Page 12 RA[N April1980 lIn this spread on women non-dominant values. Ti ~~notesoll ecology (e-kol'e-ji) 1. th e bran ch of biology that deals with the relations between living organisms and their environment. 2. in sociology, th(' relatio'nship between the distribution of human groups with reference to material resources, and the consequent social and cultural patterns. . - Webster's New World Dictionary Both feminism and ecology embody the. belief that everything is connected to everything else-that the eco-system, the production system, the politicalleconomic apparatus and the moral and psychological health of a people are all interconnected. Exploitation in any area has repercussions on the whole package. Merging feminism and ecology is not simply a device to unite two currently popular movements, thereby strengthening the numbers of each. It's no coincidence that the two movements share common concerns, common roots, and common visions. Patriarchy's attack on women is so closely associated with its assault on nature that it's difficult to see where one begins and the other leaves off. " Feminist ecologist" may be a new term . But the movement it describes is not. Societies once existed which were ecological, democratic, communal and peaceful, where women held social and political power. Relationships between women and men were non-monogamous, so that the paternity of children was often difficult to establish. Consequently, kinship was matrilineal (traced through the mother) . Property was owned by women and inherited by women . Records of the tribes and their balances and accounts were kept in the temples of the deities-the Divine Ancestresses. [t is likely that the women of these temples invented writing to maintain these records . It is only with the invasion of the Indo-Europeans (beginning about 3000 B.C.) that cultural patterns dating back many centuries are disrupted (the earliest goddess image found has been dated about 25,000 B.C.). The Indo-Europeans replaced the mother deity, the life worshipping religions of the people they conquered, with a male god. To secure patrilineal kinship and inheritance they instituted monogamy. To guarantee paternity, any transgression of the monogamous relationship on the part of the woman (including her being raped) was punishable by her being put to death. pressed, the values denie change. We approached tation . We've reacted to sources. We've cross-pol process a nurturing one. gry, some of it makes us stronger. In her letter to ]emilliS1llOteoology spective: ' '/' m not one fv sexism before folks undo' oppression. I think it le(11 ing behavior modificatiu Donna Warnock There was tremendous opposition to these ideas. They were seen as unnatural. Whole tribes were massacred for their resistance (see the Old Testament). But resistance and reactive slaughter continued into the 18th century in the form of witch burnings. [n the meantime a market economy developed . Political power accompanied economic power. As merchandiSing grew, communal property became private, production expanded, small tribal governments became kingdoms, and communal agricultural societies gave way to feudal ones. The economy became profit-centered, and classes of producers and consumers were created to generate that profit . The contemporary product of all of this is embodied in our global crisis. Non-renewable resources have been all but depleted. In the past quarter century alone global fuel consumption has tripled, oil and gas consumption quintupled, and there's been a seven-fold increase in the use of electricity. Thousands of new polluting chemicals have been put on the market, and deadly radiation from nuclear power production will remain with us for the next 250,000 years. Five million people could be killed from a nuclear reactor accident, and nuclear war could end life on earth. The doomsday predictions are all too real. And who are we told is to blame? "In an overpopulated world, ordinary, 'normal' woman may yet become the sorceress who inundates man with every new creation , who keeps pou ring forth a stream of children for whom there is neither role nor room , whose procreative ins tinct , irre sis tiblr , keeps producing like a machine go ne mad. .. . " And in the end the balance of this globe may yet again have to b(' redressed by the Great Mother herself in her most terribl(' form: as hunger, as pestilence, as the blind orgasm of the atom." - Wolfgang Lederer, M. D. The Fear of Wom en , 1968 Witches, Midwives and Nurses, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, 1973,48 pp., $1.95 from: The Feminist Press SUNY/Coliege at Old Westbury Box 334 Old Westbury, NY Authorities estimate that millions of women accused of being witches were killed between the 14th and 17th centuries. "One writer has estimated the number of execution s at an average of 600 a year for certain German cities, or two a day, 'leaving out Sundays.' Nine hundred witches were destroyed in a single year in the Wertzberg area, and 1000 in and around Como. At Toulouse, four hundred were put to death in a day . In the Bishopric of Trier, in 1585, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant each ." Who were these women and why has the gynocidal intent of the witch trials been obscured and erased? Witches were strong, autonomous women. They were not the possessions of men . For this they burned. Many of them were healers, who used their knowledge of herbs and plants to care for the sick and the poor. Historians would like us to believe that the witch hunts were carried out by hysterical peasant mobs purging their villages of eccentric, isolated old women. The opposite is true. " The witch hunts were well-organized campaigns, initiated, financed and executed by the Church and State." What were the crimes of these women? "The Church associated women with sex,
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