The Right's Use and Abuse of Women and Nature
Passage of the week
One author who has been fundamental in my understanding of how greenspace is viewed, used, and shaped in capitalist societies is Neil Smith. He has a keen ability to find and clearly spell out the crucial underpinnings of our economic and political systems. In his book Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, Smith lays out a historical perspective of these systems and discusses what they mean in an evolving sociopolitical world.
The ideas add a depth to my reading of any development plan, including Project 2025. The converging roles of religion, politics, capitalism, and science play a role in what is currently going on. This particular passage is one that strikes a chord right now with some of the proposals being put forth by the Republican Party:
It is striking that the treatment of women in capitalist society parallels the treatment of nature. As external nature, women are objects which mankind attempts to dominate and oppress, ravage and romanticize; they are objects of conquest and penetration as well as idolatry and worship. The language is exact. Women are put on pedestals, but only once their social domination is secure; precisely as with nature, romanticization is then a form of control.
-Neil Smith
For me, the push and pull of some of these long-running neoconservative ideas seem to be coming to a head. There is a frustration and defiance as old truths are questioned, because some of those are vital to the way capitalism has been interpreted and implemented thus far.
If we treat women as equal to men and if we treat the land as a finite resource that we don’t have control over, how can we maintain the wealth accumulation that comes from their exploitation? And with it, how do we uphold our personal sense of worth that has been built around the idea that excessive wealth accumulation is honorable?
I’d love to hear what Smith’s words mean to you, and how you see them being relevant (or not) today.
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Lately, as a woman....I have begun to question my acceptance of the crumbs of equality swept our way. Understand, I do not consider my struggle as hard or difficult in comparison to what women of color face, but I find myself furious. Simply furious to have wasted a minute, on makeup, clothes, and acquiescence. And those that know me would never describe me as a milk toast. Still I gave grace to men....who should have been called on the carpet, for their million and one little microaggresive comments...their condescending remarks, on and on....I worked primarily with men. To my credit, I never let it slow me down nor took any of it personally....so why am I furious? Because society allows this environment of turning women into a commodity to be tolerated, exploited, and disregarded...unless they are forced to do otherwise. And....I can say...it was men who gave me my chances. One...was a sexist....the other not. Yet I held no grudge.
Still, I know...the internal insistance to be treated as a partner, a fully respected collaborator has surfaced with a fury....and spread. I now demand consideration for myself, my sisters of color, for the environment, and for animals. The challenge now...is how to be heard...how to rally and not scare off similar budding ideologically driven people...
I didn’t use to think this way, or maybe more precisely, I didn’t want to consider this point of view. My work in affordable housing has made me reconsider.
It seems that one - consciously or not - objectifies and dehumanizes that which one wants to control for his own purposes, rather than a collective good. It serves to make the pursuit/acquisition/conquest more internally defensible?