The irony of registering for the course "Natural Disasters" in my final semester of undergrad is not lost on me. My experience with the course was, indeed, just what the course title predicted for me. Securing an "A" in my begrudging final attempt to fulfil my science requirements was certainly not my expectation (nor intention, frankly) with this final essay, but I'll be damned if the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies department didn't teach me good. An "A" paper, indeed.
I will spare you the full 13 pages of...stretched "discourse" on climate change (that was the prompt as far as I remember). I recall being instructed to make sure I mention the difference between weather and climate, and definitely to discuss volcanoes. And with that, I present an excerpt from my penultimate writing contribution to academia of my overpriced education:
Feminist perspectives on climate change: social constructions of anthropogenic forcing
(Okay wait, before I begin, a few notes: 1. Disney is problematic?? Groundbreaking, Laken. 2. This essay does in fact get super real. I'm obviously not calling feminism,and its brilliant and necessary additions to the climate justice movement, bullshit---really just the fact that I used this uninteresting, unimportant Disney short as an excuse to include images to extend my page count and the stretches I made to make it worthy of the intro is insane and damnit I'm proud of it. That's it, enjoy.)
“Unfortunately, the idea that women and nature are inherently linked is a tacit acceptance of their mutual exploitation.”
The feminization of Earth and its natural processes (and hazards) are no new phenomenon. “Mother Earth” and the ways in which the colonial interests of the West have extracted “her” resources for profit are consistently paralleled with the abuse of human resources and oppressed populations. Feminists have critiqued this language and the inherent subjugation of women it implies for decades, but in light of tackling the ramifications and roots of climate change, feminist theory has much to offer in its critiques. It begins with the very foundation of gendering the Earth.
Pixar Animation Studios does an extremely blunt version of this in its short film, LAVA, from 2014. In the short film, a volcano surrounded by images of determinately heterosexual animal couples begins to long for companionship. He sings a song of yearning, sinking into the sea, until the appearance of a hyper-feminine nearby volcano is born and fulfills the male volcanoe’s need for romantic companionship - “someone to lava.” The short was critiqued for many of its shortcomings in its plot and narrative, but the visuals alone speak to one simple issue:
“In Lava, where the male volcano is defined by the fact that he’s volcano-shaped, the female volcano is defined by her ‘feminine’ traits: her hair and her lips.”
While this is a small example in the larger scheme of what it means to tackle climate change discourses, policies and research with a feminist lens, the discursive analogies surrounding cultural texts such as this short create dangerous dichotomies and parallels. Sara Milner-Barry outlines the connection in the following, stating, “Even as we have spent decades subjugating the power of Earth, American children have been taught to address the environment as “Mother Nature.” The idea that the Earth is a parental figure because it sustains us is a comforting analogy. But what we do not learn as children, and are often not taught as we age, is the harm caused by gendered and sexist language that reinforce gender stereotypes and hierarchies.”
How does this lay the foundation for how feminists are understanding and providing strategies for limiting the effects of climate change? The oppression of and devaluing of femininity, and the framing of women’s bodies in terms of their reproductive capacity, have become so normalized and paralleled with “Mother Nature” that their mutual exploitations are linked, and the anthropogenic forcing of climate change has everything to do with how feminists are approaching environmental and climate justice, for, “When we conflate the productive and reproductive qualities of women and the environment, we at once glorify and demonize them.”
By Laken Sylvander
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