Amidst the virulent persecution of humanity across the territories of world, what's contrastingly considered fortunate, is the rejuvenation of our flora and fauna in the meantime. Dwindling in the fate, stamped on our civilization, the capsizing ecology, somehow found its way back to life again! Surprising isn't it? What decades of human effort couldn't do, few months of ignorance did!
In the time that swept 2020-21 into darkness and dreadfulness, it would be repugnant to oversee the environmental regeneration that has occurred during the consistent pandemics and lockdowns. We're sailed on an introspective shore to cautiously rethink about our lifestyles and its perilous impacts on nature, in the absence of which an unprecedented ecological re-genesis could be evidentiary. Though haphazard, a sizeable extent of transformation in the atmosphere could be reckoned. But, apart from what we're pre-acquainted of our environment, there's something more, that's been poignantly existent yet concealed under patriarchal chimes of dominance. Yes, something that has bagged a seat in green politics too.
Whether it is Nature or Femininity, we've never been short at evidence of how men have voraciously exploited both. The tryst between the subjugation, barraged upon women and the exhaustion perpetuated on the nature, invariably over the time, has been summoned as Eco-Feminism. A term primarily coined by Françoise d’Eaubonne, a renowned French Feminist back in 1974. Ecofeminism as a concept is much dynamic, subjective and multi-disciplinary to underscore. It traces the epistolary of exploitation, catalytically executed by humans on nature, just as prevalently as did men on women. The traceability investigates human-nature interaction in likeable terms as that of the man-woman, where masculinity, autonomy and dominion play an elitist role, in determining the sociocultural positions of femininity and nature. An instance is Judi Bari, the chieftain organizer of ‘Earth First', who was stifled for her gender. ‘People could survive blindfolded, but wouldn’t wish a lady to unfold the fabric!’
The social paradigms and ceremonious interpretations of ecofeminism could be interviewed in eminent ecofeminist arts, nature-based religions, sermons of justice and philosophy, surviving political history and even in the radical propaganda of feminism in 2021. Women as the forbearers of nature, and men who ordain the binding cultures around it, together inform of humanly discretion and exercise of nature, with or without necessary checks or decentralized autonomies.
Since ancient times, under the indomitable masculine virility, nature and femininity did somehow manage to relate, identify and find certain associations in each others' versatilities or of how indistinctively have they been effectuated oppression upon or canonized in accordance with the men's needs and demands.
It wouldn't be wrong to examine ecofeminism, as one, exploiting gender to draw dichotomous human-nature relationships, or to analyze certain susceptibly similar subjects of it, but it would equally appeal one's knowledge, of how society viewed women and nature as indistinguishable, in terms of the frequency of their interaction-cultural/spiritual, caregiving and surreal disposition they commonly share, or specifically the traits that combined, stand as a contrast to the masculine pursuit of livelihood! Ecofeminism at large, is the revaluation of human relationships with the nature, on a holistically egalitarian, collaborative and nonlinear foundations, alias, a doctrine that commits to the conservation of the environment, by confirming a unanimous and equalized association of all the human genders with it.
It essentially accredits organically inspired practices, belief in intuition, subtlety in demeanor and preclusion of male-centric possession, operation or coercion of the either.
Vegetarian Ecofeminism
While we intertwine the two tangible aspects into a singular thread, the acquisition of the flesh or meat is what can pragmatically abridge the prospects in which men have archaically been forcing nature and femininity into subjectivism. Upright from physically captivating women, to the meat-consumption of animals, each has been only examined to find parallels in the treatment unequivocally , which is neither way less dreading, but unjustified as a whole. We call against, such connections between physical violence and meat-eating, vegetarian ecofeminism. Echoed by Greta Gaard, an American environmental activist and US Green Party's leader, the concept not just motivates to transcend one's food-habits to a meat-free schedule but does equally inculcate in one, the sensibility to empathize with the speechless or, the devoid of autonomy.
Cultural/Spiritual Ecofeminism
Treading forwards, the spiritual or the cultural domain-the most promptly acknowledged interpretation, when we even remotely hear the term ecofeminism, is another ramification of the ties between environment and feminist isms that prevail. The belief in existing as organisms of the same planet, agitates the spirit of communion amongst the diversity and traces the ancestral footprints of belongingness, allegiance and sensitiveness towards each other. This inherently associates with the femininity, through their correlativeness with the Goddesses and subsequent identification of earth, land or nature as the care-giving Mothers. Owing to such vastly circumscribed feminine associations, we're not just laid across the virtues of care, compassion and kindness but a simultaneous effort is poised to continuously interrelate both, in order to uphold and cherish the serenity in each of their reverence. In many such ecofeminist societies, women often revive and rejuvenate obsolete traditions and rituals that, though being far outpaced, operate as institutions to worship the fundamental wombs of a human - earth, atmosphere, nature, land and a woman's reproductive organs.
Whether it might incentivize the masculinity to stop butchering animals for subsistence consumption, considering the natural liaisons they've with humanity, or the other way round, wherein the keen respect for one's environment or nature, comes as a hammer to turn minds towards dignifying femininity for their rapport with the nature. They’ve combined, asserted a pronouncing sobriquet of resemblance.
When we call nature and women at test, discourses are apparent to burgeon, but it is significant to understand, that these institutions only reinforce checks on the humanity, from slithering into diversionary and unethical pathways. It simultaneously plateaus a moral obligation against ascertained radical propagandists who nurture extreme faiths in feminism but are negligent when it comes to the mother nature! The interdependency and holism that the nature and its feminine evolution share, is the most skeptical yet flamboyant aspect of their existences, and the balance between the two must remain untarnished! Ancient or Radical, a believer in either shall reassure, the tenets of his faith is rooted in bilateralism, and he must mechanize his thoughts, to suit the universal appropriateness. As honored our women, equally precious is our environment, and that neither shall be taxed to loss.
By Upasana Kashyap
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