Day 17

Time for a little green - it’s St. Patrick’s Day. I am about a quarter Irish, but I don’t think about it much. I’m a bit of a mongrel, which isn’t unusual for those of us living in the US. In other words, I may have come from Irish ancestors, but I come from a culture that is Midwestern US. But thinking about green leads to my topic for today. I am an environmental scientist, and for me, green means something else most of the time than my Irish heritage. Green is the color of leaves, of iridescent scarab beetles, of some reptiles and amphibians…there are a lot of manifestations of green in nature. And for me, green is…feminism. Allow me to explain…today, an essay.

FEMINIST GREEN

The environment is in trouble. We all know that, even those who won’t admit it. For centuries, humans have altered the natural systems to suit them; now, they may have started the process of their own demise by altering the environment so much it will no longer support them. You may wonder what this has to do with Women’s History Month. Fair enough. It is my belief that the damage to the environment is intimately bound in with misogyny and women. In fact, they are so inextricably bound together they cannot be separated.

Hyperbole? Not much. If you think about it, keeping your mind and your eyes open, it becomes clear. Mother Nature. The environment has been given the identity of a woman. This makes ‘her’ fair game. The goal of men throughout history has been to subdue nature, to force ‘her’ to submit to their wishes, to change in ways they want ‘her’ to change…to take care of, nurture, and obey man. To this end, he has plowed and planted, concreted, dredged, polluted, dried up, poisoned, and rendered extinct many of the natural habitats and species that populated Earth.

Nature committed one of the cardinal sins of a woman; she failed to nurture. We could get a living from her, but she made us work for it. She didn’t put us first in her scheme of things; we were just one of many. This was not acceptable. Man needed to control this feisty woman, this woman who could outsmart him with a single lightning bolt.

Humanity began to believe they had won their long struggle against nature. The rivers were dammed and channelized. The grass was gone, covered with pavement that allowed cars to move rapidly through a world they no longer needed to look at. Agriculture provided food enough for everyone, even if not everyone could afford to buy it. Central heat and air controlled a climate that blew hot and cold as the seasons changed. Mother Nature became the wife, comfortably background, making sandwiches on demand, managing everything else while men did as they pleased to her. On the weekend, it was possible there would be some notice paid, but usually only a sculpted nature, one that could be mowed and trimmed, pesticided and fertilized, managed. One that submitted.

But like women, nature has had enough. Submission was never complete, and victory was always precarious. Nature is fighting back. Winter storms in Oklahoma. Blizzard warnings in Los Angeles. Drought everywhere you look. Strange precipitation patterns. Acid rain. Nothing is the same. Mother Nature wants a divorce, and she is prepared to fight for it.

Is it any wonder men bestowed a woman’s identity on nature? Of uncertain temperament, difficult to tame, only grudgingly nurturing, grumbling, and sometimes throwing things. The environment mimics the standard stereotypical picture of a wife, and the expectations on the environment are similar to those on a wife. Man cries “take care of me” and expects women and nature to jump to his command.

Mother Nature has started saying no. Funny how her rebellion coincides so closely with the rebellion of human women, rising up and demanding to be given freedoms permitted previously only to men. Nature and women decided nearly simultaneously that enough is enough. Neither of us were ever tamed completely, and neither of us could be guaranteed to submit on command. Now we show our strength. We demonstrate our ability. We are determined to see this through to the end.

Isn’t it funny that one of the possible ends to the women’s movement is environmental meltdown? Though we are so intimately tied together, we must be honest. Nature doesn’t care about women any more than she cares about men even though Mother Nature is the original feminist.