Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Animal Rights Focus Promotes Romanticism
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Animal Rights Focus Promotes RomanticismATTEMPTS TO “PROTECT” NATURE DISGUISE A PATRIARCHAL DESIRE TO CONTROL—THE ISOLATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS BLAMES THE VICTIMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION Heller ‘93 [Chaia, “For the Love of Nature: Ecology and the Cult of the Romantic,” Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, pp. 224-5] The tendency to idealize nature is coupled with the fantasy of protecting an image of nature that is portrayed as weak and vulnerable. During Earth Week 1990, an epidemic of tee-shirts hit the stores depicting sentimal images of a soft blue and green ball of earth being held and protected by two white man’s hands. Huddled around the protective hands was a lovable crowd of characteristically wide-eyed, long-lashed, feminine-looking deer, seals, and birds. Underneath the picture was the caption “Love Your Mother.” The message was clear: nature is ideal, chaste, and helpless as a baby girl. We must save “her” from the dragon of “Everyman.” However, this romantic posture toward nature has an even nastier side. Romantic protection of nature often hides men’s underlying desire to control and denigrate women and people of color. For example, members of Earth First! And others in the deep ecology movement have been quoted as blaming nature’s woes largely on “population.” The Earth First! Journal regularly advertises a sticker that says, “Love Your Mother, Donnnn’t Become One.” Paradoxically, the same men who romantically express love for “Mother Earth” suggest that mothers are to blame for the denigration of nature. In the name of “protecting Mother Earth,” women are reduced to masses of brainless, brown women breeding uncontrollably in the Third World. Meanwhile “Gaia,” the idealized mother herself, sits elevated on her galactic pedestal awaiting knightly protection from women’s insatiable wombs. The fantasy of romantic protection blends male perceptions of social reality with male fantasy. The romantic can remain disdainful and ignorant of women’s oppression within society while maintaining his fantasy of protecting “woman-nature”: in this way, the romantic can love his cake and hate her too. However, removing the veil of romantic protection from the population discussion reveals population imbalances to be the result of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. These institutions disenfranchise women from their own indigenous cultures and their traditional techniques of reproductive control. Throughout history, women have ingeniously managed to control population. However, once women are robbed of cultural knowledge and self-determination, they lose the cultural practices vital to population control. Additional factors, including high infant mortality and the family’s need for child labor for survival, contribute to women’s having more children than they would ordinarily desire. Animal Rights Focus Promotes RomanticismTHE ISOLATION OF INDIVIDUAL CONSUMPTION AS THE SOURCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DECAY IS AN AUTHORITARIAN FORM OF SOCIAL CONTROL THAT MAINTAINS INSTITUTIONS OF DOMINATION Heller ‘93 [Chaia, “For the Love of Nature: Ecology and the Cult of the Romantic,” Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, pp. 238-9] These warnings to conserve natural resources and to exercise environmental constraint imply that "we" have been "partying it up" and now must get sober. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The "party" ended when domination emerged within society thousands of years ago, adding capitalism to its list of atrocities only during the last several centuries. Under patriarchy, women and all oppressed peoples have been forced to restrain their desire for freedom, expression, and self-determination. We have constrained, held back, our passions, creativity, and desires for a truly liberatory society. When George Bush, "the environmental president," instructs us to conserve nature, perhaps he is really warning us to conserve the structure of this authoritarian society. The media campaigns have an authoritarian flavor that appeals to our expectations of social control and direction. Surely these campaigns do not encourage the public to question the economic and social structures that are the true causes of ecocide. We are asked to conserve more, waste less. However, capitalism itself is never challenged as a system that promotes and depends on wasteful consumption. Ironically, capitalism shapes the false needs that we are chastised for attempting to satisfy. Our lives are vacuous. We are alienated in our work, in our communities, and in our ideas of nature. We live within an economic system that depends on a poor underclass, a system that requires ever-new human and natural "resources" to survive. Yet, again, no one questions whether this system is inherently flawed. Instead, the flaw is assumed to be inherent within "human nature." Indeed, wasteful consumption must end. But this end must be achieved by abolishing capitalism and social domination, not merely by recycling and encouraging the rich to buy expensive "ecologically sound" products. The slew of new "environmentally friendly" products that crowd even mainstream market shelves are unaffordable to many working- and middleclass consumers. These products alleviate the ecological anxiety of the rich while perpetuating an oppressive economic system that ultimately exploits humans and nature. The romantic drama of ecology is over. It is time for a new era. The knights can stop protecting nature and restraining their unchivalrous desires. The dragon no longer hovers over the romantic countryside flashing the generic name tag of "technology" or "humanity." The dragon has finally taken off its mask. It wears the face of the capitalist draining the blood from the land and people of the "Third World." The dragon wears the fist of the batterer beating the last breath from the woman who dared survive. The dragon wears the face of domination, the face of all institutions, ideologies, and individuals who strip people of their land, culture, passion, and self-determination. 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