiteness has her
searching for another identity neither Native nor white but newly constructed
from bits and pieces of the Other.
Overall the cultural appropriation of Indigenous artifacts and the definition
of Indigenous peoples as teachers for the development and empowerment of
126 Valerie Padilla Carroll
white women permeated the magazine. For the authors in Country Women, the
ecological Indian with his imagined deep connection to the earth offers guid-
ance to young white women. In other words, through the deployment of the
ecological Indian trope, Country Women presented Indigenous Americans and
Indigenous cultures as tools for the white soul. The irony of this appropriation
is that these feminists could easily recognize and condemn women as oppres-
sors. They even produced entire themed issues that recognized and condemned
female as oppressor showing the ways that, for example, middle-class women
could oppress lower-class women and how straight women could oppress
lesbians (Country Women: Class 1977; Country Women: Sexuality 1975). They
even acknowledge the ways that the mother role could oppress children
(Country Women: Children’s Liberation 1974). Yet at the heart of these realizations,
the “women” in Country Women were still coded as white Western woman.
Entrenched in the privileges of American whiteness, these appropriations
remained unquestioned even presented as sincere admiration for such cultures.
It is the apparent sincerity of these women that points to the structural nature
of oppression—it is so much broader, deeper, and more intertwined into
culture that even when these feminists called for radical change, the power of
hegemonic control remained.
The appropriation of nature by the feminists of Country Women is a little
more complicated because the human/nature binary was both challenged
and naturalized. As an environmentalist magazine, Country Women rejected
the mainstream commodification of nature, animals, and the land, or those
ecofeminists Karen Warren calls “earth others” (2000, 1, 125). Even as they
critiqued the capitalist patriarchal misuse of earth others, however, Country
Women still used nature as a resource for the empowerment of the white,
Western subject. Earth others are presented as the teachers and healers for the
individual human self. However, existing in tension with this anthropocentrism
was a deep desire to seek connection and alliance by defining nature as both
a sacred goddess and a feminist project.
The most obvious appropriation of earth others in Country Women were, like
the ecological Indian, constructing the land, plants, and animals as teachers
and healers for these women. Sometimes it is stated outright such as when as
when Barbara from Covelo proclaims in “An Alternative to the Homestead
Approach,” “The land was, and is, a healer for me” (1973, 2). Sherry Thomas
in “Being is Believing” (1977) explains gardening as a journey of self where the
garden “has become my teacher and healer” (7). More often though nature is
used as an analogy such as in “Cycles: Reflections” where the experiences on
the farm are explained as, “I am learning to grow here. I’m learning to grow
from the tomato . . . I am learning how to grow here. And I am learning how
to die here” (Jacobs et al. 1974, 7). Here the author lyrically emotes growing
tomatoes as a connection to the earth, to life, and to death. The tomato is a
teacher that mirrors the author’s life helping her understand her own mortality.
Like Mitten and D’Amore discuss in “The Relationship of Women’s Body
Image and Experience in Nature” (Chapter 6 this volume), the authors in
 Back-to-the-land feminism in Country Women 127
Country Women understand the positive health benefits of being in and connect-
ing to nature. However, these authors also define nature as more than a site for
developing physical and mental health, they anthropomorphize nature as a
teacher and healer as a means of empowerment for the human subject. In other
words, the women grow as autonomous subjects whereas nature is an object
that provides the resources for that growth.
Sometimes in tension, other times in conjunction with using earth others
as teachers, Country Women also offered a metaphorical merging of women and
earth others, most often in the funky artwork that dotted the pages. For instance,
a drawing in the themed issue “Spirituality” shows a woman with arms raised
to the sky. Naked to the waist, she is clad only in a skirt woven out of whole,
living, earth others—a multitude of animals and plants including flowers,
lizards, vines, camels, giraffes, snakes, pigs, horses, octopus, and butterflies
among others (Guignon 1974, 13). In the same issue, another illustration depicts
a pregnant woman as a tree, her legs rooted in the earth, her hair and arms as
branches reaching toward the sky (Flores 1974, 21). Another manifestation of
the woman/earth merging was through the trope of the goddess, often as a
personified Mother Earth. Particularly in the early years of the magazine’s run,
this goddess image appeared repeatedly in artwork promoting a conflation of
the female body and the land. For example, accompanying a poem about the
first Women’s Country Festival (1973) is a line drawing of a supine young
female as a mountainous landscape—her breasts, belly, and knees forming the
outlines of mountains (Leona 1973, 15). In another issue, a drawing titled
“Mother Earth Lain to Rest” presents the landscape as a headless woman’s body
where her breasts and abdomen shapes mountains and her pubic hair forms the
trees (Koolish 1973, 6). In yet another illustration, the connection of goddess
and woman is shown in a six-pane drawing reminiscent of a comic book page.
In each window, nature is anthropomorphized as female body parts. The sun
is woman’s face weeping, her hair streaming down as lightning. In another pane
a woman with her cheeks puffed as she blows out water complete with fish.
Another window shows a mountain where between vaginal folds flows
a waterfall (Young 1974, 3). Such images show women, nature, the earth, and
goddess as transposable and are meant to recognize a deep and meaningful,
often essentialist connection between women and nature. These drawings
evoke the goddess, a concept that theologian Carol Christ (2012) explains as,
an “affirmation of female power” and a “positive valuing of female will” (249,
248). Such images attempt a liberatory message where women’s power derives
from a perceived innate connection to the earth outside of patriarchal culture.
While the artists may have hoped to evoke female connection to and power
with earth and earth others, the poem next to Young’s six-pane drawing returns
the idea of earth/goddess as teacher and while simultaneously reinforcing the
separation between human and nature by claiming to speak for the earth.
In this poem, Ruth of Mountain Grove writes of her connection to the goddess:
“I have dedicated my body / To the goddess / Now I must wait / To learn what
will be, / To know, to know” (1974, 3). As her teacher, the goddess will offer
128 Valerie Padilla Carroll
direction and purpose. Yet she ends the poem speaking for the earth, “I will
bring through my words Your message / Your message; / your voice / Into a
woman’s world” (ibid.). Here the woman is both student and teacher drawing
from the goddess and speaking for her to create a “woman’s world.” What
begins as the spiritual growth of the woman becomes a feminist political project
for the benefit of all women.
Such spiritual conflation of women and nature happens less as the magazine
matures through the 1970s. Throughout all the issues though, but especially
in later ones, the connection of women to nature was written as an explicit
political project where the enlightened feminists are portrayed as the protectors
and spokespersons for earth others. Unlike the goddess approach, this one
defined the women as similar but separate from nature. Thus, the relationship
between women and nature was not about sameness but rested on the feminist
duty, even noblesse oblige, to protect nature from the destructive forces of capitalist
patriarchy. For example, in “No Trespassing,” author Carmen Goodyear sees
herself as obligated to protect the earth others on her land from the unenlightened
population even if it brings, “‘bad vibes’ from people who want to use the land
but not care for it” (1973, 25). Echoing this obligation Diney Woodsorrel in
“A Land Buying Guide” explains that “I feel one of the biggest reasons for we
land-loving people and especially women to take this [the protection of nature]
on is to combat the old male trend of heavy developing and misusing and raping
and turn it toward care and furthering life and happiness” (1973, 10). Here the
“especially women” is telling. She is describing a particular obligation based on
a feminist identity that requires the dismantlement of patriarchy or the “old
male trend” of destructive land abuse.
Connecting these women’s obligations to earth others, especially the land,
has at its foundation an inkling what ecofeminist Karen Warren explains as the
“one central conceptual issue [that] concerns the nature of the interconnections,
at least in Western societies, between the unjustified domination of women
and ‘other human Others,’ on the one hand, and the unjustified domination of
non-human nature, on the other hand” (Warren 2000, xiv). While Country
Women rarely recognized their similar oppressive experiences with other
human Others like Indigenous peoples, throughout the magazine there is a
trend toward recognizing the ways that women and earth others are similarly
oppressed. Put most clearly by Linda Ford in “Journey” (1977), she discusses
the connection between feminist anger and “the needs of the planet, our home,
our Mother” (29). She continues:

Maybe the timing is such that women have found their voice and their
indignation and fury about the personal levels of oppression and hurt that
they have experienced as women, and with that practice under our belts,
the time has come when we can fulfill our role as spokespersons for the
Earth Mother, with whom our experience as women in this lifetime gives
us identity.
(Ibid.)
 Back-to-the-land feminism in Country Women 129
Ford wants feminists to channel their anger, “their indignation and fury” for
the protection of the earth. Here the theory and practice of these women’s
feminism recognizes similarities in oppression and even in identity between that
women and the earth. This is not a spiritual merging of woman and nature
but a feminist fire born of women’s liberation and radical feminist thought
where women “found their voice” and got “practice under their belts.” Yet,
in the end, the journey was too far, returning to the language of separation,
Ford sees this connection between women and nature as a site where women
speak for earth others, even more so, the enlightened feminist is the “spokesperson
for the Earth Mother.” She creates a new role for women that removes the
agency of nature even as that nature gives women identity.
Throughout Country Women, whether using earth others as teachers, merging
symbolically with nature, or as spokesperson for the earth, at the foundation of
these arguments is the unquestioned primacy of the white Western subject.
Earth others and other human Others are constructed in these pages as tools for
personal growth. Even as political projects, such as being the spokesperson
for the earth, liberatory intention rests on the individual purpose of the feminist
activist. As a feminist magazine they consistently explored and condemned the
ways that women were oppressed and made invisible by American culture.
They recognized the oppressions of earth Others wrought by patriarchal
capitalist power and promoted an activist response to protect of earth Others.
The recognition of similar experiences of women and nature offered an
opportunity for these women to fully relate to and work with earth Others.
Unfortunately it is an opportunity missed since the calls quickly devolved
into speaking for nature as a savior rather than as an equal. These women, these
feminists, these radicals, desperately wanted to create egalitarian spaces,
yet unfortunately they remained mired in a white colonial (and speciesist)
framework that demanded they other Others even as they themselves were
gender Others.
I close by describing where most of the readers of Country Women would
start: the cover. Country Women’s cover for twenty-six of their thirty-three
issues was the same line drawing consisting of a central title encircling a raised
fist feminist power symbol.
Held firmly in the fist is a cluster of wheat. In opposite corners of the cover
illustration are four portraitures of different women. These figures are outlines,
drawn without facial features. One woman sows seed from a satchel, another
reaps by swinging a scythe, and another woman picks apples, while the final
woman sits reading by a wood stove. Bordering the cover, touching but never
entering the portraits, are vines of cucumber, pumpkin, grapes, and beans. The
hypothetical reader, a women in the 1970s, perhaps on the land, perhaps just
dreaming, begins with the cover. The cover shows the possibilities and the
promise of back-to-the-land for women. Each woman has agency in working
the land whether in sowing, reaping, harvesting, or even enjoying the fruits of
one’s labor relaxing by a fire. These are independent, feminist women. Such
imagery speaks to the heart of the desires of many women seeking the
130 Valerie Padilla Carroll
empowerment and autonomy that comes from self-sufficiency. Yet this cover
illustration also points to a foundational ideological problem of in Country
Women, perhaps even the back-to-the-land movement. The unquestioned
primacy of the individual defines the self-sufficient back-to-the-lander as
independent and autonomous. Conversely, a feminist activism demands
collectivity, collaboration, and integration. This tension between the desires of
individual autonomy and feminist collective sisterhood permeated the entire
magazine’s run. Herring, again in “Out of the Closets into the Woods,” reads
Country Women’s cover as connective stating, “Though each female is singular,
these women are braided together through an illustrated border of grape and
pumpkin vines” (2007, 356, 358). However, my reading is not so hopeful. The
artwork represents what I believe to be the central obstacle to a truly radical
advocacy connecting women and earth others (and with other human Others).
Separate, faceless, and coded as white or at least not explicitly raced, these
women seek connection but never truly achieve it. In the image, as in the
writings contained within, the portraits remain individual, even autonomous,
with each woman separate from each other and connected to nature only in
how they work or use the land.

References
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Ashe. 1977. “Ashe Speaks.” Country Women: Class. February.
Bailey, Sally. 1972. “Fisherwomen.” Country Women: Work and Money 4: 20.
Barbara, Carol, Kathy, Tania of Covelo. 1973. “An Alternative to the Homestead
Approach.” Country Women: Living Alternatives. June.
Brown, Dona. 2011. Back-to-the-land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern
America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Christ, Carol. 2012. “Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still need the
Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later,” Feminist Theology 20(3):
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Collective. 1977. “Opening Statement.” Country Women: Class. February.
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and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–1299.
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Women: Women Working. June.
Danbom, David E. 1991. “Romantic Agrarianism in Twentieth-Century America.”
Agricultural History 65(4): 1–12.
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Goodyear, Carmen. 1973. “No Trespassing.” Country Women: Women and Land. June.
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and the Post-Stonewall Emergence of Queer Anti-Urbanism,” American Quarterly
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hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks Race and Representation. Boston: Southend Press.
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Jones. 1974. “Cycles: Reflections.” Country Women: Cycles. December.
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Koolish, Linda. 1973. “Mother Earth Laid to Rest.” Country Women: Women and Art.
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Part IV
Mediating practices
8 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s
“third party” in
environmental dialogues
Shlomit Tamari

Bilha Givon is a well-known personality in the environmental movement in

Israel. In the book The Environment in Israel (Tal 2006), there is a relatively
detailed description of some of the environmental struggles in which she was
involved. In this book she is defined as “one of the few women who managed
to survive the predominantly male hierarchy of the Society for the Protection
of Nature in Israel (SPNI), for a long period of time, and as one “who has
achieved significant victories for the green movement.” In 2006, the organiza-
tion for the Sustainable Development of the Negev (SDN), which Givon estab-
lished, received the Transparency Award on the Public Forums with industry
(Transparency International–Israel); in 2008, Givon won the “Lifetime
Achievement Award for Environmental Protection” (by the Minister for
Environmental Protection and the President); in 2009, the SDN organization
received the Knesset Speaker’s award in the category of Quality of Life; in
2013, Givon was elected “Woman of the Year” in the south, on behalf of
Lions Club International; in 2014, SDN won the Cleantech award.
This chapter will focus on the period when Givon was one of the leaders
of the mediation process between the Ministry for Environmental Protection
and the chemical plants in the Ramat Hovav industrial zone.1 Beginning to
collect material for this study, I was guided by the thought that Givon could
not have been invited from the outside into the mediation process as an
objective and impartial mediator. After years of struggle against the chemical
pollution caused by the plants, after being considered the biggest enemy of the
chemical industry in the Negev, why did she decide to take it upon herself to
ease the regulator in his negotiations with the owners of capital?
Knowing the successful results of the mediation process and being familiar
with Givon as well, I wanted to reflect with her on the process she underwent
between 1998 and 2008. What existential questions was she dealing with, what
processes had she to undergo to change from a darling of the SPNI, to a woman
who for years was seen as having crossed the line and as someone who has sold
her soul to the plants for their big money (Grinbaum 2015)?
To clarify this process, I decided to focus on the dialectics of the third party,
as described in the book Critique of Dialectical Reason (Sartre 2004). Jean-Paul
Sartre developed the concept of reciprocity and the dialectics of the third party
136 Shlomit Tamari
in order to explain the manner in which groups are formed and organizations
established (Gordon 1985; Matarrasse 2001). According to this approach, the
third party is responsible for creating the objective reality in which the parties
can discover the reciprocity between them as a situation, that is, as a social
entity that has existence in a specific time and space. Familiarity with Sartre’s
ideas led me to conclude that thinking about a mediation process like this is not
possible without understanding the dialectical process that Givon, herself, had
to undergo. In other words, I argue that Givon was not invited from the outside
as an objective and impartial mediator, but rather the opposite. One cannot
think about the existence of such a complicated mediation process without
understanding the importance of a third party, a person or group of people who
are willing to think out the things from the inside, and to undergo the dialectical
process themselves.
The discussion over a dominant woman who contributed so much to nature
and the environment in Israel may clarify a thing or two on the connection
between women and nature. Moreover, the discussion from the perspective
of a Sartre’s third party may also contribute, as Sartre’s claim that Nature, or the
indifferent material, often serve as a third party in dialogues that take place
between individuals and between groups. Ecofeminists, such as Vandana Shiva
(1991, 1993, 1997), indicate that women’s bodies and even women themselves
are often perceived as an indifferent material designed to endure the hardship
of life. But these ecofeminists usually do not relate their findings to Sartre’s
idea of the third party and therefore miss the passive power of such a role.
In this context I will not pretend to explain all the implications of such pers-
pective but rather to illuminate ways of thinking that can help the development
of human and sensitive environmentalism. I will focus on Sartre’s concept of
‘reciprocity,’ a key concept for understanding the triadic reciprocity of the third
party. Sartre pointed to ‘alienated reciprocity’ as a manner of existence that has
characterized man throughout most of human history. The manner of existence
that characterizes many in modern-industrial times he terms serial or ‘sequential
alienated reciprocity’ (Sartre 2004; Gordon 1985; Barnes 1992). Through
examples from the life of Givon, and while concentrating on the events that
led up to the mediation process, I show how Givon developed an understand-
ing of alienated reciprocity as characteristic of the environmental movement
itself and not only as a characteristic of the owners of the chemical plants or
state officials. Following that, I explain the concept of the third party in con-
nection to nature and the environment, and I describe the events leading to the
mediation process while emphasizing moments of triadic reciprocity and how
they influenced the perception of reality. Finally, a further clarification
of the concept of the third party will be made from Givon’s point of view
following a serious illness she suffered in this period. Two texts written by Bilha
Givon herself will serve as a source of examples. Both were submitted as part
of her graduate studies in Conflict Resolution (2004, 2010). In addition, I relied
on interviews given to the press and an interview made with Asher Grinbaum
(2015), one of the senior industrialists of ICL (Israel Chemicals Ltd), and a
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 137
partner in leading the mediation process from its initial stages. To complete the
picture, I conducted an in-depth interview with Givon (2015).

From alienated reciprocity to a reciprocity of dialogue

According to Sartre, reciprocity is the simplest relation between humans,
between concrete individuals, each with his or her specific project. However,
Sartre’s concept of reciprocity is very different from the conventional concept,
which sees reciprocity as identification or empathy toward the other (Gordon
1985). In the following quote, Sartre described an abstract pattern of reciprocity
that can take place in thousands of concrete examples:

Two men are performing a certain task together. Each adapts his behavior
to that of the other, each approaches or withdraws according to the require-
ments of the moment, each makes his body into the other’s instrument to
the extent that he makes the other into his, each anticipates the other’s
movement in his body, and integrates it into his own movement as a
transcended means; and in this way each of them acts in such a way as to
become integrated as a means into the other’s movement. But this intimate
relation in its reality is the negation of Unity.
(Sartre 2004, 114)

We learn from this quote that reciprocity, when you strip it of all moral aspects,
is the reference with which a person refers to himself and also to others as a
means. Beyond the historical fact that it goes against Kant’s imperative to treat
each person as an end rather than a means, it is important to clarify that Sartre
is not trying to develop a code of ethics or to turn us into people with greater
awareness and patience, but quite the opposite: he wants to show the situation
in the world as it really is and not as we would like it to be. He seeks to deal
with the least pleasant moments, when individuals create a hell through their
own praxis: through tools and instruments they reify and objectify themselves,
referring to every creature, whether human or not, as present-to-hand. The
examples are many and they are also important to the environmental movement.
Sartre tells the story of a Chinese peasant who cuts up slivers of wood and
thereby contributes to the disappearance of the forest, the erosion of good soil
and the clogging of rivers, that later cause dangerous flood. In another example,
he describes a woman who works on instruments that produce cosmetic
products, while she dispels boredom by dreaming about sexual adventures.
This peasant and this woman serve as an example of how people turn their
own bodies into instruments of the other while turning others’ bodies into
instruments of their own. These serve as examples of how an individual can
create his own deprivation: the peasant produces floods that will devastate the
land, and the woman produces the cosmetic products that she herself will not
be able to buy. But unlike other Marxist approaches, Sartre is not satisfied with
the materialistic aspect of alienation, but expands and explains the various
138 Shlomit Tamari
aspects of alienated reciprocity, which at its base is the reason the shortage is
created. Thus alienated reciprocity, which as we have mentioned is characteristic
of most of the conduct of people around the world, is, according to Sartre, the
main reason for the permanent shortage that people feel in the world. Therefore,
Sartre concludes, this shortage is not imposed on them in advance, but is
gradually formulated as a result of a praxis of shortage that is guided by baseless
greed and bad faith.
One can question whether Sartre was not exaggerating a bit when he asserts
that for most people reciprocity with others and with the world stems from bad
faith, a faith that leads to alienated reciprocity. In any case, the period in which
Givon decided to leave the SPNI, to establish the Sustainable Development
for the Negev organization and to return to dealing with the chemical plants
at Ramat Hovav, was also the period when she began to become aware of the
alienated reciprocity of the environmental struggles. Read the words with
which she describes this period with industry (2010). At first she describes her
successes but later she doubts those successes and her ability to cope with the
alienated reciprocity of the developers; finally she questions the alienated
reciprocity of environmental organizations and their whole attitude toward
nature conservation:

From 1983 and until 1994, I specialized in and developed the environmental
struggles in the Negev. From 1994 to 1999 I dealt with the nationwide
struggle. These environmental struggles were without compromise, and to
their credit the Ashdod sands, the craters, the Jaffa port and the Tel Aviv
seashores all exist today. In the Arava region we prevented construction
of the “Voice of America” station and the airport at Ein Evronah. We
prevented the paving of a road to Ma’aleh Shacharut and the paving of an
additional road to Masada. We prevented establishing the city of Hever
along the shore of the Dead Sea. We led the legislating of the Beaches Law
and prevented at least ten marinas along Israel’s shores and much more.
Yes, I was good at this and achieved many successes, but, when I analysed
these successes it suddenly hit me: a few battles were indeed successful
and prevented the project, but it was prevented not because of the battle
but because the situation changed. . .
My successes were the struggles, and I did not consider this a success.
They saw this as a success and I viewed it as a failure. Once a plan that we
had succeeded in preventing returned – a plan for building along Israel’s
shoreline, or a plan that nibbles away at the nature reserve on Mt. Carmel
– and they always return after a few years, when such an issue is back on
the agenda, it is a failure. It is a sign that perhaps we managed to delay the
building, but we did not change people’s attitudes. But in the Green
Movement it is not seen that way, because people are replaced, because
headlines are needed in order to get funding. The Green Movement lives
off these battles.
(Givon 2010)
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 139
In an interview I conducted with her, Givon was even more decisive concerning
the alienated attitude of the Green Movement as a whole and especially of
her own role in this framework. Perhaps after attempting for so long to prove
the success of the mediation process with the factories, she felt more confident
about casting doubt on past and present experiences:

In these fights, you are on the side that is right, and this is something that
gives you strength, particularly when the objective is conservation of
nature and the environment. In this fight you know what is best for the
public; there are no doubts or questions. This fight puts you in the headlines
and you bask in the exposure, especially when media sees you as the “good
guys” and the other side as the “bad guys”. The other side is the one that
harms nature, the landscape and the environment. It destroys out of greed
for money while you act without any motives, political, economic, or
otherwise. Your hands are “clean”.
[In the Green Movement] they missed the part of the change in
perceptions. Perceptions don’t change. Each year a million people pass
through SPNI [in trips, nature activities, free guided tours]. The organization
exists for over 60 years . . . that is 60 million people! We should already be
drinking mineral water from the streams. . .
In all of the struggles we had for the sake of nature, people did not
interest us, not even the registered members of the SPNI. We used them.
We thought we knew what was good for them and used them. All of the
decisions were ours. We did not concern ourselves with what the [local]
residents felt. After all, if the chemical plants were shutdown tomorrow,
then we would have a Negev free of toxic materials but the people would
have no reason to live in the Negev.
(Givon 2015)

In the interview, Givon dated the turning point to the year 2001. At that time,
she returned to deal with the issues of Ramat Hovav, after being absent from
the Negev for many years. The immediate reason for her renewed preoccupa-
tion with this subject was the irritation caused by the unbearable smell that
wafted from the plants’ communal evaporation pools of industrial sewers. For
many nights, the approximately 200,000 residents of Be’er Sheva had to shut
themselves indoors with windows closed, due to the inversion phenomenon
that brought the cloud of pollution directly into the city. Attempts to solve the
chemical waste problem through induced evaporation—spraying the polluting
industrial waste into the atmosphere in order to accelerate the evaporation
process—created additional problems, and devastated another region. The
construction of a facility for the biological treatment of industrial chemical
waste, at a cost of over 55 million shekels, also failed to provide the desired
results; the facility stopped operating after two months, and stands today as a
white elephant (Lichtman 2002).
Alon Tal, in his book The Environment in Israel (2006), argued that the policy
of the Ministry for Environmental Protection in those years lacked focus and
140 Shlomit Tamari
was devoid of economic and legal instruments that could provide a solution
to the variety of problems related to the hazardous materials. For example, the
Hazardous Materials Law, passed by the Knesset, is far from modern legislation
that is able to meet diverse problems that come with the production of hazardous
substances. There is lacking a control system for toxic waste “from the cradle
to the grave,” and the Ministry for Environmental Protection, instead of
adopting standards and technologies that have proven their effectiveness in
Europe and the U.S., preferred to treat the symptoms and not to focus on the
in-depth problems of production, transportation, burial and combustion of
hazardous materials (Tal 2006, 433–434). The plants themselves were helpless.
On the one hand, investment in treatment requires large sums of money and
did not provide the desired results. On the other hand, enforcement measures
were increased and they found themselves fighting in court over excessive
emissions of pollutants and accidents that were not reported in time (Lichtman
2002; Waldoks 2008).
In light of this situation, it was not difficult to mobilize the environmental
movement, to block the roads leading to the industrial zone, burn tires, and
mobilize the media against the chemical plants. Givon was highly regarded
because of her organizational and confrontational abilities. Thanks to these
skills, she was invited to meet with government ministers and representa-
tives of the industrialists. In the interview, I asked her to focus on the feminine
aspects of these encounters. To my surprise, Givon chose to compare the attitude
toward women and the attitude toward non-profit organizations of the third
sector, even though they are not all run by women:

At first I felt that they measured me by the size of my breasts. This is always
true. You arrive at the committees and they assess you according to exterior
form. Afterwards there is the disdain: what do you know, what do you
understand? But it is not only as a woman; I have a feeling and this should
be further considered, that they treat NGOs with disdain because they have
no influence, they are not connected to the government and they don’t
represent the government. They proposed, several times, that I work at the
Ministry for Environmental Protection, and the Ministry for the Interior,
but I refused. I wanted to be an outsider; I wanted work from the outside.
When you are part a system you have to fall in line with the system.
(Givon 2015)

According to Givon the turning point came in 1999, when Akiva Moses was
appointed CEO of Israel Chemicals Ltd. A short time later, Givon received a
golden envelope containing an invitation to the Environment Prize Award
ceremony, which would be awarded to Moses by the Manufacturers Association
of Israel. Moses, out of respect, invited her to the ceremony and Givon came.
There, she says, the ice was broken when the mutual respect became tangible
and overt by a simple human gesture. But this mutual respect was achieved in
the price of a battle she waged against him in the 1990s, when he served as
manager of the Zin and Oron plants at Rotem Amfert:
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 141
I knew Akiva Mozes when I conducted the fight against the mining of
phosphates in Zin and in the Gov stream. The stream serves as a popular
hiking route, therefore I asked the ranger from the Nature Reserves
Authority to report to me each time they come to mine phosphates within
the area of the nature reserve. The Nature Reserves Authority did
not want any problems with them but I was not afraid of them. I went to
check if they had permits and I saw a caption on the file at the Ministry of
the Interior that they had a permit because they were a “Zionist plant”.
Imagine, they had no permit whatsoever! I stopped all of his [Akiva Moses]
work, and I made them prepare plans for mining phosphates, which was
never done until then.
(Givon 2015)

The discussion so far has revealed that Givon’s decision to seek another way, a
way of dialogue, was made against the backdrop of disappointment that became
more and more distinctive of the alienated reciprocity that characterized the
environmental battles. When Givon requested an appointment with Moses,
she hoped that “perhaps this will lead to a better outcome than a situation
[where] everyone fights against everyone” (Givon 2015). This all-out war was
also summed up by Moshe Lichtman (2002), a dedicated volunteer at the
Sustainable Development for the Negev Organization. The vast experience she
accumulated allows her to outline a better vision for the environmental
movement:

We [in the environmental movement] find it difficult to conduct battles

over a period of time, so we do it in bursts. Therefore, work must be done
on changing perceptions. We don’t have fancy lawyers, time or resources.
So we cannot run to the courts before we tried other ways. We must
also be honest and express the will of the public rather than our own will.
Therefore, it is unacceptable for green NGOs to make money out of
lawsuits [as one of the green NGOs does today]. That is a move that will
be used against us in the future.
(Givon 2015)

To conclude this topic, it can be said that, whether or not Sartre was right in
claiming that alienated reciprocity is the mode of existence most common
throughout human history, it is important to show both the extent of the
alienation and the process of sober awakening that Givon underwent in
this context. On the other hand, one can ask whether Givon could reach
the mediation process without obtaining what she calls the “reverence,” or the
feeling of “respect and suspect” (Givon 2015), that was established between her
and the industrialists? In other words, could Givon have become the authority,
or a dominant third party in the mediation process, without the courage,
determination, and cleverness that emerged and developed during those
struggles? Below we will get to know Sartre’s original idea of the third party,
142 Shlomit Tamari
which is not necessarily a peacemaker, a mediator, or a conciliator. As with the
concept of reciprocity, it seems that this term actually helps to rethink Nature
in a new context. Then, the events leading to the mediation process will be
described while emphasizing moments of triadic reciprocity and how they
influenced the process of environmental dialogues.

Nature and the dialectic of the third party

In the best-known example Sartre gave for the concept of the third party
(Rio 2002), he describes a situation which occurred during his stay on vacation
at a hotel. While looking out of the window, he noticed two workers, one of
them was a gardener, trimming, hoeing in the garden of the hotel, and the
other, a road-mender repairing the road. The two workers were very close but
were not aware of each other as a high concrete wall stood between them.
Thus, at the same time as Sartre, the holiday maker, totalizes the situation of
reciprocity between the two workers, he realizes himself as a partner in a triadic
relation and he situates his own relation to the two workers as negative: “I do
not belong to their class, I do not know their trades, I would not know how
to do what they are doing, and I do not share their worries”:

By this I mean that the reality of the other affects me in the depths of my
being to the extent that it is not my reality . . . I see the two people both
as objects situated among other objects in the visual field and as prospects
of escape, as outflow points of reality . . . Each of the two men is reconceived
and located in the perceptual field by my act of comprehension; but with
each of them, through the weeding, pruning, or digging hands, or through
the measuring, calculating eyes, through the entire body as a lived
instrument, I am robbed of an aspect of the real. Their work reveals this to
them and in observing their work; I feel it as a lack of being. Thus their
negative relation to my own existence constitutes me, at the deepest levels
of myself, as definite ignorance, as inadequacy. I sense myself as an
intellectual through the limits which they prescribe to my perception.
(Sartre 2004, 101–102)

Gordon (1985) explained that one could argue that in these excerpts Sartre is
merely going beyond what he already explained in the section on “The Look”
in Being and Nothingness (Satre 1984). There he discussed the Other as an object
in one’s perceptual field; here he is discussing him as a person performing
praxis. But this seemingly simple change has great significance: the third party
is a key to making intelligible social relations and developments. For instance,
if the road-mender and the gardener are ignorant of each other, it is an ignorance
which exists through Sartre the ‘holiday maker.’ He is their objective milieu at
the moment of his looking out of the window at them working. Similarly,
Gordon concludes, the teacher will be the objective milieu for his two
pupils when he calls them to account for acting cruelly toward each other.
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 143
Their cruelty becomes a social reality through the teacher’s admonitions,
through his performing his praxis in educating their character. The teacher, as
a dominant third party, can be the person that enables the dialogue between
the pupils, but may also be the one that allows only sequential alienated
reciprocity, as is often the case in overcrowded classrooms managed by outdated
educational methods.
It may be argued that after the laborers or the pupils meet and establish a
reciprocal relationship between them, there is no longer a need for a third party.
But Sartre insisted that the third party, as the person responsible for the objective
reality within which the parties can reach a dialogue to reveal the reciprocity
between them as a situation, will continue to accompany all of the reciprocal
relations between them. However, this accompaniment will not come from the
outside, such as a teacher who observes and supervises pupils. The triadic relation-
ship is a relationship that the participants experience from the inside, a relationship
of practical immanence. This relationship is embodied in the language they share,
in gestures such as a handshake, and in the tools they will exchange. Language,
tools, and even the environment itself can be used as a third party because they
are manmade. Therefore, people are able to experience the motivation that led
to their creation, internally.
From the above we can understand that a moment at which a tertiary relation-
ship is formed is an existential moment that has occurred with certain people
at a specific space and time, a moment after which history appears different.
Sartre gave as an example the moment when the Emperor of China boarded a
plane to see for himself how the collective praxis of deforestation in China, a
praxis that took place over several generations as part of the effort to expand its
farming areas at the expense of the nomadic herders of the desert, causes the
phenomenon of erosion of soil and flash floods from which all the residents of
the area suffer. Until then, every farmer thought he was acting alone and did
not understand the wider context of his actions. The new perception that was
formed during that fateful flight changed the reciprocity between the Chinese
themselves and between them and the nature of their country. In this sense, we
can understand why establishing a triadic relation is an accomplishment and
a moment of no return. Moments where individuals serve a third party for
others are moments incised in memory, moments without which one cannot
understand the course of history, whether his own history or the history of
mankind.

The mediation process and triadic reciprocity

We have seen above how the understanding of an “alienated reciprocity”
influenced Givon’s decision to conclude her environmental struggles, to give
up on her presence as a Green observer in regional planning and construction
committees, and to start looking for ways of dialogue with the industry. I also
mentioned that, according to Sartre, the dialectical process of the third party is
an internal process, a relationship of practical immanence. In other words, the
144 Shlomit Tamari
manner in which a person serves as a third party to other people passes through
his own materiality. Indeed, we have seen how Givon became acquainted with
key individuals in the Green Movement, in the Ministry for Environmental
Protection and in industry. The fact that she has lived in the Negev for decades
and worked as an educator for years has turned her into a recognized and well-
known personality. Givon frequently gives interviews to the press and to the
media, as part of her environmental and fundraising campaigns; I, however,
have found no reference to these biographical details, which I knew indirectly
from my familiarity with her. I, therefore, held an in-depth interview in which
I asked her to focus on how she had to change her lifestyle in order to be able
to play a major role in the mediation process.
Despite the importance of Givon’s intentions to establish a dialogue with
the industry, it appears that the big change that enabled her to go through the
mediation process was connected to the establishment of the SDN as an
independent organization. Givon was about fifty years old then; she had a
respectable position and a steady job in the nature conservation department of
the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI). According to her, in
that year, 1999, it was not her intention to leave this job in order to embark
on an adventure that would also involve her financially:

The idea was to establish a branch of SPNI in the south. The funds that
provided the finance did not agree. They wanted the money [to go to] the
organization I established. I consulted with the CEO of SPNI and received
his blessing just as I had received the blessings of many other people, but
the decision was about me. If I had known then what I know today about
managing organizations, raising money, preparing a budget, training people
and so on, maybe I would not have gotten into it at all.
(Givon 2015)

One of the first acts of the SDN was to build a think tank. Involving more than
sixty experts, academics, and environmental activists, think tanks were created
to engage in a variety of subjects: chemical waste, urbanization, regional councils,
environmental education and so forth, a process summarized in the booklet
titled Principles for Sustainable Development of the Negev: “to initiate and support
the general population in sustainable way of life based on positive change and
development through dialogue, transparency and public awareness prevent-
ing and repairing environment degradation” (Givon 2001, 2). As previously
mentioned, during those years, the problem of bad smells emitted by the
evaporation ponds of Ramat Hovav evolved. In 2001, nineteen factories
operated within the Ramat Hovav Industrial Council area, producing about
50% percent of all chemicals produced in Israel. Also operating there was the
national site receiving all toxic and dangerous waste from the entire country.
Adjacent to this site, an incinerator for burning these hazardous substances was
erected. The effects of chemical poisons were already clear in those years;
scientists expressed concern about genetic changes, congenital diseases, aborting
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 145
of fetuses, infertility, malignant and degenerative diseases, damage to water and
food reservoirs, and more.
Givon identified the main issues concerning Ramat Hovav as early as the late
1970s, the years when the first plants were built. But now, after years of struggle
against those chemical plants, she sought a different direction. As mentioned
above, it soon arrived in the form of a golden invitation, and Givon did not
miss the opportunity to start afresh with Akiva Moses, CEO of Israel Chemicals
Ltd. With the establishment of SDN and the support of more than sixty registered
members, she received the blessing of Akiva Moses and Asher Grinbaum, and
negotiations to establish the Community Advisory Panels (CAP) began soon
thereafter. This is how she describes those negotiations:

At first, contact was made with the CEO of the Bromine Compound
Plant. Together with him, a representative of the industrialists and their
lawyer, we met and tried to see how to undertake the process. For a year
and a half we formulated a vision and drafted the regulations. There were
quarrels about every sentence until we set down the contract. In July 2003,
we began the first forum at the Bromine Compound Plant.
The greatest obstacle before the industrialists was: what will happen
if the greens go to the media when they discover cases where plants vio-
lated the law. “If we reveal everything to you [they asked], then who will
guarantee that you don’t use it against us?”
I understood the plants’ demand and first of all I undertook not to
disclose the protocols until they approved them. Secondly, I stated that
once a relationship is established, I don’t run to the media on every matter.
Thirdly, if you were in excess and did nothing in order to prevent a
recurrence of the faults, then we will go to the media. These are three
unwritten agreements that we did not put in the contract. If you do not
handle it and ‘kill it when it still small’, then I’m going to the media.
(Givon 2015)

These citations exemplify how the media served as a dominant third party
in the reciprocity that began to form between the Green Movement and the
industry. Givon’s vast experience with the media allows her to make its presence
felt during the meetings. The media is a present absentee and it seems that it is
perfectly clear to those in attendance with what kind of articles they are dealing.
Another third party serving as a present absentee in those meetings is a different
Green organization, which sought grounds for lawsuits against the Ramat
Hovav plants. This alienated approach caused the Makhteshim and Bromine
Compounds Plant to fear reports on their shortcomings and thus involved the
plants in even longer lawsuits (Waldoks 2008). As part of the dialogue process,
Givon had to consolidate the identity of the Sustainable Development in
the Negev Organization with a praxis that distinguishes it from other Green
organizations. Finally, the contract, too, is a dominant third party, representing
the State and the Ministry for Environmental Protection. According to Givon,
146 Shlomit Tamari
after a relationship of trust was established, the contract and even the media had,
to a great extent, lost their dominance.
In an interview with Givon, I asked her to focus on relations between
women and men at the negotiating table. Note Givon’s remarks on this issue:

On their part [the industry] there were only men. They knew I was a
fighter and they feared me. Even today they speak mainly to me. They
don’t speak to other volunteers in the forum. Do you see? It’s amazing.
That is why I am apprehensive about what will happen when I leave. In
my opinion, what the industrialists first saw in front of them was “Bilha
the sucker and she is going to falls right into our hands” . . . I have no
doubt that the policy of the plants to cooperate on the matter of the nego-
tiation was out of an intention to win some media “silence,” but we won
an amazing improvement on the matter of the quality of the environment.
My deep acquaintance with the field of struggles created a “balance of
terror.”
(Givon 2015)

After the CAP in the Bromine Compound Plant proved to be efficient

for establishing the reciprocity between the Greens and the industrialists, the
industrialists began to view Givon as one of them. But then there was a
turnaround. When Givon decided to join the respondent with the Ministry of
Environmental Protection against the factories, this move was seen by them as
a betrayal or as they said: “you are shooting us in the foot” (Givon 2015).
According to the SDN organization website, in 2004, after intense activity
by the organization to expose the members of parliament and the govern-
ment ministers to what was happening at Ramat Hovav, the Minister for
Environmental Protection came to meet the protesters. In the interview Givon
mentioned this brief meeting as a moment of triumph:

Tzahi Hanegbi [Minister for Environmental Protection at that time] asked

me bluntly, “Will you stop shouting and tell us what you want?” I was
prepared for that moment and I had three requirements of which I am
proud of to this day: first, separation of the effluents – each factory will treat
its own chemical waste; second, a system for monitoring and control that
is exposed and open to the public, every citizen will be able to know at
any given moment what he is breathing; and third, amendment of the law
concerning the Ramat Hovav Industrial Council, so that it will enable
having green representatives at the council meetings.
(Givon 2015)

As the saying goes, “success has many fathers.” For Givon, the sense of success
came from the fact that three months after that brief meeting, the major factories
in Ramat Hovav received a message from the Director General of the Ministry,
advising them to prepare to separate their effluents; each plant will treat its own
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 147
chemical waste by the target date set for 2006. The proximity of these events
gave her the feeling that even if the idea of separating chemical waste effluents
was already known in other countries, her determined stance at that meeting
with the minister is what ultimately caused its implementation in Israel. On the
other hand, a sense of anxiety might have been accompanied this triumph when
she realized how complicated the situation had become. At that time, the plants
did not have any possibility, of meeting the target set by the Ministry for
Environmental Protection. Following those directive requiring each plant to
treat its own chemical waste by 2006, the plants filed a petition with the
court against the Ministry for Environmental Protection and against the Ramat
Hovav Industrial Council. Givon and her friends decided to side with the
Green and SDN organization join the respondents to the petition.
However, a problem remains with the Industrial Council of Ramat Hovav,
and also among the defendants. Originally the Industrial Council was affiliated
to the industry rather than the Greens but following the petition of the chemical
plants they found themselves between the hammer and the anvil. Note the way
Givon outlines a new framework for them and thereby facilitates their joining
to the Greens:

When I asked the Minister for Environmental Protection, Tzachi Hanegbi,

that every plant will treats its own chemical waste, the Director General of
the Industrial Council stood next to me and said, “Bilha, what are you
doing? You are shooting us in the foot.” Under the Industrial Councils
Law [the Industrial Councils Ordinance, Book of Laws 2332, 5772, page
136], one of the main functions of the Industrial Council is to treat the
waste from the plants, something that constituted one of the main sources
of finance. I told him [the Director General of the Industrial Council]
that they will constitute a sort of frontline command of the Ministry for
Environmental Protection in Ramat Hovav. Instead of treating [only]
sewage they will treat environmental quality problems. It was a change of
the manner of thinking. The introduction of new technologies created
new roles, and today there is a twelve-man department in the industrial
council dealing with matters of environmental quality, and its budget is
about one third of the budget of the Council.
(Givon 2015)

When SDN organization joined as a representative of the public to the

respondents of the petition, Givon attended the hearings until 2004 when the
new Minister for Environmental Protection, Shalom Simhon suggested a
process of mediation (Rinat 2005). Prof. Avishay Braverman, president of the
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, was elected as mediator. But in practice,
another official conducted the process. Under his management, the matter
tangled and delayed. The situation seemed to come back to an impasse:

It turned into a lot of pointless discussion and it was dragged out until 2006.
I decided to intervene when ideas that were clearly non-environmental
148 Shlomit Tamari
started popping up. Since the Ministry for Environmental Protection
demanded that not a single drop of liquid exit the plants, the plants claimed
that this could not be done; it’s impossible. At the end there will be
brines that will need a place found for them. An idea was raised for getting
rid of the brines by a pipe that would flow to the Mediterranean Sea, or to
the Dead Sea, or even to the Zin Stream. I wrote a letter and demanded
that decisions be made. In the end, the decision was made by the professional
level, representatives of the plants, and representatives of the Ministry for
Environmental Protection [who all] sat together, “turned over the entire
world” and found an appropriate technology.
(Givon 2015)

If we stick to Sartre’s terminology, it is possible, I think, to discern Givon’s

good faith. Whenever she feels that she has reached an impasse, she is willing
to learn, consult, and modify her basic tenets. In addition, Givon has a special
talent for surrounding herself with good advisers, like those sixty experts,
academics, and environmental activists, whose advice contributed to the shaping
of the image of SDN at its inception. Even today, there are 150 registered
volunteers, most of them retired personnel of chemical plants, participating in
twelve public forums in industry. These advisers, friends, and volunteers believe
in her and empower her as she undertakes her courageous decisions. While
critics argue that she is a soloist, working alone and making decisions on her
own, justifiably arguing that she has failed to train another person to fill
her place in the future, they do not deny the central role she has played, since
the year 2001, in the establishment and management of eleven public forums
in industry. Asher Grinbaum, Deputy CEO of I.C.L., testified on this matter in
an interview he recently gave to Refaela Babish:

All that is seen at Ramat Hovav is the fruits of this partnership with the
residents and especially the dialogue in the Community Advisory Panels.
These things are fine, but what is needed is the proof, the investment . . .
we were not able to duplicate it in other regions. Because, at the end of
the day, what is needed is this personal connection . . . [people] like Bilha,
that really believes that there is no deception. This mediation can only
work when trust is created. If one day, members of the [CAP] discover
they have been deceived, that things were hidden from them, that it is all
“green wash,” at that same moment everything will fall apart. In other
regions, in Ashdod and in Haifa, there weren’t any leadership figures who
took the reins out of a willingness to completely strip down, and I blame
the industry for this. I told them, you are suspicious all the time. Please,
talk! Although every case is different.
(Grinbaum 2015)

According to Grinbaum, the huge investment in technology designed to

prevent chemical contamination was the proof of plant’s truthfulness of intent.
As a member in one of those public forums, I can attest that factory managers
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 149
are very proud to show and explain to SDN volunteers about this advanced
technology. It is therefore possible to say that this new technology enables the
triadic reciprocity established by members of the CAP with factory managers.
Oddly enough, Grinbaum’s rich experience turned him quite skeptical regarding
the possibility that such process will take place in other areas of Israel. He points
to Givon as “a one-time leading figure who made the factories open up
and talk.” This issue increases the mystery, because as far as I know nothing
in Givon’s formal training prepared her to serve as a mediator in such a process.
Givon is not an engineer; she is not a chemist, and certainly not a legal expert.
At that time, she did not even hold a mediator diploma. Why then she decides
that if environmental national codes are ignorant of industrial needs, it is
an ignorant that in some way passes through her? Or perhaps, her ignorance
of chemicals and engineering was actually an advantage because from the
standpoint of a layman or the public, she could serve as an objective milieu for
those experts, calling them to account for acting recklessly, wastefully, and
irresponsibly?
Following is Givon’s description of her personal life at that period. It seems
that her personal experience gives credence to Sartre’s claim that the process of
the third party is an internal process, a relationship of practical immanence. We
mentioned that according to Sartre ‘the holiday maker’ is not just an observer
intervening in other people’s life. A moment of triadic reciprocity is experienced
by the third party as “a lack of being” as a negative relation to his own existence,
as a relation that constitutes him at the deepest level of himself. Thus the
holiday maker crystallizes his identity as an intellectual who may assist
the workers in fighting for their rights. The final chapter is devoted to this idea
in an attempt to trace the process that enabled Givon to ‘betray’ both the
Greens and the industrialists in order to truly represent the public.

Givon’s practical immanence as the third party

In 2001, at the height of the process of setting up the CAP in the Bromine
Compound Plant, Givon contracted colon cancer and doctors predicted she had
three months to live. At the same time, the organization faced a financial crisis
because the funds that provided the finance suddenly stopped their funding. The
organization was in debt for 270,000 shekels. At that time, Givon’s eldest
daughter also got divorced and moved back into her parents’ home. The aid to
her daughter included caring for her infant son as she was bedridden due to a
high-risk pregnancy. Givon describes this period as a crucial stage in her life
where she had to deal with many contradictions. See how she describes the
contradictions in the different requirements demanded from her as a wife, as a
mother, and as the manager of an organization, and through dialogue with her
husband, Yehudah, she negates the trivial and concentrates on what is essential:

I thought my life was about to end and what kept me going was the
attempt to get the organization out of the situation it was in, to have it
150 Shlomit Tamari
financially balanced, and to leave. I loaned money from home and kept
silence about the financial state of the organization. Some industrialists
earned in one week the entire amount I owed, but I disclosed nothing. I
did not want them to think that we needed their money. A relationship
was established based on mutual respect or a sort of equality, and it was
important to keep it so. I was receiving a course of chemotherapy that
was making me weak, and going to give lectures in order to earn another
500 shekels for the organization. I refused to give up because the feeling
of failure burns. Together with all this, there was a “rebellion” within
the management of the organization, three of the nine members of the
executive committee did not agree with the process of negotiations with
the plants. They wanted to fight! The other six members told them that if
Bilha leaves, then there is no organization, but if they leave, then the organ-
ization will overcome this, and so it was. Three members of the executive
committee left and maybe even contributed to defaming the organization
among green organizations and in the media.
. . . It completely changed the perceptions, all the matter of the illness,
and all these blows . . . first of all, my attitude was not to listen the
vilification of others. It simply doesn’t matter, because if you believe that
your way is the right one, then go your way. Life is fluid and can end at
any moment. You can’t know what will happen to you tomorrow. It took
me a lot of years to build my self-confidence . . . I had no problem of
financial security because Yehudah always earned three times more than
me. He was the chief breadwinner. But still, the feeling of partnership is
important. You need to justify it. But you can justify it even with a third
or a quarter . . . but this was a joint decision with Yehudah. I did not do
it without his knowledge. Yehudah had faith in me that I would succeed
in raising the money.
. . . I never saw money as something. When I see something I want
I don’t even check how much it cost . . . In the SPNI I never had to
deal with anything to do with money. But in the organization I have
to deal with manpower, with budgets, with raising funds. This is one
reason why I would not establish an organization today. It limits you very
much. An organization is the idea but it is difficult to realize the idea if you
are busy with other things such as raising money, manpower, bookkeeping.
Also, if I want the organization to survive, I need to do activities that
are not always in line with the real objectives of the organization. As an
organization, there are limitations.
(Givon 2015)

As I mentioned, I had to hold an in-depth interview with Givon in order to

know these hidden details behind the scenes of the mediation process. I was
particularly amazed to hear how, even on the verge of death, she adhered to
her life’s mission and refused to give up. She courageously faced death refusing
any thoughts of despair and resentment. In this context, it seems that Sartre
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 151
would not agree with Givon’s argument that the establishment of an organization
makes it difficult to realize the idea. It appears that the opposite is true. The
organization as an institution that exists beyond the existence of this or that
person changes the situation in many ways. For example, we saw how it enabled
Givon to establish an identity of “Greens” who are capable of dialogue and who
are capable of acting out of a long-term vision that requires patience and
perseverance. In retrospect, it seems that Givon’s decision to completely give
up the trappings of honor and money in order to determinedly maintain what
had been achieved paid off when, in 2003–2004, other ten factories joined
the movement of CAP.
Ultimately, Givon’s standing by the Ministry for Environmental Protection
and against the plants helped create the status quo that exists to this day. The
change that was generated at Ramat Hovav did not happen all at once and
certainly was not brought about by one woman. But, as someone who has
accompanied Givon for many years, I can attest that the change in consciousness
that occurred in the first decade of the 21st century was enormous. The main
motto, as it is expressed by the managers of the plants, is the importance of
safety and environmental protection (ecology in their language). This is actually
the principal change, because in the past, production and making profits were the
top priorities. From meeting to meeting new ways to embed the values of safety
and of ecology can be seen. Seminars are conducted, rules are written, automatic
monitoring systems are purchased and emphasis is placed on physical conditions
that will encourage employees to see the immediate connection between
maintaining safety at work and environmental protection.

Conclusion
Bilha Givon is one of quite a few women running and managing a major
environmental NGO in Israel. Her devotion and dedication over many years
to environmental issues have made her a well-known figure but no less
controversial. Asher Grinbaum’s claim that Givon is “a one-time leading figure
who made the factories open up and talk” can raise a few eyebrows: what can
we learn from a one-time individual? Within this chapter I wanted to expose
the one-time individuality of Givon. How does she reconcile between nature
and public concern? How does she resolve her femininity with her determined
confrontations with the industry, which is predominantly male? The ability of
women to serve as the third party and thus motivate complex processes often
stems from obstacles and constraints that they face. For example, the willingness
to give up a respectable income allowed Givon to be on the ‘right side’ from
which it is easier to rebuke and admonish factory managers for their inability
to decide and implement environmental national codes. On the other hand,
the establishment of SDN organization appeared as a wise decision because the
NGO itself serves as a third party for complex processes. Over the years, several
SDN employees who started without any environmental training moved and
became valued employees in the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the
152 Shlomit Tamari
City Council of Beersheva. Even for me, as one who worked with Givon thirty
years ago and currently is a board member of SDN, Givon is a ‘source of
values,’ or as Simone de Beauvoir said:

For existentialism, it is not impersonal universal man who is the source of

values, but the plurality of concrete, particular men projecting themselves
toward their ends on the basis of situations whose particularity is as radical
and as irreducible as subjectivity itself.
(2006, 17)

Note
1 Following the success of the mediation process, it was decided to change the name of
the industrial zone to Neot Hovav—Eco Industrial Park in the Negev.

References
Barnes, E. H. 1992. “Sartre’s Ontology: The Revealing and Making of Being.” In
The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, ed. C. Howells. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
De Beauvoir, S. 2006. The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York:
Open Road Media.
Givon, B. 2001. Principles for Sustainable Development of the Negev. Omer: SDN
Organization.
——. 2004. “Community Advisory Panels in Israel.” www.negev.org.il/index.
php?m=text&t=&la=&lib=367
——. 2010. My Notebook of Reconciliation. Submitted as part of MA studies, Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev.
——. 2015. Interview with S. Tamari.
Gordon, H. 1985. “Dialectical Reason and Education: Sartre Fused Group.” Educational
Theory 35(1): 43–56.
Grinbaum, A. 2015. Interview with R. Babish.
Lichtman, M. 2002. “Ramat Hovav: Talking and Talking While Poison Seeps.” Globes,
January 20.
Matarrasse, C .2001. “Solidarity and Fear: Hegel and Sartre on the Mediation of
Reciprocity.” Philosophy Today 1(45): 43–55.
Rinat, T. 2005. “Ramat Hovav Manufacturers: Will Transport Factories Abroad.”
Haaretz, March 13. http://news.walla.co.il/item/684305
Rio, K. 2000. “The Sorcerer as an Absented Third Person,” Social Analysis 3(46):
129.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1984. Being and Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
——. 2004; orig. pub. 1960. Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1, trans. A. Sheridan-
Smith. New York and London: Verso.
Shiva, Vandana. 1991. Ecology and the Politics of Survival: Conflicts Over Natural Resources
in India. Thousand Oaks. Sage.
——. 1993. Monocultures of the Mind: Biodiversity, Biotechnology and Agriculture.
New Delhi: Zed Press.
 Bilha Givon as Sartre’s “third party” 153
——. 1997. Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: South End
Press.
Tal. A. 2006. The Environment in Israel: Resources, Crises, Campaigns and Policy. Tel Aviv:
Hkibbutz Hameuchad.
Waldoks, E. Z. 2008. “Poison Cloud from Chemical Plant Could’ve Been Prevented.”
The Jerusalem Post, April 6.
9 “Yo soy mujer” ¿yo soy
ecologista? Feminist and
ecological consciousness at
the Women’s Intercultural
Center1
Christina Holmes

At the Women’s Intercultural Center (WInC) near New Mexico’s border with
Mexico, Sofía sings “Yo soy mujer. Yo soy mujer en busca de igualdad.” The
song served as an opening ritual to meetings held at the Center and the lines
translate to “I am a woman. I am a woman in search of equality,” reflecting the
development of feminist consciousness among participants. By Sofía’s account,
the song inspired her, built up her self-esteem, and opened unexpected doors
for her; across interviews with staff and participants, women spoke of being
transformed by their time at WInC as they came to consciousness regarding the
oppressions that Latina immigrants in the United States face.
WInC is a non-profit organization serving women in southern New Mexico
and west Texas. Its mission is to “provide a place for women to learn and work
together to develop their social, spiritual, economic and political potential”
(“Mission” n.d.). WInC offers classes for economic self-sufficiency such as the
Small Business Academy; classes for personal empowerment such as painting,
sewing, ESL, and citizenship; and workshops on nutrition, violence against
women, and feminism. Programs are aimed at skill building and consciousness-
raising, but at the heart of programming is an effort to challenge the social
isolation rampant in the community. Many WInC participants lived in Mexico
before moving to Anthony, and thus left friends and family behind to find
themselves isolated in a rural new home with few English language skills.
A primary drive behind the creation of the Center was to address these concerns
and to facilitate a greater sense of belonging among the women of Anthony.
Josie explains, “I live out in the country and my husband is working. I was
alone most of the time and I was very depressed . . . I tell everyone, if you come
here, you won’t be depressed. It’s the medication that you need” (“Where
It Starts” n.d.).
While not embedded in the mission statement, many participants also develop
an ecological consciousness as they begin to theorize issues of gender, race,
class, and nation in their lives. Sofía, who spoke joyously of the song above,
explains, “Another thing that I learned here: to love nature, to give praise
through meditation because we don’t appreciate what we have. If you don’t
appreciate something, you’re not going to take care of it. So you have to know
 The Women’s Intercultural Center 155
about it in order to take care of it.” Sofía was present when participants built
the Center’s main building out of recycled tires and earth. Deeply insulated, it
uses little energy to heat or cool itself. The building also features rain barrels,
solar panels, recycle bins, and a thrift shop for the recirculation of clothes, shoes,
and furniture. Recent environmental programming includes classes on organic
gardening, recycling, and water conservation. In practice, WInC works at
the intersection of feminism and environmental justice; though the ecological
elements are easily overlooked, it offers an important case study to understand
the relationship between environmental activism and feminist concerns among
some of the most vulnerable populations in the U.S., including underserved
women in a heavily policed border region. I argue that WInC mobilizes a
borderlands environmental praxis with activities that stretch the self into
ecological relationships with human, nature, and spirit others; drawing on
Gloria Anzaldúa’s work (1999), I named this praxis “borderlands ecofeminism”
because borderlands theory may be understood to refer not only to the symbolic
and material conditions of life on the border, but also to displacement from
ecological belonging and strivings to re-root. As such, while environmental
practices such as recycling and organic gardening are important, an informal,
subtle form of ecological consciousness that emerges there, one that strives
to form new connections to place and community, may have the most to
teach us about intersectional feminist environmentalism; in this, borderlands
ecofeminism also adds concreteness to some of the more theoretical ecofeminist
celebrations of the interconnectedness of life.

Feminist environmentalism in the borderlands:

ecological consciousness
WInC prioritizes consciousness-raising where ‘consciousness’ underscores the
importance of reflection on our social lives and exploration of their political
implications—an idea that derives from the feminist practice of consciousness-
raising (i.e., making the personal political) and from Paulo Freire’s liberation
pedagogy (1970). To raise ecological consciousness is to make the ecological
political. First, ecological consciousness requires understanding of the place facts
for a given area or bioregion, including knowledge of vegetation, animal
species, landscape features such as the watershed, and an understanding of how
resources (e.g., water, energy, food) are managed in the region (Thayer 2003;
Tweit 1995). Bioregional awareness also accounts for changes to the land and
its inhabitants as a result of human interventions (Dodge 1990). It necessitates
systems thinking to see how Anthony, once known for its fertile land and
occasional flooding from the Rio Grande, is now home to a number of water-
intensive alfalfa and dairy farms trying to survive (and contributing to) the
desertification of the Mesilla Valley. Drought impacts the agriculture-based
economy and increases food insecurity among a population that already
experiences poverty. An ecofeminist-informed bioregional awareness would
note that women and Hispanic-headed households experience food insecurity
at the highest rates in the nation (USDA 2014).
156 Christina Holmes
In addition to establishing a sense of place, environmental scholars reflect on
the kinds of subjectivity that facilitate ecological consciousness. On an
intellectual level, individuals should begin to develop awareness of their
place in webs of connection to activities such as goods and energy production,
housing sprawl, meat consumption, environmental activism. But ecological
consciousness also relies on an affective ability to embed ourselves in a place
through what Marla Morris calls “dwelling-in-the-world” (2002, 572).
To “dwell” is to develop bioregional knowledge and relationships to a place
and its inhabitants. Yet playing on the other meaning of “dwell,” the practice
also incites reflection on our thoughts and emotions, allowing us to understand
the effects of place on our bodies and behavior. Dwelling is an embodied
phenomenon; perception and emotions can alienate or facilitate emplacement.
In sum, ecological consciousness includes both intellectual understandings
of bioregionality and systems awareness and an emotional, perceptive, and
materially embodied connection to human and nature others. Raised ecological
consciousness also implies a shift from understanding to action. Although
WInC does not have an explicitly environmental mission, the way it creates
opportunities to develop ecological consciousness while grounding actions
in a Chicana feminist framework of decolonial consciousness-raising provides
a model for recognizing and valuing intersectional ecofeminism.

Gendering the ecological self: stretching toward

intersubjective embodiment
Several practices at WInC encourage women to redefine their bodies in ways
that are not only empowering from a decolonial feminist perspective, but
which also demonstrate emplacement—an awareness of “dwelling-in-the-
world.” Interviews reveal three facets of Center life that challenge the individual
to reflect on her connectedness to others and to her physical, material place
within the Center, including the cultivation of strong emotionality, bodily
awareness, and creativity. On this point, I begin with the most frequently
recurring theme: many interviewees spoke of the Center’s positivity. This
starts with the fact that participants felt safe and supported because they were
surrounded by women, but sociality is also encouraged through classes and
parties that develop a sense of belonging among the participants. Although the
Center has designated spaces for social gatherings and for popular classes
such as painting, Reiki, Zumba, sewing, and ESL, there is good flow among
the spaces and a central courtyard that connects them; there are always people
moving through the Center who are talking and enjoying themselves. Sofía
recalls her first experience there: unable to pay a driving ticket, she was court-
ordered to work community service hours at WInC; she approached the Center
with trepidation. She narrates, “I came in and there was a group of women in
that little building talking and laughing. It seemed to me that they were enjoying
themselves . . . I felt like it was a place that I wanted to be. I didn’t feel afraid
 The Women’s Intercultural Center 157
or nervous anymore . . . By the time I walked a few steps that first day I was
saying, ‘I want to be here! I want to be part of this!’”
There are affective and political aspects in efforts to belong; belonging is not
just a motion toward embracing others (people, places, non-human others), but
can also effect a change in embodiment—an idea that sutures place, affect, and
embodiment. Aimee Carillo Rowe writes, “Belonging is that movement in
the direction of the other body: bodies in motion, encountering their own
transition, their potential to vary” (2005, 27). Through affective ties to others
we rethink ourselves together into ‘we-ness’ and the very borders of our bodies
become less firm; we know ourselves through our relations through others.
For Sofía, the laughter and positive sense of community caused a longing
that resulted in a shift in her identity; she developed a new sense of belonging
both to the Center and to her new homeland—a feeling that has consolidated
through her long-term commitment to WInC.
In their interviews, many staff and participants also expressed a heightened
level of body awareness. First, interviewees spoke of positive changes that
overcome the body when one arrives. Those who walk through the door
notice the moderate temperature that contrasts with the more extreme
temperatures of the desert. During her time as receptionist, Anna saw this:
“When you come into the building, you see that it’s cool when it needs to be
cool and warm when it needs to be warm. And even that affects the way people
feel when they go home because a lot of the people don’t have central air so
they dread going home in the summer.” Others claim that making friends and
developing hobbies led to a marked improvement in their health. For example,
in honing her painting skills, Josie saw her depression and fibromyalgia
improve—as her quote from earlier suggests, attending classes at WInC is all
the medicine you need! Sandra, spoke to me of her poor eating habits and
exhaustion from the stresses of being a single mother. She was enthusiastic
about the opportunity to take nutrition and Zumba classes to improve how
she felt. In each case, the body is reworked as it moves through WInC and,
as Anna’s comments suggest, that changed embodiment bleeds into other
relationships (to people, places), such as in the home upon return from the
Center.
For staff, the female body is a site of potential for physical and emotional
health and for relationship-building, but they also recognize the assault on
women’s bodies from domestic violence, sickness, and hunger as gendered,
raced, and classed acts of violence. Elena, a staff member and former participant,
elaborates, “Basic human rights-building . . . I think that a lot of immigrants
are not empowered. They don’t feel confident enough to say, ‘You know
what, I deserve this’ . . . We have citizenship classes that are very important.
This office also used to have sexual assault counseling and resources.” Because
staff understand women’s health as a multifaceted and socially constructed arena
of concern, their strategies for healing are diverse. From Reiki and labyrinth
walking, organic gardening and painting, to sexual assault awareness, and the
promotion of citizenship and human rights agendas, they demonstrate systems
158 Christina Holmes
awareness of the social and physical components of women’s health in their
programming. Each of these healing strategies opens up different relationalities
with others, emphasizing positive connections between people and reworking
negative ones such as violence between intimate partners. Importantly, these
efforts contribute to ecofeminist theories of embodiment because they highlight
women’s bodies not as ‘natural’ but contested social terrains—bodies that reveal
and rework how power inscribes and subjugates. Acknowledging this gives
women agency to create new scripts and to change their environments.
In addition to emotionality and bodily awareness, WInC values creativity as
a means to rework relationships. Carter, the director, explains: “Every woman
has something special to share. Women have been known to have incredible
talent and creativity so the moment someone discovers a talent, then a class
emerges out of that.” For example, Rosario came to WInC depressed after the
death of her son—she was looking for community. She enrolled in paint-
ing classes and eventually began to sell her work; now she teaches her own art
classes. For Rosario, the Center “is a support network for me. In being here,
it is not only an economic support but it elevates my morale and I feel really
happy particularly in sharing my knowledge” (Carter 2009). Classes on painting,
sewing, and quilting offer women the chance to create themselves through new
relationships to each other, to the materials they work with, and to the world
around them that is reimagined in their works. At WInC, these affective
connections not only rework bodily boundaries and human relationships,
but they also facilitate emplacement through developing connections with the
surrounding environment. In the next section, I consider practices that are
explicitly environmental as well as aspects of WInC that may be less so, but
which raise ecological consciousness nonetheless. While the latter practices
(such as building space consciousness) may seem less obvious than acts like
gardening, they exemplify a transformation of the autonomous self into one
advocated by ecofeminists such as Ynestra King (1983) and Val Plumwood
(1986) in which ties to human and nature others remain central to one’s
subjectivity.

En-naturing embodiment to build ecological

consciousness
WInC integrates ecological awareness into varied daily activities. During
parties, participants are reminded that plates and cups should be recycled. When
participants asked for nutrition and cooking classes, the idea to plant an organic
garden sprung up, and participants created a play to introduce the community
to the health and flavor benefits of organic produce. Emphasizing the role
many women play as household money managers, a “Go Green, Save Green”
workshop repurposed household objects (e.g., turning plastic bottles into
decorative flowers). As Carter states, WInC considers “possible activities that
reduce our imprint on the environment.” The Center’s construction from tires
rescued from landfills and the desert shows this. The tires are free, and their
 The Women’s Intercultural Center 159
insulation keeps utility costs down while reducing natural resource use—a
reflection on the place facts of the region mobilized to enhance social and
ecological health among the human and non-human residents.
Like everything, construction was carried out as an educational activity.
Participants researched methods of “green construction,” planned out the
space, and learned the skills necessary to build the Center. The gallery, which
is the primary entertaining space, features a partially finished segment of
the wall that exposes the building materials, serving as a visual reminder of the
building process. The Center also boasts solar panels, rainwater collection tanks,
recycling and compost bins, and an organic garden used by the gardening and
nutrition classes. Education activities raise consciousness about the social
and ecological benefits of the conservation of resources, the importance of
local organically grown food, and of limiting waste and consumption. In one
nutrition class I observed a discussion of the expense of fresh, organic food
at the grocery store, the relative poverty of the community, and women’s
responsibilities for buying food and caring for their family and community.
Questions arose: What are the healthiest options if you can’t afford organic or
fresh produce? Are frozen and canned vegetables still good choices? Why is
it difficult to buy fresh vegetables when large farms surround the town?
This exchange reflects the growing systems awareness that emerges from
needs in the women’s lives. It also highlights how raised ecological conscious-
ness involves an understanding of the links between class, race, gender, and
environmental health.
As a scholar of ecofeminism, I was curious what role (if any) gender played
in WInC’s environmentalism. Elena, a longtime staff member, thoughtfully
replied:

There has to be a relation. Maybe it has to do with [the fact that] most
of our classes we offer to empower women; I think that learning that you
could have your own garden and you could save money, you’re healthier,
which means that if you’re healthy, you have a mind to learn, you’re
healthy to work, you’re healthy to go to school and you’re healthy enough
to be a parent . . . I think it’s about empowerment in many ways.

Laura, participant-turned-staff member concurs, “You see the ladies come and
plant things because to them, that’s helping the earth and they take that home
with them. With the knowledge of how to recycle, you’re going to go
home and find that you don’t want to throw that bottle in the trash.” This
environmental education sparks raised consciousness that participants bring
with them into the home and other spaces in their lives. Further, environmental
education at the Center isn’t merely focused on conservation, but is oriented
toward the care of others. This is expressed in the care of nature others—that
interviewee went on to say that if we can save a bird by recycling plastics, we
have a responsibility to do so. It is also expressed as the care of human others—
feeding yourself and your family well, being “healthy enough to be a parent,”
160 Christina Holmes
sharing your knowledge about recycling or water collection with others,
building community through sharing a garden. WInC enables women to make
the most of their socially assigned roles as networkers, a strategy that empowers
women to develop and facilitate more equitable and just relationships within
their community and between their human community and the natural environ-
ment; however, no staff or participants gestured toward a ‘natural’ or biological
link between women and nature. These links were deployed through daily
educational activities to empower women and teach them to change their
surroundings.
In addition to gathering place facts and building systems awareness, the
development of spatial and place consciousness stretches the self into body/
landscape subjectivities (Davies 2000). Space consciousness is ever present at
WInC. First, the Center’s proximity to a church facilitates a spiritual awareness
despite the departure of the Sisters of Mercy several years ago. Second, WInC’s
location between two large metropolitan areas and near the U.S.-Mexico
border contributes to its success and made it a hub for people crossing through.
This is nicely illustrated by a participant whose quilting square depicts women
with linked arms as they march forward. It reads, “across the desert came a
multitude of women”—a phrase that, in the strategic use of the word “multitude,”
conveys solidarity among a large number of women and references the diversity
or multiplicity among them. These examples show how WInC took advantage
of its geographic location to bring people together and strengthen community
ties, but other examples of space consciousness reveal an effort to deepen
not just communal ties, but move toward intersubjective associations that
appear to be so necessary for the building of socially and ecologically conscious
community.
The gallery is the Center’s most emotionally charged space. It is the gathering
place for events and features a labyrinth that was researched, designed, and tiled
by the participants. The gallery also features an internal window that exposes
the tire construction and it houses participants’ artwork, including a quilt that
stitches together messages of gratitude to WInC. Several interviewees believed
that there was something positive and peaceful about the gallery despite its
nearness to the reception area that occasionally becomes congested and hectic.
There may be two reasons for this. First, as a social geographer, Amanda Bingley
(2003) studied boundaries around the self that are negotiated through past
memories and current landscape interactions. Participants were interviewed
about their relationships with familiar places while engaging in both creative
activities and a more structured interview setting. Her interviewees used
more vivid language to depict self-landscape relations during interviews that
involved the creative and sensory interview experiences (in her case, sand play).
These findings mirror my own: creative practices and behaviors that prod us to
rethink our relations to others and to the landscape produced a change in the
embodiment of the subjects—interviewees became more animated, more likely
to speak of themselves in relation to particular places and spaces, more likely to
see relationships in general as constitutive of their subjectivity. Displaying art,
 The Women’s Intercultural Center 161
exposed construction efforts, and a labyrinth, the gallery is a space marked by
women’s creativity, prayer, and reflection; as such, it brought out emotional
reactions among WInC participants.
Second, while the social and creative purposes for which it is used contribute
to its calm, positive feeling, there is also a piece of folklore that marks the
Center and that area in particular. The director describes the construction
process:

Whenever they would get really stressed through the construction of the
building . . . they had this ceremony. They would get a couple of pens
out and they would start thinking and really try to connect with the idea
behind the Center. On little pieces of paper they would write their dreams
and wishes for themselves and for the Center. Then they would dump all
the little pieces of paper within the dirt and within the tires . . . I always
laugh when somebody tells me that as soon as you come in, you have this
sense of peace even if you’re having problems at home. I really think it has
to do with all the beautiful well wishes that are located in the different
sections of the Center because there’s so much positivity that was given to
it and that’s how they were able to connect to the vision and the mission
of the Center and they were able to refocus.

In this ritualized enactment of the mission, participants forge a connection

to each other as well as to future generations of staff and participants through
the sharing of hopes, dreams, and contagious positivity. Through affective
communion, the women energize themselves in the wake of their physically
and emotionally exhausting labor and they do so by focusing on their shared
strength and shared futures. It is a conscious performance of intersubjective
relationality wherein women redraw their ties with each other and, in putting
parts of themselves (i.e., their dreams and wishes) into the soil and tires, they
become co-extensive with the Center and more deeply invested in its success.
The reiteration of this story to new participants bolsters the effect of space
consciousness on the women and embeds them in their environment; they
refigure their sense of self as contiguous with the human and nature others
that comprise their environment both in the present and in the past as a result.
Capitalizing on this knowledge, Carter hopes to introduce additional spaces
that draw community together, what she calls “a gathering space that is really
open to all.” Modeled off el Zócalo in Mexico City, she envisions a large
concrete patio that could host dances, farmers’ and craft markets, and forums
on community development. Carter explains, “That attracts me, that something
so simple as an area of cement would provide so much to a community.”
These examples show WInC’s broader sense of the environment that includes
not just the natural world, but also an individual’s relationship to natural and
built environments; this expands the narrow ideas of ecological belonging
that can be found in some environmentalist and ecofeminist work. The gallery
and other communal spaces facilitate intersubjective selves that are oriented
162 Christina Holmes
toward community building and education for consciousness-raising, but they
are also working toward more thoroughgoing connections between humans,
nature, and the built world that surrounds them. As the interviews show, the
staff and participants develop identities that are directly linked to these relation-
ships and, maintained through the affective ties and sense of responsibility for
social and ecological justice, these identities are solidified through constant
performance of WInC’s mission. This is visible in the examples above from
the ritualized construction of the Center to the ritualized daily welcomes to the
constant reminders about the importance of recycling.

Embracing the spirit of ecological consciousness

We saw the Center’s explicit and institutionalized commitment to environ-
mentalism alongside more subtle ecological work (e.g., practices of dwelling);
the two move in tandem toward the development of a borderlands ecofeminist
subjectivity. Similarly, there is a more overt spiritual presence that coexists with
a subtler and more diffuse spirituality—interviews show that the narrative of
spiritualty emerging at the Center is one that stretches human ties into the
nature and spirit realm, facilitating new body/nature/spirit intersubjectivities.
Overtly, the Sisters of Mercy founded the Center and its location across
from a church links it with a religious community in the area. In fact, some
continue to confuse WInC for a Catholic community center despite its non-
denominational status. A multicultural approach to spirituality can be seen in
the different traditions celebrated at the Center, including Reiki and medita-
tion, healing arts associated with Eastern practices such as Buddhism; the laby-
rinth, which can be found in cultures around the world; and prayer, which
interviewees described as a reflection and appreciation of life rather than a
narrowly Catholic focus on sin and forgiveness. Perhaps, because of the Center’s
efforts to be spiritually open without imposing any particular belief system
on staff and participants, there was no single narrative about religion in place to
shape interviewees’ responses. One person characterized the spirituality cited
in the mission as less about religion and more about “the golden rule”—doing
unto others what you would have them do to you. Another spoke of it as a
feeling that overcomes you: “If you don’t want to go to church, it’s okay . . .
It’s not so much a ‘doing’; it’s not a verb, it’s a feeling. It’s something like a
feeling of calm; you have peace” (emphasis in original). As seen earlier with
respect to issues of intersubjective embodiment and human–nature relationality,
mobilizing affect seems key to create intersubjective identities—especially in
prayer and group reflection. One of the younger participants explicitly named
the relationship between affect, prayer, and their ability to build strong ties to
others: “I think it [group prayer] is important because you get to understand
what they’re feeling and the prayers connect you more to everyone else.
For me, when I pray with my family, it connects us more.”
A staff member focused on the practice of hospitality within the belief system
of the Sisters of Mercy, but she emphasized that what is important about
 The Women’s Intercultural Center 163
hospitality is not its link to religion, but that it offers “a welcome.” While the
interviewee was careful to note that she believes this ritual to be independent
of religion, the feeling it generates is comparable to the feeling expressed by the
participants and staff mentioned above. Though the focus on hospitality and
the ritualized welcome may appear on the surface as a non-religious phenom-
enon, some have simply defined religious activities as those that generate
what Émile Durkheim calls “collective effervescence” (1995). For Durkheim,
religion is seen as a primarily social phenomenon wherein the collective energy
from a gathering of individuals takes on a character of its own: a social euphoria.
Religion builds community, but more than that, with the generation of great
emotional or affective energy, individuals de-individuate and come to collec-
tivize themselves. Recalling Carter’s description of the ritualized writing of
positive notes that were placed into the tires, the energy at WInC during the
highly social event of the building’s construction exemplifies this phenomenon.
The rituals that propel affect through individuals and the social body—the
welcome, the consecration of the building with positive messages, the labyrinth
walks and morning meditations held for years at the Center—build ecological
consciousness through intersubjective associations.
Victor Turner theorized ritual as a socially significant performance that
creates meaning from the ambiguity of cultural liminality (1995). Understanding
ritual as a mechanism of social cohesion may be particularly important for the
study of a community that largely comprises immigrants striving to build a new
home on the northern side of the border; indeed, his description of liminality
shares much in common with what Anzaldúa describes as the borderlands.
At one point, the Center’s website bore this parallel out, citing Anzaldúa’s claim
that “The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World
grates against the first and bleeds” (1999, 25). Anzaldúa saw the border as an
in-between space populated by outsiders and from which residents can develop
a critical consciousness—la conciencia de la mestiza—that draws on experiences
of outsiderness to forge a new kind of belonging. In this case, the ritualized
welcome and construction efforts act as place-making practices that invite
participants to belong to the Center, to the community, to the land in Anthony.
Reclamation of this land, as earlier activists sought to reclaim the Chicano/a
homeland of Aztlán and Anzaldúa sought to create a new borderlands home, is
an under-theorized strategy for ecological justice.
Although I have been writing about a connection between spirituality and
ecological consciousness that uses affect to connect people to each other and to
place as a means of belonging (i.e., spirituality can facilitate dwelling), spirituality
is also en-natured at the Center. A longtime participant explained that before
she joined, “I was used to staying at home with my family, praying in front of
an image or something. Now we do it in nature, giving thanks to God for
the day, for what we see, and to appreciate what we see because sometimes we
are walking through the desert or the street and you don’t appreciate what
you are seeing, what nature is showing to you.” She describes religious practice
at the Center as en-natured, as an appreciation that joins us with nature and
164 Christina Holmes
spirit others in a web of connectivity. For her, nature lives as much in the street
as it does in the desert. Importantly, she does not claim that women are
essentially linked to the natural world or that they share a unique connection
to the spiritual world. This appreciation needs to be taught and what is most
important, like others above have said, is the feeling that connects minds, bodies,
spaces, and spirits. This is not an easy task as she went on to say: “We can talk
about spirituality, but I cannot move your feelings inside.” She is referencing
the fact that some activities such as the sing-along to “Yo soy mujer” and
morning meditations—spiritual activities that have affective import—have
disappeared with the departure of the Sisters of Mercy; in their place the Center
moved toward an increasing focus on personal and economic self-sufficiency.
There need not be a discrepancy between practices that use affect to build social
cohesion and those that instrumentally emphasize skill building (as many of the
prior examples have shown). However, this example makes a case for diverse
programming that includes a celebration of en-natured spirituality as part of
individual and community healing.

Conclusion: lessons on affect and bioregionality

The shift from an overt spiritual presence to a latent one coincides with a larger
shift from affective modes of gathering to combat social isolation toward
gatherings explicitly aimed at education, skill building, and economic self-
sufficiency. Examples of these programs include: the Small Business Academy
and workshops on how to market one’s paintings, food, jewelry, and clothes;
workshops on how to fill out a job application and practice for an interview;
and classes on how to study for and successfully complete the citizenship exam.
This programming is important to women and makes a real difference in their
lives and those of their families. While there is a critique of this model for
the ways it fits within a neoliberal economic agenda that measures women’s
empowerment by their ability to participate in traditional economic and state-
making practices, here I will note that the model of self-sufficiency is essential
to disenfranchised women in an underserved rural town in New Mexico.
Furthermore, a focus on economic self-sufficiency programming is more legible
to national and regional funding agencies that can provide financial support for
the Center’s programming as well as its expansion into satellite offices in
neighboring rural communities, which remains crucial for many residents who
lack transportation. This point cannot be overemphasized since the recession
led to staff reductions and the need for creative partnerships with regional
service providers. Yet, in shifting away from programming that provides less
visibly tangible rewards, WInC may lose that element of affective cohesion that
was so important through its founding years. Staff that have been with the
Center since the early days say that participants continue to find the sociality
the best part of their experience, though women who have seen the evolution
of WInC remark that the feeling is not as strong as it once was. This chapter
argues that the ability to draw affective connections between human, nature,
 The Women’s Intercultural Center 165
and spirit others is what pushes participants from instrumental education and
community building toward the long-standing and deeper connections that
have enabled the Center to become as strong as it has and to form a base for
wider community change.
WInC’s performative strategies to rework subjectivity in relation to one’s
body, to the natural world, and to the spirit world can create social, political,
and environmental healing; they can be the basis on which to build an eco-
feminist, decolonial community that is inclusive of both human and nature
others. The ecological consciousness that emerges at WInC conceptualizes
human/nature/spirit co-being, which gives more agency to non-humans than
much of the literature on environmental justice allows since the focus is often
on the effects toxicity and dislocation have on particular human communities
rather than on the human–nature relation itself. It adds to ecofeminist models
for green community because it recognizes the specific needs of working-class
Mexican-American women, including the importance of developing a sense
of belonging to the land, region, and nation. This chapter also contributes
important lessons about ecological consciousness to environmental studies.
It demonstrates the connection between raised consciousness and action from
feminist and critical pedagogy studies; for example, learning about nutrition led
to action—planting an organic garden. It also shows how place facts and systems
awareness illustrated at WInC weave together social and environmental needs;
for example, recycled tires provide an environmental good—a well-insulated
Center—and a social good—happier, more comfortable participants.

Note
1 Modified from Ecological Borderlands: Body, Nature, and Spirit in Chicana Feminism.
Copyright 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with the
permission of the University of Illinois Press.

References
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Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
Bingley, Amanda. 2003. “In Here and Out There: Sensations between Self and
Landscape,” Social & Cultural Geography 4(3): 329–345.
Carter, Mary. 2009. “Reflections: Women’s Intercultural Center First Annual Report
to the Community.” Anthony, NM: Women’s Intercultural Center.
Davies, Bronwyn. 2000. (In)Scribing Body/Landscape Relations. Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMiraPress.
Dodge, Jim. 1990. “Living by Life: Some Bioregional Theory and Practice.” In Home!
A Bioregional Reader, ed. Andruss et al. Philadelphia: New Society.
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King, Ynestra. 1983. “The Eco-feminist Imperative.” In Reclaim the Earth: Women,
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“Mission.” N.d. Women’s Intercultural Center. www.womensinterculturalcenter.org/
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Studies 34(5): 571–587.
Plumwood, Val. 1986. “Ecofeminism: An Overview and Discussion of Positions and
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Rowe, Aimee Carrillo. 2005. “Be Longing: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation,”
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Thayer, Robert. 2003. Life Place: Bioregional Thought and Practice. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Turner, Victor. 1995. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine
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Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
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(accessed April 1, 2015).
10 The politics of land,
water and toxins: reading
the life-narratives of
three women oikos-carers
from Kerala
R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan

India’s narrative of nationhood and development in the post-independence

years has largely remained truncated due to a variety of factors like the
weakening of the tribal society, uneven patterns of growth, patriarchy and caste
domination which have contributed to the lowering of women’s status and
their access to natural resources. Vandana Shiva (1988, 55) equates this decline
of women to the death of the feminine principle ‘Prakriti’—the creative feminine
principle responsible for the co-creation of the world in tandem with ‘Purusha,’
the masculine principle. However, the complex linkages between gender
and the environment are to be located in diverse historical and socio-political
conditions and cannot be reduced to a simple ethic of care and loving rooted
in women’s reproductive capacities or women’s way of knowing and being in
a state of harmony with the world. The advocacy of ecofeminism in the Indian
context of environmental justice activism can be largely seen as the attention
on an oikos-household continuum where women’s participation has been instru-
mental in regenerating these spaces under severe environmental and economic
stress (Krishna 2009, 333).
The writers C. K. Janu (1970–), Leelakumariamma (1948–), and Mayilamma
(1940–2007), whose life-narratives are taken up for analysis in this chapter are
from Kerala, the southernmost state of India. The Kerala ‘model of development’
was hailed as a success since the statistical quality of life indicators put Kerala in
the league of high-income developed countries in contrast to its counterparts
in the low-income world. According to Bill McKibben (2007), Kerala offers
hope for the future of the Global South given its low rates of infant mortality,
high rates of literacy, and falling birthrates. He (2007, 123) approvingly notes
that, “Kerala could be as significant a schoolhouse for the rich world as for the
poor.” However, Kerala’s escalating environmental problems are numerous:
the death of rivers due to deforestation, construction of dams, water extraction,
discharge of effluents from industries, indiscriminate aerial spraying of pesticides
and fertilizer use leading to changes in the diversity of species and organisms,
poisons seeping into food chains and causing serious physical deformities in
humans, uncontrolled sand mining hindering natural purification of water and
the lowering of water levels in wells and lakes, a burgeoning eco-tourism
168 R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan
industry that compromises the fragile coastal ecosystem and the values and
traditions of indigenous communities. Besides raising questions about the
sustainability of the Kerala model of development, this grim dossier of facts
mirrors the environmental problems of India and the Global South and drives
home the truth that development must be predicated not just on statistical
indicators but also on equity, environmental justice and wisdom in using
natural resources.
The life-narratives of these women writers coming from ravaged, subaltern
environments demonstrate the écriture of resuscitation that brings the oikic
home spaces into the public spaces of representation. They question inter-
ventionist technologists that harm the health of the land, rivers, and forests and
clearly outline how women and nature are harmed when traditional ways
of life are disrupted. Their narratives strive to make visible the invisibility of
attritional “slow violence” (to use Rob Nixon’s term)—namely the narratives
of violence done to the earthscapes and the disenfranchised subalterns which
erupt painfully and insidiously over a protracted period of time far below the
level of visibility since they do not have the element of sensationalism which
guarantees center-stage news coverage. Their ecofeminist ethics springs
from the desire to restore their oikos to the exercise of ‘active seeing,’ which is
a special kind of witnessing or attention that performs the advocacy function of
raising public awareness and ensuring political action. These life-writings which
at the local, bio-regional level map the disease of the physiological and planetary
also become synecdochical texts mirroring the larger nodal network of what
Heather Houser (2014) refers to as “ecosickness” narratives. In her eponymous
work, Houser (2014, 6) points out that pervasive effects of technology ventures,
ecological and social colonization have posed important questions for writers
in the realm of the narrative affect: “how do interventions into the very
stuff of life make us feel?” Houser (2014, 7) believes that this narrative effect
portrayed through emotions like discord, fear, and anxiety acknowledges the
multiple enmeshments of the body in the macroprocesses of environmental
manipulation and leads to the awareness that emotions are the driving forces
behind environmental ethics and political action.
The life stories of these women writers from Kerala employ the language of
emotion to articulate the harm done to the fabric of the tribal and agro-centric
ways of life that cannot be captured by information stacked in data charts. These
earthcarers (to use Carolyn Merchant’s term) are involved in local struggles and
are on the periphery of the mainstream elite discourses on environmental
activism. Their life-narratives offer concrete examples of how human subjects
and environments are entangled thereby becoming what Iovino and Opperman
(2014, 6) refer to as the “middle place” where matter enmeshes in the “discursive
forces of politics, society, technology.” These life-narratives offer unique
examples of what Scott Slovic (2008, 28) refers to as “narrative scholarship” in
which the human and other-than-human come together in a complex net
of intra-being. They also offer unique Global South instances of what
Carolyn Merchant (1995, 222) calls “partnership ethics” by “making visible the
 Life-narratives of oikos-carers from Kerala 169
connections between economic systems, people, and the environment in an
effort to find new economic forms that fulfill basic needs, provide security, and
enhance the quality of life without degrading the local or global environment.”
Kerala has been the emergence place of a number of women crusaders in
service of the environment. A pioneering voice is that of Sugathakumari
(1934–), the poet-environmentalist who spearheaded the iconic Save Silent
Valley movement in the 1970s to save some of the oldest and biodiverse forests
from the ravages of a planned hydroelectric project. However, environmentalism
in Kerala has progressed beyond the wilderness protection drive of the 1970s,
labeled as a middle-class, intellectual elite’s concern for nature (Devika 2010,
765). The roots of the environmental movement in Kerala are firmly anchored
in environmental justice movements which have seen the emergence of significant
women earthcarers who engage in their unique brand of environmental justice
activism to save the oikos—their home and hearth. C. K. Janu, Leelakumariamma
and Mayilamma, whose life-narratives are taken up for analysis in this chapter
are representatives of the grassroots ‘oikos-carers’ and women activists in Kerala
and they redefine the space of environmental agency by positing a nature–
culture continuum in which the awareness of the biological and social systems
in which we are embedded is seen as a vital tool of survival and sustainability.

C. K. Janu’s Mother Forest and the tribals’ land

struggles in Kerala
C. K. Janu’s Mother Forest belongs to the wave of multiethnic writing emerging
from the fringes of the Global South where nature does not represent pristine
wilderness untouched by human presence. For the “empty-belly environmen-
talism” (Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997, xxi) that Mother Forest represents, the
forest is as much a source of resources vital for human sustenance as it is a place
for human/tribal–nonhuman animal cohabitation. Thus, the overarching
question that the life-narrative of C. K. Janu, a tribal activist hailing from the
Wayanad district of Kerala, raises is that of ‘dwelling,’ or rather the lack of it,
and the poor material conditions faced by the Kerala tribals in the face of
deforestation and expropriation of the tribal land by the non-tribals. The Kerala
tribals who traditionally lived off the land were thrown into abject poverty
when the migrated non-tribals encroached upon their lands and appropriated,
through acts of persuasion and coercion, the majority of the land owned by
the tribals. G. S. Jayasree (2012, xvi) usefully indicates that the “innocent”
tribals “did not even have the notion land was ‘property’ and that they could
be alienated from it. To the Adivasis, the first inhabitants of the land, there was
no question of acquiring individual rights over the land. The land was not
separable from their sense of collective identity; they were one with it and
celebrated this union in all rites of passage.” According to statistics in 2002, 24.7
per cent (i.e., 22,491 families) of Kerala tribals is landless and 34.02 per cent
(or 30, 981 families) have less than an acre of land, making, as Bijoy (2006,
4332) indicates, “the overwhelming majority landless or near-landless.”
170 R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan
The twofold division of Mother Forest represents the logic of binaries—the
personal space as opposed to the public. As the translator N. Ravi Shanker
(2004, xii) observes, “[The first chapter is] closer to Janu’s inner world, while
the second chapter [is] more polemical and belong[s] to the outer world.” The
first chapter contains descriptions of Janu’s life in the forestscapes of Wayanad
district, intimate vignettes of feudalism and the agricultural work done by the
tribals and Janu’s careful steps toward gaining literacy. The second chapter
traces the changes that have come over the tribal community, Janu’s participation
in the Communist Party’s activities, her later disillusionment with it as well as
her early attempts at land agitations in places like Mananthavaadi and Munnar
that mark her rise as an activist. Thus, the bipartite division of the text parses
Janu’s life into the dichotomized realms of oikeion and politikon. Jean-François
Lyotard (2000, 135) explains that oikeion encompasses women, the children, the
servants and notes:

[E]verything that can be called “domesticity” in the old Latin sense, that
which is in the domus, like the dogs, for example. In the final analysis,
oikeion is everything that is not [public]. And the opposition between
the oikeion and the politikon exactly matches up to that between the secluded
on one side and the public on the other. The political is the public sphere,
while the oikeion is the space we call “private”, an awful word that I’m
trying to avoid in saying “secluded”.

However, the oikeion, in the tribal context, has an added complexity since, for
the forest-dwelling tribals, the notions of ‘domesticated’ and ‘wild’ hardly exist.
C. K. Janu (Bhaskaran 2004, 3) describes her life in the midst of “unending
forests” and everyone gathering, as it gets dark, in the courtyard and spending
“hours listening to what the forests mumbled.” For the tribals who “lived in
and with nature” (Kapoor 2004, 44), the lessons in ecological literacy were
obtained early and at first hand:

Nature lay open for little ones to learn from. Time and seasons could be
told from the chirping of certain birds. The months could be counted
when the leaves fell from the trees. From the darkening clouds descending
on the hilltops and the forests we could gauge the direction of the wind.
Our lives were so strongly interlinked with Nature, the earth and the trees.
(Bhaskaran 2004, 51).

The deep topophilic connection that Janu as a girl experiences toward the land
and ‘mother’ forest as documented in the first chapter is juxtaposed with the
growing estrangement and topophobia in the younger generation of the tribals.
In the opening of the second chapter, Janu (Bhaskaran 2004, 30) observes:
“Mother Forest had turned into the Departmental Forest. It had barbed wire
fences and guards. Our children had begun to be frightened of a forest that
could no longer accommodate them.”
 Life-narratives of oikos-carers from Kerala 171
C. K. Janu’s Mother Forest is an example of “New forest texts” (Rangarajan
2016) or “Nava-Aranyakas,”1 a term coined by Anu T. Asokan (2014) to analyze
Mahasweta Devi’s tribal texts as revisionist forest texts. Asokan (2014, 46) notes:
“Aranyakas or the Vedic meditative texts (dated from 700–600 BC) . . . offer a
mystical view of the forest. Traditionally, Aranyakas, an important limb of the
Upanishads, were an important aid to philosophical reflection for men who
retreated into the wilderness in preparation for the ultimate act of renuncia-
tion – ‘Sanyasa.’” However, ‘Nava-Aranyakas’ are not “wisdom texts . . . but
volatile spaces in which texts of turbulence are written” (Asokan 2014, 47).
Shorn of the metaphysical tinge, these ‘New forest texts,’ bring to the foreground
a bricolage of themes which uncover the subsistence and survival-based issues
of Indian environmentalism faced by forest dwellers who have been traditionally
dependent on local natural resources (Rangarajan 2016).
The “livelihood ecology” (Gari qtd. in Martinez-Alier 2002, 10) that the
New Forest texts like Mother Forest foreground reminds us that “antihuman
environmentalism” (Nixon 2011, 5) will not work in the Global South context.
Thus, C. K. Janu’s deploring of deforestation and her “call for forest preservation”
(Menon 2002) is as much about caring about nature as it is about attempts at
“staying alive,” to use the title of Vandana Shiva’s 1988 book, as a community.
Janu (Bhaskaran 2004, 55) perceptively asserts, “[M]any of our problems will
be solved only if we continue to live and work close to the land.”
With the changes in the traditional lifestyle of the tribals who largely
depended on agroforestal and sustainable agricultural systems (Martinez-Alier
2002, 13), the majority of them turned themselves into mere wage laborers
(Bhaskaran 2004, 30). The wages were not enough to keep hunger at bay and
they did not have access to the forest which once provided them with a “bellyful
of food” (Bhaskaran 2004, 7). The tribals helplessly witnessed the disintegra-
tion of agricultural lands that were allowed to lie fallow by its paper-owners,
complaining that “agriculture was not paying” and often used to build concrete
houses. The loss of land and access to the forest brought the tribals in greater
contact with the civil society. Janu highlights the instances of sexual exploitation
of young tribal girls by the ‘outsiders’ who took the girls to tribal hostels in
towns in the name of education. Noting the transformations coming over the
tribal community, Janu (Bhaskaran 2004, 48) comments:

[The girls] imbibed only the wrong aspects of civil society. The way they
spoke and the way they behaved became a matter of shame and degener-
ation . . . Unable to study or to pass the tests in new syllabi they lost their
balance. They had to, [sic] for the cities to get their menial jobs done.
Our people began to apply for such menial jobs. They became good-
for-nothings by writing competitive tests and failing miserably in them.
And the government ridiculed us further with figures that proved that our
people were in a condition to compete with people from civil society.
Certain ruling forces and power centres emerged who could stamp this
society underfoot as a group of people who always failed.
172 R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan
Thus, uprooted from their lands and the forest environment and unable to
quite blend in with the civil society, the tribals became tragic liminal figures or
“nowhere people” (Nair 2003).
Janu (Bhaskaran 2004, 55) observes that all land struggles by the tribals in
Kerala “have been struggles to establish the ownership rights of the real owners
of this land for the right to live on it.” Though Mother Forest does not cover the
watershed Muthanga agitation on January 4, 2003 when thousands of tribals
under the leadership of C. K. Janu and the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha (the
grand assembly of tribals) encroached on the deforested portions of Muthanga
and erected huts after the state government failed to keep its promise of land
distribution to the tribals (Bijoy and Raman 2003, 1975–1976), it documents
the circumstances that led to what climaxed in Muthanga. After describing a
couple of land-occupations by the tribals led by her in places like Appootti,
Vellamunda, Chinieru, and Kundara in Munnar, all of which were crushed
using police force, Janu (Bhaskaran 2004, 54) wryly notes: “The only reason
our people did not run away was that they had no place or land to run to.
For that same reason they have been severely beaten up.”
Echoing Ben Chavis’s (qtd. in Sze 2002, 175) observation that “the issue of
[socio-]environmental justice is an issue of life and death,” Janu (Bhaskaran 2004,
55) asserts, “These were not just land encroachments. They were life and death
struggles for our basic rights to live and die where we were born.” Mother Forest
is at once a place-based, topophilic narrative and a writing about displacement.
It offers a gendered perspective on the state of ‘uninhabitance’ experienced
by the Kerala tribals and rescues the Kerala indigenes from a long-haul
“spatial amnesia” (Nixon 2011, 151–152). Mother Forest and C. K. Janu’s socio-
environmental activism should be understood, evidently, as part of the larger
picture of growing struggles and writings for indigenous rights around the globe.

Leelakumariamma’s Jeevadayini and Kerala’s

endosulfan disaster
The Green Revolution during the 1960s and 1970s was launched primarily to
tackle the food problem in India through the introduction of advanced
technology, high-yielding crop varieties, and an extensive use of pesticides.
It was believed that by employing improved agrotechnology, the Malthusian
prophecy of an impending population-resources imbalance could be overcome,
and that material abundance could be achieved by combating scarcity through
an unprecedented control of the environment (Shiva 1993, 14). India’s agri-
cultural experiment yielded remarkable returns in its early years; but the
ecological ramifications of the Green Revolution soon became apparent as
the chemical fertilizers impoverished the soil-fertility and insect pests developed
immunity to the pesticides. Agriculture became more commercialized and the
introduction of new seed varieties replaced the common traditional ones.
Leelakumariamma’s autobiography, Jeevadayini [The Life-giver], foregrounds the
ambiguity of an agricultural officer who was raised in a traditional Gandhian
 Life-narratives of oikos-carers from Kerala 173
farmer family in Kannur in northern Kerala, but had to campaign for the
environmentally unfriendly programs of the Green Revolution as part of
her profession. In her family, Leelakumariamma’s mother, Pappiyamma, led the
way by toiling hard in the fields using the traditional organic farming methods.
Various crops like paddy, tapioca, thina, and chaama2 were cultivated in their 15
acre farmland using cow dung as the main fertilizer for the crops.
While pursuing agricultural science in college, Leelakumariamma had to
unlearn the traditional farming methods that she had picked up at home and
learn the names of different chemical fertilizers and pesticides like Malathion
and the need to produce high yields in agriculture. It is with deep contrition
that she writes about her work at the Agricultural Office in Kasaragod district
when she was entrusted to distribute to the local peasants chemicals like DDT
and Sevin (which was manufactured by Union Carbide India Limited pesticide
plant in Bhopal). Leelakumariamma also deplores the loss of many traditional
varieties of paddy seeds after the introduction of Green Revolution’s High
Yielding Varieties (HYVs) of paddy. She had to face her colleague’s antagonism
when she revealed to the unsuspecting farmers that the pesticides they were
taking home were poisons. At the end of Chapter Six, Leelakumariamma
(Ajeesh 2011, 38) poignantly notes, “Within almost three years, we, Agricultural
Officers, killed a rich heritage of the local farmers.”3
Leelakumariamma’s initiation into environmental justice activism was
galvanized by the premature death of her elder brother Ramakrishnan, who, at
her request, had come to stay with her to oversee the construction of her house
in Periya village where she was transferred to. The livelihood of the villagers of
Periya largely depended on the vast swathes of cashew orchards owned by the
Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK), a public company run by the Kerala
state government, where they either worked as laborers or obtained firewood.
To ward off tea mosquitoes, PCK used to aerially spray the highly toxic
endosulfan over the plantations using helicopters. Endosulfan belongs to the
group of ‘Persistent Organic Pollutants’ (POPs) and is classified by “the US
Environmental Protection Agency as a category Ib (highly hazardous) chemical,
since it is easily absorbed by the stomach, lungs and through the skin” (Rajendran
2002). C. Jayakumar Thanal (2011, 88), the founding director of ‘Thanal,’ an
environmental organization based in Thiruvananthapuram, lists cancer, various
mental and physical disabilities, psoriasis, blindness, aborted pregnancies, as well
as reproductive disorders as the common health risks associated with endosulfan
exposure. The seriousness of the health impacts of endosulfan that Jayakumar
Thanal illustrates throws into sharp relief the extreme callousness shown by
PCK toward human and other-than-human lives in these villages by its rather
criminal non-adherence to the standard norms prescribed in the instances of
the aerial spraying of endosulfan. The stipulations with regard to the aerial
spraying of endosulfan include:

1 The spraying of endosulfan should be publicly announced through

microphones two days before.
2 Endosulfan should be sprayed only five-feet above the saplings.
174 R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan
3 Aerial spraying of endosulfan should be done only during early morning
and late evening.
4 All water bodies should be covered before the spraying begins.
5 Cattle should not be allowed to enter the plantation up to twenty days after
the spraying
(Ajeesh 2011, 43; Padre 2011, 47).

None of these steps was followed by PCK. As a result, the sprayed pesticide
percolated down to the uncovered water bodies in the area, making them unfit
for both domestic and agricultural consumption (Rajendran 2002, 2207).
Crows and other birds killed after consuming the poisoned water soon became
a common sight (Ajeesh 2011, 39) and Periya and other endosulfan-affected
villages literally began to witness “the strange stillness” that Rachel Carson
(1962, 2) described in the first chapter of Silent Spring. Leelakumariamma’s
brother fell ill within a year of his stay in Periya, his eyes frequently became
watery and his sight also began to fail. Even doctors were unable to pin down
the nature of his disease. The death of her perfectly healthy brother, whom
she was very close to, just after a year of stay in Periya amply demonstrated to
Leelakumariamma not only the physical health threats but also the emotional
harm done by the pesticide use (Stein 2002, 194).
Leelakumariamma, who is credited as “the first person ever to come forward
against the aerial spraying of endosulfan by the Plantation Corporation of
Kerala” (Ajeesh 2011, 5), launched her crusade to end this ‘toxic rain’ by
sending out petitions to the state’s Chief Minister, Health Minister, Agriculture
Minister, the District Collector and the Head of PCK in Kottayam. Her
constant appeals to halt the spraying of endosulfan, however, did not incite
any response. She, then, started to sensitize the local public about the dangers
of endosulfan and sent ministers mass-signed petitions for three consecutive
years (1994–1997). When she realized that it was pointless to wait any longer
for governmental intervention in the issue, she decided to take the legal course.
Leelakumariamma’s petition was considered by the Munsiff Court and it
ruled for stay of the spraying of endosulfan in the plantations. The morning
after the court judgment, PCK’s Kasaragod district manager, along with a small
group of people, came to Leelakumariamma’s house and threatened her that
she would suffer if she did not withdraw her complaint. Raising the gender
question, Leelakumariamma (Ajeesh 2011, 50) asks if they would dare to turn
up on her doorstep and threaten her if she were a male. Rob Nixon (2011, 145)
has convincingly demonstrated how Rachel Carson and Wangari Maathai, two
of the important female ecoactivists of the 20th century, “On all fronts, had to
weather ad feminam assaults from male establishments whose orthodoxies were
threatened by their autonomy.” However, for Leelakumariamma, just as it was
in the case of both Carson and Maathai, her “marginality was wounding but
emboldening” (Nixon 2011, 145) and she, having the full support of the local
villagers, decided, much to the astonishment of the PCK authorities, not to
withdraw the complaint.
 Life-narratives of oikos-carers from Kerala 175
Although PCK moved to the Subordinate Court (which is superior to
Munsiff Court), it also upheld the Munsiff Court’s ruling. Following this, PCK
approached the High Court of Kerala demanding Rs. 75 lakh as compensa-
tion from Leelakumariamma for the losses incurred by the company. At this
crucial juncture of her campaign, Leelakumariamma was helped by T. P.
Padmamanabhan, the Director of the environmental group called ‘Society of
Environmental Education in Kerala’ (SEEK), who arranged Advocate Daisy
Thampi to appear for Leelakumariamma in the High Court. After the hearing,
the Kerala High Court asked PCK to wait for the Munsiff Court’s judgment.
On October 28, 2000, the Munsiff Court passed the landmark judgment order-
ing to stop the aerial spraying of endosulfan. Although she met with a life-
threatening accident and is on crutches, Leelakumariamma continues her
crusade for the ban of endosulfan across the country.
The damages done to the local ecosystem of these villages by twenty-four
years (since 1976) of toxic exposure is immense. A study by Dr. V. S. Vijayan
of Salim Ali Foundation (Mathew 2011), for instance, reveals “a decline in plant
diversity between 40 and 70 percent, particularly for native species” in those
villages where endosulfan was used. The toxic spraying of endosulfan has also
left in its wake a very large disabled community. While endosulfan-related
deaths in Kasaragod have crossed the 500 mark (John 2011, 14), the long-term
casualties of the toxin are staggering. Y. S. Mohan Kumar (2011, 67), a
Kasaragod-based physician who first associated the proliferation of health prob-
lems in the villages to endosulfan use, predicts that the after effects of the
pesticide use are likely to haunt generations in Kasaragod for the coming fifty-
sixty years! Rob Nixon (2011, 8) rightly points out that in the incidents of
slow violence—like the endosulfan-impacted villages in Kasaragod—the “post
is never fully post” since, as he (2011, 8) argues, “Violence, above all environ-
mental violence, needs to be seen—and deeply considered—as a contest not
only over space, or bodies, or labor, or resources, but also over time.” Thus,
with the “attritional lethality” (Nixon 2011, 8) of endosulfan lingering over
these villages, there is no ‘post-endosulfan’ phase to speak of.
Leelakumariamma (Ajeesh 2011, 44–45) decided against fleeing the health-
threateningly toxic atmosphere of Periya to other safer locations taking
into account the plight of the indigent villagers who could not afford to do so.
Leelakumariamma’s ecofeminist ethics sees beyond the binary oppositions of
privileged/oppressed and self/other which also renders the speciesist assumptions
of human superiority erroneous. With regard to the menace of wild boars that
come at night to feed on the vegetables grown in her backyard organic farm,
Leelakumariamma (Ajeesh 2011, 25) maintains that the food crunch in the
degraded habitats impels the wild animals to wander into village farms and asks,
“What is the point in saving my crops by killing them?” Leelakumariamma’s
inclusive vision acknowledges, to cite Greta Gaard’s (1993, 5) phrase, “sexism,
racism, speciesism, and naturism (the oppression of nature) [as] mutually
reinforcing systems of oppression” and gestures toward the “liberation of all
oppressed groups.”
176 R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan
The stories of toxic buildup, water pollution, deforestation, accelerated
species loss and loss of habitats that form the narratives of ‘slow violence’ are
rescued from invisibility and representational bias by women writing nature
like Leelakumariamma in the Global South. However, it must be noted that
Leelakumariamma’s autobiography is as much “eco-protest” writing (Nayar
2014, 292) as it is a deep trauma narrative induced by environmental disturbance
and personal loss. Her protracted battle to end the use of the toxic pesticide in
her village underscores the typical Global South scenario where the matters of
environmental impoverishment are embedded in “basic human rights and social
justice” issues (Tarter 2002, 224; Comfort 2002, 229). The Kasaragod endosulfan
disaster has been fodder also for creative writings in Malayalam like Ambikasuthan
Mangad’s acclaimed novel Enmakaje (2009) where Leelakumariamma makes a
brief appearance and engages in a candid conversation with the novel’s activist-
protagonist Neelakantan about her anti-endosulfan campaign, and Francis T.
Mavelikkara’s play Swapnangal Vilkkanunudu (2013).

Mayilamma: Oru Jeevitham and the Plachimada struggle

Post-economic liberalization in India in the 1990s, the Coca-Cola Company,
after an interval of sixteen years (1977–1993),4 made a comeback to the Indian
market and established, in March 2000, one of its bottling plants in the small
village of Plachimada in the Perumatty Panchayat in the Palakkad district
of Kerala. The company was set up in 34.64 acres in what previously were
paddy fields and held out the promise of bringing ‘development’ to a ‘backward’
region (see Aiyer 2007, 643). The plant was intended to produce its popular
brands like Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Limca, Kinley Soda, Maaza and Thumps-
up and it started functioning in 2000–2001 (Bijoy 2006, 4333; Aiyer 2007,
643). The population of Plachimada, located on the borders of Tamil Nadu,
comprises a predominantly dalit, tribal and a few Muslim communities dependent
on the cultivation of crops like paddy, coconut, bananas, maize, etc. (Bijoy
2006, 4333). The prospect of jobs in the company was shattered as soon as the
company started functioning as only a handful of the local people were given
employment, citing their lack of education, in menial tasks like cleaning bottles.
C. R. Bijoy (2006, 4333) describes the operations of the company thus:

About 85 lorry loads of beverage products containing 550–600 cases each

with each case containing 24 bottles of 300 ml capacity left the factory
premises daily. Six bore-wells and two open-wells in the factory compound
sucked out some 0.8 to 1.5 million litres of water daily. Within two years,
the people around the plant experienced problems that they had never
encountered before, the receding of the water table and the drastic change
in the quality of water spread around 1 to 1.5 km radius of the plant. Water
shortage upset the agricultural operations. Water became unfit for human
consumption and domestic use.
 Life-narratives of oikos-carers from Kerala 177
5
Mayilamma: Oru Jeevitham, the autobiography of Mayilamma, an unlettered
woman belonging to Eravala tribe in Plachimada, begins with an episode where
the uneducated tribal community comes to grips with the falling quality of
drinking water and the different health problems posed by it. Children at the
local Anganwadi Center, for instance, fall sick after consuming food prepared
with the contaminated water, raising anxiety in their parents and the community
at large. The water from the local sources which was traditionally used for
drinking and cooking was found unfit for use and the village faced signs of
impending drought. Contact with the contaminated water during dishwashing
made hands itchy followed by a burning sensation. As ailments began to
proliferate, the local tribals, who had previously avoided hospital treatment
even at the time of pregnancy and childbirths, became frequent visitors of
hospitals. With water scarcity and pollution beginning to upset the heath and
the daily activities of the local population, the Panchayat started distributing
water in tanker trucks. The water distributed by the Panchayat was no better
either, as Mayilamma (Pariyadath 2012, 27) notes, the widespread rumors said
that it was collected from the side of the Chittor River below a burial ground!
Vanadana Shiva (1988, 186), in her celebrated work Staying Alive, rightly
emphasizes that groundwater is not a limitless resource but, “a critical part of
the water cycle which depends on rainfall for its renewal.” She (1988, 175) also
affirms that “[v]iolence to the water cycle is probably the worst and most
invisible form of violence because it simultaneously threatens the survival of
all.” According to the “Global Risks 2015 Report” by the World Economic
Forum, “water crisis is the #1 global risk based on impact to society” (qtd. in
“Facts about Water and Sanitation” n.p.). In the Global South context, women
are the key players in the domestic water management (United Nations 2014)
as well as the “water-providers” of the families (United Nations 2014; Shiva
1988, 171). Thus, disappearing water sources create new burdens and new
drudgery for women (Shiva 1988, 171). Mayilamma (Pariyadath 2012, 23–26)
makes note of the predicament of the tribal women in Plachimada who, after
the water-mining of the Coca-Cola Company started, had to trek long distances
in search of drinking water and wait carrying their pots in long queues even
during the months of monsoon. She (Pariyadath 2012, 26) also indicates how
it is often a trade-off between going to work and fetching water. For the
underdeveloped rural tribal women, water-scarcity poses a concomitant risk of
personal sanitation and hygiene owing to the non-existence of toilets and
women’s biological processes like menstruation and pregnancy. The issue of
groundwater depletion in Plachimada was so severe that by 2005, the region
was found to be a “water impoverished zone” (Aiyer 2007, 645).
The mass campaign against the Coca-Cola Company’s water abuse in
Plachimada was formally launched fittingly on Earth Day April 22, 2002 by the
‘Coca-Cola Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samithy’ (Anti-Coca-Cola People’s
Struggle Committee) with the participation of over 1,300 people, most of
whom being the local tribals (Pariyadath 2012, 27; Bijoy 2006, 4334). The
campaign was inaugurated by C. K. Janu who situated the Plachimada agitation
178 R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan
within the larger picture of tribal protests for land and livelihood happening
across the state which, Mayilamma admits, infused the gathered tribals with
confidence. The tribals of Plachimada adopted the Gandhian ‘satyagraha’ style
of peaceful sit-ins and ‘hunger-strikes’ to assert their water-rights and livelihood
issues. The agitation, though facing indifference and opposition in its initial
months, soon drew sympathies from environmentalists from across the country
and the globe and Mayilamma became the very face of the agitation. The
Plachimada struggle also garnered the attention of national and international
press. Mayilamma: Oru Jeevitham provides the history of the Plachimada move-
ment when the frail tribal-dalit women engaged in a Goliath–David kind of
struggle against a global corporate power for water democracy and whose
eventual victory6 bolstered similar struggles against Coca-Cola happening
elsewhere in the country and the world. The ecosickness narratives like
Mayilamma: Oru Jeevitham also highlight how the environmentalism of the
poor becomes “an environmentalism of survival and livelihood” (Ciafone 2012,
125–129).
The Coca-Cola Company took a lot of flak also for its rather hubristic act
of handing out its waste sludge as fertilizers to the gullible local peasants.
Mayilamma (Pariyadath 2012, 26) recalls that the waste smelled like decomposing
carcasses. According to a BBC radio program exposé (qtd. in Bijoy 2006, 4334)
dated July 25, 2003 on the Plachimada waste dumping:

Of the three solid wastes analysed, one showed relatively high levels of
two toxic metals, namely, cadmium and lead. Some other heavy metals,
including nickel, chromium and zinc, were also present at levels significantly
above those expected for background, uncontaminated soil and sludge.
The presence of high levels of lead and cadmium is of particular concern.
Lead is a developmental toxin in humans, particularly noted for its
ability to damage the developing nervous system. Cadmium is especially
toxic to the kidney, but also to the liver—it is classified as a known human
carcinogen.

Clearly driven by the dangerous assumption that “natural resources and the
poor [are] dispensable elements of ecosystems” (Shiva 1988, 213), the Coca-
Cola Company’s activities demonstrate the hierarchy of power relations and
the burden of waste disposal that is differentially borne by those on the margins.
Waste shifting from the Global North to the Global South, which is an
objectionable practice from a transnational point of view, is also mirrored in
this incident. In fact, Coca-Cola’s entanglement in the issues of toxicity in the
Indian context is more complex. The Center for Science and Environment
(CSE) in New Delhi, for instance, published, in 2003, a report that indicated
unacceptably high levels of pesticides like lindane, DDT, Malathion, and
Chloropyrofs in the products of the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo
(Summerly 2014, n.p.; Aiyer 2007, 644). The pesticide residues in these
products were toxic enough to cause long-term cancer, damage to the nervous
 Life-narratives of oikos-carers from Kerala 179
and reproductive systems, birth defects, and severe disruption of the immune
system (Summerly 2014, n.p.). However, the Colas available in the U.S. were
found to be pesticide-free (Ramesh 2004, n.p.). Furthermore, some newspapers
reported that the farmers of Chattisgarh were successfully using Coca-Cola in
lieu of costlier pesticides to protect their rice crops against pests (Putul 2014,
n.p.). Ananthakrishnan Aiyer (2007, 646) observes that it is the reports of
pesticide content in the soft drinks that marshaled the Indian urban middle-class
opinion against the coke. On a related note, Mayilamma (Pariyadath 2012, 16),
in her narrative, expresses her concern at the practice of some of her fellow
tribals consuming toddy mixed with Coca-Cola for greater intoxication. Thus,
Leelakumariamma’s Jeevadayini and Mayilamma: Oru Jeevitham have the narrative
of toxicity as the common horizon.
The tribal agitation against a multinational corporation (MNC) like the
Coca-Cola Company should be situated in the broader history of tribal struggles
in the state for land and livelihood. Mayilamma (Pariyadath 2012, 17–18) shares
the history of Plachimada tribals’ land-possession and land-distribution that
involves painful stories of tribal exploitation. According to her story, the lands
where the tribals toiled from dawn to dusk were taken away from them by the
non-tribals by offering them a meager 100–200 rupees. The tribals were beaten
up if they resisted. Mayilamma (Pariyadath 2012, 21–22) also documents a crisis
situation faced by them not so long ago due to the unavailability of a proper
burial ground. When someone died, the tribals had to cross the Kerala-Tamil
Nadu border to come to the Tamil Gounders’ land to inter the deceased. This
issue sometimes escalated into violent conflicts between the two groups.
The problem was finally solved when the district collector arranged a burial
ground for the tribals at Nellimedu.
The tribals’ loss of land is interlinked with the high levels of illiteracy in the
tribal community. C. K. Janu (Bhaskaran 2004, 40), for instance, notes how
the tribals lost their lands since they “were unable to find out or remember the
survey numbers,” thus, failing to prove their ownership. Landless and displaced,
the tribal communities who were self-sufficient ‘producers,’ of grain were
reduced to the state of ‘consumers,’ buying “everything from the shops”
(Bhaskaran 2004, 52). Ananthakrishnan Aiyer (2007, 640) therefore usefully
indicates that the Plachimada struggle also “needs to be analyzed as part of the
unfolding agrarian crisis and not simply as a case of valiant community struggling
against the rapacious practices of a transnational corporation like the Coca-Cola
Company.”

Conclusion
C. K. Janu, Leelakumariamma and Mayilamma fall under the category
“grassroots women” whose socio-environmental activism is ‘lived’ rather than
merely ‘spoken’ (Devika 2010, 759). They represent the breed of women
ecoactivists who are on the margins of Kerala society like Seleena Prakkanam,7
the female dalit leader of Chengara land struggle when over 7,000 landless dalit
180 R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan
families occupied a part of Harrisons Malayalam Plantations in Chengara
(Rammohan 2008, 15), and Pallikkal Bhavani,8 a seventy-three-year-old
resident of Padinjare Kallada “whose one-woman campaign against a sand-
mining ‘mafia’ led to their packing up from the banks of the Kallada river”
(“P.V. Thampi” 2010). As Mei Mei Evans (2002, 29) argues, personal testimonies
like these are “the lifeblood of the environmental justice movement[s]” and
the versions of environmental racism and ecological imperialism found in
these testimonies draw attention to the government-corporate nexus that has
engendered in laypeople “a web of mistrust” (Adamson and Stein 2002, 23)
toward both the state and big businesses. Highlighting the subjection of ‘human
others’ (women, people of color, [and in the Indian context, dalits], children
and the poor) and “earth Others” (animals, forests, the land) (Warren 2000, 1)
in a globalizing world, the life-writings of these Global South women activists
throw light on the lives of communities willfully forgotten from the mainstream
national discourse. These narratives call for a ‘human-sensitive environmentalism’
since the environmental and the social are closely imbricated in the Global
South context. These life-writings highlight the “vaporized dwelling” of Indian
tribals who, though being the original inhabitants of the land, suffer from a
cultural contempt and marginality and being looked at as “inconveniencing
anachronisms in a globalizing economy” (Nixon 2011, 153–164). These writings
also offer resistance to forms of narrative violence employed by mainstream
discourses which engage in the act of silencing crucial information and suppress
important local stories so that they do not turn into judicial enquiries, monetary
compensation or pieces of legislation.
These ecotexts as a whole fundamentally question the land, water, and
agricultural commercialization and underscore the importance of concerted
grassroots resistances against the same. These texts also seem to advocate what
Vandana Shiva (2006, 1) calls, “Earth Democracy,” which conceives the idea
of “earth family,” that is, the essence of the Indian saying “vasudhaivakudumbakam.”
Armed with slogans like “Our world is not for sale,” “Our water is not for
sale,” “Our seeds and biodiversity are not for sale,” ‘Earth Democracy’ responds
to the strategies of privatization by corporate globalization (Shiva 2006, 2).
Elaborating on the “insane ideology of privatization,” Shiva (2006, 2–3) further
adds, “Privatization encloses [for instance] the water commons. The enclosure
of each common displaces and disenfranchises people which creates scarcity
for many, while generating ‘growth’ for the few. Displacement becomes
disposability, and in its most severe form, the induced scarcity becomes a denial
of the very right to live.” Though Shiva (2006, 3) specifically mentions the
“victorious” Plachimada movement as located “at the heart of the emerging
Earth Democracy,” the ten key principles of Earth democracy justify the
inclusion of the anti-endosulfan movement led by Leelakumariamma and
the tribal land struggles like the Muthanga movement led by C. K. Janu—both
conducted in a non-violent manner—in Earth Democracy. This is particularly
evident in the fourth principle, which states that:
 Life-narratives of oikos-carers from Kerala 181
All members of the earth community, including all humans have the right
to sustenance—to food, water, to a safe and clean habitat, to security of
ecological space. Resources vital to sustenance must stay in the commons.
The right to sustenance is a natural right because it is the right to life. These
rights are not given by the state or corporations, nor can they be extinguished
by state or corporate action. No state or corporation has the right to erode
or undermine these natural rights or enclose the commons that sustain life.

Inclusive of “diverse species, faiths, genders and ethnicities,” Earth Democracy

(Shiva 2006, 5) holds out the promise of “hope in the time of hopelessness.”
The life-narratives of the three women ecoactivists analyzed in this chapter also
share this hope and optimism, for, as Linda Hogan (qtd. in Stein 2002, 200)
perceptively put it, “Those who protested were the ones who could still believe
they might survive as a people.”

Notes
1 ‘Nava’ in Sanskrit means ‘new.’
2 Thina and Chaama are two varieties of millet.
3 All translations used in this chapter are ours, unless otherwise mentioned.
4 As Ananthakrishnan Aiyer (2007, 653) explains, “The Coca-Cola Company left India in
1977 after refusing to accept the terms of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, which
reduced foreign ownership and equity to 40 percent in companies that produced
consumer goods.”
5 Mayilamma: Oru Jeevitham is transcribed by Jyothibai Pariyadath and uses an oral form to
capture the flavor of tribal speech in Mayilamma’s narration.
6 Mayilamma’s life-narrative, although not documenting the episodes like the shutting
down of the bottling plant in 2004, ends with an optimistic Mayilamma conveying her
hope that the movement will meet with success.
7 Seleena Prakkanam’s autobiography is titled Chengara Samaravum Ente Jeevithavum
[The Chengara Struggle and My Life] (2013).
8 Pallikkal Bhavani’s life-narrative is titled Chorinte Manamulla Cheru [Sludge that Smells like
Rice] (2010).

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11 Ecofeminism and the
telegenics of celebrity
in documentary film:
the case of Aradhana
Seth’s Dam/Age (2003)
and the Narmada
Bachao Andolan
Reena Dube

On July 28, 2015 the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement,
hereafter NBA) turned thirty years old. The history of the struggle stretches
back to the 1979 Narmada Water Tribunal decision to build 300 major, 350
medium, and 3,000 small dams on the Narmada river as well as to raise the
height of the Sardar Sarovar dam from 80 meters to 120 meters, which
culminated in the 2000 judgment of the Supreme Court of India to allow the
dam construction to go on. Most recently, on June 12, 2015 the Narmada
Control Authority gave the Gujarat government permission to raise the height
of the Sardar Sarovar dam by another 17 meters, from 121.92 meters to 138.72
meters, which would mean that another 2.5 lakh people will face the same fate
as the 320,000 people already displaced by the dam, according to unofficial
estimates.1 For a social movement that failed to achieve its main objective to
stop the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam across the Narmada river, the
movement continues to garner great interest and respect across the world.
According to most commentators, the global significance and success of the
NBA campaign issues from its innovative strategies of resistance that operated
simultaneously at the grassroots, national, and international level. As such, the
campaign’s significance as a social movement extends far beyond India’s national
borders.Balakrishnan Rajagopal, a leading international scholar on development
and social movements and a long-time observer and researcher of the Narmada
struggle, notes that globally the NBA is “regarded as one of the signature public
contestations of the twentieth century that redefined the terms of development,
democracy and accountability” (Suyoggothi, 2013). Paul Routledge, assessing
the NBA for his essay on transnational political movements, asserts that the
NBA stands “as an emblematic example of the resistance to marginalization
brought about by neoliberal development” (2008, 347).
In this chapter I examine the intersection between ecofeminist resistance
and the discipline of film studies, specifically in the use of the medium of
documentary by the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The movement has the unique
186 Reena Dube
distinction of having spawned a remarkable number of documentaries.2 The
social anti-dam protest movement occasioned by the Sardar Sarovar dam
project qualifies as an ecofeminist struggle not only because the two most well-
known faces associated with the movement are women—Medha Patkar, the
social activist and founder of the Narmada Bachao Andolan in 1989, and
the novelist Arundhati Roy, the 1998 Man Booker prize winner for the
novel The God of Small Things3—but also because women have played central
roles in the campaign. The NBA’s struggle against the Maheshwar Dam in the
state of Madhya Pradesh, for instance, has been led by the Narmada Shakti Dal,
a separate women’s organization within the NBA that was set up on March
8, 1988, International Women’s day, and comprises female villagers from
Maheshwar.
A second, equally important reason the NBA qualifies as an ecofeminist
struggle is because of its use of non-violent Gandhian methods: organizing
peaceful marches and protests, dharnas (sit-ins), hunger fasts, and an innovative
“non-cooperation movement’’in the Narmada valley against the payment of
taxes that sought to deny entry to the villages to all government officials, except
teachers and doctors.Their marches, demonstrations and even their water
protest had frequently drawn violent reactions like lathi-charges and arrests
from the government. In emulation of other disadvantaged groups which had
successfully moved the Supreme Court,the NBA has been inspired to take up
litigation against the current government for contravening the binding norms
of the Narmada Tribunal and the judgments of the Supreme Court.
Thirty years after the launching of the NBA, and almost as long since the first
documentary was made on the subject, Sashi and Mathur’s A Valley Refuses
to Die (1988), it is time to examine why and how the NBA struggle offered
such a rich text of the theoretical issues endemic to ecofeminist struggles in
postcolonialism when media is used to engage in globalization from below.
I suggest that the use of the alternative media of documentary by women
filmmakers in the NBA is both innovative and instructive. I examine one such
example, Aradhana Seth’s BBC-funded Dam/Age (2003), and how it negotiates
with the power relations between center and periphery, especially in its
engagement with global media in terms of telegenics of the celebrity personality
cult. The purpose is to study the innovative evolving role of the documentary
in the context of ecofeminist struggles in postcolonial developing societies
wherein the traditional role of the documentary—the medium that captures,
par excellence, the real, the ordinary, the present—undergoes transformation
as a tool for the citizen/investigative journalist/popularizer in global transnational
media solidarity campaigns.

Indian documentary and the nation state:

a brief overview
In order to assess the current status of Indian documentary, we must begin
by recognizing that the medium of documentary, more than any other
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 187
audio-visual medium, has a symbiotic relationship with the nation state. In the
Indian case, documentary served the longest apprenticeship under its inherited
colonial ideology. The majority of documentary films made in India during
roughly the first three decades after independence fit squarely within what is
known as the Griersonian tradition: artisanal practices and imagery borrowed
from the European avant-garde of the 1920s, the “voice of God” narration, the
predictable problem/solution format, the objective being to discourage direct
political action on the part of the audience by convincing them that a benevolent
socialist-leaning state has the means and initiative to solve all problems. The
independent documentary movement in India, pioneered by the likes of Anand
Patwardhan, rejected the Griersonan tradition and consistently de-emphasized
the aesthetics of practice in favor of activism.4 In his documentary about the
NBA, the Narmada Diary (Simantani Dhuru/Anand Patwardhan 1995), started
as a project on behalf of the NBA, Patwardhan and Dhuru comment ironically
on the Grierson tradition by juxtaposing contemporary news footage about the
struggle to save the Narmada river valley from being destroyed by a proposed
hydroelectric dam with the soundtrack from an FD documentary “Village of
Smiles,” in which the narrator quotes Prime Minister Nehru’s famous statement
that “Dams are the temples of modern India” (Ghosh 2009, 81).
It is commonplace that moments of crises or revolutionary change often lead
to exciting and spectacular leaps in audio-visual mediums such as documentary
film, lending it a sense of urgency and immediacy, which often translates in
terms of documentary realism and political relevance. The Emergency (1975–
1977) under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi functioned as one such crisis which
radically questioned the citizenry’s belief in the project of the independent
nation for architects of the modern documentary like Patwardhan who took
the nation state as the main frame of reference of his critical gaze, constituting
a discourse which defined the political credentials of a film according to whether
it was affirmative or critical in its address, and the ideal of the filmmaker as a
revolutionary citizen of the nation who still acted on behalf of it. This discourse
was, however, a counterpoint to the political and social imaginaries proposed
by the social and political movements that were gaining traction post-Emergency,
and which critiqued the lack of alternative visions of the nation state (Wolf
2013, 366).
Throughout the 1980s it was the women’s movement and its issues which
led people to start making documentaries and which constituted much of its
audience. Yet the discursive atmosphere was experienced by some women
filmmakers as being as restrictive as the state propaganda form which they were
seeking to oppose, “we have got stuck with the form of socialist realism without
the environment of revolution—that bred that form in the first place” (Bhushan
1998). Therefore women’s films which explored the real and the political
through the fictional, the theatrical or popular instead of social realism were
critiqued for not being political enough. In addition the standardization of the
process of NGO-ization led to documentary film abandoning open-minded
inquiry and reflection through aesthetic exploration and turning into vehicles
188 Reena Dube
for visualizing an argument or didactic position This state of affairs prevailed
right through the 1990s up to the early 2000s, and was, according to Wolf, “a
period of discontent, which despite or because of this paved the way for the
lively documentary scene that we find today” (2013, 367–368).
In contrast, I offer a reading of a documentary made by a women documen-
tarian in the early 2000s that challenges the scenario described by Wolf.
Admittedly the documentary is occasioned by a revolution in the form of a
global socio-political movement against big dams and the neoliberal develop-
ment. In order to fully appreciate how a woman filmmaker like Aradhana Seth
opens up the documentary format to a rather unusual inquiry and reflection
through aesthetic exploration, I begin with two questions suggested by Wolf
in her survey and summary of the current documentary scene in India that are
particularly relevant to Dam/Age. The first asks how constitutions of the self
intertwine with the shifting textures of the real, the people, the nation state and
its discontents. And the related question concerning the framing of the subjects
of documentary as protagonists through processes of othering or how they
create and imagine themselves in front of the camera? The second inquiry is
about how the development of documentary languages can be addressed
while acknowledging local embeddedness as well as transnational affiliations
(Wolf 2013, 362).5
We obtain very interesting answers, I suggest, if we examine the former
question in terms of the latter in the context of the Seth documentary. That is
to say that given the transnational nature of the documentary, we find that in
Seth/Roy’s documentary Dam/Age (2003), the classic documentary categories
and distinctions of the self, the real, citizenship, the process of othering and
local embeddness are muddied up.

Aradhana Seth’s Dam/Age (2003): the making of a

global celebrity woman activist
Dan Brockington begins his analysis of the rise of celebrity within development
studies with a caveat, “I must first dispel a common misconception. The study
of celebrity is not a shallow or trivial exercise . . . we need to explain its popu-
larity and success” (2014, 88). Brockington sees an increase in the importance
of celebrity advocates of development issues as poverty expands in the Global
North where celebrity industries have been present at the same time as we see
the expansion of celebrity industries into the Global South with internet
connections, media industries, and mobile phones. Implicit in Brockington’s
(2008) forecast about the expansion of the role of celebrity advocates in develop-
ment issues is the assumption that the traffic will be one-way, celebrities from
the North visiting and advocating development issues affecting the Global
South. But Seth/Roy’s artfully constructed documentary Dam/Age (2003),
aligning the story of the fight against the Sardar Sarovar dam alongside the
personal narrative of novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy’s engagement with
the NDA, records the making of a transnational woman celebrity activist from
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 189
the Global South, and therefore breaks new ground in Indian documentary
filmmaking. I use the construction ‘Seth/Roy’ as the makers of the film not
only because Roy performs herself as a celebrity activist and is the voiceover
and narrator of the entire film, but by Seth’s own admission it is a film made
“with” Arundhati Roy, “in every sense of the word”; therefore it is Seth/Roy’s
clever and careful interlacing of political issues and personal drama that makes
of the film a record of the making of Arundhati Roy into a translocal celebrity
activist.
Although it is true that by the time of the documentary Roy had already
published her critical essays on the developmental politics in “Power Politics”
(2002c), of nuclear testing in “The end of Imagination” (1998) and big dams
and in “The Greater Common Good” (1999), and was already known on the
international lecture circuit, her ascent as the global celebrity activist was
occasioned by her personal engagement with the NBA movement in terms of
both her donation of $30,000 Booker Prize money and the Rs, 20 lakhs royalty
for her essay, “For the Greater Common Good,” and in no less measure by
her participation in the anti-dam NBA demonstrations and rallies.
Roy’s activism has come in for a fair share of criticism particularly by scholars
and academics who critique Roy’s alliance with the Narmada Bachao Andolan
(NBA) for not being deeply immersed in that struggle alone, that her targets
are diffuse, that her facts merge into fiction, that her non-fiction is often
ill-informed and self-serving. For instance Julie Mullaney, critically examines
Roy’s “particular brand of ecofeminism” which positions her as “the public
voice of India’s anti-globalization movement” (2002a, 63, 57), and concludes
that it undermines both the history of such protest, as well as the role of note-
worthy activists and scientists like Vandana Shiva. Like Mullaney, Routledge
notes the irony of Roy’s critique of the global marketplace even as she “herself
[is] the beneficiary of a globalized literary market” (2008, 345). Graham Huggan
is more explicit in his criticism of Roy’s manipulation of her celebrity
image through what he describes as her “strategic exoticism,” her “incorrigibly
photogenic” appearance, and her “life story containing almost as many carefully
leaked secrets as [Small Things]” (2001, 77). Roy has also received negative
criticism from social and political environmentalists, like Ramachandra Guha,
who claim that Roy’s writing about the Narmada Dam Project is “self-indulgent
and hyperbolic,” her “vanity . . . unreal,” her anti-dam essay (“The Greater
Common Good”) replete with “signs of self-absorption” (2000).
In contradistinction I suggest that the key to Roy’s success as a global celebrity
activist is precisely the qualities so maligned by the literary and academic
establishment. In order to argue this, I examine Roy’s performance in Dam/
Age of her transnational activist identity and show how at each turn in the film
the Seth/Roy combine makes strategic choices in order to represent Roy as a
popularizer, a translator, a facilitator, and a celebrity rather than a scholarly,
academic expert. The process begins right from the opening shot of the film
with Roy’s iconic profile at dusk on a boat gazing out over the Narmada
landscape. Roy is foregrounded, she stands above the sitting woman and man
190 Reena Dube
protestors/passengers on either side of her. This shot functions as a historical
placeholder—indicating her early (she sports her earlier hairstyle) engagement
with the movement, and is a sequence that is repeated again and again, especially
in a flashback 40 minutes into the narrative. Roy’s voiceover reads from her
text “The Greater Common Good” about crossing the river, climbing up the
bank and laughing at the ludicrousness of the Supreme Court’s concern
that displaced children have parks in which to play, as the camera shows us the
shoreline, skyline, and the waters of the rushing river from Roy’s perspective
on the boat finally ending on an interior shot of Roy in the present moment
as she reads from her essay on camera. The self-referential opening of the NBA
documentary, especially the laughter, prompted Ramachandra Guha (2000) to
characterize it as “a straight lift from the first lines of that monument to egotism,
Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.” I suggest it is precisely these kinds of easily
discernable allusions to popular literary icons from the Global North, as well as
the self-referentiality and the laughter (which occurs again and again in the
film), that Roy uses to great effect to construct her translocal celebrity activist
identity.
The process of foregrounding Roy continues as the subtitles appear on
screen, “In October 2001, the Supreme Court of India charged Arundhati
Roy with contempt of court. This is the story of the events that lead to her
arrest. Dam/Age: A Film With Arundhati Roy.” Thus we are skillfully prepared
by Seth/Roy to hear Roy on Roy occasioned by a film ostensibly about the
damage caused by the age-of-dam: specifically to be acquainted through Roy
on the damage caused by big dams through the damage suffered by Roy because
of her engagement with the anti-dam movement in the age-of-dams.6
Given Seth/Roy’s easy assumption of the self-referential mode from the
opening moments of the film, it comes as a surprise when 28.5 minutes into
the film, in the segment where Roy is preparing for the court date, a monologue
occurs about this being a public-political fight yet “it’s also personal.” Roy
confesses to finding it “very difficult . . . to decide when to be personal and
when to be public. In a moment like this, maybe you don’t want to put your
personal self out there, but you have to, because it can only be fought in the
public arena. And it must be done.” The mystery is dispelled if we read this
discussion as Seth/Roy embodying the popular feminist principle of the
personal is political. Similarly little more than 13 minutes later once again Roy
foregrounds her femaleness during the disclosure that in addition to the Supreme
Court judgment day on March 6, there is a hearing in Kerala on February 15
to ban The God of Small Things for the last chapter presumably corrupting public
morality. Roy quips, “It is as though it’s that time of the month,” and laughs,
then explains somberly and despondently, “For it to be coming up right now
is strange, because it is as if the legal net is closing round me in some ways.”
The quip and laughter foregrounds Roy’s identification with “that time of the
month” for all woman when they feel overwhelmed, and with her despondency
she shares the vulnerability of a courageous woman.
In the second segment of the film Roy is framed inside the Supreme Court
in interaction with her lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, in his chambers; her voiceover
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 191
elaborates the charges against her. That is when we see the dam affected people
for the first time in the film, in the distance in long shots as they shout slogans
while walking through fields and on the receding river banks, as the camera on
the boat pulls away and Roy’s voiceover commences, explaining the nature
of her association with the NBA. The connection between the Narmada and
Roy, she says, is personal and child-like: “I owe rivers a debt of gratitude
for all kinds of understanding. I grew up in Ayemenem on the banks of the
Menachil. I always think that as a very young child, the hours that I spent
catching fish were the hours that made me the writer that I am.” Once again
the initial iconic profile shot of Roy on the Narmada is repeated. Not only
is the association with the Narmada located in her childhood memories of
the town made famous by The God of Small Things, but also the description
of her relationship echoes her writerly style in the novel where her language
experimentation includes fluid adoption of children’s thoughts and images: she
says she understands the river not as an environmentalist or an ecologist, “but
just because a river was my friend when I was little. And the loss of a river is a
terrible aching thing.”
Roy’s singularity as celebrity writer develops through the next segment
of the documentary when we witness a protest where Baba Mahariya, an
indigenous tribal activist, speaks on camera in Hindi, and subsequently Medha
Patkar, the other famous woman social activist associated with the NBA,
appears for the first time. Patkar is indistinguishable in dress and appearance
from the protestors and is filmed turned away from the camera, addressing the
gathering in Hindi, as if in implicit acknowledgment that as the grassroots
organizer and leader neither she nor the NBA are the focus of the documentary.
Underlining the difference in identities, roles and linguistic communicative
capabilities of the two women for the NBA, Roy is absent from this particular
sequence except for a very brief glimpse of her amongst the cheering crowd
of women audience members. Then Roy’s voiceover commences over the
faces of the gathered protestors, explaining that her decision to write about
the Narmada was driven by her feeling that “what was missing in the fight
was the story, the whole story, all the connections. And I really wanted to tell
the story in all its details but accessible to the ordinary reader”. Thus Roy
introduces her evolving persona as an essayist and writer of social and political
commentary. At this point it will be useful to suspend an examination of
the narrative of the documentary in order to pursue the question of Roy’s
self-definition as it relates to her role for the NBA.

A global celebrity woman activist?

In the introduction of her essay, “The Greater Common Good” Roy reaffirms
the idea that it was the story embedded in the NBA that drew her, even though
at the time the fight for the NBA had “entered a newer, sadder phase”; she
writes, “I went because writers are drawn to stories the way vultures are drawn
to a kill. My motive was not compassion. It was greed. I was right. I found a
192 Reena Dube
story there” (2002b, 49). What is notable, however, is that Roy’s declaration
that she is a serious non-fiction writer, an expression of intent couched in
phraseology one would expect from an investigative journalist, follows
immediately after her deliberate recalling of her fiction writing: she ends her
suggestion that the scale of the 21st century is the small and specific rather than
big with these words, “Perhaps right now, this very minute, there’s a small god
up in heaven readying herself for us. Could it be? Could it possibly be? It sounds
finger-licking good to me” (2001, 48–49).
Roy’s linguistic strategy above is typical of her non-fiction writing: she
constantly subverts expectations. Just when she seems to speak with authority
about a subject, she takes refuge in her literary fiction persona; then when
we adjust our expectations to hearing from a novelist about political matters, a
writer-activist in other words, she lapses into the most pedestrian populist
expressions (parodying an advertising or public relations campaign slogan),
lending credibility to her claim to be a middle-class citizen-journalist. The net
result is that her non-fiction writing is, I suggest, a postmodern pastiche that
patches together a number of discourses, from the low to the high, without
letting herself be held hostage by any particular one.
While much has been written about her play on language in her novel, little
sustained analysis has been forthcoming on her non-fiction writing. The
majority of the reactions veer to the extremes: from Guha labeling it self-indulgent
to Steve Palopoli who, reviewing Dam/Age, gushes like a star-struck fan calling
Roy “a fascinating muse for India’s culture of protest, able to drop insights like
‘The only thing worth globalizing is dissent’ at any given moment” (2002a).
Roy’s stated views on language are at odds with her own practice in her non-
fiction writing and therefore critical to understanding her refusal to accept the
label of the writer-activist.
Precisely in the years when poststructuralism and postmodernism swept the
academy and challenged the normative notion of language and the plain style
with singularity of meaning and authorial intention and the literary world was
celebrating the liberation into linguistic multiplicity and heterogeneity, Roy
claims to eschew the playful postmodern style of her novel for a common sense
view of language. She writes:

As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language,

trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and
thought. ‘Language is the skin on my thought,’ I remember saying to
someone who once asked what language meant to me.
(2000, 135)

She espouses this view of language implicitly, even when she characterizes the
discussions at the World Water Forum at The Hague, as “the ritualistic slaughter
of language as I know and understand it . . . mask[ing] intent. . . .They breed
and prosper in the space that lies between what they say and what they sell”
(2000, xviii). Roy repeatedly ascribes this obfuscation in the language of experts:
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 193
in many of her essays of the time she questions the idea that only experts
can speak on such urgent matters as nuclear war, privatization of India’s
power supply, and construction of monumental dams in India. As translator
and popularizer of “the story” of the NBA the playful, creative Booker Prize
winning novelist aspires to write in the “accessible” language for the “ordinary
reader.”7 What is left unsaid, however, is that the ordinary readers she has in
mind are middle-class global Indians like her and the transnational audience
abroad. In an interview with Barsamian, Roy acknowledged that she says what
other middle-class people like her would like to say but cannot. The middle
class has a valid role in the leadership of the NBA because, as she puts it, it was
middle-class engineers who designed the dam.
She elaborates this idea of being the envied celebrity spokesperson for
the ordinary citizenry in the context of disputing the appropriateness of the
appellation of the writer-activist. Roy describes the current global state of
things for the writer: the writers are “free” to an unprecedented degree, more
numerous and “commercially viable” than ever before, virtually “influential,
wealthy superstars,” “torch-bearers,” their work the “benchmark” for art as it
“is” and “ought to be.” All of this has led, Roy writes, to what she calls the
“almost farcical” scene in India where the “Indo-Anglian” writer has emerged
as the new career pursued by ambitious parents, corporate advertising seeking
endorsement and infotainment media. She notes that while “in the early days”
she was introduced as the “almost freakishly ‘successful’” author of The God of
Small Things, she now “in twenty-first-century vernacular” is referred to as “a
‘writer-activist’. (Like a sofa-bed.)” She explains her discomfort with the
appellation even when used admiringly. She reasons that “the double-barreled
appellation, this awful professional label,” has been given to her, not merely
because her work political:

in my essays I take sides . . . What’s worse I make it clear that I think it’s
right and moral to take that position and what’s even worse, use everything
in my power to flagrantly solicit support for that position. For a writer of
the twenty-first century that’s considered a pretty uncool, unsophisticated
thing to do . . . uncomfortably close to the territory occupied by political
party ideologues.
(“The ladies have feelings, so . . .” 2002d, 175–176)

Roy has drawn yet another distinction between her non-fiction essays and
other commentaries: her essays are not only written in the common language,
but are also “flagrantly” political and thus infringe on the province of political
“ideologues.” The branding of her non-fiction writing as a “writer-activist”
diminishes both writers and activists: the writer is seen as “too effete” for
having the wherewithal to “publicly take a political position,” and activists, the
professional position takers, are seen as “crude, simple-minded, one-sided under-
standing of things.” Her “fundamental” objection, however, is “that this
attempt[s] to ‘professionalize’ protest” (ibid., 186).
194 Reena Dube
She specifies that her own involvement is neither in order to raise causes nor
because she is a writer or activist, but the as a “human being,” a citizen reacting
in writing to the immense political and social upheavals taking place because it
“just happens to be the most effective thing a writer an do” (ibid.). She recom-
mends the de-professionalization of public debates on matters affecting ordinary
lives; to take back from the experts, “to ask, in ordinary language, the public
question and to demand in ordinary language, the public answer” (ibid., 187).
That is the reason that even as she admits that there has been a fair amount
of writing on the subject, she characterizes most of it as “for a ‘special interest’
readership”:

Experts and consultants have hijacked various aspects of the issue . . . and
carried them off to their lairs where they guard them fiercely against
the unauthorized curiosity of interested laypersons . . . Disconnecting the
politics from the economics from the emotion and human tragedy of
uprootment is like breaking up a band. The individual musicians don’t
rock in quite the same way. You keep the noise but lose the music.”
(“The Greater Common Good” 2002b, 46–47)

It is precisely due to this role of the experts that Roy writes, “For the people
of the valley . . . their most effective weapon—specific facts about specific issues
in this specific valley—has been blunted by the debate on the big issues” (46).
For Roy the role of experts is Brahmanical, to colonize knowledge and profit
by it; she uses the saying “There’s a lot of money in poverty” to imply that
experts and scholars and indeed organizations like the World Bank are
“parasite(s)” (188). What is happening in globalism lies, Roy clearly suggests,
“outside the realm of common human understanding” and it is only artists
practicing a “new kind of art” that can bring it within the realm of common
understanding through humanizing the “boardroom speeches into real stories
about real people with real lives.” The virtue of her writing, she seems to
suggest that it is both more political and less political in the traditional sense,
because she has “no personal or ideological axe to grind. I have no professional
stakes to protect”. Her politics, if it must be identified, is humanist, that of a
“citizen” (“The Ladies . . .” 2002d, 187). And while there can be no rules for
a writer, the trajectory of a writer must not be weighed down with morality
and responsibility; yet the refusal of morality and responsibility “can only
lead to bad art.” This is a “new” kind of politics: a politics not of governance
but of resistance, of opposition, of forcing accountability. Roy ends the essay
“The Greater Common Good” in her inimitable style, with a quotable quote,
“In the present circumstances, I’d say that the only thing worth globalizing is
dissent. It’s India’s best export” (2001, 191). And Arundhati Roy is our best
global export of dissent, we might add.
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 195
The aesthetics of representing a media-savvy global
celebrity woman activist
When we next see Roy in Dam/Age it is in the present framed in the tastefully
appointed, softly glowing interior of her house; she explains, “I really believe
that the story of the Narmada valley is the story of modern India. Not just
of modern India but it is a story of what is happening in the world today.”
With this last statement, Roy has drawn even more starkly the difference
between Patkar’s and her own perceived role in the NBA. We might say that
while Patkar’s is a place-based ‘militant particularism,’ Roy’s own engagement
with the NBA may be characterized as ‘global ambition.’ The terms are those
of David Harvey who, theorizing social movements, borrows a term from
Raymond Williams to argue that place-based resistances frequently articulate a
‘militant particularism.’ But the ideals forged through this militant particularism’s
affirmative experience of solidarities in one place have the potential to become
generalized and universalized as ‘global ambition’: a working model for a new
form of society that will benefit all humanity. However, Harvey also notes
that militant particularisms are profoundly conservative, grounded in the
perpetuation of patterns of social relations and community solidarities. Therefore
it stands to reason to wonder, as Harvey (1996) does, whether at the scale of
global ambition, militant particularisms become impossible to ground, let alone
sustain. It is precisely for this reason I suggest that Patkar and Roy seemed to
have defined their roles differently with respect to the NBA. And as a result of
which, the NBA achieved great success in forging a national and transnational
coalition, working on innovative resistance strategies at multiscalar levels.
In less than four and a half minutes from the start of the film, Seth/ Roy have
successfully accomplished three tasks in the making and marketing of a global
celebrity woman activist: they have framed Roy’s global ambition visually,
linguistically, and discursively; foregrounded her difference from the people
associated with the NBA, including Patkar, and finally overlaid the narrative of
a people’s movement with Roy’s personal narrative. This overlapping of the
two narratives occurs visually and discursively as Roy’s explanation progresses:
it occurs visually as Roy’s voiceover discloses her realization that in writing
the story of the Narmada valley, “instinct wasn’t enough”, that “I needed to
know the algebra” and as she speaks the camera cuts from her in profile reading
and marking a book, to a close-up panning shot of what appears to be words
on a concrete wall, evoking the concrete structure of the Sardar Sarovar dam,
except that this one is blue in color. Then as the camera pans slowly over
the words, we realize we are looking not at a dam wall but at the book cover
of Roy’s The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002a).8 The discursive overlapping
occurs, interestingly, with Roy’s repeated use of the metaphors of “light” and
“dark” to determine “what is happening in the world today”: she uses the
former phrase to describe the role of power, including her own, and the latter
to designate the people who don’t count, yet who pay the costs and suffer the
collateral damage; later in the segment as she talks about how the centralization
of resources through neoliberal development schemes such as big dam building
196 Reena Dube
benefits the rich and makes “[ordinary] people melt into the darkness and
disappear.” She uses the metaphor of light as she describes her own task as a
writer, “to increase the area which is lit,” and the metaphor is implicit in the
space she professes to command, that is as celebrity to draw the media’s light:
“I suddenly realized I have the space, I command the space in which to raise a
dissenting voice and if I don’t do it, it is as political an act as doing it.” The use
of the twin metaphors appears to be a very deliberate strategy on the part of
Roy and in doing so she appears unaware or uncaring of the colonialist legacy
of the civilizing mission implicit in the metaphors. The effort is to distinguish
herself from the experts and academics who might be exercised by the politics
of it, but who do not write in an accessible manner or address for ordinary
people, but to use language, as she memorably said in one of her early interviews
on NPR in answer to an observation that her language use in the The God of
Small Things was innovative, “Language does not use me, I use language!”
Roy’s narrative about her present legal woes moves artfully back and forth
between her activist identity and her persecution which individuates her and
adds to her celebrity status: how false and “ludicrous” litigations against her,
Patkar and Bhushan by five lawyers in the Supreme Court devolves into a suo
moto contempt of court charge against her alone by the Supreme Court because
of her affidavit questioning the wisdom of the Supreme Court in taking up a
case that was dismissed by the police station. Similarly artfully Roy casts the
significance of fighting the contempt of court charge on the double registers of
a personal vindication and “political” litigation, against the contempt of court
act: the lawsuit is “challenging” and opening to “criticism” an “unaccountable
institution” (body? Roy’s own?) as it “wades into public life” (the Supreme
Court and Roy herself?) and is increasingly powerfully affecting the lives of
millions of people. The segment ends with the first of the only two interactions
between Roy and an NBA subaltern woman protestor: at 15:40, in the middle
of a demonstration she tells the subaltern woman in halting Hindi, “What
if they put me in jail?” “We will be there. We will fight.” “I am going to be
locked up on the 6th.” “We’ll see.” “They say I am not apologizing.” “Why?
What’s our crime? They build their dams, they flood our lands, they displace
people, destroying everything. They should apologize, [Roy joins in] why
should we?” “It’s our right to ask questions,” ends the woman, almost ventriloquiz-
ing Roy herself. Through the exchange Roy’s individual legal trouble is
embraced by the subaltern woman as “our crime” for which “we” will see, we
will be there, and we will fight. Instead of the displaced people it is Roy who
has become the cause célèbre, prefiguring the most icon-making scene of the
film where in its final moments we see that the demonstrations and slogan
shouting, instead of espousing the cause of the NBA, are now being undertaken
to express solidarity with the woman celebrity activist.
The actual “story of the Narmada”, begins almost 17 minutes into the film
and ends 5 minutes later with the “Rally for the Valley.” In a documentary
film of 50 minutes, the “algebra” and the “mathematics” of the argument with
the world about the Narmada, as Roy termed it, constitutes only one-tenth of
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 197
total film time. On the one hand this decision on the part of Seth/Roy is
surprising given the visual skill with which this “story” is told by Roy with the
aid map, historical FD newsreel, official documentaries, actual footage of
the lives of the displaced in the city slums and the submerged villages. The
duo display the same skill in a later clip when the interconnections drawn by
Roy between war, bombs, and dams echoes eerily in the speech about the
achievements of the government (nuclear tests in 1998, Kargil war in 1999 and
lifting of the stay on the Narmada dam in 2000) by the then Home Minister
L. K. Advani. The overlapping fortuitously allows Roy to underline her own
persecution, “when he makes the connections it’s a patriotic act, and when
I make the connections it’s a criminal offense.”
We begin to appreciate the wisdom of Seth/Roy’s decision to substitute dry
facts and figures when we are treated to the visual sumptuousness and emotional
resonance of the famous ‘Rally for the Valley.’ Roy recalls her call for the
‘Rally for the Valley’—“we called for people, for outsiders, for people from all
over the world, and from people’s organizations and resistance movements
from all over India to travel through the valley to see what the struggle was all
about.” Note Roy’s frequent use of the lists in her address to people. “Such
enumeration,” notes Bishnupriya Ghosh, “is typical of Roy’s strategy, which
turns multiple corporealized bodies palpable, immediate, and intimate for the
transnational audience who religiously follow her untiring lecture circuit in
the Global North, on television and radio, in print, and over the Internet as the
chronicler of local struggles” (2011, 270–271).
Today we know that the “Rally” established Roy’s sheer star power viz-à-
viz the national and international media, activists, and volunteers. The various
groups from across the world who visited the Narmada valley during the
“Rally” to learn about the struggle, to participate, and to subsequently disseminate
information about it, continued to maintain links with the NBA and conduct
solidarity work on its behalf. For example, the group Narmada UK was formed
after several individuals who had participated in the 1990 ‘Rally for the Valley’
along the Narmada, and the subsequent PGA conference in Bangalore, decided
to conduct solidarity work in the UK in support of the NBA (Routledge
2008, 346).
We watch the video of the rally alongside Roy as Medha Patkar walks past
the camera along with the other protestors and Roy is shown standing up
on stage, “The whole valley rose up—somehow the spontaneity, the happiness
that someone outside cared, that their struggle had registered, that it mattered
[emphasis mine],” she says as she watches the video of the Rally. Her words
not only acknowledge her own outsider status, but also make explicit her ability
to call upon other outsiders to care and to register. The segment ends with us
watching Roy watch herself. Then comes Roy’s second interaction in the film
with a subaltern woman:

That’s Dedlibai of Domkhedi. At the end of the rally she gave me this
basket of all the different kinds of seeds, and all the different kinds of plants
198 Reena Dube
and foods, and wheat and lentils and rice that they grow. And she is here
saying, where will they be able to replace this for us if they throw us out
of here, if they take the river away from us, if they take our ancestral land
away from us, will they be able to give us all this?

Dedlibai is well known as one of the go-to cast of the tribal NBA woman
activist characters that featured in a number of documentaries occasioned
by the NBA, what Bishnupriya Ghosh calls “NBA docs.”9 Like her predecessor,
the anonymous subaltern woman interlocutor in the first interaction with Roy,
Dedlibai charmingly and willingly enacts her own subalternity while
acknowledging Roy’s ‘outsider’ celebrity status with her gift.10
Roy’s poetic address to the subaltern old man Bhaijibhai, “the last person
I met in the valley” who was not strictly a displaced person because he had
lost 17 of his 19 acres to the “wonder canal,” only adds to Roy’s unique auratic
identity:

Bhaijibhai and his people forced to smile on government calendars, denied

the grace of rage, squashed like bugs by this country that they’re supposed
to call their own. Bhaijibhai, Bhaijibhai, when will you get angry? When
will you stop waiting? When will you say that’s enough and reach for your
weapons, whatever they may be? When will you show you show us the
whole of your resonant, terrifying, invincible strength? When will you
break the faith? Will you break the faith, or will you let it break you?

At first blush, Roy’s poetic exhortation of Bhaijibhai appears to be an explicit

call to arms. Not surprisingly then that later in the decade the Maoists expressed
the desire that Roy serve as a mediator between them and the government.
An offer that Roy refused, but agreed to write a tract about them, resulting in
the essay “Walking with the Comrades” (2010).11 Foreshadowing her response
to the invitation by the Maoists seven years later, the call to arms to Bhaijibhai,
when it is repeated, in part, 40 minutes into the film over a repeated iconic shot
of Roy from the beginning of the film, it is crafted to enhance her transnational
translatability:

When I first went to the valley, I used to say that I am not here because
my house is being submerged, or my fields are going under water. But my
world view is being submerged, that’s why I am here. But it’s not just that
anymore. They are knocking at my door, they are coming for me and
therefore I know that I have to fight with all the skill I that I have, which
is my words, my ideas, my ability to communicate. I believe that the only
hope and the only thing worth globalizing is dissent. And I think that when
the Supreme Court comes for us, for the artists, for the writers, for the
filmmakers, for the musicians, we have to show them our terrifying strength
we have to fight back with our art.
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 199
Notice the introduction of two new elements from the previous version
addressed to Bhaijibhai: first is the use of phrases and meter that are reminiscent
of the famous statement and poem “First they came. . .” written by Pastor
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals
and quoted in the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The second element is how
disarmingly the militant element becomes translated into the arms that a writer
has at her command: words and ideas.
Roy is ever mindful of her international audience and she expertly reels them
in by direct reference as well as through topics that would resonate with them;
for example, at a little under half an hour into the film, we find Roy addressing
her American audience with her artless confession about her perceived image
abroad, specifically America, “I’m always invited to portray myself as this radical
person who is being hunted down by these institutions in this native banana
republic . . . There are many things about India like a banana republic, but that
goes for America as well.” The confessional is followed by reference to the free
market as an unwelcome third in her present “conversation” with an institution
in the society that she inhabits, “this is the way in which democracy becomes
more sophisticated.” She then links up free market to the two dams on the
Narmada—the Sardar Sarovar (state sponsored) and the Maheshwar (privately
funded)—where the brutality and the corruption are the same, if not exacerbated
in the case of the latter.
The introduction of Roy’s reminiscences about “the dawn we marched
through to capture the Maheshwar dam site” introduces just the right note of
romance and activism back into the polemic:

I can still remember the sound just the crunching of feet and the flip flap
flip flap of slippers. We started at three in the morning. We walked for
three hours: farmers, fisher folk, sand miners, writers, painters, filmmakers,
lawyers, journalists—all of India was represented, urban, rural, touchable,
untouchable. We were not just fighting against the dam, we were fighting
for a philosophy, a worldview.

Roy loops back to the issue of the free market and controlling institutions, like
the WTO and World Bank, that control even developing countries like India
through their parliamentary institutions. The second to last sequence of this
segment is an anecdote that although is ostensibly about her personal sense of
her outrage at the World Bank President James Wolfensohn’s visit to India,
may as well have been crafted by the screenwriter Roy (an identification
mentioned by Roy herself in this account) to introduce the racial viewpoint,
that most essential ingredient of transnational politics:

I was just seeing this white man in a pinstripe suit addressing the
peasants of India all over again. I didn’t want to hear what he said. I didn’t
want to hear his reassurances. I just kept thinking who the hell are you,
how are you back here after all these years? Was all this for nothing?
200 Reena Dube
The World Bank pulled out of the SSP in 1993, but the mess they’ve made
lives on.

Appropriately, the anecdote about the patronizing white male World Bank
president is punctuated with a shot of Patkar and others in the jalsamarpan
protest; this in turn leads to the final sequence of the segment where Roy draws
the contrast as she recalls that in 1999 while the protesters stood in chest-deep
water while their households and the homes were being washed away, at the
same time the Supreme Court held three sessions to discuss whether Arundhati
Roy had lowered the dignity of the press. She bursts into laughter as she reads
the charges. The contrast and laughter brings the focus of the film back to Roy,
this time via the Supreme Court’s obsession with Roy herself. According to
Laura Wright, this laughter marks the supplanting of the “victimization of
valley residents” due to displacement to “Roy’s victimization by the Supreme
Court of India.” The film is no longer preoccupied by the “fate” of the Narmada
river and the affected people, Wright notes, “the narrative now focuses on the
fate of Roy.” In fact for Wright the last part of the film, what she refers to
as “the third ‘act’ of Seth’s film” (the first and second act being punctuated
by Roy’s laughter occasioned by the Supreme Court), is characterized by
the silencing of the polluter who “pollutes the stream of justice.” The story
of Roy’s persecution is mediated “through other, less coherent voices,” writes
Wright, and “the audience is aware of the chaos that exists without Roy’s
framing discourse” (2010, 125–126).
In contrast to Wright’s reading, I suggest that far from being “silenced” or
put “offstage,” Roy’s celebrity becomes mythologized and the transition of her
transnational identity to a social and political mediator and translator gains even
greater gravitas. This is expressed by Roy herself in two statements in the final
moments of the film: she expresses the hope that her trials make of her, “a
different kind of writer now,” because having “written the book I wanted to
write . . . now I am swimming in the river of life and I hope what comes out
will be literature at the end of it.” The second statement is Roy’s concluding
comment in the last moments of the film, “the establishment has always feared
writers because they have the weapon of clarity” that, when used effectively,
“can be deadly.” The mythologizing itself takes place primarily visually through
the first scenes in the film that show preparations for a protest, not for the NBA
but for Roy herself who has by now completely displaced the NBA and in fact
eclipsed it: from posters being painted, written, and stitched, in English and
Hindi, to Roy perusing a fax with a long list of signatories the camera focuses
on for a couple of seconds;12 to Roy watching from the balcony of the Supreme
Court with tears in her eyes, the protestors gathered and chanting below to
walking through the chanting crowd with her legal entourage.
The final step in the mythologizing and iconizing of Arundhati Roy happens
when Seth/Roy use camera in the way that is typical of guerilla cinema. That
is to say Wright’s “chaos,” the “seemingly inarticulate crowd,” and “the camera
at a loss” in the minutes anticipating the judgment may in fact be read as a
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 201
technique of “the imperfect” borrowed from revolutionary cinema. The
imperfection in guerilla cinema is an acknowledgment that in terms of technical
achievement in comparison to the mainstream, revolutionary cinema will always
fail; and second, as committed art whose true goal is for the artful to disappear,
revolutionary cinema cannot strive for disinterestedness. Thus for instance
scenes of protest may be composed of short, handheld, and unstable shots, as
they are filmed in the midst of the riot police and smoking tear gas canisters.
Similarly the uneven and jerky camera movements and indistinct urgent voices
we hear on the audio track as we await the Supreme Court’s judgment in Dam/
Age, impart a sense of immediacy and urgency to the images and experience.
In importing this technique from revolutionary cinema for the ending, Seth/
Roy’s attempt is to elevate the film from a personal record into a political
documentary.
Aradhana Seth and Arundhati Roy’s film Dam/Age in its documentation of
the transition of a glamorous multicultural or postcolonial fiction writer into a
transnational celebrity woman activist, also exemplifies a new kind of experi-
ment in women documentary filmmaking, one where new subjects are explored
innovatively, without sacrificing aesthetics, and where the distinction between
“activism and art” are blurred.13 Through very careful crafting and choreo-
graphing of her image and her words, we see Seth/Roy position Arundhati
Roy as a fascinating icon of India’s culture of protest who refuses, as she her-
self puts it in “Power Politics,” the luxuries of “subtlety, ambiguity, complex-
ity” to ask “in ordinary language, the public question and to demand, in
ordinary language, the public answer” (2002c, 24). Hence, it seems to me to
be an oversimplification to call Roy the “voice” of the subaltern (Ghosh 2011,
270) or that “Roy does speak for the untouchable subaltern (in Spivak’s sense)
masses,” (Wright 2010, 123).
A much more reasonable description, as I have attempted to show through
an examination of Seth/Roy’s documentary Dam/Age, is through her role as a
transnational celebrity woman activist of globalized ambition, whose attempts
to lay bare and universalize the working model of herself to benefit all of
humanity, ultimately proves inimitable and ungeneralizable: she acknowledges
as much when, at the end of the film, she chooses to pay the fine and refuses,
in her own words, to martyr herself for a cause that is not hers alone. “Choosing
to suffer,” she says, “isn’t exactly my style.” And her style, we are compelled to
conclude, is inimitable.

Notes
1 The most recent decision has been widely criticized as favoring Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s home state Gujarat, at the cost of the lakh people in Madhya Pradesh and
Maharashtra. See “The News Minute” (2014).
2 K. P. Sashi and Ratna Mathur’s A Valley Refuses to Die (India, 1988), Ali Kazmi’s Narmada:
A Valley Rises (Canada, 1994), Simantini Dhuru and Anand Patwardhan’s The
Narmada Diary (India, 1995), Jharni Jhaveri and Anurag Singh’s Kaise Jeebo Re (How Shall
We Survive, India, 1997), Sanjay Kak’s Words on Water (India, 2002), and Franny Armstrong’s
202 Reena Dube
Drowned Out (U.K., 2002) along with two shorter videos, Arvind Pillamarri’s I Will Report
Honestly (India, 1999) and Leena Pendharkar’s autobiographical foray My Narmada Diary
(U.S., 2002).
3 See Parsai (2003). Although the article talks about Roy’s donation of the prize money
from the U.S.-based Lannan Foundation Award to fifty remarkable people’s movements,
institutions, and individuals who are engaged in making India into a real democracy, it
also mentions Roy’s previous donation of the Booker award to the NBA.
4 John Grierson was a Scottish-born filmmaker and administrator who became a leading
figure in the British documentary movement of the 1930s, when he headed the film unit
at the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), an organization charged with creating propaganda
that would promote trade among the colonies of the British Empire, including India.
See Hanlon (2014).
5 Although I pick up on only her last two suggestions for this chapter,Wolf names five that
deserve further study (2013, 362).
6 Aradhana Seth, the director, acknowledges this unique collaborative feature of the film,
because although many had wanted to make a film with Roy, “she wasn’t going for it,
because she didn’t know what it would turn out like.” It was agreed that it would not be
“only a conversation” with Roy, but rather a record of her thoughts, her writing, her
words as the court event was unfolding, therefore “really a film with her, in every sense
of the word that made the project come to fruition in the first place” (Palopoli 2002).
7 In her interview with Barsamian, Roy makes this clear: “I don’t see a great difference
between The God of Small Things and my works of nonfiction . . . My whole effort now
is to remove that distinction . . . It is very important for me to tell politics like a story, to
make it real” (Barsamian 2007).
8 In 2005 Roy dramatically turned down India’s prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for
The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002a) in a well-publicized media event. Roy chose instead
to use the glare of publicity to make a symbolic gesture of protest against the Indian
government’s policies of targeting the disenfranchised.
9 Ghosh writes, “The ‘NBA docs’ (as I shall call them) shot on film and video have played
a robust role in garnering global legibility for a series of heterogeneous struggles.” See
Ghosh (2009, 60).
10 Judith Whitehead provides some examples of this phenomenon of what I call enactment
of subalternity and what she calls “naturally conservationist imagery” about the tribal
during the ‘Rally for the Valley’ in the summer of 1999: “the arrival of noted writer and
activist Arundhati Roy was accompanied by hundreds of journalist from both India
and abroad including from The Times of India, The Indian Express, the BBC, and The Hindu.
All had to be accommodated in the tiny hamlets of Jalsindhi and Domkhedi. For the first
time since visiting the Narmada valley, I saw a group of male Adivasis attired in ‘traditional’
lungis and turbans, some playing long flutes and ready for the photographers. When
I happened to step beside a group playing music, an irate photographer from The Times
of India asked me to step aside, since I was spoiling his photograph of ‘authentic’ Adivasi
culture.” See Whitehead (2010, 154–155).
11 Koteswar Rao, better known by his nom de guerre Kishengi, the leader of the main guerilla
force of India’s Maoist extremists, fighting a violent insurgency against the Indian state
telephoned the BBC from an undisclosed location to say that the Maoists would halt
their campaign if the government invited intellectuals and rights activists like Roy to
mediate in peace talks. Roy ruled out becoming directly involved in any talks, but told
The Guardian that she considered the offer “serious” and said she felt “both sides should
call a ceasefire.”
She was “a writer, not a mediator. I don’t think I would be very good at it,” she said.
“It’s a serious responsibility and there are people who would be good at it,” although she
would consider being an “observer”. See Burke (2010). Also see Roy (2010).
12 In the interview with Palopoli, Seth identifies the list as a “fax of support from Toni
Morrison, Jonathan Demme, Woody Allen, Susan Sarandon, Robert Redford, Bernardo
 Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan 203
Bertolucci,” which said, “Dear Mr. President, we write to express our full support for the
author Arundhati Roy and our concern in regards to the contempt petition against
her. . . . We fully support the right of free speech” (Palopoli 2002).
13 In an interview conducted with Barsamian (2004), Roy is overtly critical of the
documentaries that are produced in India, noting that “few of them transcend
the boundaries between activism and art.”

References
Barsamian, David. 2004. The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with
Arundhati Roy. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
——. 2007. “Interview with Arundhati Roy.” Progressive, February. www.progressive.
org/news/2007/07/5078/interview-arundhati-roy
Bhushan, Madhu. 1988. “Activism and Art: A Dialogue with Deepa Dhanraj.” Deep
Focus 1(3): 32–39.
Brockington, Dan. 2008. “Powerful Environmentalisms: Conservation, Celebrity and
Capitalism,” Media, Culture and Society 30(4): 551–568.
——. 2014 “The Production and Construction of Celebrity Advocacy in International
Development,” Third World Quarterly 35(1): 88–108.
Burke, Jason. 2010. “India’s Maoist Extremists Ask Arundhati Roy to Mediate in
Conflict with State.” The Guardian, March 7. www.theguardian.com/world/2010/
mar/07/arundhati-roy-maoist-mediator.
Ghosh, Bishnupriya. 2009. “We Shall Drown, but We Shall Not Move: The Ecologics
of Testimony in NBA Documentaries.” In Documentary Testimonies: Archives of
Suffering, ed. B. Sarkar and J. Walker. New York: Routledge.
——. 2011. “The Politics of the Icon.” In Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular. Durham:
Duke University Press.
Guha, Ramachandra. 2000. “The Arun Shourie of the Left.” The Hindu, 26 November
26. www.thehindu.com/2000/11/26/stories/13260411.htm
Hanlon, Dennis. 2014. “Making Waves: Anand Patwardhan, Latin America, and the
Invention of Indian Third Cinema,” Wide Screen 5(1): 1–24.
Harvey, D. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell.
Huggan, Graham. 2001. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London:
Routledge.
Mullaney, Julie. 2002. “Globalizing Dissent? Arundhati Roy, Local and Postcolonial
Feminisms in the Transnational Economy.” World Literature Written in English 40(1):
56–70.
Palopoli, Steve. 2002. “Village of the Dam: Director Aradhana Seth Shows a Side of
India You’ll Never See on TV in ‘Dam/Age.’” Metro Santa Cruz, October 30–
November 6. www.metroactive,com/papers/cruz/10.30.02/damage-0244.html
Parsai, Gargi. 2003. “Arundhati Roy Donates Rs. 1.67 –cr. Award Money.” The Hindu,
January 23.
Routledge, P. 2008. “Transnational Political Movements.” In The SAGE Handbook of
Political Geography, ed. K. R. Cox, M. Low, and J. Robinson. New York: Sage.
Roy, Arundhati. 2002a. The Algebra of Infinite Justice. London: Flamingo.
——. 2002b. “The Greater Common Good.” In The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Delhi:
Viking Books.
——. 2002c. “Power Politics.” In The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Delhi: Viking Books.
——. 2002d. “The Ladies Have Feelings, So. . . .” In The Algebra of Infinite Justice.
Delhi: Viking Books.
204 Reena Dube
——. 2010. “Walking with the Comrades.” Outlook Magazine, March 29. www.
outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?264738
Suyoggothi. 2013. “The Story of Narmada Bachao Andolan: Human Rights.” Essential
Thinkers, October 3. https://essentialthinkers.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/the-story-
of-narmada-bachao-andolan-human-rights/comment-page-1/
“The News Minute.” 2014. July 1. www.thenewsminute.com/technologies/56
Whitehead, Judith. 2010. Development and Dispossession in the Narmada Valley
New Delhi. San Francisco: Pearson Education.
Wolf, Nicole. 2013. “Foundations, Movements and Dissonant Images Documentary
Film and Its Ambivalent Relations to the Nation State.” In Routledge Handbook of
Indian Cinemas, ed. K. M. Gokulsing and W. Dissanayake. London and New York:
Routledge.
Wright, Laura. 2010. “Swimming in the River.” In Wilderness Into Civilized Shapes:
Reading the Postcolonial Environment. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Afterword
Izabel F. O. Brandão

The act of looking back offers us a possibility to reflect on what has been done,
and ponder about our own perceptions as concerns a certain issue. We may, as
Foucault (1984) claims, find ourselves in a heterotopia—a real place that can be
seen in opposition with a utopian and unreal place. Border spaces exist between
heterotopia and utopia which act as mediators in such places. The mirror—“a
placeless place” (Foucault 1984, n.p.)—is the territory that sums up both spaces.1
This is where the writing of this Afterword is located: as a mediator sensing
a path that tells me that the connections between women and nature still
have a long way to go before one can safely say that no conflict is to be found
any more. This is to begin with; let feminism and ecofeminism2 direct the
connections that follow.
I had immense pleasure reading this book, for if, on the one hand, it tells me
that people from different countries understand the organization of society
along the lines that criticize this very organization because of its patriarcal
values, which still oppress beings—humans, non-humans—and more specifi-
cally women; on the other, such criticism is not an empty one. All readings
bring suggestions of how to construct a different world along a more egalitarian
and hopeful line than what we see today. I understand the analyses that form
the corpus of this book as a varied one, which commune in a range of perspec-
tives that enters into dialogue, as poses Bakhtin (1984), referring to the multi-
directionality of discourses (Bauer and Mckinstry 1991). Such is the idea of the
complex intersectionality behind the articles which come from different fields
of knowledge in their dialogue about gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, class,
the body, and their interconnection with nature.
My reading of the articles found at least three lines of thought which inter-
weave, interconnect, and intersect the authors in their approach to ecofeminism,
women, transgender individuals, animals, and nature: (1) ethics of care, and
essentialism; (2) narratives of oppression as related to body images; and (3) social
action, and activism as related to life-narratives, and other writings. This is in
no way a suggestion that the articles have to follow a stark understanding, for
their dialogue finds echoes elsewhere, as I intend to point out.
One of the relevant questions that permeates ecofeminist thought from
the start is its interdisciplinary basis, rooted in its “philosophical plurality” and
206 Izabel F. O. Brandão
the theoretical debate allowed by such basis (Gaard and Murphy 1998, 4).
Yet the many trends within ecofeminism open up the possibility of diversity as
far as a problematic connection between women and nature is concerned, one
of which is the source of many dissensions within feminism itself, that is,
essentialism. In order to depart from a context inside ecofeminism, it is possible
to come across many ideas, some of which support the connection whilst
others contest it, turning the area into a territory of potential conflict, or as
claim Gaard and Murphy (1998, 6): “Static categories that define our nature or
individuals can only be distortions.” On the one hand, if the relationship
involving nature/culture/male/female/masculine/feminine/other may be
quite worn, on the other, it still is far from an easy solution.
Ecofeminists such as Karla Armbruster (1998) situate the problem by calling
into the fore other eco/feminist critics, like Ynestra King or Susan Griffin who
work such an equation—woman–nature—within a perspective that vindicates
a more liberatory connection. All humans, they claim, are driven by cultural
forces that can blind them to their (our) participation in nature (Armbruster
1998, 100). Stacy Alaimo (2000), however, calls for a redefinition of nature, for
this will also mean a redefinition of woman (we can say women). The argument
used by Alaimo, supported by Val Plumwood, Rose Braidotti, and Donna
Haraway, is that feminists (and ecofeminists) need neither to escape nor to
associate with nature provided that a transformation of the gendered concepts
such as nature, culture, among others, is effected.
The above debate leads to the fact that both women and nature are “socially
constructed,” and that nature, “a profoundly gendered realm,” is “a site for
many struggles for power and meaning” (13), as rightly claims Alaimo. In this
sense, it is clear that certain concepts may be relearned—reweaved—in a
dynamic process of rereading nature, women, humans in general, non-human
life, as well as their relation to the all, or as claims Karen Ya-Chu Yang in her
Introduction to this book, “how women are to reconnect with nature remains
an ongoing challenge and prospect.”
The majority of the chapters in this volume deal with ecofeminism with the
understanding of such a complexity, but the connection between women and
nature sometimes seems to resort to essentialist values. In this sense it is
never too much to return to Diana Fuss’s Essentially Speaking (1989), in that she
suggests that the question of essence is grounded in history, philosophy, and
politics, which point toward its character of immutability. This has been an
immense and heated area of debate for feminism, whose end is not yet clear.
All I want to say here is that Fuss’s argument brings to the fore the contingence
of the use of essentialism, precisely because of its historical character which
opens up possibilities of changes—something that ecofeminism would address
as a conceptual reweaving—because the sign is neither stationary nor uniform,
let alone immutable. As a concept it needs renewal, for it is a productive term
that the new generations of feminist and ecofeminist critics will still have to
confront. I see this as a long journey to tread.3
In his discussion of Françoise D’Eaubonne, Luca Valera points to many rel-
evant ideas, some of which bring the question of essentialism to the fore.
 Afterword 207
He refers to a non-dualistic anthropology which connects feelings and reason,
feelings and will, a coexistence which, if peaceful, contributes to a harmonious
relationship between humans, non-humans and nature. He also calls our atten-
tion to the ethics of care as the best effort offered by feminism and ecofeminism
as it considers the complexity of the human being in our relationship to nature,
and the need for women’s “housekeeping nature.” And yet, should this ethics
be a prerrogative of women alone? Should it not be the task of all of us living
in this planet?
As this Afterword was being written, I could not help thinking of the Samarco
Dam break in Mariana, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, which devastated
the village of Bento Rodrigues. The irresponsible action of the company
(Samarco) caused the environmental disaster for the Rio Doce river basin, as
claimed Brazilian President Dilma Roussef during the Paris 2015 COP 21.
It will take at least a decade for the complete recovery of the region. Obviously
this is not a problem for women alone to solve, even if, as Valera says, they (we)
are “the bearer of the emotional seed.” I believe that all of us humans have to
develop such a seed, but we also have to assure strong environmental laws that
really defend the environment and preserve nature from such problems.
Adriana Teodorescu’s chapter on motherhood presents new ideas on a
difficult theme, be it in the West, North or South of the Globe. Despite the
fact that there is an understanding of it being socially and culturally constructed,
and that it is a biological non-choice, there are still many stereotypes associated
with what Teodorescu describes as “the good mother paradigm.” Yet she
claims that the connection between women and nature is now seen in a different
light, in that new representations of motherhood escape the ornamenting and
idealized ones. For the critic, women involved in childbirth and mothering
are “the agents that restore the ideological dominance of nature over culture.”
In this sense motherhood means empowerment for the woman, because she is
to be seen as having “an ontological advantage over men.”
Would this mean that women and men are still competing for superiority?
Binary divisions are not helpful, despite the fact that the world still works
under the oppressive dominance of patriarchal values. Should we not consider
the need for a more supportive relationship that includes solidarity involving
men and women? Such learning would help us understand the other
(persons—human and non-human altogether), and live in a more egalitarian
and harmonious way.
According to Teodorescu, “a natural component of femininity” is mother-
hood and breastfeeding. Yet although both are indeed something biologically
associated with us women, identified with such gender, such perception seems
to be problematic for those who do not take the concept of femininity essen-
tially. As I read her views on motherhood, I thought of Elizabeth Grosz’s
(1990) problematizing of the concept of femininity. Her feminist discussion of
the term via psychoanalysis may be helpful for our own understanding of the
complexity of the concept. The characteristics of femininity, according to
Freud’s outline, include “seductive, coquettish behaviour, narcissism, vanity,
208 Izabel F. O. Brandão
jealousy, and a weaker sense of justice” (1990, 132), all of which are “strategies”
for maintainance of the woman’s status of object of desire, something that she
manages to retain “through artifice, appearance, or dissimulation. Illusion,
make-up, the veil . . . techniques she relies upon to both cover over and make
visible her ‘essential assets’” (132). This for Lacan, on the other hand, are attrib-
utes in the masquerade. Hence femininity for Grosz is seen as “practices,”
a perception that is closer to Freud, for whom the concept is seen as “tech-
niques,” rather than from Lacan. Such convergences and divergences—
“practice” (“tecnique”) is something one learns, whereas “attribute” seems to
be inherent in the subject—still need to be better qualified in order for us
to understand the concept and its complex use.
Breastfeeding and motherhood are a biological given, a non-choice, as claims
Teodorescu, but I would not consider it as a qualifying term within the
discussion of “femininity,” for one cannot escape the idea of positionality,
neither socially, nor culturally. Men and women can be in such positions, but
still, motherhood will be always a non-choice for women. Femininity as a term
needs a redefinition.
Anja Höing and Stephanie Baran discuss animals and women, and their
association for different purposes with the help of ecofeminist’s perspective of
the interconnectedness of all oppressions. Höing’s chapter analyses animal
stories and her line of reasoning points to the use by different writers—male
and female—of a recurrent pattern of oppression toward these animals, especially
the female ones, that always have their roles minimized. Val Plumwood’s
problematizing of the theme helps in understanding such oppressive tints that
show women and animals as the other.
Baran’s essay analyses, in her turn, animals and women in an exchange of
roles used by PETA to sell a commodity—the animals—by means of a “mantra”:
“sell women” to “sell animals.” Such a paradoxical positionality reveals a con-
troversial market strategics that works with ads in which women are used to
frame oppression against animals. Some of the ads use celebrities and their
bodies as commodities in order to sell the product. The connection discloses
an ambivalent connotation: it can either promote empowerment for the
woman, as Diana Villanueva Romero (2013) claims in her analysis of women
and animals in fashion campaigns, or such a connection implies a body used
as a “site of abuse” (166) when this likeness becomes derogatory, informing
the oppressive charge channeled for both disempowered beings.4
The perception of animals and women as ‘disempowered beings’ leads to
Anja’s Koletnick’s chapter on transgender individuals and the ecofeminist’s
understanding of meat non-consumption, diet, and body image. This chapter
is an excellent reading for our understanding of ecofeminism and vegan femi-
nism. Yet when Koletnick refers to diets as always having political connotations
and implications, this made me think that the oppressive implications are much
wider than the context of transgender individuals, for it includes race/ethnicity,
gender, and class, alongside a whole complex of body patterns North, South,
East, and West of the globe. The intersections can be endless.
 Afterword 209
Here, my illustration comes from literature and refers to the Caribbean poet
Grace Nichols in her The Fat, Black Woman’s Poems (1984). The body is for her
a site of resistance and many of her poems express this perspective. It is
contextualized as in opposition to oppressive dietary regimes by means of irony
(Hutcheon 2005): the poem “Looking at Miss World,” for example, discloses
a fat black woman as the possible winner of a beauty contest. The skinny
contestants are framed within a TV set, and, in the meantime, while at home
watching the contest, the fat black woman celebrates her victory. Obviously
what Nichols implies in her poem is the different Caribbean discursive context
in which this woman appears; that is, outside the global Western perspective
there are other body patterns that are not considered, and that such bodies are
also “attached to the order of desire, meaning, and power” (Grosz 1994, 77). The
body image presented in this case is not passive, even if one considers the questions
of race/ethnicity as well as fat as present in the struggle shown in the afore-
mentioned poem. Here what is also at stake is the question of otherness which
testifies that the context is much wider, as already pointed out.
In Mitten and Amore’s chapter, body images are the focus in terms of
the “normative discontent,” which leads to the perceptions of women’s physical
bodies as being internal and external. Unrealistic standards attached to women’s
bodies contribute immensely to the creation and introjection of negative images,
which help in the development of low self-esteem, since not all women meet
such standards. For the critics, “body dissatisfaction is present in the majority
of women in developed countries, including women at normal weights.” This
is synonymous with depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and isolation.
Feminist and ecofeminist criticism deal with this issue in many ways. I thought
of Debora Slicer’s still valid claim: “We are a culture generally deaf to both
our bodies and the rest of material life, deaf at an increasing cost” (1998, 61),
for we do not listen to the body’s speech. In other words, women seem to pay
more attention to what culture forces them to accept at the cost of their (our)
own health. Eating and other health disorders still cause women’s somatizing
symptoms in their (our) bodies. Culture regulates what is or is not possible
within its oppressive normative standards, as argues Butler (2004).
And here, once more literature helps us understand culture: whilst Nichols’s
fat black woman is happy with her large body, the poem’s profound sense
of irony shows the lack of critical awareness in those who are taken as a kind of
‘hostage’ of culture (illustrated by the TV beauty contest), for they seem unable
to see that the imposition of standards such as the beauty/fashion complex
(responsible for the “tyranny of slenderness,” to use Bordo’s [1993] term) is
oppressive for human beings—women, men, transgender individuals, and that
it does not matter whether they are white, black, slim, fat, or vegan.
Other examples from literature come from two Brazilian contemporary
writers whose novels unveil the question of body perceptions directed to
a heterotopian context. Both discuss body images as related to the female
protagonists and to those associated with them, including a transgender
individual. Such is the case of Pérolas absolutas (Pure Pearls), by Heloisa Seixas
210 Izabel F. O. Brandão
(2003). The heterotopic body belongs to a transgender individual, a “woman-
fish” (that is her main feature), who occupies both male or female positions,
depending on the client, in this case a heterosexual woman biologist. The
other novel, A chave de casa (The House in Smyrna), by Tatiana Salem Levy
(2007), problematizes the heterotopic question as related to the paralized body
of a writer who only manages to heal herself as she goes to Turkey, and while
there, she looks for her identity, and that includes a meeting with a Muslem
girl in a Turkish Bath. Both novels disclose the body question as related to
cultural problems of self-esteem, gender, and transgender identities. The place/
space occupied by the body is a question related to affect and to transforming
one’s own body image into an empowered territory.
Such empowerment is immensely relevant be it in fiction or promoted by
the real world. Mitten and Amore’s chapter talk about the danger that internaliz-
ing negative body images may cause to women, for it leads to a disconnection
with values that are greater than the body, referring, among other things, to
spiritual values developed through women’s positive relationship with nature.
They talk about how being outdoors in nature has helped many women
develop a sense of empowerment, because of what such interconnection means:
“from microbes . . . to the sun on whose light we depend.” This also means
nature’s allowing for differences—big and small. This, they say, helps in self
acceptance, for the world is more than human.
Christina Holmes’s chapter is also an incredible lesson in this respect,
especially when she discusses the question of consciousness raising as related to
Latina women immigrants in the Women Intercultural Center (WinC) that
welcomes women immigrants from Mexico. The WInC welcomes these
women in an affectionate, socially and politically responsible way, for it not
only welcomes but helps them to become empowered in what Holmes
calls “borderland ecofeminism,” deriving the term from Gloria Anzaldúa’s
borderlands/la frontera. From her chapter I would like to mention her reference
to Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogia do Oprimido” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), in
which the educational practice is considered in relation to its political features
that involve the oppressed in their own liberation from oppression, as well as
their building up confidence in order to look after themselves, and the environ-
ment: “to raise ecological consciousness is to make it political.” The WInC
also deals with women’s sense of belonging in its “affective and political
aspects.” Affect here is also related to women’s health, a “multifaceted and socially
constructed arena of concern” in which healing takes up many forms, which
recalls again Slicer’s (1998) perception about the unheard discourse of the body.
Holmes refers to the interviews conducted with women at the WInC—
immigrants and workers—and the responses dialogue with the other chapters
in this book, especially because they go beyond the essentialist connection
between women and nature already discussed in this Afterword. Holmes sees
the responses as disconnecting women’s bodies from nature, since they are seen
“not as ‘nature’ but contested social territories, bodies that reveal and rework
how power inscribes and subjugates,” also that there’s no “‘natural’ or biological
 Afterword 211
link between women and nature.” Hence it is useful here to understand that
indeed the ‘connection’ between women and nature is far more complex
than one might think. The body is a border, or as Anzaldúa quoted in Holmes’s
chapter points out, is “una herida aberta” (an open wound) to be healed in different
ways, and ecofeminism can help in a variety of ways, one of them illustrated by
the social and political work developed within WInC.
Holmes also discusses social action within the WInC, even though the
Center is not directly involved in ecofeminist activism. Its action can clearly be
associated to a political activism of a kind, in that far more than just welcoming
women immigrants, its work toward consciousness raising opens up possibilities
for these women to find their own independence in a country foreign to their
experience in a whole range of respects, including language, and culture. The
analysis is connected with the other chapters that discuss ecofeminist activism
in relation to life narratives. Apart from the idea of activism most of the chapters
call attention to the question of hope, a feature that I see as relevant for us eco/
feminist readers today.
From Shlomit Tamari’s chapter on the work of Israeli activist Bilha Givon
more than anything else, I would like to stress the idea of perseverance behind
the activist’s practice, for not even a severe illness developed during her work
prevented her from defending her ideas. Curiously enough, more than gender,
her role as a fighter for environmental justice counted more than her being a
woman activist, for her actions defined her as a “source of values,” as Tamari
points out. I believe that such a perception reinforces the question about what
really matters: whether the awareness that (environmental) justice can be
effected despite one’s gender, or if one’s gender has always to be the focus. By
the same token, certain fights can only be fought by the oppressed themselves.
This is what Jana Sawicki (1994) claims in her feminist approach to Foucault,
often accused of not having a real interest in the feminist struggle. Bivon was
also criticized for doing what she did—her activism was both outside and inside
the industrialist system, becoming what Tamari claims as Sartre’s dialectic of the
third party. Being a soloist defines Bivon’s life struggle as important but teaching
us a lesson: individualism may lead to an unconcluded journey and environmental
justice is a collective fight.
The question of the collective as opposed to individual fight for autonomy
is present in Valerie Padilla Carroll’s very perceptive and critical essay of the
feminist magazine Country Women, in relation to the 1970s movement toward
the back-of-the-land participants. Having a connection with the 19th-century
nature writing which became popular in the beginning of the 20th century and
reached maturity in the mid-1970s, the magazine called for a retreat into the
countryside as a way of escaping from problems of different sorts brought by
society: “a potent fantasy for many”; “idyllic narratives wrapped in a ‘how-
to’ of self-sufficient agrarian living.” This was critically viewed as “Fantasies
of independence and autonomy” which had to do with “masculine endeavors”
to be better supported by the women who were to accompany those who
participated in the movement.
212 Izabel F. O. Brandão
I thought of a Brazilian writer and educator, Júlia Lopes de Almeida, who
lived during the first half the 20th century, and who wrote educational essays
as well as novels addressed to women. She is one of the Brazilian first feminists,
but her kind of feminism is now understood as a “possible feminism,” consider-
ing the historical and cultural context in which she lived. I put it between
inverted commas because in a sense it seems to follow the same line as the
writing of Country Women as it “defends” women’s supportive role for their
partners. Almeida’s thought defended women’s education so that they could
better organize the home and educate their siblings within the contraints of the
patriarchal family, for it allowed women to be educated but they would not
be freed for higher flights (Brandão 2002).
Padilla Carroll’s analysis points to the maturity achieved by the back-to-the-
land movement, but it continued the oppression of women masking it with
solidarity and companionship. The idea of “empowerment” for the women is
instead a mask for oppression, for they were only a supportive hand for their
male partners. As a whole, the objective of the magazine meant women writing
as a possibility of independence. Yet the magazine had the bias of the Western,
white and middle-class (North) American woman as the pattern, and oppressive
ideologies go unchallenged, and even women play the role of oppressors
themselves.
The final point as refers to nature in relation to Padilla Carroll’s chapter is
that although it is a source of empowerment, again the Western is the structural
beneficiary. Nature is also a “sacred goddess and feminist project,” again
strengthning the essentialist association between women and nature. The maga-
zine cover enacts such association which, according to Padilla Carroll, can be
viewed as an empowering for the woman and a liberatory message. Still she is
not hopeful with such an image for there is “tension between the desires of
individual autonomy and feminist collective sisterhood.” The author’s critical
reading claims that the women seek but do not find connection. Hence the
fight seems flawed.
Reena Dube’s chapter presents a critical analysis of the use of documentary
films, especially as the ones produced by women filmakers in the Narmada
Bachao Andolan (NBA) action. Her theoretical discussion claims that women
filmmakers are more innovative and instructive when it comes to this kind
of film, for they “elevate the film from a personal record into a political
documentary.” Her argument can in a way be contrasted with Tamari’s chapter
on Bilha Givon’s kind of activism, for the main ‘actresses’ in the NBA
documentary—the writer Arundhati Roy and the social activist Medha Patkar
—have different performances. If Givon and Patkar are not really ‘celebrities’
of social activism, for their performance is a low profile one, Roy, on the other
hand, plays the great Diva in the Dam/Age documentary, and wants to be in
that place, hers is a “global ambition” as opposed to Patkars’s “militant parti-
cularism” and almost invisibility in the documentary. Yet Dube defends Roy
from having an opportunistic role in the film, for the writer seems to blur art
and activism.
 Afterword 213
R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan’s chapter on life narratives of
three women ecoactivists take me to my final comment. I would like to point
to the fact that practice is indeed what may transform life into meaning, pending
on the direction taken by such practice. The chapter poses the idea of life stories
as the language of emotion and that the data collected is unrevealed by the
statistics. Emotions such as discord, fear, anxiety are seen as “driving forces
behind environmental ethic and political action.” It is here that “human subjects
and the environment become entangled.” The life narratives by these women
grassroot ecoactivists are stories about a kind of activism that is ‘lived’ rather
than merely ‘spoken,’ as the authors claim. In their activism the ethics of Earth
democracy leads one to find echoes of a hopeful future even if the context of
protest in which the stories were enacted was a hopeless one: displacement,
survival, and health for both humans and non-humans. The awareness of this
kind of struggle is far greater than merely fighting big companies such as Coca-
Cola, or the use of pesticide, for what the stories really defend is the need one
has to feel (and be) in one’s place. It is what Val Plumwood (2002) calls “place-
sensitivity” (233), when it becomes possible to claim both critical and emotional
approaches to space/place, or the women’s “desire to restore their oikos,” as
claimed by the authors.
As a final point I would like to return to the initial idea of this Afterword
being in a heterotopian place, a place that mediates between a conflicting yet
possible dialogue that interweaves, interconnects, and intersects different
thoughts and arguments, which expose the dense and complex world that
nature, is alongside all its creatures, human and non-human alike. The chapters
in this book are a challenge for all readers who want to deepen their
understanding of the complex web of authors thinking ecofeminism. The
connection between women and nature is well woven from the question wisely
established since the book title, which takes us to the idea of intersectionality
which weaves the chapters together, for, as Murphy (2011, 147) claims:
“intersectional analysis becomes increasingly important across the widening
range of ecofeminist concerns. And such analysis requires an ever more
sophisticated inclusiveness in our rhetorical constructs and our ethical purviews.
Such analysis . . . necessarily reject[s] dualistic and dichotomous thinking.”
Hence, the chapters provide food for our thinking nature from different
ecofeminist perspectives: from essentialism through activism; from oppressive
to liberatory attitudes/actions toward what we do to our body image; to our
life stories in relation to humans and to nature others; in relation to us as
humans to the more than human in the world and the planet as a whole. Such
thinking should help leading us to a perception of nature as empowerment, and
a relation which means inclusiveness as well as an affectionate and politically
responsible attitude toward the all. An ecofeminist’s approach to nature as a
process can teach us to dive into learning a new language. This book is part of
this process.
214 Izabel F. O. Brandão
Notes
1 See Brandão (2015) for a more in-depth feminist analysis of heterotopian places/spaces
as related to two Brazilian contemporary women writers, Heloisa Seixas and Tatiana
Salém Levy.
2 Although I am well aware of the current use of the term ‘feminist ecocriticism’ as
interchangeable with ecofeminism (Gaard et al. 2013; Opperman 2013), I respect the
choice made by the authors for ecofeminism (or eco-feminism).
3 This argument was presented by Brandão et al. (2015) in a plenary session of XVI
Seminário Nacional Mulher e Literatura/VII Seminário Internacional Mulher e Literatura, held
in Caxias do Sul/RS, Brazil, September, 14–16.The title of the work read is: “Traduções
da cultura: para onde caminha a crítica feminista?” (“Translations of Culture:Where Does
Feminist Criticism Go?” and had the collaboration of Ildney Cavalcanti, Ana Cecília A.
Lima, and Claudia de Lima Costa, Brazilian feminist scholars from Federal Universities
of Alagoas, and Santa Catarina, involved in a research project on feminist translations into
Portuguese. For this Afterword I have translated the argument into English adapting
the ideas as needed.
4 In the anthology Literature and Ecofeminism (Brandão forthcoming), my chapter discusses
the poem “Hottentot Venus,” by Jackie Kay, in which such a connection leads to the
devaluation of the body of a black woman.

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Index

activism: 8, 61, 122–23, 129–30, capitalism: 19, 43, 47, 54, 91, 121
155–56, 167–170, 179–181, 186–201, care: 4–6, 13–14, 20, 77, 107, 159,
211–213; see also ecofeminism; 167–69, 205; health 87; medical 82;
feminism; intersectionality self 102
Adams, Carol J.: 4–6, 43, 57, 59–63, career: 13, 19, 81, 193
66–71 Carson, Rachel: 14, 174,
Adams, Richard: 29, 31, 33 Cartesian: 6, 28, 30, 33, 36, 40
Adivasi: 169, 172, 202 chaos: 10, 200
adventure: 29, 35, 102, 104, 118; sexual cisgender: 57, 59–61, 67–72
137 cisnormative: 58–60, 65–69
agriculture: 17, 118, 155, 170–74, cissexism: 57, 63
180 class: 80, 107, 118, 121–22, 126, 142,
Alaimo, Stacy: 5, 206 154, 165, 192–93; see also
androcentrism: 3, 6, 14, 31, 38; see also intersectionality
anthropocentrism conservation: 27, 38, 138–39, 144, 155,
animal studies: xx, 4–6 159, 202
animals: 15–17, 50–54, 59–61, 67–68, constructivist: 70, 78
118–119, 126–27, 208; motherhood contradiction: 59, 80, 82, 86, 149
and 84; stories of 27–41; see also animal Country Women: 7, 39, 92, 117–30,
rights; animal studies 211–12
anthropocentrism: 20, 28, 67, 126 culture: 4–5, 17, 27, 51, 122–23, 209;
anthropology: 12, 14, 19–20, 77, 123, animal 32, 36; conservative 29, 38;
207 Indian 191, 202; indigenous 125–26;
autonomy: 7, 78, 101, 118, 127, 130, Native American 124; nature and
158, 174, 211 31, 39, 66, 69–70, 100, 206–7;
patriarchal 12, 39, 43, 59–60, 108,
back-to-the-land: 7, 117–25, 129–30, 127; popular 13, 78–79, 89;
212 Western 28, 59–62, 97
Bacon, Francis: 15–17
Beauvoir, Simone de: 6, 11, 18, 152, d’Eaubonne, Françoise: 3, 6, 10–12,
binary: 3–5, 57–62, 64–72, 117, 122, 17–20, 77, 107, 206
126, 170, 175, 207 Debord, Guy: 45, 47
biodiversity: 4, 169, 180 deconstruction: 3, 40, 57, 85
biological: 6, 27, 30–33, 62–65, democracy: 8, 36, 178, 180–81, 185,
69–70, 77, 79–81, 85–86, 169, 177, 199, 213,
207–8 dependence: 34–35, 57, 69, 107, 171,
body image: 7, 44, 96–112, 126, 176, 211–12; maternal 6, 12–13
208–10 Derrida, Jacques: 28
Braidotti, Rosi: 4, 206 Descartes, René: 15–16; see also
Butler, Judith: 67, 70, 209 Cartesian
 Index 217
development: 16, 101, 112, 124, 161, epistemology: 4–5
167–68, 176; neoliberal 185, 188, 195; essence: xx, 13, 90, 206
sustainable 135, 138, 141, 144–45 essentialism: 3, 6–7, 31, 40, 45, 91, 127,
dialectics: 8, 135–36, 142–43, 211 205–206, biological 65, 86; gender
dialogue: xxi, 40, 120, 135–37, 141–45, 60–62, 66–70; see also essence
151, 205, ethics: 7, 14–15, 19–20, 57–72, 107,
dichotomies: 7, 15, 20, 28, 57, 62, 137, 207; ecofeminist 168, 175;
69–70, 170 environmental xx, 213; see also care;
Disney: 30 partnership
diversity: xix, 4, 15, 160, 167, 175, 206 evolution: 7, 21, 79–80, 84, 89, 100,
documentary: 8, 185–91, 196–98, 201, 122, 164
212 existentialism: 152
domination: 3–4, 11, 31, 54, 121, 128, experience: 19, 28, 38–39, 57, 67–72,
167; logic of 14, 16 96–97, 100–9, 195; authentic 81, 91;
Dreamworks: 30 female/woman’s 11, 43, 48–49, 61,
dualism: xix–xxi, 3–6, 15–16, 28, 36–37, 121, 128–29,
107, 213; beyond 5–6, 30, 40; extinction: 91; see also biodiversity
Cartesian 30; non- 19–20, 207; see also
binary; dichotomies; hierarchy; feminine: xx, 12–13, 44, 53, 59, 106–7,
intersectionality 140, 167, 206–8; motherhood as
Durkheim, Émile: 163 77–78, 80, 82–85
feminism: 11, 15, 57–58, 68–72 , 78,
ecocriticism: xx, 3–5, 66, 214 129, 206, 212; material xxi, 5, 61–62;
ecofeminism: xix–xxi, 3–5, 111–12, see also dualism; ecofeminism;
185–86, 205–213; animals and 6, 17, patriarchy
27; borderlands 155, 162; coining the film: 8, 13, 78, 185; see also documentary
term 3, 10, 77, 107–8; history of 11; Foucault, Michel: 91, 205, 211
philosophy of 12–15; proponents of 6, Freire, Paulo: 155, 210
19, 158; vegetarian 7, 57–70; see also
care; ecofeminist ethics; Gaard, Greta: 4, 6–7, 58, 61, 66, 175, 206
intersectionality Gaia: 10, 14–15, 27, 39–40
ecology: 11–14, 32, 38, 91, 107–8, gender: 13, 27–28, 117–22; 156–57,
122–26, 151–63; deep 14, 20–21, 40; 205–11; see also feminism; queer; sex;
livelihood 171; political xx, 5; social transgender
11; see also environmentalism; nature; Givon, Bilha: 8, 135–41, 143–52,
science 211–12
economics: 32, 81, 96, 154, 158, 164, Global North: 178, 188, 190, 197
169; socio- 13, 78, 98, 101, 12; Global South: 167–69, 171, 176–78,
see also capitalism 180, 188–89
education: 19, 100, 104–5, 143–44, 160, globalization: 180, 186, 189
210, 212; environmental 159; lack of God: 10, 30, 91, 187, 192
176 Goddess: 18, 39, 77, 85, 126–28, 212
egalitarian: 100, 129, 205, 207 Grahame, Kenneth: 29–30, 32, 36
emotion: 58, 96, 100–3, 156–61, 168, Griffin, Susan: 3, 206
174, 213; religion and 163 Grosz, Elizabeth: 62, 69, 207–9
empowerment: 51, 82, 90, 117–27, 154,
164, 210, 212–13 Haraway, Donna: 31, 206
environmental humanities: xx–xxi, 4 heterosexism: 45, 58
environmental protection: 7–8, 110, 135, heterotopia: 205, 209–10, 213
139–40, 144–48, 151 hierarchy: 15, 60, 67, 107, 135, 178
Environmental Protection Agency: 173 holistic: 15, 108, 123
environmentalism: 14, 40, 81, 124, 136,
162; feminist 8, 155; Indian 169, 171, independence: 67, 118, 129–30, 133,
178, 180 163
218 Index
India: 6, 8, 123, 167–68, 171–73, partnership: 8, 148, 150, 164, 168
178–80, 185–95, 199–201 patriarchy: 11, 18–19, 38–40, 43–46,
interdependence: 15 52–54, 60–61, 128; hetero- 117, 120
intersectionality: 45, 47, 107, 121, 205, People for the Ethical Treatment of
213 Animals (PETA): 6, 32–33, 43–54,
intersubjectivity: 8; see also subjectivity 208
intimate: 5, 100, 137, 158, 170, 197 philosophy: 4, 12, 199, 206
Irigaray, Luce: 11 plants: 15, 31, 39, 100, 109, 124,
Israel: 6, 8, 135–36, 144–51, 213 126–27
Plumwood, Val: 19, 28, 30, 35, 38–40,
justice: 33, 46, 79, 122, 124, 200; 158, 206, 208, 213
ecological 162–63; environmental 17, politics: 6–7, 37–38, 57–63, 65–72,
43, 53–54, 66, 155, 165–69 117–19, 168, 189, 194
postcolonial: 3–5, 186, 201
Kerala: 167–69, 172–76, 179, 190 posthumanist: 34
postmodern: 78, 83, 88, 192
LGBT+: 46 poststructuralist: 3, 61
linguistic: 28, 70, 191–92, 195 power: 4, 8, 17–18, 59, 70, 77, 107, 127,
literature: 27, 40, 82, 111, 117–20, 165, 195; patriarchal 32, 36–38, 47;
200, 209 technological 11; see also domination;
Lovelock, James: 10–11 empowerment; hierarchy

Maathai, Wangari: 174 queer: xxi, 3, 40–41, 61, 64, 68, 119;
Margulis, Lynn: 11 see also queer studies/theory
masculine: 30, 33–37, 52–53, 60–61, queer studies/theory: xx, 4, 6, 66
120–22, 167; see also gender; sexual
difference race: 6, 50, 62, 121–22, 130, 205,
mastery: 16, 28, 101 208–9; gender, class, and xix, 27, 45,
materialism: see new materialism 154, 157, 159
mechanistic: 15–16, 28, rationality: 5, 20, 28
media: 40, 46–48, 50, 87, 97–99, reason: xxi, 4, 7, 20, 65, 90, 207
186–88, 195–97 reciprocity: xxi, 8, 135–38, 141–43,
Merchant, Carolyn : 16, 168 145–6, 149
Mexico: 6, 8, 154, 160, 210 reproduction: 17–18, 28, 32, 35, 40,
mother: 7, 12–15, 32–33, 77–91, 120, 81–82, 120; see also reproductive
126, 157, 169–73, 207–8 rights
myth: 6–7, 10, 27, 32–33, 37–39, 79, 91, revolution: 11, 19, 187–88, 201; Green
99, 200 172–73; Industrial 100; Scientific 6,
15–16
Narmada valley: 186, 195, 197 rights: 3, 11, 15, 33, 107, 149, 178, 181;
nature: 3–8, 27–31, 58–62, 96–103, animal 43–44, 47, 49, 52, 57, 92;
160–65, 175; women and 10–14, 32, human 157, 176; reproductive 3, 107;
77–80, 168, 205–7, 211–12 traditional/tribal 124, 169, 172
new materialism: xxi, 4, 6–7, 61–66, romantic: 30–31, 33, 84, 91, 125
69–70 Roy, Arundhati: 8, 186, 188–90, 194,
New Mexico: 8, 154, 164 200–1, 212

objectification: xx, 16, 34, 65, 99, 107, Sandilands, Catriona: 4, 58, 61–62, 66
112 Sartre, Jean-Paul: 8, 135–38, 141–143,
ontology: 15, 80, 207 148–50, 211
organicist: 16 science: 15–17, 28, 81, 173, 178
overconsumption: 17–19 Seth, Aradhana: 8, 185–86, 188–90, 195,
overpopulation: 17–19 197, 200–1
 Index 219
sex: xix, 5–7, 29–30, 32, 43–54, 65–70, subjectivity: xx, 34, 39, 152, 156, 158,
137, 171; see also sexism; sexual 160, 162, 165
difference survival: 14, 28, 119, 169, 171, 177–78,
sexism: 4, 48, 57–60, 107, 175; see also 213
cissexism; heterosexism; sexual assault
sexual assault: 120, 157 technology: 11, 16, 38, 140, 147–49,
sexual difference: 15–17 168, 172
Shiva, Vandana: 4, 19, 136, 167, 171, transgender: xx, 6–7, 53, 57, 60–70, 205,
177, 180, 189 208–10
slavery: 18, 37; see also race truth: 10, 90, 125, 148, 168
social constructionism: see constructivist
society: 3, 18–20, 51, 88–90, 107, 195, universal: 3, 5, 39–40, 152, 195, 201
205, 211; animal 29, 31–32; capitalist universe: xix, 11–14, 16–17, 27, 86
7; civil 171–72; matriarchal 28;
patriarchal 16, 36–37, 39, 45; Western vegetarianism: 4, 6–7, 45–48, 52–54,
13, 78, 83, 91 57–72,
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty: 201; see
also subaltern Warren, Karen: 4, 13, 19, 126, 128
Sturgeon, Noël: 4, 123–24 wild: see wilderness
subaltern: 168, 196–98, 201 wilderness: 39, 83–4, 100, 103, 169, 171