April1980 RAIN Page 13 andecologyweareexploring~I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. '-lese are the values sup- tempt to kill a culture which challenges the anti-nature Judeod, yet the values essential to Christian theology. Native spirituality has reverence for life and this from our feminist orien understands the merger of the body and soul, the spirit and flesh. It is the closest culture that exists in the geographical U.S. to the ancient ecological civilizations. each other and to our relinated our ideas , making the Like sterilization, rape must also be understood as more than the Some of this has made us an crime of violating a victim's body and spirit. Through its adjective, sad, all of it makes us " rapacious," it has also come to mean "living on captured prey." us Donna sums up our per- Today's patriarchy becomes "the rule of rapists. " Mobil, Exxon, Westinghouse, G.E. and their corporate brothers all stand guilty. r talking about overcoming rstand the roots of women's Their violence, lies, deceits, manipulations, exploitation, violations-all part of the act of rape. Our bodies, our minds, our is to superficial and patroniz spirits, our planet-all victims. n." -CC & KS We are at a crossroads in time. The feminist and ecology movements must work together to oppose the notion that women and nature exist to serve man. For, as serious as the threat of global aestruction is right now, it promises to get worse and we must be prepared: The patriarchy wants to play God. This is especially evident in their experiments in DNA, their institution of involuntary sterilization, and their development of atomic power and warfare. They want to determine who will live and who will die. They want total control. And they will get it if we don't all work together to Never mind the fact that people-especially women-have had little or no say in production decisions. Never mind who profits from pollution, or who pays for it. " People cause pollution," the industrialists argue, " by their insatiable demand for the products ~hich pollute." Women are at fault any way they look at it. After all, " people" are consumers, "consumers" are women, and " people" are caused by women. 50 now the standing-room-only syndrome has environmentalists and industrialists alike putting the blame for pollution and hunger on population growth and, ultimately, on women. Population control becomes a handy coverup for the rape of the Third World countries (see RAIN , Jan. '80) and for domestic problems, too. In rhetoric reminiscent of Hitlerite eugenics, the Rockefeller-backed Population Council argues that births must be "equalized between people at different socio-economic levels" and discouraged "among the socially handicapped." They conclude that tax, welfare and education policy could be used to achieve this (and these have certainly had an effect). But when all else fails, they return to sterilization. And so we see that sterilization has been on the rise. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that perhaps as many as 25 percent of all Native American women have been sterilized-many of them involuntarily. There is one tribe in Oklahoma in which all of the full-blooded women have been sterilized. The implications of sterilizing Native American women should be seen in full. It is anti-woman. It is racism and it is genocide. It also represents a modern return to the witch hunts, for it is an atstop them. The needs of the planet and the needs of women have merged. But the line of division between the movements supporting each remain. Ironically, it is reminiscent of the patriarchy'S own separations between the body and soul, the political world and the natural one. It's academic; it's artificial; it's illusory; it's a trap ; and it benefits the exploiters only. Feminism and ecology require thinking across such boundaries. "I'm not talking about adopting the old school "You-come-toour-demos-and-we'll-go-to-yours" attitude. I'm talking about the need for a deep philosophical and political merger which results in ecologists seeing themselves as feminists and vice versa. Feminism and ecology both call for liberation through self-reliance, cooperation, community and democracy. They call for nurturance of the earth, its resources and its inhabitants. They understand that everything is connected to everything else. Therefore, any attempt to liberate women or solve the ecology crisis without countering the forces of hierarchy and domination which place men over women, whites over peoples of color, heterosexuals over lesbians and gay men, the able-bodied over the physically challenged, industrial nations over " underdeveloped" ones, the rich over the poor, and so on, is a gross misunderstanding of what is nec~ss.ary to save this planet and establish peace and equality. .. Donna Warnock works with Feminist Resources on Energy & Ecology (FREE) and is a member of the Syracuse Peace Council. "Notes on Feminism and Ecology" are notes from Donna's research for a .book on this subject. and all pleasure in sex was condemned, because it could only come from the deviL" And thus women were killed for their sexuality. They were also accused of being healers. "If a woman dares to cure without studying (and there were no schools for women), she is a witch and must be bu rned. " Women healers posed a threat to the male doctors patronized by the ruling class. These men did not serve the peasants but people's medicine was threatening their monopoly on the secrets of healing. This was at a time when bleeding patients and applying leeches to their skin was the current state of the art. The medical elite actively participated in the witch trials. They were called upon to determine if certain women were witches and what diseases were caused by witchcraft. This proved to be a very efficient way of eliminating competition. The suppression of women healers was not quite so easily accomplished in the United States. The Popular Health Movement in the 1830s and'40s was a serious challenge to the medical establishment's monopoly on the mysteries of medicine. "The movement was a radical assault on medical elitism, and an affirmation of the traditional people's medicine." With the age of industrialization came big money, and the medical elite was once again supported by the patronage of the ruling class, only this time it was the Rockefellers. Breakthroughs in germ theory and clinical science allowed universities supported by corporate and government money to expand and change the nature of medical training. Schools for minorities and women were forced to close. Eventually lay midwives were even outlawed. Today women make up a meager 7 percent of U.S. doctors. They are restricted to the role of nurses, which was originally seen as an extension of women's " natural" domestic nature. But women are reclaiming the art of healing. Feminist clinics are available in most major cities. The self-help movement is one of the most vital parts of the women's movement. Within this context it is especially important to understand the suppression of women healers. We know we were once witches. -KS
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz