Intersectionality Within the Movement
Throughout history, marginalized voices have always been the quieter ones—not necessarily because they themselves are quiet, but because society does not want to listen to them and attempts to silence them. The ecofeminist movement, unfortunately, was no different. Outwardly, it was mostly white, straight women who had the loudest voices, and regrettably, such was the case for much of its earlier existence.
Lesbian ecofeminists were prominent members of the community, celebrating a woman’s relationship with nature as loud as they could. Lesbians, historically, are more environmentally-friendly than straight women, shown in the 1970s as lesbians left cities for rural spaces, free from male domination. Another example of lesbians and their connection to the environment can be seen in the American Women’s Antarctic Expedition in 1992, in which Ann Bancroft became the first woman and first lesbian to bring an all-woman team to the Antarctic. Gardening and having forest homes have also been movements lesbians create movement in. As society became more and more polluted, both by patriarchal mindsets and by run-off, toxins, and nuclear waste, lesbians grew louder and louder in their distaste, and in their distress for the environment. In April of 1980, a conference called “Women and Life on Earth: Eco-Feminism in the 1980s” discussed male violence towards women and the environment, and inspired the Women’s Pentagon Movement. Most of the three thousand women who surrounded the pentagon were lesbian. Ynestra King, a highly important activist, mentioned previously, was lesbian, and was a key oraganizer in both of these events. Lesbian ecofeminists also believed that “women and people of color are animalised, eroticized, and naturalized, so, too, has nature been feminized, raced, and eroticized,” and “through these conceptual associations, all of these forms of oppression are linked and rationalized in patriarchal thought” [1]. Lesbian ecofeminists acknowledged the oppression of people of color more outwardly than many of the straight ecofeminists.
People of color who were environmental activists in the Second Wave dealt with the most pressure during this time out of any within ecofeminism. Black and indigenous voices were quieted and were far less highlighted and raised up than white ecofeminists. However, they were the strongest voices to discuss what was wrong with environmental and societal structures, as they themselves faced the harshest offenses on all sides. Documents and articles written by people of color and other marginalized groups are hard to find, having not been given the recognition they deserved. They were not represented or lifted up in the same way as white ecofeminists, and unfortunately, because of that “the ecofeminist movement, like the mainstream environmental movement, has been mainly white and middle class dominated and lacks intersectionality” [2]. Ecofeminism, at least of the Second Wave, was mostly white. While it did recognize the struggles of those who were not white, those voices were not sent out in the same way. This is a great shortcoming of 1970s and 1980s ecofeminism.
References
[1] Zimmerman, Bonnie. “Ecology and Ecofeminism.” In Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia 1, 1:253–54. New York: Garland, 2000. https://books.google.com/books?id=0EUoCrFolGcC&pg=PA254&lpg=PA254&dq=lesbian+ecofeminists&source=bl&ots=NIzokbZc15&sig=ACfU3U1C2ovybxX9JYVA13WWjkwcQWAvqQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwii1Oveu4btAhUsw1kKHV0iAXQQ6AEwBXoECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=lesbian%20ecofeminists&f=false.
[2] Cain, Cacildia. "The Necessity of Black Women's Standpoint and Intersectionality in Environmental Movements." 2018. https://medium.com/black-feminist-thought-2016/the-necessity-of-black-women-s-standpoint-and-intersectionality-in-environmental-movements-fc52d4277616