Blog Post #13

"What do you think of ecofemisnism before you read, and after? Did you have any strong reactions? What do forms of dominance do you see in the world around you?"

Well I honestly had no idea what ecofeminism was in contrast to other forms of feminism before the readings. The closest understanding I could come to has to do with my study abroad experience in Chile. I had a class in which we studied native civilizations to Chile, and we learned a lot about a certain culture that was actually matriarchal to begin with. That later changed, but before the women were the ones that built certain tales, or myths, surrounding their culture to explain their right to power in their society. Beyond that experience, I would not have thought that ecofeminism was as its most basic definition a study of the understanding of how everything interrelates and the place of nature and women within that web.

I've gained some neat insights from the readings. In the Spretnak reading, she talks about the roots of ecofeminism, and of these I found a few most interesting, and some of the other readings elaborate on them: creation-centered spirituality and ecofeminism as it relates to nature, and more specifically agriculture. The logic in connecting God's (or whatever Creator or Creators) creation of the Earth, to our covenant to defend and protect that Earth, and then to the folly of creating the "myths" that uphold a masculine-centered society that are by no means natural to this creation of God or whomever makes a lot of sense to me. It's a wonderful realization of what is real and what is not. The sun and the oceans are real, but what rules by which we run our societies are not necessarily, and that encompasses the rules that interrelate us. The article about agriculture and India from Huffington post was also something I did not expect to be a part of ecofeminism, but opened my eyes a bit to the breadth of the topic.