Capitalism, Nature, Patriarchy

Summary of the analysis of patriarchy in the podcast series so far. The invention of social class. Patriarchy creates a set of psychological foundations for class society. Contempt for non-human nature can fit into these psychological patterns. Among other factors, this works to drive class societies to collapse. How these links become apparent in classic works of civilisation and in popular culture today. The ecofeminist analysis of class society. 

Transcript

Ch 8: Patriarchy and nature in Indigenous societies
Terry Leahy 2024

I will be writing four chapters on feminist and eco feminist views of class society. The first two lay out my own picture of how this all works. This one is about how patriarchy, gender and nature are related in the context of Indigenous societies – classless societies. The next one is about how all this gets configured in the context of class. Following that is a chapter on discourses circulating in current capitalism. Finally, I will look at recent environmental and ecofeminist politics.
My first proposal is that class society has a psychic base in patriarchy, that class society depends on patriarchy. Patriarchy is in no way an outcome of class society. It’s the other way around. The second proposal is that class societies have a troubled relationship with non-human nature. I am not saying that all class societies are hell bent on destroying the natural world. On the other hand, compared to stateless societies, they are more likely to run into ecological trouble. This troubled relationship is often expressed through a discourse that links women to nature, denigrating both. In the standard phrase, women are to nature as men are to culture. Women and nature must be controlled by men. What comes out of this are four allied dualisms. Men versus women. The ruling class versus the subordinate class. Civilisation versus the barbarians. Humans versus nature.
My analysis in these chapters is loosely based on some wonderful books by feminist scholars and by an earlier tradition of psychoanalytic Marxism. To mention four key authors. Wilhelm Reich, a radical psychoanalytic theorist from the thirties. Shulamith Firestone, a radical feminist social theorist from the New York women’s liberation movement. Nancy Chodorow, a feminist anthropologist and psychological theorist. Val Plumwood, an Australian eco-philosopher. All writing in the seventies. 
Before I get into all this, I want to talk about how this configuration of ideas and practices in class societies is absent in Indigenous societies. The link between women and nature is not an eternal verity of the human species but a construct of class society.
Patriarchy
So, first to re-cap some of the ideas from earlier chapters that are relevant here. My first question: is patriarchy natural?  Patriarchy is both socially constructed and also relies on natural differences between the sexes. Does this make patriarchy natural in the sense of given and inevitable? No, it means that we need to attend to both these natural material elements of sexual difference and, also to the social construction of gender. If we are to understand and hopefully to eliminate patriarchy. 
Patriarchy is cross-cultural and trans historical. There is no mode of production that escapes patriarchy. I do not think we can know whether it has been one hundred per cent universal, but it is hard to come up with exceptions that stand up to detailed examination. It is the exploitation and domination of women by men. It depends upon men's political advantage in power conflicts with women. Men are not hampered by pregnancy, wet nursing or strong emotional ties to infants coming out of those experiences. All of these things mean that men are free to develop political control in societies and have much more freedom than women. But it's also a political choice by men. You can talk about men, as Firestone does, as a sex class. They make a political choice to take advantage of those differences. It's not inevitable in the sense that they might make a different choice. 
It is even possible that that patriarchy is a cultural invention. We could set it back to 80,000 years and say it was invented at the same time as the exodus from Africa. There is no way to contradict that. The archaeological evidence is moot. It is certainly not inevitable now at the present time. Women’s biological role in reproduction is subject to technological intervention, given a feminist movement. Things like a lower birth rate, control over death in childbirth, contraception.  
So, what are the cultural impacts of patriarchy that play out in different social orders? Setting aside the more obvious aspects of patriarchy in gender oppression. The first aspect I want to talk about is first theorized by Reich and later Firestone. The predisposition to expect society to be organized hierarchically. With leaders and followers. Or authorities and subordinates. This predisposition is based on an experience of childhood where a father or grandfather is the head of the family. This experience is not restricted to nuclear families in capitalism. It equally applies in communities where authority is more communally organized, and brothers or clan fathers are dominant. The leading men in the family are in authority and women and children are subordinate. Giving the growing child an expectation of dominant and subordinate roles in society outside the family.
The second cultural impact is anxious, competitive masculinity. I have discussed this extensively in the previous chapter. It's premised on the fact that in a patriarchal society, men avoid the entanglements of early childcare. The outcome is that men are keen to distance themselves from the nurturing roles that women inevitably occupy. To establish their masculine identity through hostility to women and in competitions with other men. To deny empathy. This analysis comes from the work of Nancy Chodorow.
Patriarchal psychology in classless societies
In all patriarchal societies, these psychic patterns are important. However, in classless societies, these psychic patterns do not lead on to class inequality. Let us consider what happens in Indigenous societies. What anthropologists call ‘hunting and gathering’ and ‘horticultural’ societies. A psychological predisposition to arrange society as leaders and followers is at least an aspect of all the different spheres of social life in Indigenous societies. In politics, ritual, religion, war, and art, there are leading men who become influential. Within the context of women’s sphere, there are leading women. In horticultural societies these leaders may be hereditary chiefs. In addition to these chiefs, particular men are war leaders, organizing conflicts with other communities. 
At the same time, these leadership roles are kept in check by egalitarian political arrangements. Typically, big decisions are developed after extensive meetings of all the adult men or of the whole adult community. If there is a chief, their role is to try and find a consensus that works. The leadership of war chiefs only applies to a war party for the duration of the conflict. Back home there is prestige attached to this but no actual power. 
The bottom line is that leaders in classless societies do not have any power to command people. Do this or else — with socially authorized sanctions to back up that command. They do not tell people what to do. Instead, they ask and invite. They inspire and get followers. Men who are part of a war party have volunteered, and others opt out. The big man who wants pigs for the ceremony cajoles their followers and seeks their support. It is not like a tax. 
This fluidity of authority is related to the economic structures of classless societies. Each family has control over its own subsistence work and has a right to use their land. Whether we are talking about the territories of hunting and gathering bands or the gardens of settled horticulturalists. Leaders do not end up with control of the means of subsistence and cannot threaten subsistence to enforce their will. If a conflict becomes severe, the community will just split up. The disaffected parties go elsewhere to make their subsistence.
Along with this is an ethos of autonomy. People are expected to be their own boss. The outcome is that leadership shifts. It depends on the personal qualities of leading men, or leading women. So, a psychic pattern of authoritative leadership does not consolidate itself to establish an elite — with the capacity to command. 
There are many avenues to express competitive masculinity in classless societies. They take the form of struggles for status and influence. For example, raiding parties in horticultural societies. A group of men leave their community and go to make war on another community. The successful raiding party gets prestige at home and establishes their virility by defeating their enemies. Men can become influential as shamans, protecting villagers from sorcery and healing illnesses. Or engaging in malevolent sorcery against others. Feuds, hosted by whole communities that ensure that the feuding parties stick to the rules of conflict. Status rivalry may take the form of competitive ceremonial gift exchange. A leading man hosts a celebratory feast and provides gifts for another community. In return, the leading men of the guest community will attempt to outdo their rivals in a payback feast. Men can get influence by developing a new ritual or dance — after communicating with ancestors or spirit beings through hallucinogens, a trance or a dream. Conflicts over jealousy and adultery are common. 
In other words, competitive masculinity is expressed through struggles for leadership that do not go on to create a stratified society with different material resources for different classes.
How classless societies relate to nature
Let us now look at where the non-human natural world comes into all of this. Classless societies adapt to the non-human world, they acknowledge their dependence on nature. For example, in Australian Indigenous belief, the dream time ancestors of present people were godlike creatures from the natural world. The ancestral dingo, the rainbow snake, the emu and so on. These ancestors created the world as we now see it, the rivers, mountain ranges, waterholes. Implying nothing less than a kinship between people now living and aspects of non-human nature. Ceremonial events are often rituals of renewal. The ritual will invite a particular non-human natural species to flourish and reproduce in abundance. For example, bunya nuts, flying foxes, hakea plants. Whole sites, like a waterhole, cave, a tree or rocky outcrop can become sacred to a species and their affiliated kin group of humans. The characteristic behaviour of non-human species is given the English term ‘culture’. Just like the rituals of the human species. For example, the mating dance of the brolgas. 
All this makes a very clear statement that we humans are a part of this non-human natural world and depend upon these natural species to do well. We can readily find examples with the same meaning from other Indigenous cultures around the world. Just to mention one. If a hunter in the Americas kills an animal, they thank the animal and its spirit ancestor for the gift. All these cultural phenomena of classless societies blur the distinction between human and non-human nature. 
Along with all this are sets of technologies that are in fact sustainable. Meaning that they have been repeated for thousands of years without undermining the foundations of a human economy that depends on a flourishing natural world. Hunting and gathering societies move across the landscape to harvest seasonal abundance, leaving the land to recover from their impact. Patch burning is timed to leave islands of rainforest unharmed. Understory is reduced to favour grasses eaten by browsing animals. Horticultural societies rely for much of their food on tree crops and leafy perennials that complement the natural forest ecology. For example, bananas, breadfruit, coconuts, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, oaks, chestnuts. This perennial agriculture is very complex, making use of hundreds of different species. Swidden agriculture digs up gardens for root crops after clearing a patch of forest. As the soil becomes less fertile, the community moves on, leaving the forest to grow back, fertilized by the waste left over from their occupation. To come back for another round, decades later. 
Gender and nature
What we can also say is that there's no universal gender division in terms of relationship to the natural world. There is no generalized pattern in Indigenous cultures that implies that women are more closely connected to non-human nature than men. Men and women are likely to have different relationships to different aspects of the natural world. But there is no overall dichotomy.  
An edited collection by Carol MacCormack and Marylin Strathern brings together five ethnographic accounts of non-European societies, all written by women anthropologists. The authors argue that in none of these societies is there a view that women are closer to nature than men. 
I will briefly describe two of these societies. The Laymi of the Brazilian Highlands are described by Olivia Harris. This is a peasant culture. In so far as there is a separation of nature and culture at all, it is revealed in various spirit figures that dominate different places. The mountain peaks are male gods which are sources of thunder, hail and rain. They are sacred and powerful places that are also the source of life. The deities that are embodied in these mountains protect some domesticated animals while also being the gods of animals that ravage the flocks. So, these aspects of wild and domesticated nature are associated with male gods, not with femininity. The mountain gods also have a female counterpart, the earth mother, who is associated with cultivated land. So, this aspect of nature is associated with a female deity. The spirits of the dead, which are associated with fertility, live in the wild mountainous places. Fertility is associated with the masculine mountain gods. Men, as ritual specialists, have more contact with these mountain gods and with ancestor spirits. Women are seen as more vulnerable to harm from these spirits. There is no easy way to map masculinity and femininity on to nature and culture in this society. Aspects of the natural world are associated with both sexes.
In so far as the Laymis see any humans as closer to nature, to the wild, it is the young. From birth until they first begin to speak, children are seen as essentially wild, and it is not until marriage that people become fully human. Women are not seen as closer to nature on account of their reproductive powers. While men dominate social life, there are many spheres of culture in which women represent and create key symbols of Laymi society – through their weaving and creation of songs, for example. In all, we can see this as a culture that reveres and also fears various powers of nature. At the same time, these are not particularly associated with women. Some deities are male and some female. In terms of humans, it is the young who are most seen as close to nature and the married who are seen to most embody human culture. 
Jane Goodale describes the Kaulong of New Britain. As Goodale sees it, the Kaulong envisage their most human or cultured place as their permanent settlement, a cleared area in the forest where a permanent house marks the place where ancestors are buried and where the descent group was founded by its original father. It is where unmarried people live, and it is quite common for men to delay marriage till later in life. This central place is also the place where pre-eminently social activities such as feasts, and the giving of status goods, are carried out. Further away from this place are the gardens, with the gardens of the married couples furthest into the forest and separated from each other in isolation. The forest is also a place where foods are gathered – so all three areas are occupied by human culture to a certain extent. In terms of beliefs about spirituality, the Kaulong clearly see their dead ancestors as spirits. But the forest is also home to demons and other spirits which may be dangerous to humans. Kaulong men fear pollution from women through marriage and so they avoid marriage. On the other hand, because they can only replace themselves and their descent group through marriage it is an unfortunate necessity. Sexual intercourse is seen as animalistic. Goodale interprets the dispersion of married couples into the forest as a sign of their wild status. There is no link between these categories of wild versus human – and the gender categories of male versus female. Both men and women are most ‘cultured’ when they are unmarried and living in their clan house. They are most ‘wild’ when they are married and living further away in the forest. Both men and women participate in actions which involve the transformation of natural objects into cultural products. They are both involved in bringing up children and in that way bringing children into culture. Both men and women are involved in the production of status goods through gardening. The people who are considered closest to nature, are not women but married couples, precisely the people that the Laymi regard as most human. 
The Kaulong culture is patriarchal in that men are the managers of descent groups and make many decisions which affect the whole group. Men are more likely to gain status through their productive activities although women also do this to some extent. When a man dies his wife is often strangled by her male kin, as it is considered that their marriage links them as indissoluble partners. The Kaulong live harmoniously with the natural world in terms of food production; they are not destroying their forest. 
Conclusions
Accordingly in classless societies, men have customary relationships to particular aspects of nature, and women have different relationships. But there is no global pattern which affiliates men to culture and women to nature. Patriarchy is not a template for a universalized masculinist dissociation from nature. As some ecofeminists have argued. For example, Maria Mies, who sees separation from nature as coming out of men’s role in hunting. From within Western civilisation, it is easy to think that women’s closeness to nature is an inevitable outcome of women’s role in birth and reproduction. What we realize when we look at Indigenous classless societies is that this connection is by no means an obvious one. To understand why it seems to be so compelling from a Western perspective we need to look at the psychic landscape created by class society. 

Ch 9: Patriarchy and nature in class societies 

Terry Leahy 2024

So, in the last chapter I looked at the ways in which patriarchal masculinity is expressed in Indigenous societies. But does not lead to the consolidation of a class elite. I also looked at how these societies view the natural non-human world. How they live sustainably and blur distinctions between humans and the non-human world. I pointed out that these societies do not appear to notice what seems to us to be an obvious link. Between women as fertility and reproduction — and the non-human natural world on which we all depend. In this chapter I want to look at how all this plays out in class societies. 

The birth of class

First, a brief account of the origins of class out of classless society. Class societies are an invention of the human species. They clearly were not around before, about 8,000 BC. My guess as to how that they were set up is the following thumbnail sketch. To begin with, cultural leaders in classless societies managed gifts for ceremonies. At sites like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey or Stonehenge in England. These were monumental sites but do not appear to be associated with an established class society. It appears that these sites hosted annual ritual festivals with participants from a vast hinterland. We can assume that such events also took place in other parts of the world where they left no monuments for archaeologists to look at. Like in Aboriginal Australia for the Bogong moth festivals. 

It seems likely that influential shamans organized these events and sought contributions from the participants to make them work. For example, food, livestock, beer. In the first place and throughout the longest part of human history these contributions were gifts and did not imply elite command over society. But at a certain point, and along with the invention of cereal agriculture, the leadership started to pay a small army with these gifts and to ensure their loyalty through that. They used that leverage to make these gifts compulsory. They became ‘tribute’ or ‘taxation’ rather than donations. The extraction of a ‘surplus product’, to use the Marxist terminology.

At this point I am indebted to the theory of Michael Mann, a social historian. He notes that small aspiring states sprang up in many parts of the world after the ninth century BC. Their most typical fate was to fall apart as the peasant class deserted the state and de-camped to avoid control. The sites where class society got a more permanent foothold were all in areas where irrigation was used to produce basic subsistence. For example, in Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, the two rivers of China, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Ancient Egypt. Even the Americas follow this pattern with the Aztec empire founded around a lake, the Incas installed in irrigation valleys surrounded by deserts, the Mayans using a system of irrigation based on cenotes, deep wells of water that are unique to that landscape. In these early irrigation societies, it was difficult for the subordinate class to escape, given that they were dependent on the irrigated homeland where the ruling class had become established. 
So cereal agriculture made a store-able surplus possible. Allowing a ruling class to gain control of an army. Irrigation made it difficult for the subordinate class to leave. From these secure anchors, class society spread into surrounding territories. These neighbouring societies developed a professional army to defeat the nearby irrigation state. And ended up with a state. Or the irrigation state conquered them, using its stock of surplus food to supply a professional army — turning independent peasants from the hinterland into slaves of a great empire. 

How patriarchy and class society connect

Given this brief account of the transition to class societies I am ready to ask how patriarchy informs them. I am arguing that patriarchy is a causal prerequisite for class society. Just as much as cereal agriculture and irrigation. 

1. The dominion of fathers in the patriarchal family becomes the psychic template for the relationship between ruling elites and the subordinate masses. The king and the accompanying elite class are regarded as the fathers of society. They are to be feared, respected and even loved. Obedience is a duty. They are terrifying in their power but also necessary to protect you. For example, they might organize ceremonies to ensure rainfall and a good crop. They command armies that defeat the enemies of the state. This is ideology, in so far as these wars put rival states in the good cop and bad cop camps where their respective peasant classes are concerned. 

The benevolence of ruling classes is fictitious and is seen as a myth in moments of enlightenment. But this myth is also unavoidable in a state where the ruling class commands an army and extracts surplus to maintain their rule. The real power of fathers in families makes this scenario familiar and even to be expected. A psychological metaphor. At a deeper level this metaphor implies that the subordinate classes are being treated as though they were women. To be exploited and governed, just like women are exploited and governed.

2. The second cultural pillar of class societies is the competitive masculinity that has been explained in an earlier chapter. At every point of the social hierarchy, the ruling layer has won the competition with the next layer and defeated them. The ruling class sends their subordinated army into battle on their behalf. On the friezes depicting these battles, they are glossed as conflicts between kings. The army shows no mercy to the enemies of the state. The army and the tax collectors subordinate the peasant classes. Without empathy. The peasants are constituted as women, to be despised. The Samurai knights of ancient Japan, beheading random peasants to test their weapons. The Spartan teenage boys becoming men by killing an enslaved helot for sport. The terrible massacres of Indigenous people in the colonial conquests. In the Congo, in Namibia, in Australia, in the Americas, in India. Before that in the Roman conquests of Europe and North Africa. 

That defeated opponents are denigrated as women is so universal that it escapes comment. In Australian football, until very recently, a failing team was described as ‘playing like girls.’ The detachment from women that boys achieve as they ‘become men’ is reconfigured in class societies as detachment from a subordinated class and from the enemies of the ruling class.

Class societies — their material base

Now I want to look at the ways that class societies work with and view non-human nature. The first thing you can say is that cereal agriculture is the mainstay of class societies, because it allows a storable surplus that a ruling class can appropriate. Using it as they wish to control their armies and the population at large.  Like maize in the Americas, rice in China and wheat in Europe. This agriculture is an intense modification of a pre-human environment. It implies ploughing the soil, planting a dominant crop and destroying the whole biodiverse environment of a previous era. Think of a rainforest which has been turned into a set of rice terraces. Well, where there was a rainforest, it's not there any longer. The same thing with a field of wheat, or maize. Any remaining plants are divided into two types: a crop and its associated companion plants, and wild nature, as represented by unwanted weeds. Wild species become an enemy to be excluded with violence by clearing, ploughing or weeding. Then there are the various wild animals that are an enemy of a good harvest. Mice, rats, locusts, caterpillars, birds. It makes sense to see this agricultural context as at least part of the basis for the hostility to wild nature that is such a feature of class societies. 

Going along with these material aspects of class, it has not been uncommon for class societies to destroy the natural basis of their own economies. For a start, these constructed ecologies are very vulnerable to natural disasters. Classless societies depend on a large estate with low population. They rely on a huge multitude of food sources in a biodiverse natural and constructed ecology. Class societies rely on a monoculture and can be undone by small climate fluctuations or plagues. Equally likely is that they depend on an agricultural ecology with self-destroying long-term outcomes. For example, irrigation agriculture that brings salts to the surface. 

Related to this, it makes sense for a ruling elite to maximize the population density of their nation. Making every fluctuation in yield catastrophic for the vast majority. A famine. The ruling classes of pre-industrial societies had to ensure that they could supply an army travelling on foot. Increasing the likelihood that the central area under the state’s control, surrounding the capital, would become overpopulated, out running their agricultural resources. 

Finally, there is the inflexibility of class societies as social machines. They are based on a set of unconscious assumptions about the way society should be organized. These ideas constitute an effective strategy for control at the time of their invention. The mode of production as a social invention, a kind of game. It is hard to shift strategies in the light of any natural crisis. Because each part of the society is locked into a relationship with every other part, constituting a social machine operated through the rules of the game. So even though the agricultural societies of the Mesopotamian basin could observe the decline in yields with increasing salinity, they had no chance of changing to allow a more sustainable mode of subsistence. For example, contour bunds, tree crops, depopulation and decentralisation. 

Metaphors of gender and nature

Along with these material elements of class societies goes a set of dualisms that reflect the psychic structure of class. Women and the lower classes are seen as natural, unruly elements to be subordinated. These ways of thinking link the unruly wild with the subordinated parts of the human population. For example, as James Scott explains, the ancient states of Southeast Asia treated surrounding stateless populations as wild. The forest in which they lived was emblematic of their uncivilized danger. Nature is itself feminized. A force to be dominated as women are in patriarchy. There is a dissociation between ruling elites, their civilized states and their agriculture on the one hand — and the non-human natural world on the other hand. Psychologically this dissociation is modelled on the prior dissociation between men and women. As an effect, there is a patriarchal construction of nature in most class societies. Women are regarded as closer to nature. Masculinity is esteemed as control over nature. 
Val Plumwood considers this as a set of parallel and related dualisms. Women and Men. Civilized versus wild. Reason versus emotion. Refined versus basic. Master versus slave. My view is that gender is the originating dualism of this set, a dualism that informs class society — and adds on these other dualisms pertinent to its functioning. 

A common trope of class societies is the portrayal of the ruling class as beyond material concerns. Of course, this is a reality in so far as they dine on the surplus while the peasants starve in famines. But as well, the metaphor of gender is operating. Women do the earth-bound unpleasant chores, cleaning up the infant messes, tidying the house, cooking. The ruling class paints itself as pure, spiritual, even holy. The lowest classes get to do the work that is considered demeaning or disgusting. The ruling elites see themselves as rational and civilized compared to the irrational, uncivilized, merely animal.  

Collapses and class society

Looking at looking at how this has worked out in history, quite a number of class societies have over-used their environments to the point of collapse. Capitalism is just the most recent example. Mesopotamia where irrigation agriculture brought a lot of salt to the surface of the soil and destroyed the cropping fields. The Indus valley, another early civilization with the same kind of problem. Rome, where the empire set up huge farms to grow wheat for export to feed Rome and its armies. Turning North Africa into a desert. The Cahokia in the Mississippi valley. A class society that built timber palisades around their settlements to stave off attacks from rival states. Ending up with deforestation and land degradation. A similar problem destroyed the Anasazi civilisation of New Mexico.  The Mayan civilisation. To awe the peasants and advertise their power, the ruling class organized the construction of stone temples rising out of the rainforest. They were plastered to look a gleaming white. A striking show of power and control. The lime plaster was produced by burning limestone in kilns. The wood used for these fires was cut from surrounding forests in huge quantities. The deforestation that followed allowed rainfall to erode the hillsides, covering fertile bottom lands with a mass of infertile rocky soil. Starving their people. A drought finished things off. The irrigated city surrounding Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Lower rainfall gummed up the complex works required to feed a dense population. 

Clearly the dualism of humans and nature is not the only cause of these collapses. But it is surely part of the mixture, as ruling classes distanced themselves from the everyday material world. Not all class societies succumbed to that kind of collapse. The Asian states based in irrigated rice terraces have done better in the long run. In China, Japan, Indonesia, parts of India, and Southeast Asia. A social machine that linked into persistent ecological conditions to remain sustainable. Despite these differences, a common thread in class societies is the psychology of patriarchy, the culture of class domination and the separation from nature.

Examples — gender and the natural world

I will give a few examples of these constructions in diverse class societies. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest pieces of poetry ever discovered. A saga from Mesopotamia. The reign of Gilgamesh was about 2,700 BC with versions of the epic created by the Sumerians and Akkadians in about 2,000 BC and inscribed on clay tablets found at Nineveh and other sites. The epic is a mythical account of the founding of the city of Uruk and the exploits of its first king. The following ecofeminist interpretation of the myth owes much to ‘Rape of the Wild’ by Andrée Collard and Joyce Contrucci. 

Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk. He is renowned for his aggressive, nasty competitiveness and his huge sexual appetite. As punishment for his cruelty, the God Anu creates the wild man, Enkidu, to restrain him. 

Much about the following events suggests the way non-human nature and the feminine are linked. Enkidu has long hair. He eats grass and lives in the wild with gazelles. Gilgamesh turns the tables on Anu by befriending Enkidu. He persuades Enkidu to rape a priestess. Now friends, the two men eat animal flesh and drink alcohol. They travel to a cedar forest, sacred to the Goddess Ishtar. They kill the guardian of the forest and cut down the sacred trees. The goddess Ishtar responds by sending the Bull of Heaven to attack them. But they kill the bull and offer its heart to Ishtar’s brother, the Sun God. Ishtar is in mourning and calls on the courtesans, prostitutes and harlots to join her lamentations. Meanwhile Gilgamesh holds a celebration. 

The myth features Gilgamesh as a powerful and cruel king. He dominates nature and destroys the sacred trees, temples and allies of a goddess. He suborns Enkidu, the wild man sent to restrain him. Enkidu joins him in his desecration of nature and female power. Doing all this Gilgamesh founds a powerful city. Masculine power is control over women, the rejection of nature and the subordination of the lower classes. Along with imperial conquest. 

Let us now jump to 2,000 years later and to Aristotle, the third of the linked Ancient Greek philosophers. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. At the time when he was writing his influential books, he was a tutor to Alexander the Great. A famous passage in his ‘Politics’ is a very clear articulation of these dualisms. 

And it is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient, whereas the equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful. The same holds good of animals in relation to men; for tame animals have a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by man; for then they are preserved. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind. Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.

He separates emotions, which are material and gross from the rational. The rational should always control the emotional. Based on this logic, humans should control animals. The ruling classes should control the slaves. Men should control women. This is the natural order, and in each case represents the rule of reason over the irrational. Anything else is hurtful, a corruption. Not just for the ruling category but also for those who are ruled. 
While these are just two examples, we can find similar analogies informing the myths and religions of other class societies. In Indian caste system we have the higher castes who are the purest and the untouchables who do menial and disgusting tasks related to the body. The world is divided between ‘prakriti’ and ‘purusha’. Prakriti represents material reality, the original form of things. It is associated with women. While ‘purusha’ represents the abstract, the soul. The disembodied intellect that watches things. In Balinese tradition, we have the evil witch goddess Rangda. She eats children and leads a coterie of fellow witches against the good god, Barong. She is depicted as a grotesque older female figure, mostly naked, with pendulous breasts and claws. Her statues are placed at the base of huge banyan fig trees, a symbol of femininity and danger. In ancient Balinese, Rangda is also the name for a widow. In English mythology, we have St. George killing the dragon. The knight on horseback, in armour kills the evil monster. St Patrick drives the snakes out of Ireland. 

In other words, these linked dualisms tend to be a theme of class societies in a variety of times and places. Some ecofeminist writing traces the origin of this socially constructed link between women and nature to capitalism and the scientific revolution. For example, Carolyn Merchant explains the patriarchal metaphors used by Bacon to explain the scientific method. Nature is a woman to be investigated, to discover the truth through science. An oft quoted passage in a letter to his King, goes like this:

For you have but to follow and as it were hound nature in her wanderings, and you will be able when you like to lead and drive her afterward to the same place again ... those holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is his whole object.

What I am suggesting instead is that these linked dualisms well predate capitalism and the scientific enlightenment. They are in fact a common theme in a variety of class societies. In the next chapter I will look at the way current capitalism conceives class, gender and nature. How dualisms that are manifest in a variety of class societies are also reflected in popular media today. 

Ch 10: Nature and gender in recent media

Terry Leahy 2024

Now let us look at the ways in which these linked dualisms play out in more recent capitalist times. A dualism which allies women to nature is certainly a theme in some popular media. I will first take a look at two films made for children — ‘Bambi’ and ‘Babe’. In both, there is a link between women, mothering and empathy for non-human animals. In both, the film is urging us to take the women’s perspective and to reject men’s hostility to nature. To that extent they are aspects of an ecofeminist discourse of resistance. A discourse that takes these gendered links for granted and opts to defend the subaltern position.
Bambi
In ‘Bambi’ a cute young deer and its mother are gambolling in the forest, when a hunter comes along and shoots Bambi’s mother. Bambi is inconsolable. How this Disney cartoon was ever considered suitable for children is a mystery. It presents wild nature in the persona of the two deer, mother and child. The feminine. Their enemy and master is man, the hunter. A telling incident related to this took place in one of my environment and society classes. I arranged an excursion to a permaculture farm near the university. The farmer was a middle-class middle-aged permaculture enthusiast. He was deeply committed to trying to grow all the food his household required. As part of this, he had a cage for keeping huge white pigeons for food. There was no doubt that they were appealing, and pigeons are not typically eaten for food in Australia. My students were mostly young women. It was clear that they were not at all happy with this project. He angrily spoke to me on the side about the inappropriate ‘Bambi view of nature’ to which my students had fallen victim. Lest the reader think this scenario is typical of permaculture men, a later visit to a different farm was run by a very different couple. They were vegetarians and kept farm animals to help with the plant production, rather than for food. 
Babe
Babe was made about thirty years later than Bambi. It also targeted a market of mothers and small children. Almost exclusively the audience when I went to see it. It has similar themes and a similar approach to gender and the natural world. 
‘Babe’ does not immediately spring to mind as an ecofeminist film. On the face of it, the film is about a male pig, who proves his credentials by rounding up sheep and so wins the approval of Farmer Hoggett, the patriarchal boss of the farm. With the support of his pig, Farmer Hoggett goes on to win the approval of male authority in the national sheep dog trial, where Babe wins against all the dogs. What is worse is the comic portrayal of Mrs Hoggett as a bossy, conventional and flustered matron. The film perpetuates the anti-feminist myth that such women dominate their husbands, while the reality of the plot leaves Farmer Hoggett in charge. 
The film certainly presents what is widely regarded as a ‘sentimental’ anthropomorphic view of animals, associated in this culture with women and children. There is no doubt about the environmentalist credentials of the film. The film follows the argument of Peter Singer’s famous book, ‘Animal Liberation’ (1990), very closely. Animals should be treated as equals. They should be respected and should not suffer needlessly to satisfy human desires. Animals have their own interests, which should be recognized; it is a travesty to regard them as merely instruments to satisfy human ends. This political message of the film is announced from the very beginning when the camera shows us mother pigs, suckling their young in confined stalls in a huge, dark barn. The sinister men come to collect the adult pigs for slaughter. The pigs are shown in their hundreds walking towards the huge truck which will take them to be slaughtered. The baby pigs are left to mourn their mothers and are forced to suckle on a machine teat that looks like an alien artifact. The narrative voice over during this sequence intones:
This is a tale about an unprejudiced heart, and how it changed our valley forever. There was a time, not so long ago, when pigs were afforded no respect, except by other pigs. They lived their whole lives in a cruel and sunless world.

The framing of this account in the past tense is itself a political message. It tells us that the horror of factory farming is a social choice; animals could be given respect by humans and these cruel conditions could be overturned. The animal liberationist message of the film is conveyed through the plot device of anthropomorphizing the animals and giving them human voices to present their views. For example, Babe is horrified to learn that the reason pigs are kept by humans is for food. The sheep inveigh against the cruelty of the dogs who round them up, describing them constantly as ‘wolves.’ Of course, all this is played for laughs, and it might be thought that audiences would dismiss the political message. I want to argue the opposite to this, suggesting that the comedy allows the audience to come to grips with a very painful topic. The largely female and child audience responds to the film in terms of discourses of femininity, childhood and sympathy for animals. 
I want to look at the film in relation to Chodorow’s analysis of masculinity, discussed in the previous chapter. In the context of the traditional family, coming of age for men means abandoning attachment to women as mothers and rejecting the nurturing qualities associated with mothering. It means distancing oneself emotionally from those over whom one would exercise power and competing with other men for mastery. In terms of this culture’s rejection of the natural world, it means rejecting ‘childish’ and ‘feminine’ concern for the well-being of other animals. 
In ‘Babe’ this path to adult masculinity is challenged. The film can be seen as a coming-of-age story in which ‘Babe’ comes to age as an adult male. However, at every step of the way, Babe succeeds by rejecting patriarchal advice to be cruel to other animals. Instead, he listens to and is defended by a variety of nurturing mother figures. While Farmer Hoggett is initially the patriarchal and cruel farmer, he is seduced by Babe into a different way of looking at other animals. He ceases to see Babe as merely an instrument to satisfy human needs and comes to look on him with love and affection. 
A few examples show how this plays out. The first sheep that Babe meets is called ‘Ma’. She takes a mothering role to Babe, warning him against the cruelty to sheep which is normal for sheep dogs. 
Ma: Seem like a nice young pig. What be your name?
Babe: Babe.
Ma: Not like them wolves. Treat you like dirt they do. Bite you as soon as look at you … some wolves is so bad, they’ll run a sheep down and tear it to pieces.
Babe: Fly would never do that.
Ma: Fly, is it? Well, a right vicious creature she be, I tell you.
Babe: Not Fly.
Ma: The wolves is cruel to us sheep. Always have been. Brutal. Savages. That’s they be. Oh, I wouldn’t like to see a gentle soul like you, mixing with the likes of them, young’un.

At the time of this conversation, Fly is the mother sheep dog who is looking after Babe. Babe is thinking more and more that he would like to be a sheep pig himself. In this conversation he is made to realize that the sheep will see such a transition as joining with the enemy. Ma is like the old wise woman, advising the young boy to retain his identification and sympathy with women, and not to join the patriarchal club. Later, in the paddock, Babe tries to round up the sheep. Fly urges him to take control as follows:
Fly: You’re treating them like equals. They’re sheep. They’re inferior. We are their masters. Make them feel inferior. Abuse them. Insult them.
Babe: But they’ll laugh at me. 
Fly: Then bite them. Be ruthless. Whatever it takes, bend them to your will.

He gets nowhere with these tactics and Ma admonishes Babe:
Ma: Enough wolves in the world already without a nice lad like you turning nasty. You haven’t got it in you, young’un. No need for all this wolf nonsense. All a nice little pig like you need do is ask.

Ma tells the other sheep that Babe really has a heart of gold. Babe asks the sheep politely and with great respect to walk out in two lines. When they do this Farmer Hoggett is amazed. The father sheep dog, Rex, is horrified at this departure from stern control. He reprimands his partner Fly, who has encouraged Babe to become a sheep pig:
You and I are descended from the great sheep dogs. We carry the blood line of the ancient Bahoo. We stand for something. And today, I watched in shame as all that was betrayed.

In these incidents, Rex represents the tradition of patriarchy and the social power that is associated with ruthless control over others. While Fly initially urges Babe to follow this model, she also comes to stand for the mother who supports her son’s departures from hegemonic masculinity. Ma, the sheep, is another mother figure who urges the son to retain his respect for women, the less powerful and the supposedly inferior animals. 
In terms of the cultural construction of femininity in this society, Babe represents a wish fulfilment myth for women and children. In the myth, the women successfully oppose the son’s transition to adult hegemonic masculinity. In the end, Farmer Hoggett, as the leading patriarch, sees the error of his ways and comes to accept his unconventional son as a legitimate adult. Even Rex, the sheep dog patriarch, comes to love Babe. This theme is linked to issues concerned with the relationships between humans and nature. At the present time, ruthless control over nature is a part of hegemonic masculinity; a viewpoint on nature that is to some extent rejected by women and children. In the film, Farmer Hoggett, the patriarch, comes to reject this way of looking at the natural world. In coming to love Babe for his own sake, and not as a prospective meal, he accepts the point of view that Babe enunciates – that all the animals deserve respect and to be treated as equals. A key moment in the film is when Babe is sick and Farmer Hoggett feeds him with a bottle, taking the role of the mother. Following this Hoggett gets to his feet to sing the theme song of the film, a love song, which he addresses to Babe – ‘If I had words to make a day for you, I’d give you a morning, golden and new’.
Science, technology and masculinity
In late capitalism, masculine ‘culture’ is often opposed to feminine ‘nature’ through the gendered division of labour. Men have had almost exclusive domain in work where powerful technologies are used to subordinate a resisting wild nature. Or at least that is how it is portrayed. The muscle car and SUV as an expression of masculinity. Also, bulldozers, trucks, guns and chainsaws, not to mention bombs and warplanes. 
Let us look at some ads from the late nineties. An advertisement for ‘Greg Norman’ products shows a back view of Norman standing up on the seat of a small yellow open top jeep with a roll bar. To emphasize Greg’s courage and his confident control over machinery, the jeep is perched facing downhill on a rocky slope with a big drop directly in front of it. Greg’s power and control in this perilous situation is indicated by his nonchalant standing position. On the top of his vehicle is his kayak. In front of Greg and, importantly, below him, is a grand vista stretching into the distance, with rocky hills at the horizon. It is a desert scene but in the foreground is a green golf course, complete with small pines and a glistening pond. In big block letters plastered across this vista are the words ‘Attack Life’. What is suggested is that Greg is a master of this approach and that he has attacked and conquered the natural landscape in front of him. He has mastered it. This impression is reinforced by the presence of the golf course, a lush green civilized lawn established within a desert, an anomaly within nature that reveals the civilizing work of our hero. In terms of the way the ad addresses its readers, it invites the reader to reveal himself to be the kind of man that Greg Norman is – by buying Greg Norman’s products. In terms of hegemonic masculinity, Greg represents an ideal of hegemonic masculinity which, it can be safely assumed, the reader endorses as a model for his own life. Fearless, aggressive and technically assisted mastery of nature is a key ingredient of this hegemonic ideal. 
Another advertisement with the same message is an advertisement for a four-wheel drive (SUV), a large red car. The slogan is ‘Deep in thought.’. The advertisement is designed to appeal to the middle class professional and re-assure him that a masculinized control of nature is possible for a member of the middle class. It is peppered with links between science and the control of nature. In that way it is a popularization of the association between science, masculinity and the control of nature that Merchant traces in the modern western tradition:
Only one 4WD has the intelligence to get you out of deep water without even thinking about it. Ford Explorer with Control-Trac; the smart 4WD system that constantly monitors terrain, senses loss of traction and automatically adjusts the power applied to the front and rear wheels. All in milliseconds … In addition, Explorer XL’s powerful 4 litre fuel injected V6 or the Explorer XLT’s 4 litre overhead cam V6 and unique 5 speed automatic lets you dive into just about anything that crosses your path.

Here nature is portrayed as a dangerous, or at least annoying, other. However, it can be overcome through the power of scientific intelligence and through the power of machinery. The masculine owner of the car, the ‘explorer’, and the masculine reader are identified with the qualities of the car. The owner must be intelligent if his car is intelligent, and the reader would likewise express his superior intelligence by buying this vehicle! Linked to this appeal to the reader as intelligent is the depiction of science as the intelligent control of nature. The use of difficult scientific terminology congratulates the reader – he is the kind of powerful and intelligent middle-class man who can understand science and the power over nature that it offers. Science is identified with the control and surveillance of nature – the phrase ‘monitors terrain’ objectifies nature as an obstacle to transport. The scientific terminology of ‘milliseconds’ assures the reader that the car embodies the latest technological developments.
The picture shows the car forging ahead through water, with its bow wave washing over the top of the wheel. Nature here is ‘deep water’, something that you need to get out of. Later, you are urged to ‘dive into’ anything that ‘crosses your path’. Again, nature is something that may inhibit the free access of the ‘Explorer’. It is personalised as something that may oppose or ‘cross’ you. Nature is an enemy to be overcome by the real man and his car. 
At four litres the engine size of this vehicle is immense, especially as most of the time its buyers will be just using it to get around in city traffic. All that extra power is extra carbon dioxide, exacerbating the greenhouse effect. But here it is offered to the reader as an appropriate symbol of his own personal power, of his masculinity. The environmental consequences of cars have of course often been the target of the green movement, something which is neglected completely in this ad. 
These ads do not obviously personalize nature as a woman. Instead, women are absent. Nature stands in as the antagonist which masculinity must conquer.
Nature and the Red Riding Hood myth
There is a strange paradox in the way gender and non-human nature are conceived in current capitalism. Epitomized in the Trump, MAGA circus. On the one hand, Trump paints migrants from the south as barbarians. Dangerous, violent, criminals and rapists. He stands as the saviour of American women from these uncivilized hordes. At the same time, during the riot at the Capitol, the iconic image is of a MAGA supporter wearing a fur round his shoulders with bull horns sprouting from his fur hat. At Trump’s recent rally, Hulk Hogan rips off his shirt, posing bare chested. Even Elon Musk grunts. In the chapter so far, we have characterised civilisation as a repression of the ‘animal’ in the human psyche. The triumph of reason over the emotions, the appetites. Along with control over non-human nature portrayed as feminine. Yet, there is a bizarre undercurrent in which men are wild — and women are Dresden porcelain, to be protected. 
We could see this as a cultural invention of puritan capitalism. Women are god’s police. Preserving the innocence of children. Implementing a repressive socialisation into docile subjects of capital. While men are out in the competitive world of business and politics. 
But maybe this is a more generalized ambivalence in class societies. The ruling class represents itself as the civilized repression of wild nature. At the same time, it claims the mantle of apex predator where enemies are concerned. As an untamed beast. In the Cahokia civilisation of the Mississippi, archaeologists uncovered a burial site for a king. Surrounding his skeleton was a collection of the skeletons of young women. He was buried in a cloak of shiny shells splayed out in the shape of a falcon, a bird of prey. The symbol of the Roman army was an eagle. The British empire, a lion. Masculine power can be demonstrated through the killing of an apex predator — I am the real predator here. The man posed next to the dead lion. 
I find Anne Cranny Francis’ analysis of the Red Riding Hood myth very useful to get a sense of the structure of this discourse of gender and nature. As Cranny Francis points out, a myth which represents the traditional view of masculinity is Red Riding Hood. The good woodsman saves Red Riding Hood and her grandmother from the bad wolf:
There is the admired patriarch, the hunter – the male authority figure, who will protect women – apparently from the wolf, though actually from themselves (that is, from any transgressive expression of their own sexuality). The other character is the animalistic, uncontrollable beast within man, who preys on women.

An interesting feature of this psychoanalytic analysis is that the suppressed sexual side of the civilized masculine personality is represented as a ‘wild animal’ that must be controlled by the responsible superego of the civilized man. In doing this, the civilized man rescues the helpless female from wild nature and also from his own unsocialized instinctual self. 
As Cranny-Francis points out, men can also identify with the aggressive wild animal self. This certainly complicates the understanding of traditional hegemonic masculinity in relation to the environment. For example, in the film ‘Rambo, First Blood Part Two’, Stallone plays an American soldier who rejects the authority of the army – the civilized man – and follows his animalistic aggressive side – represented in the film as Rambo’s Native American forebears, and shown in his use of a bow and arrow, his long hair and headband, the jade stone worn round his neck, his muddy appearance and so on. There is a class element of this version of Red Riding Hood. The working class is demeaned as closer to nature, as uncivilized. The reversed discourse of ‘Rambo’ allocates moral virtue to this untamed wildness. To working class rebellion against the middle-class. As in the working class MAGA followers of Trump. 
Conclusions
This excursion reminds us of several things. We can characterize the dominant discourses of capitalism in line with an ecofeminist analysis. The way these dualisms line up and are linked. Men versus women. Civilisation versus the barbarians. Man versus nature. While this is all true, a poststructuralist take suggests that the elements of these discourses are moveable pieces, with different roles in different political contexts. Trump promotes a scientific triumphalism to repel environmental constraints. Man subdues nature. He employs the civilized versus barbarian dualism to stigmatize the lesser races. White Americans subdue the Latins. At the same time, he is the wolf as he ravages the effeminate professional classes. This raises another issue. You can look at capitalism’s destruction of the natural world as an instance of emotional distancing — premised on the prior distancing of men from women. But it is also premised on an economic structure that corrals people within standpoints related to their class interests. More on these points in later chapters.

Ch 11. Ecofeminism now 

Terry Leahy 2024

This is my fourth chapter on ecofeminism. In this chapter, I want to look at how ecofeminism might be relevant to the environmentalist movement right now. Previous chapters have looked more broadly at the relationship between patriarchy, class society and environmental destruction. Including the way this plays out in dominant discourses of current capitalist society. This chapter will look at how these discourses take a role in political conflicts over environmental issues. As explained the most basic version of this discourse identifies men with civilization and women with the wild, with nature.

A lot of rejections of environmentalism are framed up around class issues. Not around the gender binary that ecofeminists write about. We will look at some examples in the next chapter. For a sneak preview. That environmentalists are middle class moralists with no concern for the working-class. That environmentalists in government would wreck the economy. But even these claims are often wrapped up in the gender and nature dualisms we have been talking about. For example, that environmentalists are emotional. They're irrational. They're too invested in the natural world. Whereas the reasonable people are those who stand back and look at things pragmatically. The people who can see the material needs of the human species. The spectre of gender haunts these characterisations. Men are pragmatic and reasonable while women get carried away by their emotions.

Ecofeminism can be construed as a strategic alliance between feminism and environmentalism. If current society identifies women and nature, let us use that identification. Let us validate women’s culturally constructed connection to nature by defending the environment. Let us strengthen the environmental resistance by attracting women to this alliance. To celebrate women's connection to the natural world and invite men to link up to that. To offer this feminine culture to the world as a more appropriate way for humans to relate to nature. Using poststructuralist terminology. A reversal of the dualistic construction of gender and nature. The stigmatized subordinated side of that dualism is to be elevated. 

I will examine these issues by looking at some incidents and interviews that I conducted when I was in Newcastle, in Eastern Australia.

The figs blockade

The first example is a political dispute in Newcastle. There was an avenue in front of the Newcastle library and art gallery, facing onto a park of about four hectares. Beyond the park across another street are the council chambers. A row of native fig trees (Ficus benjamina) was planted on both sides of the avenue as a commemoration of the first world war. The council, taking advice from its park officers, had decided to cut all these trees down. The Council argued that the roots of the trees were destroying the pipes and cables running under the road. They were attacking the foundations of the buildings. There was a danger that a limb would fall from the trees in a storm and kill someone. This decision provoked intense opposition. Big rallies, meetings and a blockade surrounding the avenue that lasted for weeks. Ultimately the blockade was unsuccessful. The trees were cut down and, strangely enough, new trees of the same species were then planted in containers in a new plaza replacing the previous avenue. 

We can consider this struggle in the light of the dualisms described in ecofeminist writing. The dualism between men and women, and the linked dualism of the civilized versus the wild. On the other hand, this resistance was not conceived as ‘ecofeminist’ by most of the participants. It just worked out that way. 

You could say that it was no accident that the nature that was being defended were these ancient figs. Fig species of one sort or another are sacred in much of Asia. For example, in Bali, statues of the evil goddess Rangda are placed under a banyan fig tree, with a shrine for offerings. The shape and habit of the banyan and also of this native fig tree lends itself to an association with the ‘monstrous feminine’ as Kristeva calls it. Like the Medusa of classic mythology. The trunks are smooth, like human skin. Bulbous and sinuous in their mature form. Dripping from the branches are aerial roots that can look like hair hanging down to the ground. In the avenue in question, the trees on either side of the road created a dark and shady space, either a meditative retreat from the surrounding city — or a sinister intrusion of nature out of control. It was common for open air weddings to be hosted on the road between the trees, making for dramatic photos. 

In the context of this dispute, none of these psychic associations got a mention. It was all about how old the trees were, how they were a part of nature and a landmark of the city. Yet it is hard to forget the symbolism if you are doing a semiotic analysis. 

The other side of the dispute was equally gendered in its physical embodiment. The architecture of the buildings lining the avenue. Revealed since the fig destruction in their bare austerity they are Soviet in their rectangular simplicity. An institutional bureaucratic masculinity. It is these buildings that must be saved from wild nature. Facing the avenue across the park, about 100 metres away, the Newcastle town hall, the seat of local government, is a Victorian grand edifice, complete with clock tower, columns, marble floors and sweeping entrances. The symbol of empire. Then there is the physical symbolism of the operation itself. Strong men in high vis working enormously powerful machinery. A high chain link fence enclosing the avenue and keeping out the demonstrators.

In psychoanalytic terms, the project of the Council is to remove the dangerous abject, the monstrous feminine embodied in a nature gone wild. A horrifying and primal femininity to be destroyed by a triumphal, rational and progressive masculinity. St George and the dragon. The council is to come in like a knight on horseback to rescue the public from this danger. The Red Riding Hood myth. 

The fig defenders, the people who were opposing this destruction were also framing the dispute in terms of these dualisms. Representing a conflict between femininity and nature on the one hand, and a dangerous patriarchy on the other. 

In the blockade itself and in the rallies at the Town Hall, women were a majority. About three quarters of the participants. What is more, it was very common for people to attend the blockade with their children. Much more than in other protest rallies in Newcastle. The sense was that this was an issue of particular relevance to children. Their future was at stake. Some men who were normally involved in environmentalist activism avoided this action. I spoke to men like this who said that the issue was of little importance and a distraction from real issues like climate change. As mentioned above, the Council workers fenced off the trees to prevent protestors from occupying the site. Children in the protest prepared posters showing the trees, the birds, bats and possums that lived in the canopy, with slogans. They attached these to the wire fence. The Council is devoid of empathy where these precious species are concerned. Another gesture that links femininity, childcare and nature was the placing of soft furry animal toys in the trees. They were attached with ribbons of satin and with scarves. Skeins of wool decorated the wire fence. These symbols were copied from the famous Greenham Commons protests in the UK. A starting action for ecofeminism when women blockaded a site for nuclear missiles in the UK. 

Anthropomorphic identification with nature is a heavily stigmatized form of femininity in the context of patriarchal dualisms. Embracing that stigmatized identity is a strategy of reversal. The denigrated position is defended, defying ridicule. In an interview on local radio, a woman demonstrator declared. ‘Those trees do not know what’s coming’. A personalization and empathetic identification also implied in the cute animals on posters and the soft toys attached to fencing. An event that protestors featured as a flash point of the blockade was a large truck pushing through the demonstrators. A small child fainted, and a woman doctor came to the rescue. She was pushed away by the police. 

All in all, the protests played on the danger to feminine nature. They stressed empathy and identification with the natural world. They characterized the council’s actions as a danger to the lives of children, a concern associated with femininity. This is an issue of concern to women and children. Nature is like a child that needs to be protected by the human species — in the way that women protect their children. The discourse that women are closer to nature is embodied in the action.

Ecofeminism in the interviews

Shortly before the figs blockade, I interviewed ordinary people in the Hunter region, talking to them about their views on environment. Some interviews were conducted for me by my students. It was a fairly random selection, worked through snowballing. You find someone you know and interview them and then ask them to suggest other interviewees and so on. The students were often from working class or rural backgrounds, so their families were good to go beyond the middle class. Here I am going to concentrate on the interviews with women, though not exclusively. A lot of the interview responses can be interpreted in terms of discourses of class. For example, working class hostility to the cultured and educated middle class. Concerns about the impact of environmental activism on jobs. For the middle-class interviewees, environmentalists as culturally different from respectable people, as dangerous economic wreckers. This is all background. At the same time, the framing of environmental issues often reflected the split between the civilized and rational (regarded as the masculine side of the dualism) and the wild and emotional (regarded as feminine). As well, elements of an ecofeminist discourse would often come from interviews with women who were generally hostile to environmentalism. 

I want to feature in this chapter a couple of interviews that were unusual in my sample. These were interviews in which the ecofeminist position was taken up and defended by the women being interviewed. Quite directly, almost as though they had read the ecofeminist literature. Which at that time in the mid-nineties seemed unlikely.

A student focus group

The first of these was a focus group run by students. I was not present. My student, Sally, interviewed her friends, Liz, Megan, Malcolm, Robbie and Guy. All young psychology students at the time. Sally was taking a sociology subject as an elective. 

Sally. Okay. Does everyone worry about environmental issues?

Liz. Now and again. 

Megan. Yeah. 

So, all the women sign up to that idea and then Robbie, one of the three men, challenges it. 

Robbie.  No, I'll be dead before it really, the shit hits the fan. 

Sally initially ignores this provocation and responds to the earlier comments. 

Sally. You do? 

At that point, Malcolm joins the consensus expressed by the women.

Malcolm. Yeah, definitely. 

Now one of the women goes on to reinforce this majority perspective. What she says touches directly on issues raised in ecofeminist writing. The mistake of attempted separation from non-human nature.

Megan. I think it's really sacred. I think, you know, that it's really, I don't know, really. Energizing for everyone. Without it, you know, no kind of human potential would be able to be re reached. I don't think.

Malcolm jumps in to back this up and directly confronts the position that Robbie has taken. The ethics he enunciates is shared by ecofeminism and deep ecology. 

Malcolm. I don't think it's ours to ruin.

Megan. No, it isn't. 

Guy now joins the discussion and directly addresses this moral claim, backing Robbie’s anthropocentric ethical standpoint. An ethics from the perspective of human claims, ignoring the interests of any other species.

Guy. Oh, yes it is. [ours to ruin]

Robbie is encouraged to elaborate his moral position in more detail. Taking into account the argument put by Megan that we depend on nature. 

Robbie. We belong. And it's part of us that we belong with. It's made out of the same basic matter as us. 

Meaning there is no human nature split. We are all just atoms on the planet. So, humans are as much a part of nature as non-human species. So, we have an equal right to do what we like with the natural world. Through all this, Robbie and his accomplice Guy are taking the typical ‘masculinist’ position. I am a cynical selfish person, created as such by evolution. I am just being reasonable and not letting foolish emotions get in the way. I am telling it like it is — rather than being swept away in unscientific nonsense. At this point Liz and Sally join together, finishing each other’s sentences in a show of solidarity. 

Sally. We come from it. So, if we rely on it so heavily …

Liz.  So, you just turn around and kill it. Thank you. 

Sally. Would you kill your mother?

Nature is personalized as our mother. The obligation of the child is to defend the mother, paying her back for her nurturing. There is a parallel between women's nurturing of children and nature's nurturing of the human species. But also of course there is a pragmatic claim here. If we depend on nature so heavily, why destroy it? Liz backs her up and attacks Robbie’s ethics. Robbie and Guy maintain their rationalist perspective, while trying to avoid the ethical issues.

Liz. Very much. That’s the most egotistical.

Robbie. I don’t think we look at it as if we’re going to kill it. I think we use it and use it. We use it first. The abuse comes later as greed becomes more of an issue.

Guy. We get what we can get out of it.

Following from this, Robbie produces a long exposition of his position. He defends the civilisation versus nature position that he and Guy have been advancing— but with a somewhat pessimistic conclusion. 

Robbie. It’s human nature. Economics is defined by human nature and politics are defined by human nature which is to procreate, dominate and expand.

Sally. So that’s human nature?

Liz. But that, that’s only a problem of our society. I think there are societies that aren’t based …

Robbie. Well, we, because we are that. We are sort of directed in that manner to dominate is why capitalism and western society is dominating the rest of the world, because it’s a much more powerful form of expansion than any other sort of more equal socially structured system.

Sally. How do you see that sort of problem? Do you think it should be stopped?

Robbie. I don’t know. I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to do it. I think humans as dinosaurs are doomed. We’re going to die. The planet’ll be alive a lot longer than we are. I mean even if we kill it the earth and soil will still be there, and it’ll regenerate in a hundred thousand years or the meantime. 

It is human nature to exploit the natural world. I am the rational scientist dealing with the world as it is, rather than imposing a moral framework. Robbie’s analysis of human nature is the sociobiological position, explained in Part A of this book. A social Darwinism. The demands of evolution predispose humans to behave this way. This is what is successful. Capitalism has come to dominate the globe because it is more in tune with these basics of human nature and their origin out of evolutionary pressures. 

The political philosopher C. B. Macpherson calls this view of human nature ‘possessive individualism’. According to Macpherson, this view of human nature originated as an ideological defence of capitalism with philosophers like Hobbes and Locke. It was perpetuated in classical economic theory, by writers such as Adam Smith. Clearly it is also alive and well in much contemporary sociobiological theory. This theory of the inevitability of aggressive competition also fits with a hegemonic masculinity which upholds this behaviour as a masculine ideal. These discourses treat men as the primary instance of human nature, with women departing from this normative standard. 

What is fascinating in this interview is that this competitive human nature and its expression in capitalism are not regarded as ultimately benign. The end result is catastrophe. Fatalistic acceptance of this outcome fits another norm of hegemonic masculinity — death and destruction can be seen as merely events, to be regarded dispassionately without identification. From a purely scientific, that is detached, point of view, none of this really matters, since life on earth will regenerate even in the absence of the human species. 

Taken as a whole, the focus group indicates the ways in which these various discourses of gender and the environment are available. Ready to be taken up by the interviewees and used to construct their identities. The rational man of science. Exploitation of the natural world as an inevitable consequence of human nature — as it actually is. Capitalist civilisation as the most complete expression of selfish individualism — the real core of human nature. In opposition to this account the women, and one of the men, take up an identification with non-human nature. They link their environmental politics to a metaphor of gender. Mother nature. The appropriate response to the natural world is empathy and care. The surprise in this interview is Robbie’s pessimistic conclusion. Science and the rational pursuit of self-interest is not leading us to a world of successful mastery over nature, a progressive evolution of human potential. Instead, we are doomed. 

A local activist

The other interview I want to describe also reveals the way an ecofeminist politics can be implied in women’s responses to environmental issues. Diane was a librarian who was a member of a local environmental group. We were working to prevent a road being bulldozed through a small bushland park on the edge of our suburb. We were also weeding the bushland reserve to wind back an invasion of exotics taking over the understorey. I interviewed her about her views on environmental politics. The following passage from her interview mirrors much ecofeminist writing. The manner in which she talks about these issues also makes a political point. 

Diane. We're not giving any thought to the future. It's a here and now thing, even though we mouth off about we've gotta save everything for our children. I don't truly believe. We mean that. I think we, as human beings are quite selfish. We think we own all this, that it's our playground and whatever we destroy will come back again. 

So, she starts off by identifying the problem as how we might save the environment for our children. A theme of feminine identity within the dualisms of patriarchal capitalism. As women we are concerned about what will happen to the next generation. But she speaks to that and wonders whether our professions of concern are real. In fact, we, as humans, are quite selfish, thinking of ourselves rather than our children. The critique is addressed to women as mothers. Step up and do your duty as mothers. In effect she replies to Robbie from the previous interview. It may be your human nature to be selfish, but you can do better than that and think of your children’s futures. As in the previous interview, the ownership of nature becomes a key issue. Within capitalism, nature is literally owned as real estate. From the perspective of deep ecology ethics, you cannot own nature, it is not ours to own. Plants and animals own themselves, they have rights, just like human persons. She continues.

Diane. ‘Cause you don't see the harm you're doing. I mean, I can't comprehend what it must be like to pull out a whole load of bush rock and take your little lizard’s home or even smaller than a lizard. Yeah, we are replacing trees, but we don't put back the same because we can't. Because the big trees get into the drains or into the swimming pool. So, we can't have anything that's gonna get into the drains. So, we'll rip that big tree out and we'll put a little, we'll put two bushes in, but that's not the same, not like that big tree that used to stand there. And think, oh my God, how old are you? What have you seen? Who sat up in your branches. Wow. Two nice little bushes. Yeah. Birds are attracted to them. They come running tweet tweet. But they can't nest in these little bushes. Got nowhere to sleep. Now, these little birds. Oh, it's sad. 

This passage is a rampant embrace of ‘Bambi’ femininity. She personalizes and anthropomorphizes non-human species. From a lizard, to birds, to the tree itself. Through this she constructs a position of empathy and care. The non-human species are attributed concerns directly related to femininity — as it is constructed in capitalism. The home as a place of safety and nurture. The birds looking for a place to raise a family. Strategically, the cuteness of this discourse is a reversal of the stigma associated with ‘sentimental’ attachment to the natural world. You think I am a silly woman because I have an emotional reaction to these issues. Well take this. 

Conclusions

The figs blockade shows how an environmentalist defence of non-human nature can end up working through various themes of the ecofeminist analysis. How this local struggle came to embody an ecofeminist political strategy. That this happened willy nilly. Without any guiding political theory. With no conscious attempt to ‘do’ ecofeminism at all. In other words, it is no myth that current capitalism genders nature and culture according to the dualisms that ecofeminist theorists write about. That this dualism lays itself open to ‘reversal’ at this time of environmental crisis. Let us look again at the puffed-up claims of civilisation, science and patriarchy and turn instead to the despised negative of these dualisms. This is not an optional extra for environmentalism in the present time. The dissociation from nature that is the hallmark of capitalist ideology is inextricably a gendered rendering, premised on the patriarchal dissociation from the feminine. As we have seen in previous chapters, this founding dualism of humans versus nature is not attached to gender dualism in classless societies. Within class societies it is not restricted to capitalism but also finds purchase in other regimes linking class, patriarchy and separation from wild nature. 

Nevertheless, lest we get carried away with this insight, the next chapter will show how these associations between femininity and environmentalism are far from a done deal where most women are concerned. Instead, issues of class politics can be more pressing, leading women to attack environmentalism for its likely effects on the economic status quo of the capitalist order.