Liz’s Ecofeminism Blog

I have built a website/web magazine called The New Feminist Perspective. This functions like a blog with a section for public discussion and somewhere that people can post about their personal experiences with intersectional issues. While I am the only person to post (SO FAR) I have many more ideas for posts and I have reached out to some friends of mine to write pieces to add to the site. One of my friends is a Navy Veteran and gay, yet she was sexually harassed many times over her Naval career and was put into many bad situations. When I discussed writing a piece for the site with her she was almost bursting with information and was so eager to share. I am really proud that I have been able to create a place where she can share her experiences for her own mental health and maybe even help someone going through a similar circumstance be seen.  

 

Yet, The New Feminist Perspective is more than a blog, there are book recommendations and so much room to grow. I want to eventually add a news page and a page that will allow people to connect with local activist organizations. As I said on the site “The New Feminist Perspective is designed to uplift marginalized voices. Feminism has become a dirty word and has been warped ideologically to more closely resemble misandry than equality. It is the goal of the New Feminist Perspective to bring inclusivity and an intersectional framework back into mainstream feminism”.  It’s hard to assess if this is really making a difference or an impact, I think that at the least this has become a place where people can vent their issues and frustrations and that is a valuable thing. I am the moderator but I have set rules for myself when I do start getting some potential posts, I am really hoping to be able to bring inclusive representation to the table. At the most this could become a source that is able to shift the perception of feminism back to an inclusive and equal framework. I knew for this assignment I wanted to focus on intersectionality and the focus of feminism on white upper class women has always rubbed me the wrong way because I was taught that feminism is equality. This assignment allowed me to roll both of those ideas into one forum where people can share and have their experiences heard. It’s also a place where people can go to better understand and empathize with others. I feel as a white woman a lot of us have had to take a step back and ask ourselves to check our biases and this is a place where we can learn and educate ourselves.  

I will have to figure out how to get the domain name though. I don’t want this to stay as my URL but here is the current URL for The New Feminist Perspective. I am so so so proud of this site and what I was able to build here. Please I want all the feedback!!

https://elizabetheschlumbo.wixsite.com/mysite

 

The issues that really resonate with me have to do with intersectionality. Growing up in Southern California in such a diverse environment, I have learned that I have an immense amount of privilege that can be put to use. I want to create a local zine. My plan is to allow anyone to submit articles or writings that speak to issues of identity, marginalization, and overall tiredness with the culture in the US. I feel like giving people an outlet and a platform to speak will take a lot of stress out of daily life and allow people to voice their opinions in a public forum without fear of reprisal. Sometimes it feels like we are all screaming into an echo chamber that has no end, so focusing in and creating a place for self expression is what I would love to create. We see on social media how creators of color are much more likely to be “shadow banned” or have their access restricted due to how content is cultivated and the value put on certain creators. We see time and time again a lack of POC creators not because they aren’t there but because they aren’t promoted, especially if they speak about activism, social, or cultural issues. I feel like this zine could be a place where people can be seen and heard, as well as a place to grow and build on ideas. 

I want to execute this online. I don’t want to allow free posting so I will need to cultivate the content, or pay someone else to. Luckily, my sister is a software engineer so I can have her help me with the technological and logistical side of this project. But the overall plan is to have a few friends contribute to the zine and maybe advertise on our social media so that we can get people writing in. Once we have works to choose from we can start matching works that have similar themes and cultivate different zines. It will probably be on a quarterly system so four a year but we can have as many writers and contributors as we want. I hope to not only accept writing but artwork and poetry as well, as long as it fits with the themes of identity, marginalization, and oppression by the US culture. I personally have a piece I have been writing for a few weeks about Food Deserts in the US and how 19 million Americans currently live in a Food Desert.  

My plan is to give a platform. I want people to be able to write in or send in their work and be heard, I want them to see their work online on this platform and feel like they were able to reach an audience. So many people have amazing ideas and commentary on popular culture and cultural issues that I want them to be heard. As a student I have so many ideas and I have been working on them for a few years now but there aren’t many spaces where I am heard due to my inexperience. I recently attended the OAH (Organization of American Historians) conference in LA and so many of the topics that were disguised were topics I have thought long and hard about. It was a vindicating experience to see them describe 4th wave feminism seen through social media and these cultural movements like Me Too and BLM are mainly held on social media platforms. I have been saying this since 2015 that this is the direction for feminism and I have been told many times that I was wrong. I WASN’T WRONG!! But it wasn’t until more educated women and women further along in their careers said it that it was a reality. I want my zine to be a place where people can share their ideas and don’t have to show their credentials to be heard or validated. 

We see across cultures that humans have always had a large connectivity with land and environment. Defense and protection of the environment is synonymous with protection of resources and people. Native American cultures spanning from the southern parts of Chile and Argentina to northern Canada are deeply rooted in the physical land. Practicing culture and community in the age of industrialization and capitalism has become almost impossible. The 2015 “Gendered Impacts series” delves deeper into the connection between land violence and gender violence drawing parallels between the treatment of the environment and the treatment of the women who live there. These communities have been rocked by the intrusion of mining and other industrial facilities that see an “increase of violence against women due to the increase in revenue, that leads to the increase in alcohol and drug abuse, which leads to an increase of domestic violence” this paired with how many “women working at the mine were mainly working as house cleaning staff for a predominantly male workforce and so this did make them very vulnerable to sexual harassment” (KAIROS Canada). So not only have they been displaced from their land, but women in particular face violence on the soil where they were once safe. This displacement has huge community based issues, how do they practice a culture that is environment based when they have lost access to “traditional hunting grounds” and when “important animals have changed their migration routes” (KAIROS Canada)?

This connection between personal identity in land is a concept we talk a lot about in ecofeminism. Looking back on “Touching the Earth” by Bell Hooks and “Knowing Our Place” by Barbara Kingsolver we can see a more intersectional framework connecting nature and identity. Hooks speaks to the similarities between the “Native americans and African people shared with one another a respect for the life-giving forces of nature, of the Earth” adding that “sharing the reverence for the Earth, [African] and [Native] people helped one another remember that despite the white man’s ways, the land belonged to everyone” (Hooks 364). This binary idea of ownership was something that wasn’t present in Native or African cultures until intervention from colonials. Kingsolver also touches on this idea of abstract ownership and mourns the degradation of naturality in our society saying “With all due respect for the wondrous ways people amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad. I think of the children who will never know intuitively, that a flower is a plant’s way of making love, or what silence sounds like or that trees breathe out what we breathe in” (Kingsolver 2). This line instantly made me think of the treatment of Indigenous land in the Americas. Kingsolver hits hard on this idea of generational experience and how the experience of the generations will be vastly different especially in cultures that rely heavily on the environment.

-KAIROS Canada. “2015 Gendered Impacts series (4): Land is Identity (2:28).” YouTube, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LopcPrSvDBw. Accessed 2 April 2023.
-KAIROS Canada. “Violence Against The Land (3:02).” YouTube, KAIROS Canada, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mlbc2dD0gP0&t=28s. Accessed 2 April 2023.

Understanding Intersectionality is one of the keys to conceptualizing ecofeminism and the ecofeminist interconnected “web” perspective. Intersectionality is how everyone connects with the world around them, understanding the different facets of an individual identity. By defining the individual aspect of your identity you can sort out and better understand where the intersections are in an individual identity. Intersectionality is best described like a web, A.E king describes how “each spoke of the web representing a continuum of different types of social categorization such as gender, sexuality, race, or class; while encircling spirals depict individual identities” (King 65). For example, I am a non-binary, Jewish, white, student. Non-binary is my gender, Jewish my religion, white my race, and student as my class indicator. All of these individual facts are true and help to understand what affects me and my life. I have been a victim of antisemitism and I have experienced discrimination based on my religion, gender, and status as a student. Yet from a racial standpoint I have privilege. Intersectionality helps us to further understand each other and some of these big concepts in the world today. Ecofeminism has a lot to do with intersectionality because location plays into identity. If you live somewhere that has an environmental crisis like a drought, then the population there is going to be affected. Lack of water can be detrimental for women in particular according to UNwater.org,“A clean, functional, lockable, gender-segregated space is needed, with access to sanitary products and disposal systems, for women and girls to manage menstrual hygiene and pregnancy” (“Water and Gender”). We all need water to live but women in particular need water for cleanliness and health concerns, access to clean water is a necessity so if that is unavailable it has a more focused impact on women specifically. Argwall addresses this issue saying that “Third World women are dependent on nature ‘for drawing sustenance for themselves, their families, their societies.’ The destruction of nature thus becomes the destruction of women’s sources for ‘staying’” (Agarwal 124).

Ecofeminism and feminism in general have a history of under representing to the point of erasure the BIPOC and other marginalized communities. With that history many BIPOC feminists have gravitated towards intersectional environmentalism instead of ecofeminism so that their voices and thoughts are heard. We see in Leah Thomas’s article “The Difference Between Ecofeminism & Intersectional Environmentalism” how “Both Ecofeminism and Intersectional Environmentalism explore how the treatment and degradation of the earth exposes a deeply rooted societal problem. But while Ecofeminism narrows in on gender, sexuality, and the patriarchy, Intersectional Environmentalism creates space for all social injustices, including sexism.” While mainstream ecofeminism and feminism struggles with inclusivity, intersectional environmentalism by definition is focusing on inclusivity. Personally I conceptualized this idea by thinking that ecofeminism is how the environment affects women. Intersectional environmentalism is how the environment affects everyone, different people and identities will be affected in different ways depending on how they identify.

 

Agarwal. “The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India.” Feminist Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, 1992, pp. 119-158. JSTOR.

Kings, A.E. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism.” Ethics & the Environment, vol. 22 no. 1, 2017, p. 63-87. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/660551.

 

The key to understanding Norgaard and York’s paper “Gender Equality and State Environmentalism” is looking at this paper and recognizing that gender equality is quite a ways away so the change that women are able to evoke is still limited to a less than equal playing field. Norgaard and York conseptualize this by detailing how “In 1990, the UN Commission on the Status of Women estimated that for women to influence key outcomes and be taken seriously, a threshold of 30 percent women in Parliament was required” (Norgaard and York 514). But even with this low threshold women are still able to evoke change, Norgaard and York come to the (unproven but highly supported) conclusion that “gender equality and state environmentalism are linked and that an understanding of one may contribute to an understanding of the other” (Norgaard and York 515). Norgaard and York use Norway and Singapore as references because they are both “affluent, developed nations but show strikingly different levels of support for environmental treaties and gender equality” (Norgaard and York 515). Norway serves as the positive, having “one of the highest percentages of women in Parliament in the world at 36.4 percent and ratified 13 of the 16 treaties considered” (Norgaard and York 515). Singapore, on the other hand, represents the negative with women holding “only 4.3 percent of legislatorial positions in Parliament, and Singapore ratified only 4 of the 16 treaties considered” (Norgaard and York 515).

This work by Norgaard and York is parallelled by an article from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Why Women’s Leadership is Key to Climate Action: Political and financial commitment is needed to support the contributions of women and girls at all levels”. Nina Jeffs details throughout the article how necessary female voices are in environmental decision making. Jeffs describes how “Gender-differentiated tasks, including women’s responsibility for most unpaid household labour, and unequal power relations within families and communities, can limit women’s opportunities to participate in local environmental governance” (Jeffs). Jeffs not only exposes a long standing problem globally but also proposes a solution. Jeffs believes that the solution lies in education, “Ensuring access to quality education for girls is also a key pathway for gender parity in climate leadership. Girls’ education can be a force for gender equality in families and communities and is closely associated with a country’s female political representation” (Jeffs). Jeffs builds on this idea describing how “Climate education for girls, including technical environmental training, can increase their resilience and build their capacity to critically engage with climate information and lead climate solutions”(Jeffs). Norgaard and York’s work was confirmed in a 2019 study by Astghik Mavisakalyan and Yashar Tarverdi that came to the conclusion that “ national parliaments with more women pass more stringent climate policies” (Jeffs).

A woman carries vegetables in Yangole, Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite women’s contribution to achieving climate targets, their access to climate finance remains limited. (Image: Axel Fassio/CIFOR CC BY NC-ND-2.0)

https://climatechampions.unfccc.int/why-womens-leadership-is-key-to-climate-action/

Another article that I think dovetails beautifully with Norgaard and York’s paper is from Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia (representing the 29th district of Texas). This article details Congresswoman Garcia’s long and eventful history of supporting the environment for her constituents. Garcia has built her environmental platform on legistlation surrounding climate change, EPA regulations, and marine species protections. Norgaard and York emphasize that more women indicates more environmental reform and Congresswoman Garcia is just one of the many women of color that have earned positions of power and have used those positions and platforms to further environmental reform and change on a legistlative level. Garcia summarizes her standpoint on environmentalism saying that “We must recognize the reality that maintaining long-term economic growth, protecting the jobs our children will hold, and remaining competitive on the global stage, requires making investments today in the clean energy technology of tomorrow” (“Energy & Environment | Representative Sylvia Garcia”).

https://sylviagarcia.house.gov/issues/energy 

“UNFCCC research found that men spoke 74% of the time in plenary meetings between May and June last year” (Jeffs). The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change presented this statistic that parallels the statistic presented by Norgaard and York describing how “In 1990, the UN Commission on the Status of Women estimated that for women to influence key outcomes and be taken seriously, a threshold of 30 percent women in Parliament was required” (Norgaard and York 514). With women making up “on average of one third” of the “employees of environmental ministries” we can further see how women in leadership roles do make an impact and that impact is growing with time and resources funneling into supporting female education.

This is a photo that I took from Carol Adams photo library that holds examples of the sexual politics of meat. This photo in particular plays with double entendres surrounding meat and the social construct of sexual consent. This ad for Nando’s resturant places themselves as the alternative to a woman who is offended when they are sexully touched. Nando’s is essentially indicating that that social boundary is not found at their restaurant. While obviously substituting an actual woman for food in an anthropornographic context. Anthropornography is defined by Adams in an interview as she explained that “Anthropornography means animals (usually species of animals presumed to be literally consumable) are presented as sexually consumable, in a way that upholds the sexual exploitation of women” (Pots 14). In this picture the animal in question is the depiction of Nando’s chicken. This ad challenges the social construct of consent playing with the boundaries set by women by using their chicken as a replacement to be violated. The ad says “We don’t mind if you touch our buns or breasts or even our thighs whatever you’re into enjoying Nando’s meal with your hands is highly recommended” encouraging physicality towards and insinuating that the chicken is a sexual being. 

This photo is a statement piece. Animalization and sexualization of animals are topics that Adams addresses in the interview with Annie Pots. Adams breaks down this construct describing how “They are working to maintain important aspects of consumer culture, to reinforce privilege by defining who is the consumer and who is the consumed” (Pots 15). The feminization of animals allows for domination and consumption. This piece draws attention to the dehumanization that women feel when looking at these sexualized ads that have no intention other than to cater to heterosexual men’s egos. The fact that this is the way in which we have almost standardized the way that we sell meat is uncouth and damaging. Sexualizing meat is acceptable because it’s “just chicken” or “just a joke” but it is still damaging for women, especially young women who are surrounded by this on a daily basis. Simply put we have built a system that casually pets the ego of men while devaluing women simultaneously all for the sake of advertising.

This ad also follows along with Adams description of the sexual politics of meat. This ad while not depicting meat is still intended to sell meat using sex. By playing on the “hot and spicy” double entendre they are able to make a “joke” and engage their male audience. It is clear that KFC is only interested in the male audience due to the male being the only one getting sexual gratification in the image. “Hot and spicy” could have been represented in both party’s engaging in sexual activity where the pleasure would be mutual. Yet, that is not the path KFC decided to follow. This ad plays on sexuality and the human need for sexual release to sell chicken equating the want for sex with the want for chicken on multiple different fronts. Yet, in the photo chosen again it is important to recognize that the sexual release is one sided. Adams dictates in the interview with Annie Pots how “the assumption of a white male perspective as universal and an appropriation of female bodies for male prerogatives” is pervasive and specifically represented in this ad (Pots 15).

This image while not directly an image of anthropornography still has the same intent. Here we see a woman who is depicted as innately sexual. The phrase “four inches has never been so satisfying” is an obvious joke indicating penis size and how all women want a big dick. These ads represent women as sexually insatiable animals,  Adams speaks on the subject saying that  “Such ads, suggest that not only do women promiscuously want sex, but the same desire is applicable to others in the ‘Not A’ category – nonhuman animals” (Kemmerer). It is dehumanizing to be reduced to a sexual object weather human or animal it takes away all value that is not sexual and intended to please others. We are constantly stripping animals and women of their agency and respect when we continually objectify and reduce them to sexual objects.

 

The image above in my opinion is a good representation of the ambiguity and carelessness that surrounds the meat industry in the US. Both the facelessness of the person and the ambiguity of the meat to me represents the carelessness in how we ingest meat, without knowing or understanding the treatment of the animal. As well as noting how widespread this willful ignorance is in regards to the food that we eat in the US. I feel like the image could also be interpreted differently, noting how the human figure and the meat are an equal size denoting an equality that isn’t being respected. One image is not larger than the other symbolizing an equality that is not being upheld.

Gendering food is a large phenomenon in our culture. We commonly associate men with meat and women with salads directly correlating men with strength or vitality and women with the earth. Another gendered food is alcohol, men are socially allowed to drink casually or even to excess without a second thought. Women on the other hand, are judged and even blamed when they have alcohol in their system. We shake off the men who make rude comments or are disruptive while drinking but women are not afforded the same courtesy. How many times have you seen a drunk bachelorette party or sorority girls at the bar and complained about how annoying they were or how disruptive they were? Not even taking into account the amount of women who are victimized while drunk and then later blamed due to their intoxication or “bad choices”. Another gendered food is dessert or sweets. Women being classified as feminine and soft are more often associated with dessert products. Think about it a man can call his wife “sweetie pie” or “honey bun” but culturally that language of affection changes we see women reply and call their husbands names like “teddy bear” that still denote affection yet have a more masculine background. We see in the article “Meat Heads: New Study Focuses on How Meat Consumption Alters Men’s Self-Perceived Levels of Masculinity” by Zoe Eisenberg how this social construct is damaging to mental and self image as well as physically unhealthy for the body. Not only is the meat industry uncouth and unsettling in its practices but it is damaging the health of the general population to make the easy and cheap decisions. One thing not mentioned in this article is the easy accessibility to meat by most of the population through fast food chains and other businesses. We live in a culture where food is expensive and the foods needed to supplement vitamins like iron are typically more expensive than buying the meat itself. When money is tight it is hard to compare the convenience of a dollar menu burger with the alternatives.

When looking at the writings of Gaard and Curtin we see a call to action and an urge for balance in the way we treat animals. Curtin speaks to the oppression of animals and how some are tortured and then slaughtered for food while others like dogs and cats are held as pets. Curtin points out how in both scenarios we are depriving animals of their own freedoms and using them for our own needs whether they be for affection or food. Gaard breaks down the ethics of killing animals for food and brings up how contextually there are reasons to kill an animal. Gaard points out that if it is a matter of life or starvation to feed you and your family, it is understandable to use animals for necessary sustenance. The problem is that in this society there is little need to go out and butcher an animal when there are a plethora of options to choose from. The issue I find with this idea is again accessibility. I have personally gone through points in my life where I only had a few dollars to feed myself and I knew I was much better off at a dollar menu than in a market trying to find alternative meat options. Not only are the alternative meat options expensive but they really aren’t conducive to most of the budgets near or below the poverty line. Food deserts are a problem as well in this country that ought to be a part of this conversation. An article from Verywellhealth.com points out how widespread this issue is saying that “According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food deserts are a serious environmental health issue. More than 13.5 million people in the United States live in one.” Where some residential areas have farmers markets and community gardens, other and more impoverished areas have corner stores and gas stations where they purchase food and other necessities. While the relationship between humans and animals is oppressive and there are huge changes that need to happen within these industries it is important to recognize how these industries were systematically put in place to take advantage of the lower income communities and have been left as many peoples only option.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-are-food-deserts-4165971

1. The use of natural resources is not always allocated in the way that communities need to allocate their resources. Agarwal speaks on the environmental degradation in India saying how “Degradation in India’s natural resource base is manifest in disappearing forests, deteriorating soil conditions, and depleting water resources” (Agarwal 130). Just taking the lack of water resources into account we understand from the reading Water and Gender how women in particular have physiological needs that have to be met and water is key in keeping women clean and healthy. According to UNwater.org,“A clean, functional, lockable, gender-segregated space is needed, with access to sanitary products and disposal systems, for women and girls to manage menstrual hygiene and pregnancy” (“Water and Gender”). Not only as a matter of physical safety but physical health is also a huge part of the issue when looking at depleting water sources. While men are also affected by the issue there are specifically feminine gendered issues that intensify the issue. 

 

2. The western perspective of ecofeminism is summed up nicely by Hobgood-Oster in last week’s reading noting how “Ecofeminism suggests that the antagonism sometimes existing between religious and scientific worldviews has been detrimental, used by both approaches to advance their own hierarchical structures. The reductionist models of both Western theologies and many Western scientific ideologies project a material world that is not sacred, but mechanistic”(Hobgood-Oster 7). Western ecofeminists focus on the degradation of the environment in relation to women and how gendered issues are affected.  The western world materializes or itemizes the resources that sustain their communities, making the natural resources quantifiable. Agarwal uses Shiva’s ideas of ecofeminism to depict an example of a non-western view of ecofeminism. “At the same time, Shiva notes that violence against women and against nature are linked not just ideologically but also materially” going on to explain how “Third World women are dependent on nature ‘for drawing sustenance for themselves, their families, their societies.’ The destruction of nature thus becomes the destruction of women’s sources for ‘staying’” (Agarwal 124). A commonality between western and non western ecofeminism is the critique of not noting intersectionality and grouping all women together as having the same experience. A universal feature of our world is class and Agarwal points out how “Although [Shiva] distinguishes Third World women from the rest, like the ecofeminists she does not differentiate between women of different classes, castes, races, ecological zones, and so on” (Agarwal 125).

 

3. I find the perspectives discussed by Shiva and Agarwal to be the most interesting. Looking at the cause and effect of colonialism and western homogenization on the ecosystems and how in turn that affects culture and women in particular. The part that really caught my interest and got my thinking cap on was: “Shiva attributes existing forms of destruction of nature and the oppression of women (in both symbolic and real terms) principally to the Third World’s history of colonialism and to the imposition of Western science and a Western model of development” (Agarwal 125).

 

Works Cited

-Agarwal. “The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India.” Feminist Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, 1992, pp. 119-158. JSTOR.

-Hobgood-Oster. “Ecofeminism: Historic and International Evolution.” 2002, pp. 1-18.

-“Water and Gender.” UN-Water, https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/water-and-gender. Accessed 12 February 2023.

 

According to the Hopgood-Oster reading “Ecofeminism asserts that all forms of oppression are connected and that structures of oppression must be addressed in their totality” (Hopgood-Oster 2). Meaning that Ecofeminism is a critique on the structures and paradigms of our culture not a commentary on individual actions. Women and nature have been intertwined in art and literature since the beginning. We generally picture our earth in a feminine respect as “mother earth” and this has to do with nurturing. Women as child bearers are inherently considered to be caregivers. This is paralleled in how our earth provides the tools we need to survive. Just as a mother feeds and nurtures her child the earth nurtures humanity. The paleolithic period is noted for the abundance of fertility statues with female renderings comparing women with creation and this is paralleled in our current society and culture in movies like Moana with the character Te Fiti. One interesting article I found looking further at the connections between females and divinity in ancient art is going to be linked here: https://www.thecollector.com/divine-feminine-ancient-art/. 

I felt it would be interesting to look at this association between women and the role of caretaker and the imagery that goes along with that. Women are seen as caretakers due to the fact that they deliver and feed their children as the earth does, making the connection between femininity and caretaking almost synonymous. But how does this apply in a non binary and gender non conforming culture? More and more these days we see families making the decisions that make the best sense for their families over conforming to the typical gender roles. For example, if a woman happened to have a career that makes more money than her male counterpart it could potentially make more sense for that family to have the father stay home with the kids instead, taking up that role that is traditionally reserved for women. In this society, there is flexibility and resources that allow us to have children and still maintain our individuality. Same sex parents as well do not fit with the traditional methodology when it comes to child rearing and caretaking responsibilities. I think as our society and culture becomes more homogenized and less binary we will have less of these binary comparisons, while different bodies have different physical abilities it does not mean that having the ability to create life  and the ability to care for life are inherent. We see women depicted in movies like Moana as the literal representation of the earth due to the creation and caretaking abilities associated with femininity. I hope that as our culture breaks down these binary ideas we can see more representation of men and non-binary genders in caretaking roles to represent a better and more whole image of caretaking. 

Hello Everyone,

My name is Elizabethe and I am a transfer student in my second semester at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. The blog that I decided to look at was The F Word, a  feminist UK based media blog that covers everything from politics to arts and literature. This blog is designed to give a feminist perspective and commentary on our culture as well as uplift the voices of minorities and other underrepresented groups. This platform is a collective of writers presenting a diverse view of the feminist perspective. I hope that in my blog I can also give a voice to the underrepresented groups and focus on the intersectionality  and complexity of the issues we will talk about. The F-Word Blog is a great platform where they expand past just the needs and views  of women to include the LGBTQIA+ community and others. This is something I wish to emulate, we all have a complex identity that is made up of different identities and I hope to represent a well rounded view of feminism and women in general.

One thing I wanted to take a moment to speak about is the issue of toxic materials and the disposal of said materials in the state of California. I live in San Diego and my entire life I have been bombarded with the mentality that California is super green and environmentally friendly but not only is our environment and ecosystem degrading due to the overpopulation and over industrialization of the state but there are also issues when it comes to the disposal of toxic materials. Just a few days ago Robert Lewis published an article to the CalMatters organization page detailing how “In the past five years, California has disposed of more than 660,000 tons of contaminated soil in Arizona landfills and nearly a million tons at a Utah landfill, according to data in a state tracking system. That includes hazardous waste from the Mission Bay redevelopment in San Francisco, military base cleanups in San Diego and transportation authority projects in San Bernardino County.” Although California has some of the most stringent laws when it comes to the disposal of contaminated materials it does not seem to have an impact on the toxic materials that are disposed of. Instead of legally and safely disposing of the toxic materials, it is taken to states with more relaxed laws and regulations.

This is a real issue, California presents itself as a green and innovative state, while the reality is that they have just found ways to bypass the laws that are put in place to protect the residents of California. It is important that we call out this injustice and hold the State and Corporations responsible for the damage that they have caused.