Chapter Two

What Are Ecofeminists Saying?

An Overview of Ecofeminist Positions

As a political movement, ecological feminism began in the 1970s. French fem-

inist Fran~oise d'Eaubonne coined the term "ecological feminisme" in 1974 to
call attention to women's potential to bring about an ecological revolution.'
Since then, ecofeminist political events, conferences, and publications aimed
at showing important connections among the dominations of women, other
subordinated human groups, and nonhuman nature have surfaced throughout

-the world.
i... All ecofeminists agree that there are important connections between the
unjustified dominations of women and nature, but they disagree about both the
nature of those connections and whether some of the connections are poten-
tially liberating or grounds for reinforcing harmful stereotypes about women.
This disagreement among ecofeminists is to be expected. Just as there is not
one version of feminism, there also is not one version of ecofeminism. The
umbrella term "ecofeminism" refers to a plurality of positions, some of which
are mutually compatible and some of which are not. Since ecofeminism grows
out of and reflects different and distinct feminisms (e.g., liberal feminism,
Marxist feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism), ecofeminist posi-

. J
meaning. -
tions are as diverse as the feminisms from which they gain their strength and

In the literature on ecofeminism, ten types of women-other human Oth-

ers-nature interconnections tend to be discussed: historical (typically causal),
conceptual, empirical, socioeconomic, linguistic, symbolic and literary, spiri-
tual and religious, epistemological, political, and ethical interconnections.
While not all of these positions are themselves philosophical positions, each
raises interesting philosophical issues.

21

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22 Chapter Two

HISTORICAL (TYPICALLY CAUSAL) INTERCONNECI'IONS

Historical data and causal explanations are used to generate theories concerning
the sources of the dominations of women, other human Others, and nonhuman
nature. The historical pervasiveness of patriarchal domination of women and
nature has led some ecofeminists to suggest that androcentrism (male-centered
thinking) is the root cause of environmental destruction- a claim critics of
ecofeminism love to hate.2
What are the bases of these alleged historical-causal connections? Again,
ecofeminists disagree. Some ecofeminists trace these connections to prototypical
patterns of domination that began with the invasion of lndo-European societies
by nomadic tribes from Eurasia between the sixth and third millennia e.c.E. For
example, Riane Eisler argues:

The archaeological evidence thus supports the conclusion that it was not metals per
se, but rather their use in developing ever more effective technologies of destruction,
that played such a critical part in what Engels termed "the world historical defeat of
the female sex." Nor did male dominance become the norm in Western prehistory, as
Engels implies, when gathering-hunting peoples first begin to domesticate and breed
animals (in other words, when herding became their main technology of production).
Rather, it happened much later, during the millennia-long incursions of pastoral
hordes into the more fertile lands where farming had become the main technology of
production.3

In her book The Chalice and the Blade, Eisler describes the time before these
invasions by pastoral patriarchs as a peaceful agrarian era, as a partnership soci-
ety ruled by "the chalice, not the blade." "The chalice" symbolizes a cooperative,
peaceful, egalitarian, partnership society characterized by nurturing relationships
among humans and with nonhuman nature; "the blade" symbolizes an aggressive,
violent, war-prone, male-dominated society characterized by unequal power rela-
tionships and militaristic domination. Eisler then claims that "the root of the
problem lies in a social system in which the power of the Blade is idealized-in
which both men and women are taught to equate true masculinity with violence
and dominance and to see men who do not conform to this ideal as 'too soft' or
'effeminate' ."4
Other ecofeminists locate the historical-causal explanations of the intercon-
nected dominations of women and nature in cultural and scientific changes that
occurred more recently. In her 1980 book, The Death of Nature, environmental
historian Carolyn Merchant identifies the scientific revolution of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries as the key turning point in "the death of nature." She
observes that as late as 1500 "the daily interaction with nature was still structured
for most Europeans, as it was for other peoples, by close-knit, cooperative,
organic communities." She goes on to claim that "central to the organic theory
was the identification of nature, especially the earth, with a nurturing mother: a

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kindly beneficent female who provided for the needs of mankind in an ordered,
planned universe."5
Merchant argues that another opposing image of nature as female was also
present though not prevalent: wild and uncontrollable nature that could render
violence, storms, droughts, and general chaos. According to Merchant, between
1500 and 1700 the older, organic worldview was replaced by a reductionist,
"mechanistic world view of modem science" -one that sanctioned the exploita-
tion of nature, unchecked commercial and industrial expansion, and the subordi-
nation of women:

The metaphor of the earth as a nurturing mother was gradually to vanish as a domi-
nant image as the Scientific Revolution proceeded to mechanize and to rationalize
the world view. The second image, nature as disorder, called forth an important mod-
em idea, that of power over nature. 1\vo new ideas, those of mechanism and of the
domination and mastery of nature, became core concepts of the modem world.6

The Death of Nature weaves together scholarly material from politics, art, litera-
ture, physics, technology, philosophy, and popular culture to show how this
mechanistic worldview replaced an older, organic worldview, which provided
gendered moral restraints on how one treated nature. Merchant writes:

The change in controlling imagery was directly related to changes in human attitudes
and behavior toward the earth. Whereas the nurturing earth image can be viewed as a
cultural constraint restricting the types of socially and morally sanctioned human actions
allowable with respect to the earth, the new images of mastery and domination func-
tioned as cultural sanctions for the denudation of nature. Society needed these new
images as it continued the processes of commercialism and industrialization.7

Like Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, Merchant's The Death of Nature is not
without critics. Some ecofeminist philosophers such as Val Plumwood argue that the
historical roots of the unjustified domination of nature originated in classical Greek
philosophy and the rationalist tradition. For Plumwood, the culprit is "rationalism,"
that long-standing philosophical tradition that both defines rationality as the hall-
mark of humanness and elevates humans over nonhuman animals and nature on
grounds of humans' superior abilities to reason. Plumwood argues that the
human/nature value dualism at the heart of rationalism has spawned other harmful
value dualisms (e.g., masculine/feminine, reason/emotion, spirit/body).8 She argues
that these dualisms have not only been human-centered (or anthropocentric) but also
male-centered (or androcentric). Plumwood criticizes environmental philosophy
generally for its failure "to engage properly various positions within the rationalist
tradition, which has been inimical to both women and nature":

The failure to observe such connections is the result of an inadequate historical

analysis and understanding of the way in which the inferiorization of both women
and nature is grounded in rationalism, and the connections of both to the inferioriz-

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ing of the body, hierarchical concepts of labor, and disembedded and individualist
accounts of the self.9

Plumwood urges environmental philosophers to see important connections

between anthropocentrism and androcentrism: while anthropocentrism (i.e.,
human-centered thinking that assumes the superiority of humans over nature) is
objectionable, historically anthropocentrism is intimately connected with andro-
centrism (i.e., male-centered thinking that assumes the superiority of men over
women). Within the Western philosophical tradition, anthropocentrism has often
taken the form of androcentrism. As such, Plumwood argues, "the effect of
ecofeminism is not to absorb or sacrifice the critique of anthropocentrism, but to
deepen and enrich it."10
It is unlikely that ecofeminist philosophers will resolve historical questions
about the onset of patriarchy and the "twin dominations of women and nature."
In fact, claims about the origins of patriarchy may never be resolved. However,
as I show in chapter 3, to establish harmful women-other human Others-nature
interconnections, one need only show that, at least in Western societies, whenever
there has been a historical identification of women and other human Others with
inferior nature, the domination of women and other human Others has been
explained and "justified" by their connection with nonhuman nature.

CONCEPl'UAL INTERCONNECI'IONS

Conceptual interconnections are at the heart of ecofeminist philosophy. Since the

primary focus in chapter 3 is on such conceptual connections, I offer only brief
remarks about conceptual interconnections here.
Plumwood's account of the historical role rationalism plays in the dominations
of women and nonhuman nature is also a conceptual account: Plumwood locates
the conceptual basis of structures of domination in hierarchically organized value
dualisms (such as reason/emotion, mind/body, culture/nature, human/nature, and
man/woman) and an exaggerated focus on reason and rationality divorced from
the realm of the body, nature, and the physical . The account I offer (in chapter 3)
is similar, locating the conceptual connections in an oppressive and patriarchal
conceptual framework, mediated by what I call "a logic of domination." But
some ecofeminists offer a different sort of account altogether. Some locate the
conceptual connections in sex-gender differences, particularly in differentiated
personality formation or consciousness. 11 Typically, the claim is that socially con-
structed female bodily experiences (e.g., of childbearing and child rearing),
situate women differently with respect to nonhuman nature than men. These sex-
gender differences are subsequently manifested in di.fferent sorts of conscious-
ness in women and men, different "ways of knowing" for women than for men.
The work of ecofeminist sociologist Ariel Salleh is a good example of this
approach. Salleh criticizes the position in the field of environmental ethics known

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as "deep ecology" (described in chapter 4) for its failure to "recognize the primal
source of the destructive [man/nature] dualism ... or the deeply ingrained moti-
vational complexes which grow out of it." 12 According to Salleh, this "primal
source" is "a distinctly masculine sensibility," the result of "the self-estranged
male reaching for the original androgynous natural unity within himself." Salleh
criticizes deep ecology's desire for transcendence as a masculinist, "supremely
rationalist and technicist" way of thinking. According to Salleh, a preferable
approach is based on "women's lived experience." She claims that deep ecology

overlooks the point that if women's lived experience were recognized as meaningful
and were given legitimation in our culture, it could provide an immediate ' living'
social basis for the alternative consciousness which the deep ecologist is trying to
formulate and introduce as an abstract ethical construct.1 3

According to Salleh, "the unconscious connection between women and nature

needs to be made conscious" if there is to be "any real growth towards a sane,
humane, ecological future." 14

EMPIRICAL lNTERCONN~C'l'iONS
.--
: Many ecofeminists focus on the sort of empirical evidence offered in chapter 1-
--data that link women, people of color, the underclass, and children with environ-
mental destruction. As we have seen, some ecofeminists point to various health
and risk factors borne disproportionately by these human subordinate groups by
the presence of low-level radiation, pesticides, toxins, and other pollutants. Some
ecofeminists provide data to show how First World development policies result
in policies and practices that directly contribute to the inability of women to pro-
vide adequately for themselves and their families. Ecofeminist animal rights wel-
farists (discussed in chapter 6) argue that factory farming, animal experimenta-
tion, hunting, and meat-eating are tied to patriarchal concepts and practices.
Some ecofeminists connect violence against women through rape and pornogra-
phy to violence against nature. Such empirical data document the very real, felt,
lived "experiential" interconnections among the dominations of women, other
human Others, and nature. '\
- " ., \

SOCIOECONOMIC INTERCONNECTIONS

"
One
. sort of empirical interconnection is sufficiently distinct to warrant separate
mention: socioeconomic interconnections. Physicist and Chipko movement
activist Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned ecofeminist who defends
socioeconomical interconnections between the exploitation of women, women's
bodies, and women's labor, and the exploitation of nature. After conducting a

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26 Chapter Two

thorough empirical study of the effects of Western agricultural development

strategies in India, Shiva argues that Western development is really "maldevel-
opment," a development "bereft of the feminine" (which Shiva identifies as a
conservation or ecological principle). Shiva argues that maldevelopment rests on
several false, male-biased assumptions:

TIie assumptions are evident: nature is unproductive; organic agriculture based on

nature's cycles of renewability spells poveny; women and tribal and peasant soci-
eties embedded in nature are similarly unproductive, not because it has been demon-
strated that in cooperation they produce less goods and services for needs, but
because it is assumed that "production" takes place only when mediated by tech-
nologies for commodity production, even when such technologies destroy life. Asta-
ble and clean river is not a productive resource in this view; it needs to be 'devel-
oped' with darns in order to become so. Women, sharing the river as a commons to
satisfy the water needs of their families and society, are not involved in productive
labour: when substituted by the engineering man, water management and water use
become productive activities. Natural forests remain unproductive till they are devel-
oped into monoculture plantations of commercial species.' 5

According to Shiva, "maldevelopment" is a paradigm that sees all work that does
not produce profits and capital as non- or unproductive work. The neglect of
nature's work "in renewing herself' and of women's work in producing suste-
nance in the form of basic, vital needs is an essential part of the paradigm of
maldevelopment fostered by industrial capitalism"]
Maria Mies agrees. Using a Marxist-feminist perspective, Mies argues that just as
women's bodies and labor are coloniz.ed by a combination of capitalism and patri-
archy (or capitalist patriarchy), so is nature. 16 The term capitalist patriarchy stresses
the ways in which capitalism, as one version of the gender division of labor, gives
men control over, and access to, resources not given to women. Mies argues that
under capitalist patriarchy, both women and nature function as exploited resources,
without which the wealth of ruling-class men cannot be created. Other ecofeminists
argue that a socioeconomic analysis of women-nature interconnections links pat-
terns of domination in "an ideological superstructure by which the system of eco-
nomic and legal domination of women, land, and animals is justified and made to
appear 'natural' and inevitable within the total patriarchal cosmovision." 17 Included
in this "ideological superstructure" are religions and philosophical perspectives that
reinforce the domination of women, people of color, animals, and land as reflecting
the will of a supreme, deified, patriarchal male God.
Mary Mellor also uses a historical materialist approach to criticize capitalist
patriarchy. Mellor argues that although both men and women mediate between
culture and nature, they do not do so equally.18 This is because the conditions of
exploitation and domination affect women and nature differently than they affect
men and culture. Although all human beings, as animals themselves, are embod-
ied and embedded in a natural environment, men and women stand in a different

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relationship to the natural world. The difference in human embodiment is a gen-

dered, material, and historical phenomenon-one involving power relations
around the allocation of resources. 19 Mellor defends what she calls "materialist
ecofeminism," which is premised on "the fact that the boundaries of women's
lives are not defined by capitalist patriarchal economic relations."2() By naming
her version of ecofeminism "materialist ecofeminism," Mellor shows that patri-
archy is not simply cultural domination; it is importantly also a material or eco-
nomic domination.

LINGUISTIC INTERCONNECI'IONS

Many philosophers (e.g., Ludwig Wittgenstein) have argued that the language
one uses mirrors and reflects one's concept of oneself and one's world. As such,
language plays a crucial role in concept formation. Ecofeminists argue that it also
plays a crucial role in keeping intact mutually reinforcing sexist, racist, and natur-
ist views of women, people of color, and nonhuman nature.
Euro-American language is riddled with examples of "sexist-naturist lan-
guage," that is, language that depicts women, animals, and nonhuman nature as
inferior to (having less status, value, or prestige than) men and male-identified
culture. Women routinely are described in pejorative animal terms: Women are
dogs, cats, catty, pussycats, pussies, pets, bunnies, dumb bunnies, cows, sows,
foxes, chicks, bitches, beavers, old bats, old hens, old crows, queen bees, chee-
tahs, vixen, serpents, bird-brains, hare-brains, elephants, and whales. Women
cackle, go to hen parties, henpeck their husbands, become old biddies (old hens
no longer sexually attractive or able to reproduce) and social butterflies.21 Ani-
malizing women in a patriarchal culture where animals are seen as inferior to
humans, thereby reinforces and authorizes women's inferior status.
Similarly, language that feminizes nature in a patriarchal culture, where
women are viewed as subordinate and inferior, reinforces and authorizes the
domination of nature. Mother Nature (not Father Nature) is raped, mastered, con-
trolled, conquered, mined. Her (not his) secrets are penetrated, and her womb
(men don't have one) is put into the service of the man of science (not woman of
science, or simply scientist). Virgin timber is felled, cut down. Fertile (not potent)
soil is tilled, and land that lies fallow is useless or barren, like a woman unable to
conceive a child.
In these cases, the exploitation of nature and animals is justified by feminizing
(not masculinizing) them; the exploitation of women is justified by naturalizing
or animalizing (not masculinizing or culturalizing) them. As Carol Adams argues
in The Sexual Politics of Meat, language that feminizes nature and naturalizes
women describes, reflects, and perpetuates unjustified patriarchal domination by
failing to see the extent to which the dominations of women and nature, espe-
cially animals, are culturally analogous and not metaphorically analogous.22

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1bis brief discussion of sexist-naturist language deserves two clarifications.

First, the point of these examples of sexist-naturist language is not to claim that
only female b11mans are denigrated by the use of animal language. That would be
false; some nonhuman animal terms are used pejoratively against men and boys.
For example, men and boys are called studs, wolves, sharlcs, skunks, snakes,
toads,jackasses, weasels, old buzzards, and goats.23 Nor is it to claim that all uses
of animal or nature language to describe humans is derogatory. That would also
be false; some nonhuman animal terms are complimentary. For example, in West-
ern culture, it generally is complimentary to describe someone as busy as a bee,
eagle-eyed, lion-hearted, or brave as a lion.2-4 Rather, the point is that, within
patriarchal conrexts, the vast majority of animal terms used to denigrate women,
and the vast majority of female terms used to describe animals and nature, func-
tion differently from those animal terms used to denigrate men. Aod (as I show
in chapter 3) that functional difference is significant: The majority of animal
terms used to describe women identify women with (inferior) bodies, sexual
objects, domesticated pets or playthings, man's property, spirin,ally sinful or sin-
prone (temptress) creatures vis-a-vis (at least ruling-class) men; the majority of
animal terms used to describe (at least ruling-class) men identify men with (supe-
rior) intellects or minds, agency, sexual subjects, spirits, rulers, and sovereigns
who have power over both women and nature. 1bis is an important cultural dif-
ference that occurs within a historical, material context which sees women, ani-
mals, and nature as inferior to (at least ruling-class) men.
There is a second reason the cultural context in which animal language is used
is important all uses of derogatory animal language function to denigrate, inferi-
orize, and reinforce the exploitation of nonhuman animals. As Joan Dunayer
claims, "While only some nonhuman animal pejoratives denigrate women, all
denigrate nonhuman animals."25 Dunayer argues that this basic distinction,
human versus animal, is "the essence of speciesism," the view that nonhuman
animals are inferior to (the species) human animals.26

SYMBOLIC AND LI'l'ERARY INTERCONNECl'IUNS

We have already seen how Merchant's discussion of two images of nature-an

older Greek notion of nature as a benevolent female and a nurturing mother, and
a newer, modem image of nature as a (mere) machine, inert, dead-is central to
her argument that the move from an organic to a mechanistic model conceptually
sanctioned and ethically justified the exploitation of the (female) earth. It did so
by removing the sorts of moral barriers to such treatment that the metaphor of
nature as alive previously prevented. As Merchant claims:

One does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold or mutilate her body,
although commercial mining would soon require that. As long as the earth was con-

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 What Are Ecofeminists Saying? 29
sidered alive and sensitive, it could be considered a breach of human ethical behav-
ior to carry out such destructive acts against it.27

A discussion of images of women and nonhuman nature, then, raises larger issues
about symbolic patterns linking women and nature. Some ecofeminists explore
these symbolic patterns in literature and popular culture.
Many ecofeminists draw on "women's nature writing" to unpack the nature of
the women-other human Others-nature interconnections.28 One of the first to do
so is Susan Griffin. In the prologue to the epic poem that is her book Woman and
Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, Griffin writes,

He says that woman speaks with nature. That she hears voices from under the
earth. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing
through her mouth and the cries of infants are clear to her. But for him this
dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this
world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature.
And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red
Riding Hood who converses with the wolf, Dorothy who befriends a lion,
Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the
Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole. (And when we hear
in the Navajo chant of the mountain that a grown man sits and smokes with
bears and follows directions given to him by squirrels, we are surprised. We
had thought only little girls spoke with animals.)
We are the bird's eggs. Bird's eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep;
we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women.
We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and
roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls.
We are women and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak.
But we hear.29

Griffin's writing is impactive. Her writing is testimony to the power of literature

and language to convey basic attitudes about women and nature.
A new genre of literary analysis called ecofeminist literary criticism has
emerged. According to one of its main proponents, Patrick Murphy, this approach
to literary criticism uses

ecofeminism as a ground for critiquing all the literature that one reads. For literary
critics in particular this would mean reevaluating the canon that constitutes the list of
major works and texts, and calling for a dialogue between critical evaluations based
on humanistic criteria and those based on de-homocentric criteria. This would
require, for instance, reevaluating the poetic tradition of the "pastoral," which tends
to be based on an idealization of nature rather than a genuine encounter with it.30

Ecofeminist literary criticism does not seek only "a literature that meets equally
the criteria of ecological and feminist sophistication," but work "that to some
extent embody both dimensions." 31

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SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS INTERCONNbCI"IONS

___Ecofeminist theologian Elizabeth Dodson Gray was among the ftrSt ecofeminists
to examine the roles that religious and sexual imagery play in the patriarchal her-
itage of the Judeo-Christian and Western intellectual traditions. In her book Green
Paradise Lost, ftrSt published in 1979, Gray claims that a destructive hierarchy of
beings is at the heart of biblical accounts of creation:

In this biblical view of the nature of things woman comes after and also below man.
Woman was created (according to this chronologically earliest account of the cre-
ation of the world in Gen. 2) out of man's body (rather than from a woman's body as
happens naturally).... Then come children, so derivative that they are not even in
the Creation story.... Then come animals, who do not have the unique human spirit
at all .... Thus animals are below. Further down are plants, which do not even move
about. Below them is the ground of nature itself-the hills and mountains, streams
and valleys-which is the bottom of everything just as the heavens, the moon and the
stars are close to God at the top of everything.327
--
In this hierarchical "pyramid of dominance and status," the higher up one goes,
the closer one is to all that is spiritual and superior. Gray claims that "even
women, whom today we might view as equally human, are subordinate and infe-
rior precisely on the ground of 'spirit' ."33 She argues:

Women are not stepping back from these ancient religious myths, so basic to our
Judeo-Christian and Western tradition. They are looking at these myths from the
newly found perspective of a feminist consciousness and realizing that these myths
are patriarchal-Le., they rationalize and justify a society that puts men "up" and
women "down."
But the creation myth also puts down children, animals, plants-and Nature it-
self.... What is clearly articulated here is a hierarchical order of being in which the
lower orders-whether female or child or animal or plant-can be treated, mis-
treated, violated, sold, sacrificed, or killed at the convenience of the higher states of
spiritual being found in males and in God. Nature, being not only at the bottom of
this pyramid but being the most full of dirt, blood and such nasty natural surprises as
earthquakes, floods and bad storms, is obviously a prize candidate for the most ruth-
less "mastering" of all.34

Given Gray's account, it is not surprising that the symbols, images, and stories
of traditional patriarchal religions receive the attention they do from ecofemi-
nists. Among theologians, it has fueled the debate over "reform or revolution" in
traditional religions: Can patriarchal religions be reformed from within to elimi-
nate the harmful patriarchal biases, or are new or prepatriarchal religions required
in their place?
Western theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether argues that ecofeminism
sounds significantly different when contextualized by women from the Third

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World. This is because, for women in countries struggling against the effects of
Western colonialism, both the religions of colonizing powers and the religious
traditions within their own cultures have complex and historically specific dom-
inating and liberating roles. Ruether cites two important differences:

First, women from Asia, Africa, and Latin America are much less likely to forget,
unlike Northern women, that the base line of domination of women and of nature is
impoverishment: the impoverishment of the majority of their people, particularly
women and children, and the impoverishment of the. land.... Second, although many
women of Asia, Africa, and Latin America are deeply interested in recovering pat-
terns of spirituality from a pre-Christian past, these spiritualities are those of their
own indigenous roots. They are not fetched in as an idealized story from long ago
and far away with which one has no cultural experience, but rather this pre-Christian
indigenous past is still present. It has been broken and silenced by colonialism and
Christianization, but it is still present in the contemporary indigenous people of one's
own land, descendants of one's own indigenous ancestors, or even as customs with
which the woman writer herself grew up in her earlier years.35

Ruether encourages Northern women to "free ourselves from both our chauvin-
ism and our escapism" by playing creatively with what is liberating in our own
heritages, including religious and spiritual heritages, while also "letting go of
both the urge to inflate our identity as the one true way or to repudiate it as total
toxic waste." Ruether also argues that Northern women must become "more
truthful and responsible," dealing transformatively with who we are, culturally
and economically, rather than appropriating the ideas and practices of indigenous
peoples of other worlds. She concludes, "Only in this way can we [Northern
women] begin to fmd how to be true friends and sisters with women -with peo-
ple- of other worlds, no longer as oppressors trying to suppress other people's
identities but also not as 'white blanks' seeking to fill our own emptiness at the
expense of others." 36
Spiritual ecofeminists were among the first ecofeminists in the United States.
However, like ecofeminism generally, there is no one version of "spiritual
ecofeminism." Spiritual ecofeminists disagree about such basic issues as whether
mainstream religious traditions (e.g., Christianity) can be reformed (reconceived,
reinterpreted) to provide environmentally responsible and nonsexist practices and
theologies; whether any specific environmental practice (e.g., vegetarianism,
bans on hunting and animal experimentation, organic farming, population con-
trol) is mandated by ecofeminist spirituality; and whether some ecofeminist spir-
itualities inappropriately mystify and romanticize nature, or coopt indigenous
cultural beliefs and practices.
Nonetheless, spiritual ecofeminists agree that earth-based, feminist spiritualities
and symbols (such as Gaia and Goddess) are essential to ecofeminism. The works of
Starhawk, Charlene Spretnak, Joanna Macy, and Carol Christ are examples of spir-
itual ecofeminist positions. Consider what they say about ecofeminism.

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32 Chapter Two

Starhawk defines "ecofeminism" as a spiritual movement:

F.cofeminism is a movement with an implicit and sometimes explicit spiritual

base .... To say that ecoferninism is a spiritual movement, in an earth-rooted sense,
means that it encompasses a dimension that profoundly challenges our ordinary sense
of value, that counters _the root stories of our culture and attempts to shift them. 37

Like other spiritual ecofeminists, Starhawk insists that women's spirituality is

also political.38 Carol Christ agrees. She claims spirituality is central to ecofemi-
nist politics:

With many spiritual feminists, ecofeminists, ecologists, antinuclear activists, and

others, I share the conviction that the crisis that threatens the destruction of the Earth
is not only social, political, economic, and technological, but is at root spiritual. We
have lost the sense that this Earth is our true home.... The preservation of the Earth
requires a profound shift in consciousness: a recovery of more ancient and traditional
views that revere the profound connection of all beings in the web of life and a
rethinking of the relation of both humanity and divinity in nature.39

Spretnak describes the path she took into ecofeminism as involving the
embrace of ancient, prepatriarchal, nature-based religion:

In the mid-1970s many radical/cultural feminists experienced the exhilarating dis-

covery, through historic and archaeological sources, of a religion that honored the
female and seemed to have as its "good book" nature itself. We were drawn to it like
a magnet, but only, I feel, because both of those features were central. We would not
have been interested in "Yahweh in a skirt," a distant, detached, domineering god-
head who happened to be female. What was cosmologically wholesome and healing
was the discovery of the Divine as immanent in and around us. What was intriguing
was the sacred link between the Goddess in her many guises and totemic animals and
plants, sacred groves, and womblike caves, in the moon-rhythm blood of menses, the
ecstatic dance- the experience of knowing Gaia, her voluptuous contours and fertile
plains, her flowing waters that give life, her animal teachers.40

Spretnak claims that the ecofeminist sense of the spiritual emerges through expe-
riences of ecocommunion with nature-an experience of grace whereby one
experiences oneself as a particular expression of the sacred cosmic body.41
Like Starhawk and Spretnak, Macy claims that the "ecological self' is a spir-
itual self:

There is the experience of being acted 'through' and sustained by something greater
than oneself. It is close to the religious concept of grace, but, as distinct from the tra-
ditional Western understanding of grace, it does not require belief in God or super-
natural agency. One simply finds oneself empowered to act on behalf of other
beings- or on behalf of the larger whole- and the empowerment itself seems to
come 'through' that or those for whose sake one acts.42

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 What Are Ecofeminists Saying? 33

For Macy, a requisite condition for awakening to "our ecological selves" is to find
new spiritual selves and powers.
Many spiritual ecofeminists invoke the notion of "the Goddess" to capture the
sacredness of both nonhuman nature and the human body. Goddess worship has
no hierarchy, no centralized institutions, no monumental structures, no liturgy.
Carol Christ claims that the symbol of the Goddess "aids the process of naming
and reclaiming the female body and its cycles and processes.'143
What is the Goddess? According to Christ, "the Goddess" is three things. First,
the Goddess is divine female, a personification who can be invoked in prayer and
ritual. Second, the Goddess is a symbol of life, death, and rebirth-encouraging
us to see the changing phases of our lives as holy. Third, the Goddess is a sym-
bol of the legitimacy and beauty of women's power to nurture and create but also
to limit and destroy when necessary.
For all spiritual ecofeminists, Goddess worship brings about a shift in the sense
of self which is important for both men and women. The shift is allegedly from
an atomistic, purely self-interested, egoistic self to an ecological and spiritual
self. As Starhawk claims, the Goddess is not for women only: "The Goddess is
also important for men. The oppression of men in Father God-ruled patriarchy is
perhaps less obvious but no less tragic than that of women ... men are encour-
aged to identify with a model no human being can successfully emulate ... they
are at war with themselves."44

EPISTEMOLOGICAL INTERCONNECTIONS

Many ecofeminists address epistemological dimensions of women-other human

Other-nature interconnections. Epistemological concerns are concerns about
knowledge. Ecofeminists interested in epistemology challenge some trademark
Western views about knowledge: for example, that knowledge is objective; that
the "knower" is an objective, detached, independent, and rational observer; and
that nonhuman nature is a passive object of knowledge. To build their case, they
often tum to recent work in epistemology by feminist philosophers of science
such as Sandra Harding.
Harding argues that the social location of the knower is crucial to understand-
ing and assessing epistemological claims.

The activities of those at the bottom of . . . social hierarchies can provide starting
points for thought-for everyone's research and scholarship-from which humans'
relations with each other and the natural world can become visible. This is because
the experience and Jives of marginalized peoples, as they understand them, provide
particularly significant problems to be explained, or research agendas .45

Many ecofeminists agree. They argue that only by listening to the perspectives of
"those at the bottom of social hierarchies" can one begin to see alternative ways

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34 Chapter Two

of viewing an environmental problem, analyzing data, or theorizing about

wome~ther human Others-nature interconnections. The Chipko movement
illustrates that often local women foresters "on the bottom" have indigenous tech-
nical knowledge based on their hands-on, daily, lived experience as forest man-
agers. This knowledge provides an invaluable perspective on what it is like to live
the lives they live-information and perspectives not readily accessible to those
who live outside the culture.
Ecofeminist philosopher Lori Gruen builds on the work in feminist philosophy
of science in developing an ecofeminist moral epistemology. She argues that
ecofeminist theory always grows out of and examines the social context in which
moral and epistemological claims are generated. Recognition of the interdepend-
ence of science and society, facts and values, reason and emotion "is the first step
towards any legitimate knowledge."46 Gruen writes:

Ecofeminists recognize that claims to knowledge are always influenced by the val-
ues of the culture in which they are generated. Following the arguments made by
feminist philosophers of science, Marxists, cultural critics, and others, ecofeminists
believe that facts are theory-laden, theories are value-laden, and values are molded
by historical and philosophical ideologies, social norms, and individual processes of
categorization.47

Ecofeminist epistemologies often critique Western notions of objectivity and

conceptions of nature as a passive object of study. Probably the most radical cri-
tique was initially given by Donna Haraway who claimed that modem Western
conceptions of objectivity and nature-as-object are patriarchal ideologies of dom-
ination and control. Haraway argues for an alternative, pluralistic, context-
dependent view of knowledge, what she calls "situated knowledges":

Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and
agent, not as a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as slave to the master
that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and his authorship of "objective"
knowledge .... A corollary of the insistence that ethics and politics covertly or
overtly provide the bases for objectivity ... is granting the status of agent/actor to
the "objects" of the world.48

On this view, nature is an active subject-not a mere object or resource to be

studied. Nature actively contributes to what humans know about nature. The job
of the scientist, philosopher, and theorist is not to try to give accounts that "mir-
ror nature," since mirroring assumes that nature is an unconstructed "given." Nor
is it to act as if one "discovers" nature, since claims to discovery (like "Colum-
bus discovered America") mistakenly assume that there isn't anything (or any-
thing important) that already exists and that has agency. Rather, the job of the sci-
entist, philosopher, and theorist is to provide knowledge claims and accounts that
are relationally "situated" in important social and material contexts.

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 What Are Ecofeminists Saying? 35

According to Haraway, the notion of nature as active subject is something

stressed by ecofeminists. She stresses that "ecofeminists have perhaps been most
insistent on some version of the world as active subject, not as resource to be
mapped and appropriated in bourgeois, Marxist, or masculinist projects .
Acknowledging the agency of the world in knowledge makes room for some
unsettling possibilities." 49 Haraway says that when one acknowledges "nature as
subject."

Accounts of a "real" world do not, then, depend on a logic of "discovery" but on a

power-charged social relation of "conversation." Acknowledging the agency of the
world in knowledge makes room for some unsettling possibilities, including a sense
of the world's independent sense of humor.... Perhaps our hopes for accountability,
for politics, for ecofeminism, tum on revisioning the world as coding trickster with
whom we must learn to converse.50

Haraway argues for a reconception of the practice of science as a socially and

politically charged "conversation" with nature, reconceived as active agent. The
image of nature as a "coding trickster" conveys the sense of play, interaction, and
agency Haraway imputes to all epistemic relationships.
Some ecofeminists who discuss epistemological connections appeal, instead,
to the critical theory of such authors as Horkheimer, Adorno, Balbus, and the
Frankfurt circle. Salleh, for instance, claims that "their epistemological and sub-
stantive analysis both point to a convergence of feminist and ecological concerns,
anticipating the more recent arrival of ecofeminism."51 Patricia Jagentowicz
Mills agrees. She argues that "critical theory" provides a critique of the "nature
versus culture" dichotomy and an epistemological structure for critiquing the
relationships between the domination of women and the domination of nature.52

POLIDCAL INTERCONNECTIONS

· Ecofeminism has always been a grassroots political movement motivated by

· -pressing pragmatic concems.53 These include issues of women's and environ-
mental health, to science, development and technology, the treatment of animals,
and peace, anti-nuclear, anti-militarism activism. The varieties of ecofeminist
perspectives on the environment are properly seen as an attempt to take seriously
such grassroots activism and political concerns by developing analyses of domi-
nation that explain, clarify, and guide that praxis.
Stephanie Lahar states this point well Lahar concludes her analysis of the links
between ecofeminist theory and grassroots political activism as follows:

Ecofeminism's political goals include the deconstruction of oppressive social, eco-

nomic, and political systems and the reconstruction of more viable social and politi-
cal forms. No version of ecofeminist theory dictates exactly what people should do

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36 Chapter1wo

in the face of situations they encounter in personal and public life, nor is it a single
political platform. The relation of ecofeminist theory to political activism is ideally
informative and generative and not one of either prescribing or "owning" particular
actions. Ecofeminist theory advocates a combined politics of resistance and creative
projects, but the specific enactment of these is a result of dialogue between the indi-
viduals involved and the actual situation or issue.

Lahar goes on to claim that ecofeminism "contributes an overall framework and

conceptual links to the political understanding of the interplay between social and
environmental issues, and routes to political empowerment through understand-
ing the effects of one's actions extended through multiple human and nonhuman
communities."54]
Plumwood agrees with Lahar. Plumwood argues that if one mistakenly con-
strues environmental philosophy as only or primarily concerned with ethics, one
will neglect "a key aspect of the overall problem which is concerned with the def-
inition of the human self as separate from nature, the connection between this and
the instrumental view of nature, and broader political aspects of the critique of
instrumentalism ." 55
CToe political aspects of ecofeminist critiques of ethics and knowledge are
explicitly addressed by political scientist Noel Sturgeon in her book Ecofeminist
Natures. Sturgeon argues for a conception of ecofeminism as an "oppositional
political discourse and set of practices imbedded in particular historical, material,
and political contexts." Sturgeon interprets ecofeminism as "a fractured, con-
tested, discontinuous entity that constitutes itself as a social movement." Stur-
geon's characterization of ecofeminism as a social movement is based on her
understanding of social movements as:

contestants in hegemonic power relations, through which change is produced by nwner-

ous kinds of "action," including that of the deployment of symbolic resources, shifts in
identity construction, and the production of both popular and scholarly knowledge-as
well as direct action, civil disobedience, strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, lobbying, and

-·
other more traditionally recogniz.ed forms of political action.56-'.

According to Sturgeon, ecofeminism is a social movement involved in both the

deployment of and theorizing about concepts (e.g., of nature, women, race)-
what she calls the "direct theory" aspect of a social movement. Sturgeon's book
is a critique of ecofeminist theory and practice " with the goal of making sugges-
tions for the formation of a more inclusive, more politically engaged ecofeminist
movement."57
Much of the debate among ecofeminists about politics turns on the type of fem-
inism that underlies a particular ecofeminist position. Different ecofeminist poli-
tics finds roots in liberal feminism, Marxist feminism , radical feminism, socialist
feminism, psychoanalytic feminism , and postcolonial feminisms. What is
accepted as an appropriate ecofeminist action, then, will reflect the different and
differing perspectives of these feminisms.

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 Whal Are Ecofeminists Saying? 37

E'l'HICAL INTERCONNECl'IONS

Much of the scholarly literature of ecofeminist philosophy has focused on envi-

ronmental ethics. Ecofeminist philosophers argue that the interconnections
among the conceptualizations and treatment of women, other subordinated
humans, animals, and (the rest of) nature require a feminist ethical analysis and
response. Minimally, the goal of ecofeminist environmental ethics is to develop
theories and practices concerning humans and the natural environment that are
not male-biased and that provide a guide to action in the prefeminist present.
Ecofeminist philosopher Chris Cuomo argues for "ethics at the crossroads of
ethical and political theory and practice" in the form of an "ethic of flourishing."
An ethic of flourishing draws on Aristotelian concepts of eudainwnia (translated
variously as happiness, the good life, living well, excellence, and flourishing) and
the polis (or, community),58 as well as a commitment to the value of flourishing ,
or well-being, of individuals, species, and communities. According to Cuomo:

in ecological feminism , it is an entity's dynamic chann- its diffuse , 'internal' ability

to adapt to or resist c hange, and its unique causal and motivational patterns and char-
acter- that renders it morally considerable , and that serves as a primary site for
determining what is good for that being or thing.59

Cuomo's conception of the flourishing of living things and the "dynamic charm"
of systems presumes a degree of physical health and self-directedness that is
achievable by both individuals in communities (both social and ecological) and
communities themselves.
Ynestra King is among the first North American theorists to defend an ecofem-
inist ethic based in socialist feminism . King calls for a rapprochement between
cultural (or spiritual ecofeminism) and socialist feminism within ecofeminism:

Both feminism and ecology embody the revolt of nature against human do mination.
They demand that we rethink the relationship between humanity and the rest of
nature, including our natural, embodied selves. In ecofeminism , nature is the central
category of analysis. An analysis of the interrelated dominations of nature-psyche
and sexuality, human oppression, and nonhuman nature-and the historic position of
women in relation to those forms of domination is the starting point of ecofeminist
theory. We share with cultural feminism the necessity of a politics with heart and a
beloved community, recognizing our connection with each other, and nonhuman
nature. Socialist feminism has given us a powerful critical perspective with which to
understand and transform history. Separately, they perpetuate the dualism of "mind"
and "nature." Together they make possible a new ecological relationship between
nature and culture, in which mind and nature, heart and reason, join forces to trans-
form the internal and external systems of domination that threaten the existence of
life on Earth.6()

King's view of ecofem.inism recommends that ecofeminist ethics dismantle

dualisms of mind and body, reason and emotion by finding a place "in which

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38 Chapter Two

mind and nature, heart and reason.join forces to transform the internal and exter-
nal systems of domination that threaten the existence of life on earth.''6 1 (The ver-
sion of ecofeminist ethics I defend in chapter 5 attempts to do just that.)

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I have provided an overview of the literature on ecofeminism by

describing ten types of women-other human Other- nature interconnections dis-
cussed by ecofeminists. I tum now, in chapters 3 through 9, to a description and
defense of the version of ecofeminist philosophy I am defending. It is one that
addresses key issues raised within each of these ten types of positions.

NOTES

1. F~ise d'Eaubonne,le Feminisme ou La Mon (Paris: Pierre Horay, 1974), 213-52.

2 . For many environmental ethicists, it is anthropocentrism (human-centeredness) that
is the problem, not androcentrism (male-centeredness). For ecofeminists, the historical
manifestation of anthropocentrism, at least in Western societies, has been androcentric.
3. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1988), 46. The quote by Engels is from The Origins of the Family, Pri-
vate Property, and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972).
4 . Eisler, The Chalice, xviii.
5 . Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revo-
lution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), l , 2 .
6 . Merchant, Death of Nature, 2.
7 . Merchant, Death of Nature, 2.
8. Val Plumwood, " Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy,
and the Critique of Rationalism," in Ecological Feminist Philosophies, ed. Karen J. War-
ren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 155-80.
9. Plumwood, "Nature, Self, and Gender," 22.
10. Plumwood, " Nature, Self, and Gender," 22.
11. See, e.g., Jim Cheney, "Eco-Feminism and Deep Ecology," Environmental Ethics 9 ,
no. 2 (Summer 1987), 115-45; Elizabeth Dodson Gray, Green Paradise Lost (Wellesley,
Mass.: Roundtable Press, 1981); Stephanie Leland, "Feminism and Ecology: Theoretical
Connections," in Reclaim the Eanh: Women Speak Out for Ufe on Eanh, ed. Leonie
Caldecott and Stephanie Leland (London: Women's Press, 1983), 67-72; Ariel Kay Salleh,
"Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection," Environmental Ethics 6, no.
4 (Winter 1984), 339-45.
12. Salleh, "Deeper than Deep Ecology," 340.
13. Salleh, "Deeper than Deep Ecology," 340.
14. Ariel Kay Salleh, "Working with Nature: Reciprocity or Control?" in Environmen-
tal Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, 2nd edition, ed. Michael E. Zim-
merman, J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, Karen J. Warren, and John Clark (Upper Sad-
dle River, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1998), 323.

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 What Are Ecofeminists Saying? 39

15. Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London: Zed
Books Ltd., 1988), 4.
16. Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the Inter-
national Division of Labor (Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: Zed Books, 1986).
17. Rosemary Radford Ruether, "Introduction," in Women Healing Earth: Third World
Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996), 3.
18. Mary Mellor, Feminism and Ecology (New York: New York University Press,
1997), 86.
19. Mellor, Feminism and Ecology, 58.
20. Mellor, Feminism and Ecology, 177.
21. See Joan Dunayer, "Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots," in Animals and Women: Fem-
inist Theoretical Explorations, ed. Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1995), 13.
22. Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical
Theory (New York: Continuum Company, 1990), 61.
23. Dunayer, "Sexist Words," 16.
24. Dunayer, "Sexist Words," 17.
25. Dunayer, "Sexist Words," 16.
26. Dunayer, "Sexist Words," 17.
27. Merchant, Death of Nature, 3.
28. Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian
Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986); Allen, "The Woman I Love Is a Planet; The
Planet I Love Is a Tree," in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed.
Irene Diamond and Gloria Fernan Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990),
52-57; Lorraine Anderson, ed., Sisters of the Earth: Women 's Prose and Poetry About
Nature (New York: Vmtage Books, 1991); Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (New
York: Seabury Press, 1985); Rachel L. Bagby, "Daughters of Growing Things," in
Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria
Fernan Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), 231-48; Susy McKee Char-
nas, Walk to the End of the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1974); Charnas, Mother-
lines (New York: Berkley, 1979); Theresa Corrigan and Stephanie Hoppe, With a Fly's
Eye, Whale's Wit, and Woman's Heart: Animals and Women (San Francisco: Cleis Press,
1989); Corrigan and Hoppe.And a Deer's Ear, Eagle's Song and Bear's Grace (San Fran-
cisco: Cleis Press, 1990); Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: Harper and
Row, 1982); Sally Miller Gearhart, The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (Boston:
Alyson Publications, 1984); Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
(New York: Harper and Row, 1978); Joy Harjo, What Moon Drove Me to This? (New York:
I. Reed Books, 1979); Harjo, She Had Some Horses (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1983);
Harjo, In Mad Love and War (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1990); Linda
Hogan, Daughters, I Love You (Denver: Loretto Heights College Publications, 1981);
Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land: Metaphar as Experience and History in American
Life and Letters (Chapel Hill: University of Nonh Carolina Press, 1975); Ursula K.
LeGuin, Always Coming Home (New York: Bantam Books, 1985); LeGuin, Buffalo Gals
and Other Animal Presences (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, 1987); LeGuin, Wild
Oats and Fireweed (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); LeGuin, At The Edge ofthe World:
Thoughts of Words, Women, Places (New York: Harper and Row, 1989); Patrick D. Mur-
phy, "Introduction: Feminism, Ecology, and the Future of the Humanities," Studies in the

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40 Chapter Two

Humanities (Special issue on Feminism, Ecology, and the Future of the Humanities, ed.
Patrick D. Murphy), 15, no. 2 (1988), 8~9; Murphy, "Ground, Pivot, Motion: Ecofemi-
nist Theory, Dialogics, and Literary Practice," in Ecological Feminist Philosophies, ed.
Karen J. Warren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 228-43; Mary Oliver,
American Primitive (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983); Marge Piercy, Women on the Edge of
1ime (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1976); Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life (New
York: Norton, 1986); Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (New York: New American Library,
1977); Silko, "Landscape, History and the Pueblo Imagination," in On Nature: Nature,
Landscape, and Natural History, ed. Daniel Halpern (San Francisco: North Point, 1987),
83-94; Silko,Almanac ofthe Dead: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1991); Luci Tapa.honso,
A Breeze Swept Through (Albuquerque, N. Mex.: West End Press, 1987); Sheri Tepper,
The Gate to Women's CounJry (New York: Bantam Books, 1989); Alice Walker, Living by
the Wonl: Selected Writings, 1973- 1987 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988);
Walker, The Temple of My Familiar (New York: Pocket Books, 1990); Kate Wilhelm,
Juniper 1ime (New York: Pocket Books, 1980); Terry Tempest Williams, "The Wild Card,"
Wilderness (Summer 1993): 26-29; Irene Zahava, Through Other Eyes: Animal Stories by
Women (Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1988).
29. Griffin, Woman and Nature, 1 (emphases in the original removed).
30. Patrick D. Murphy, Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1995), 25.
31. Murphy, Literature, Nature, 29.
32. Gray, Green Paradise Lost, 3.
33. Gray, Green Paradise Lost, 5.
34. Gray, Green Paradise Lost, 6-1 .
35. Ruether, Women Healing Earth, 6.
36. Ruether, Women Healing Earth, 8.
37. Starhawk, "Feminist, Earth-Based Spirituality and Ecofeminism," in Healing the
Wounds: The Promise of Ecological Feminism, ed. Judith Plant (Santa Cruz, Calif.: New
Society Publishers, 1989), 174-85.
38. See Charlene Spretnak, ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of
Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1982).
39. Carol Christ, "Rethinking Theology and Nature," in Reweaving the World: The
Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria Fernan Orenstein (San Fran-
cisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), 58.
40. Charlene Spretnak, "Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering," in Reweaving the
World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria Fernan Orenstein
(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), 5.
41. Charlene Spretnak, "States of Grace," in Environmental Ethics: Convergence and
Divergence, ed. Susan J. Armstrong and Richard G. Botzler (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1993), 466-74.
42. Joanna Macy, "Awakening to the Ecological Self," in Healing the Wounds: The
Promise of Ecological Feminism, ed. Judith Plant (Santa Cruz, Calif.: New Society Pub-
lishers, 1989), 210.
43. Carol Christ, "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological,
and Political Reflections," in Womanspirit Rising, ed. Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ
(New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 76.

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 What Are Ecofeminists Saying? 41

44. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebinh of the Ancient Religion of the Great God-
dess (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 9.
45. Sandra Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is 'Strong Objectiv-
ity?'" in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1993), 54.
46. Lori Gruen, ''Toward an Ecoferninist Moral Epistemology," in Ecological Femi-
nism, ed. Karen J. Warren (New York: Routledge, 1994), 134.
47. Gruen, ''Toward an Ecoferninist Moral Epistemologyt 124.
48. Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and
the Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (Fall 1988), 592-93.
49. Haraway, "Situated Knowledges," 592-93.
50. Haraway, "Situated Knowledges," 593.
51 . Ariel Kay Salleh, "Epistemology and the Metaphors of Production: An Eco-Femi-
nist Reading of Critical Theory," Studies in the Humanities (Special issue on Feminism,
Ecology, and the Future of the Humanities, ed. Patrick D. Murphy) 15, no. 2 (1988), 131.
52. Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, Women, Nature and Psyche (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1987).
53. See Stephanie Lahar, "Ecofeminist Theory and Grassroots Politics," in Ecological
Feminist Philosophies, ed. Karen J. Warren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1996), 1-18.
54. Lahar, ''Ecofeminist Theory," 15.
55. Plumwood, "Nature, Self, and Gender," 162.
56. Noel Sturgeon, Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political
Action (New York: Routledge, 1997), 3, 4.
57. Sturgeon, Ecofeminist Natures, 19.
58. Cuomo, Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing (London:
Routledge, 1998), 70.
59. Cuomo, Feminism and Ecological Communities, 71.
60. Ynestra King, "Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and the Nature/Culture
Dualism," in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond
and Gloria Fernan Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), 106-21.
61 . King, "Healing the Wounds," 117-18.

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