Rückkehr Book

To many men, words like “patriarchy” and “feminism” are indicators that women plan on laying out a long litany of complaints about oppression and subservience. However, Reweaving tackles the concept of ecofeminism in an evenhanded, creative way by addressing topics that aren’t automatically associated with the movement – a movement that many people are unfamiliar with.
One such unique essay comes from Arisika Razak, an African-American midwife who dissects reproduction in “Toward a Womanist Analysis of Birth.” She begins her essay explaining the significance of birth to not only women but men as well, but quickly delves into how birth and fertility – once revered in cultures around the world – have become vilified in Western society through sexism and patriarchy. Thousands of years ago the fertility of women was linked to the fertility of the Earth, and the physical attributes on a woman that emphasize such life-sustaining abilities – large hips, full pregnant bellies – were desirable characteristics. Razak maintains that women experience great physical power (as well as pain) through the process of giving birth, proving “we are not the weaker sex” (169). She adds that men, unable to identify with this experience, view such pain with horror and disgust, and “much of the patriarchal oppression of women stems from fear and resentment of our birthing abilities. For the medieval church, pain in labor was God’s punishment to wisdom-seeking Eve, and the bearing of children is part of her curse. Midwives in the Middle Ages were burned at the stake because they sought herbs that would reduce women’s pain” (170). From here Razak relates how men, the creators of both the forceps and Cesarean deliveries, entered the birthing process when most other options had failed, developing a medical profession that rejects the subjective experience of the woman giving birth. But Alan Roe will be glad to hear that not all her insights on men and birth are negative; rather, Razak goes beyond blaming men for taking over the birthing process and instead questions why society hasn’t tried harder to include them. “Nurturing is not a genetically feminine attribute…in a society that wishes us to see men as devoid of feelings, let us hold an image of men as nurturers. Women are birth-givers, but men can care with them. Let us change our institutions” (172).
While Razak’s essay deals more with feminism and less with nature, Carolyn Merchant’s essay “Ecofeminism and Feminist Theory” breaks down ecofeminism into a variety of subcategories. Explaining that the word ecofeminism was coined by a French writer to represent women’s potential to bring on an ecological revolution, Merchant goes past basic definitions and describes how the ecofeminism movement is splintered into three main schools of thought: liberal feminism, radical feminism and socialist feminism. While all three factions have short-term goals that overlap, they mainly differ as to whether capitalism, women’s culture or socialism should be the ultimate objective of political action (105). Radical feminism developed as a response to the perception that women and nature have been mutually associated and devalued by Western culture and that both should be elevated and liberated through direct political action (101). By analyzing environmental problems from within its critique of patriarchy, radical ecofeminists hope to offer alternatives that could liberate both women and nature. Socialist ecofeminism, however, founds its analysis in capitalist patriarchy and desires to completely restructure – via a socialist revolution – the domination of women and nature that is intrinsically part of the market economy’s use of both as resources (100). Finally, Liberal feminism, much like reform environmentalism, works to alter human relations with nature through the passage of new laws and regulations. Merchant, surprisingly, backs the socialist ecofeminism as having “the potential for a more thorough critique of the domination issue” (100), mainly because it deals with the environmental issues that affect working-class women. For example, Merchant states capitalist patriarchy has forced women into a domestic sphere where her labor in the home was “unpaid and subordinate to men’s labor in the marketplace. Both women and nature are exploited by men as part of the progressive liberation of humans from the constraints imposed by nature” (103). Saving the earth in the mind of a socialist ecofeminist will require major changes to the economy and how both men and women are viewed in society.
For some, the “isms” in essay like Merchant’s can be off-putting, but with 26 essays to choose from, Reweaving the World covers a variety of topics, offering essays that will appeal to everyone from the staunchest feminists to the most oppressive patriarchs. Topics range from Earth-based spirituality and deep ecology to feminist theory and bioregionalism. Reviewer Beverly Miller of the Library Journal said “These are serious, even scholarly discussions, yet they remain readable and compelling, appealing to both men and women to promote new values which will affirm and enhance the Earth,” and I agree. While some of the goddess talk and suggestions for reviving ancient fertility rituals can at times seem a little misguided, these essays easily and clearly tackle a topic that is still evolving for women all around the world.