Ecofeminism Movement essays

Ecofeminism Movement essays One of the most basic tenants of feminist environmentalism is that people's relationships to their environments are differentiated by gender. A review of the ecofeminist movement reveals a deep division between essentialist and anti-essentialist positions that actually obscures the fundamental flaw within the entire movement. Ultimately, the ecofeminist assertion that men and women's relationships to their environments are fundamentally different seems to be fundamentally erroneous, and fails to take into consideration more important factors like race, economics, and Ecofeminism is seen as "a feminist rebellion within male-dominated radical environmentalism" (Sturgeon, 25). Ruether notes "Ecofeminism ... explores how male domination of women and domination of nature are interconnected, both in cultural ideology and in social structures" (2). Essentially, ecofeminism at its most basic definition focuses on the ties that exist between ideologies that result in the degradation and destruction of the environment and ideologies that result in injustices To the feminist environmentalist movement, the idea that humans are somehow separate and hold dominion over nature is problematic. Ruether argues that the humans desire to change the earth itself is symptomatic of this larger issue, rooted in the idea that nature is somehow not divine and subhuman. Instead, Ruether and other feminist environmentalists tent to "assume that the earth forms a living system, of which humans are an inextricable part" (Ruether, 5). Here, humans do not hold dominion over the earth and other forms of life, part are instead an integrated part of Ecofeminism, while it essentially argues that people's relationships to their environments are differentiated by gender, has many different forms. In Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory, and Political Action, Noel Sturgeon notes tha...