Intersectionality-Connecting Women and Nature

Let me say, I am sitting outside as I type this, and 61 degrees feels so great. Anyways, in this week’s blog, I want to discuss the interconnected web of ecofeminism.

I believe it is only appropriate to define intersectionality for those who may be confused or don’t know what it truly means. Intersectionality is a way of connecting social categories of people or nature and it typically results in some sort of discrimination when people are placed into these different categories. This web or frame could include one’s race, gender, class, etc. Feminists have taken this intersectionality web from it being primarily for “the experience of black women” (Kings 2) and are now using it to examine differences and oppression amongst all women. Ecofeminists, in contrast, are “concerned with understanding the interconnected relationship between the domination of women and the domination of nature” (Kings 16). This makes sense because of the name ECO-Feminists. Within this web, different forms of oppression collide and connect with one another and that is why it could be called a web. As we know from previous readings both women and nature experience oppression and ecofeminists want to view and understand the connections between the two on this web that lead to the oppression. For example, back to the Global South. If something happens and say river water or a water source for families becomes polluted, women now face oppression because they are not able to provide clean and safe water for their family. To also understand why women and nature are oppressed and the connections amongst things, ecofeminists look at class and location. Rather those women are poor, whether they live in the Global South versus the North.

Now taken from another article, some argue that even ecofeminism lacks intersectionality and only focuses on the treatment of white and middle-class people. A need for a movement for black women who face oppression from some of the same environmental problems is needed in order to complete this web of connections between women’s and nature’s oppression. In an ecofeminist web, race should have connections with women and nature and oppression. Without including black women or women of color in this web, we are back to what feels like a hierarchy. Where one’s oppression is more than another’s, or one’s problems come before someone else. That goes against feminism in general. Women are supposed to stick up for each other no matter their race, age, etc.

Now I want to talk about the importance of ecology when it comes to the ecofeminist web of connectivity. In order to disprove a hierarchy, one must start with the nonhuman things. Taken from the class notes “ecofeminist theory seeks to show the connections between all forms of domination, including the domination of nonhuman nature, and ecofeminist practice is necessarily antihierarchical.” Ecology has been said to be a feminist issue. Amongst ecosystems comes another connected web and then those things are connected to humans, specifically women who face some of the same oppressions as nature and ecosystems. Ecofeminists must start with the roots of nature and then connect those to the roots of women to then understand how the connections lead to the oppression of both.