Hello again. I was sorry to have to fade out in the midst of such an
interesting discussion last week, but on Wednesday my father was
diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and I spent the rest of the
week with my family, trying to sort through all the feelings and
medical options. I mention this personal crisis not as a bid for
sympathy, but because it feels relevant to me to some of the issues
you have been discussing. So often, we all (myself included) conduct
these discussions on a purely intellectual plane--"in the penthouse"
of abstraction, rather than on the ground floor of real life. I feel
that what is often missing on this list is an appreciation of the
real world impact of our theorizing--and an appreciation of real
people's lives, including our own. To wit:
I see that anne thought my defense of Western democracy was "a load
of crap" :) and followed that up with a tirade against technology.I
know that Jayne and others have already responded but I would like to
further emphasize the point that so far as women's lives and health
are concerned, those of us who live in late twentieth century
democratic societies are far far better off in almost every
conceivable way than our foremothers *and* most women in
non-democratic societies today. How many women on this list would
like to live in a contemporary or past society in which they had to
bear twenty or so children in order to raise six or seven to
adulthood, were forced to wear a veil, could be burned or hanged for
practicing their religion, were considered the property of their
fathers, brothers, or husbands, could not divorce an abusive husband,
had no right to their children etc etc. These have been the
realities of women's lives throughout much of history and, to a
certain degree, throughout the world today. It's also easy to talk
about nature culling her ranks, when you are not a mother who has sat
beside a feverish child's bedside praying to see that child whole and
healthy in the morning--or someone like Jayne who needed every bit of
contemporary medical skill and technology to save the life of you and
your baby. Perhaps it is true that in the Neolithic societies of
Crete and Old Europe women were equal partners. But such
women-friendly cultures are the exception and not the rule.
Last month I was in Pittsburgh on business. One night I rode the
Incline, a cable car which travels to the top of one of the mountains
which rings the city. At the top, I hung over the rail of the
observation deck and saw the whole city spread out before me, the
skyscrapers and bridges, the lights of a modern city. For the first
time it struck me what a marvel such a city is. Without in any way
denying the costs (environmental, economic and human) of our present
lifestyle, I still felt profoundly moved by this heroic feat of
construction. This is a different feeling, although somehow akin, to
what I felt a week later walking in a forest near my home, which
borders one of the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. There I lay
face down on a pine needle forest floor and held my hands to the
trunk of a beautiful old tree and felt the life energy running
through it. I knew that I was a part of the tree and that the tree
was part of me.
I don't know if we will be able to find a balance between our
aspirations and our limitations, between "nature" and "culture"; I do
not believe that women=nature and that man=culture. I do not believe
in any such dichotomies at all. I know that I personally *need* both
the city (and all that the city implies i.e. technology) and the
forest. I want every last drop of medical skill and technology to
extend my father's life (within reasonable bounds) and make him as
comfortable as possible. At the same time I recognize the
inevitability of his death and return to the womb/tomb of the earth.
It seems to me that often on this list we all sound like a bunch of
spoiled rich kids who are unable to admit how lucky we are and how
blessed to live at a time and in a place where we can say whatever
the fuck we want to say without being hauled off by the secret police
or the inquisitors or whatever, where our illnesses are, in the main,
curable, where we live seventy or even eighty productive years. Any
brand of ecofeminism which does not acknowledge these positive
aspects of our current situation, together with the *many* challenges
we face, has (in anne's immortal phrase) its "head up its butt."
In my humble opinion.
Deborah
