Feminism and Environmental Ethics: A Materialist Perspective 231of an environmental ethics and the claim for environmental justice must be based
on an analysis of these relations.
Materialist ecofeminism argues that the gendered nature of the relation
between hu(man)ity and nature means that dominant males (and the females who
associate with them) can live in conditions of unsustainable transcendence. Appeal
to an environmental ethic may undermine these dominant groups, but it is impor-
tant to recognize that all human beings are to a greater or lesser degree caught up
in the web of mediation. Within that web three points of agency can be identified
that may enable change to occur. The most obvious is the planet’s own response to
human action. The ecological effects of human action such as ozone depletion and
global warming, unlike desertification and localized pollution, affect the dominant
as well as the subordinate. Another locus of struggle are the campaigns by those
who are subject to social and environmental injustice. Desertification, commer-
cialization of land, destruction of local habitat, all produce economic and social
dislocation and political responses such as land claims which the so-called ‘devel-
oped’ world is finding increasingly difficult to ignore. Finally, I would not want to
underestimate the power of ideas and the growth of personal awareness. We are all
embodied, and even the richest person can feel the limits of biological time.
The centrality of women’s experience is that the work associated with subordi-
nated women can mask the demands of biological time and its connectedness to
ecological time for dominant men (and women) who claim transcendence over
natural boundaries and limits. Thus an ethics from the standpoint of women
makes political sense. It is not an essential statement about the nature of women or
something universally attributable to women. Not all women do women’s work
and much is done by subordinated men. Women’s work represents the immanence
of human existence, the non-negotiable needs of the body. Failure to recognize this
can lead to the destructive arrogance of claims to transcendence. These dangers are
well expressed by Patricia Gunn Allen (1990):
Walking in balance, in harmony, and in a sacred manner requires staying in your body,
accepting its discomforts, decayings, witherings and bloomings and respecting them ...
Walking in balance requires knowing that living and dying are twin beings, gifts of our
mother, the Earth ... In the end you can’t cheat her successfully, but in the attempt to
do so you can do great harm to the delicate and subtle balance of the vital process of
planetary being (pp52–53).Note
1 This essay builds on arguments initially made in my book. Feminism and Ecology. See Mellor,
1997b.