language...towards women and towards earth

Many years ago there was a movement called "ecofeminism' which drew the deep, clear, true, and disturbing parallels between attitudes towards women and towards our earth in a patriarchal culture, attitudes that seemed "natural" and therefore unquestioned,   Women were seen as empty wombs, only given life by the male sperm.  Because they were empty--objects really, not a living being--they could be used, could be exploited and abused.  And they were, and they are still in a misogynist and capitalist culture where value is defined by men and by power and where women are seen as objects.  And so with earth, instead of earth being mother earth, a living being, earth was seen as an object to be used, to be exploited, to be abused by those in power.  And it was and it is. 

This seeing of living beings as "other," as inferior, as lesser--as savage, as ignorant, as object, commodity-- has been the framework which allows for oppression throughout history--for slavery, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, for racism and anti-semitism,  xenophobia, race wars....  It is the inability to see other living beings as having their own deep and essential worth, a denial and blindness that allows those in power to justify immoral destructive behavior, the killing and destroying of life, without compunction or guilt, often defining what is immoral as natural, good, right, moral.   In terms of the earth, actually seeing exploitation, abuse, and greed as progress.   

Violence against women--discrimination, accepted roles for behavior, domestic abuse, rape, child marriage, trafficking in women--were often not recognized as a crime, how long it too to say what is obvious:. women's rights are human rights and violence against women in war is a war crime.  It is strange how something so clear in terms of destruction of living beings was and is still justified and affirmed.  It is the capacity of a culture and a world to shape our seeing and thinking through the lens of those in power.  It is the necessity to redefine the world, to include what has been excluded,  to see what is of value, to see living beings of dignity and worth, to change not only the power structure but the power that has allowed for so much damage, destruction, pain.  To change the world.

In terms of our earth, it is to return to what indigenous peoples have always known--what is sacred.