On Thu, 30 Mar 1995, Carol Meeds WPB 407-433-2650 x 113 wrote:
> Hi Faith -
> I really love that group that you told me about and yes, they do
> tend to fill up ones in-box! Do people still use "MS." where you
> live? They don't here.
> Carol Meeds
> Jupiter, Florida
>
>
Yes, actually, Ms. is still used ... or, I should say, I still EXPERIENCE
it as being used. Perhaps I'm not listening carefully ... and, I should
add, that on the west coast, with its less-formal-than-the-south culture,
titles such as Mr. Ms. OR Miss/Mrs. just aren't used that much. At least
in the circles I run in.
Glad you're enjoying that group!
Faith
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sat Apr 1 08:51:42 MST 1995
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 1995 07:56:49 -0800 (PST)
From: Faith Freewoman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: gretchen hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: responding to clearcuts
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Gretchen, and others, I firmly believe that loving the trees who are
still upright, and grieving for the ones who have fallen, is as important
as the letters we write, the words we say, and any other step we take as
activists. THIS CONNECTION, which I believe some refer to as spiritual,
is what gives me the energy and drive to be an activist. Grief and rage
are tools of the Mother and the Crone, and they are tools and vehicles for
all women who work for change, whatever our persuasion.
My comment, BTW, was initially aimed at the vegan/vegetarian discussion
(i.e. plants can't feel pain), but now that you've responded, Gretchen, I
also experience it as relating to the spiritual/scientific debate, and
perhaps other areas where we ecofeminists are working to find common ground.
Faith
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Apr 2 08:47:53 MDT 1995
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 10:48:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronnie Hawkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Michael Boer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: responding to clearcuts, seal kills and other violence
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Fri, 31 Mar 1995, Michael Boer wrote:
> > How many of you can drive by a clearcut area and NOT feel the pain?
>
> I recognize that pain as well. I've lived in the Seattle area since
> 1980. During the first few years, I can recall several times when my
> partner and I would have to stop driving and take a few moments to walk
> through those severed forests -- sharing a moment of mourning for the
> loss of life and recognizing the lingering violence implicit in the
> manner in which those trees (and their inhabitants) died.
>
> I grew up where the prairies once ruled. After my move to the Pacific
> Northwest, I noticed similar reactions to the clear-cuts in others,
> particularly strong in friends of mine who came to the Northwest to visit
> me. They talked about the feelings of violence, violation, and rape that
> they felt while seeing naked hills and stumps.
>
>(snip)
> Now I have lived in this region for 15 years and my partrner & I have a
> 7-year-old son. We still take the time to stop at clear cuts from time to
> time, to explore together our feelings and look for meaning and healing in
> those tortured landscapes.
>
Reviewing my mail from the last couple of weeks (I get behind so fast!),
I find my strongest responses far and away are to the string on clearcuts
and the (nonstring) posting about the Canadian seal kill. I also wish to
respectfully and appreciatively acknowledge that the post that hit me
most deeply (and to which I am responding directly) was by a man. Part of
the way I approach the "ecofem" list
postings is with the question "what does a (uniquely?) feminist perspective
have to
offer concerns about ecological destruction?"; I find this still an open
question (the majority of an ecofeminist reading group on our campus
remains skeptical, and I vacillate--often what seem the most important
issues to me are less emphasized on this list, and in ecofeminist
writings, yet great potential seems to exist . . .).
I, too, experience a very visceral reaction to clearcuts, and indeed the
entire process that is rapidly ongoing around me in Florida: first, the
little orange signs go up on a wooded parcel I pass frequently announcing
"Land Use Action . . . ," sometimes accompanied by larger commercial ones
joyfully proclaiming "COMING SOON . . ."; then the big yellow machines
move in, and one day the woods is down, shoved into piles like broken
pick-up sticks and burning. I often stop when the destruction has halted
for the day and walk around, mourning the massive loss of life, scanning
the remains for any plant or animal left behind that I can salvage, move
to another home, though this is rare and has its accompanying problems.
I think about the creatures that may not have been forced out or killed
on impact but that will be left behind to suffer lingering deaths, such
as gopher tortoises and all the other inhabitants of the burrows that
were home when the dozers closed over the opening forever--the tortoises,
being reptiles, will die of starvation/dehydration over many months. I
mourn them all, and feel it important to bear witness to their deaths. A
final phase of the process will include the frequent roadkills as
displaced creatures try in vain to return to what used to be habitat and
meet their fate--I often stop again, to pull the bodies of raccoons,
foxes, and others out of the road--it will terminate as this area, too,
has become part of the paved-over human complex that is engulfing our
globe and the animal populations have been beaten back enough yet again
not to even try to return. In
Florida, most of the clearcuts that we see are NOT going to be replanted.
I'm glad some of the forestry people can pass other clearcuts and not
feel such a sense of loss, but (as I think most will acknowledge) it's
also important to point out that timber plantations are NOT the same as
natural forests in terms of wildlife habitat, though they may take some
of the pressure off those forests. As a block of even-age slash pine
monoculture grows up, there is very little other vegetation for wildlife
to eat, and the dense stands block out much of the light, forcing
creatures like the tortoise elsewhere, often to their demise. Very
different from the open, parklike longleaf pine/wiregrass communities that
once dominated the Southeast! While it's true that large clearcuts may
simulate the large burns that may have run over stands of sand pine and
so triggered their regeneration, and while certain animals (e.g., deer)
may benefit from the "edge" between forest and open land, many others
(e.g., spotted owls) do not, and creating more and more "edge" can
greatly *reduce* the diversity when large landscape areas are considered.
But enough conservation biology. I'm curious why there was so little
response to the seal kill post. Paul Watson and others were threatened with
great physical violence; the sealers state "We are men, sealing men. We
are not women"--they want "no part of a faggot idea like seal brushing";
Watson escapes with his life but one of the last scenes he sees is
"numerous bodies of seals left on the ice with just the penis removed."
If this episode doesn't beg for an ecofeminist response, I can't imagine
what does. Violence, sexism, heterosexism, anthropocentrism--graphically
interlinked for all the world to see and examine. What would a coherent
ecofeminist response to the sealers be like? My problem with visceral
reactions is that I become so moved that I have difficulty formulating an
appropriate verbal response. Any help?
I also wonder if there may be some who will point out that the sealers,
like loggers in the Pacific Northwest, et cetera, are simply trying to
protect a way of life and their culture should not be criticized. My
reaction to this is that, if any of the above "isms" are to be
overturned, there is going to have to be some cultural change. White
males acting in Congress to get rid of affirmative action, poverty
programs, the Endangered Species Act, and everything else that might
hinder their own self-interest are also simply acting to protect a "way
of life." One can have compassion (to some degree) for oppressors while
still insisting firmly that the oppression has to stop.
I also want to note that I have great respect for those like Watson who
have the courage to stand up even to the threat of physical violence in
the defense of the Earth and its creatures. What kind of relationship is
there between such bravery (I see a kind of slippery slope running from
making the decision that one must take a stand all the way to potentially
finding one's life in danger, which might be a factor behind why there's
so much indifference out there on the part of "good people") and one's
sex? Both men and women have been involved in Earth First! actions, the
Chipko movement (mostly women?), et cetera. I think the physical violence
that is expressed in acts that destroy the Earth and living things needs
to be carefully distinguished from the physically courageous actions that
would stand up to it, and I don't think just using the word "nonviolence"
is sufficient to do the job--the uninvolved can claim to be "nonviolent,"
though their inaction allows and fosters the ongoing violence. Does it
make sense to say sex/gender is linked to physical violence but not to
physical bravery? Does even considering a linkage in the first case do
an injustice to the men who do not support such violence? How does one
target the patriarchal way of thinking, remain compassionate to men who
do embody it, and help them to get over it?
There is another topic that I also think cries out for an "ecofeminist"
response, but I will raise it in a different post. Any help with this one?
Ronnie
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Apr 2 09:16:53 MDT 1995
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 11:17:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronnie Hawkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: That Overpopulation Bugaboo--Is It?
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Sat, 1 Apr 1995 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Referring to my earlier reply to R.L. Curry, I have to question whether the
> issue of "overpopulation" isn't really a smokescreen for the developed
> world's overconsumption. I honestly don't have many hard facts on this --
> it's just a gut feeling combined with a few stats on just how much we do
> consume of the world's resources -- and would welcome comments from anyone
> who does. Doesn't it seem logical that the status quo, i.e. developed
> industrialists and politicians, would be a little wary of the undeveloped
> world suddenly "figuring out" how to over-farm and over-consume to the extent
> that the developed world does so? God forbid they should "horn in" on "our
> territory." Then there _sure_ wouldn't be enough to go around, right? The
> solution? "Create" a population problem. The truth is that we really do
> have sufficient food and natural resources to go around (just look at the
> stockpiles of often rotting food right here in the U.S., the underground
> caves in the midwest, for example) -- we just mismanage the hell out of 'em.
> Hey, I'm just thinking out loud here, but stranger things have happened in
> global politics. Anybody got any goods on this?
> --Katharine English
>
>
Hi Katherine--I notice you're the person who forwarded the message about
the seal kill that I just responded to, so you must care about nonhuman
animals. When nonhumans are brought into the picture, it's not at all
true that "we" have "sufficient food and natural resources to go
around." Large mammals, for example, especially large carnivores (TRUE
carnivores, unlike humans!), need very large blocks of territory to
support themselves, and for some the game may already be over.
Conservation biologists are concluding, for instance, that even in North
America our existing parks and preserves aren't large enough, and if we
don't turn the situation around evolution may be "over" for them.
Likewise, the great holocaust of species--E.O. Wilson estimates 17,500
being lost per year--occurring mostly as a result of tropical forest
destruction is a result of the human takeover of the planet's surface.
Yes, the people in the industrialized parts of the world consume much
more, maybe hundreds of times more than people living in
"underdeveloped" or "industrializing" (assuming they're on their way
in that great process) parts of the world. The bottom line for
nonhumans, however, is the PRODUCT of the number of people *multiplied
by* the amount consumed per person *multiplied by* the destructiveness of
the technology they use. Is the "population problem" simply a creation
of the Western/Northern promoters of consumption? No way. Can the
dichotomy between "population" and "consumption" be USED by members of
the "developed" and "developing" worlds so that each group can point
fingers at the other and nobody has to change? Look around you.
Meanwhile, "nature" and nonhumans are taking it on the chin everywhere.
If you think the population problem is just a trumped-up issue, you must
not be familiar with the population growth curve for human beings, which
shows a worldwide population under one billion for all of human history
up until about two centuries ago and is now shooting up toward 6 billion
and, if nothing changes pretty quick, way beyond. Impossibly beyond, for
any life, but nonhuman life will be the first to go, though human life is
suffering pretty dramatically in many places already. The grave
implications are very apparent to most biologists, at any rate, who are
familiar with thinking about exponential growth. Things that grow
exponentially can reach huge numbers very quickly, toward the end of the
growth span--they can really sneak up on you--the numbers then usually
fall pretty fast too, as natural controls come into play. What a shame
for our supposedly "rational" species to walk right into the same sort of
fate, denying it as we go.
And still the Pope proclaims that not only abortion but even birth
control is somehow an affront to "life"! Only human life is meant, of
course--other life is apparently not worth talking about--and human life
is to be unlimited--as if we all live on an infinitely expanding planet!
This is the second issue that seems to me to cry out for an "ecofeminist"
response. Any thoughts?
Ronnie
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Apr 3 08:41:09 MDT 1995
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 10:37:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Susanne Bounds <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Clearcuts and Clear Pain
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reading about your experience in Sedona brought up a lot of
memories of just the few short years ago when I moved to Flagstaff (1984)
and first visited Sedona. It had its environmental exploitation then,
but definitely not to the point it has currently reached. It pains me to
remember it then and to have witnessed its continued exploitation and
destruction. I wish I could understand how people who claim to love an
area so can choose to destroy it just so they can live there. I have no
idea what to expect the next time I go there ... I can only hope that the
Mother's spirit tha tthey are exploiting will have somehow reprimanded
them for the over-population, over-consumption, and Her exploitation. I
don't hope for a catclysm, but I hop[e for reprimand. There -have- been
large, unusual floods the last two years in a row ....
It seems that I'm experiencing pain everywhere I go these days --
why can't people see what a violent system we have in this country and we
are exporting to other countries. Teaching in an academic setting I'm
finding even painful because of the inherent violence we do to students,
appropriating knowledge and doling it out in the ways we want to, and
constantly judging their "performance". But yet I don't know if I want
to opt out and go to the land or gently fight back in whatever ways I can
from within (which doesn't seem like much). And the clearcutting and
exploitation and overpopulation and animal rights issues all of course
tie into this. I've subscribed to this conversation to get support and
feedback -- how do some of you out there feel about how to work the
system: fight, opt out, balance, what?
Aspen
