feminism

"By the mid-seventeenth century, depictions of s, animals, and plants had officially been declassed to the status of inferior art genres, deemed decorative, even frivolous—lacking the conceptual depth, moral integrity, and ethical elevation of art portraying grandiose human narratives. ... Or at least that was the case until aspiring female artists like , , , , , , , , Frances Elizabeth Tripp, , and , among others, turned to painting plants and flowers, spearheading an unparalleled botanical revolution in Western art. Initiating an unwavering, albeit gradual, ascent in the arts and in society, these women artists made the most of what was available to them to showcase their aptitudes, talent, and conceptual acumen."

"The work of women artists, which often transgresses the racial, ethnic, and gender dictates of society, asks us to consider the ambiguous boundary between self and other not with horror and fear—a convention of exclusion on which much of society is founded—but as offering an opening onto a new form of ."

"Why, yes, of course I wrote all the Arab of Mesopotamia. I've loved the reviews which speak of the practical men who were the anonymous authors, etc. It's fun being practical men, isn't it."

"After studying the optical effects of the , in 1960 began to make the extremely precise pictures for which she is known today. Her participation in , a 1965 show at the , earned Riley an international reputation. Although went out of fashion very quickly, Riley's work continued to fascinate viewers because of its impeccable technique and sophisticated compositions."

"We know little of the practice of the arts by women in ancient times. The degraded condition of the sex in Eastern countries rendered woman the mere slave and toy of her master; but this very circumstance gave her artistic ideas capable of development into independent action. These first showed themselves in the love of dress and the selection of ornaments. From the early ages of the world, too, and were feminine employments, in which undying germs of art were hidden; for it belongs to human nature never to be satisfied with what merely minsters to necessity."

"Recent work has brought to light so many cases, historical and contemporary, of who have been ignored, denied credit or otherwise dropped from sight that a sex-linked phenomenon seems to exist, as has been documented to be the case in other fields, such as medicine, art history and . Since this systematic bias in scientific information and recognition practices fits the second half of Matthew 13:12 in the Bible, which refers to the under-recognition accorded to those who have little to start with, it is suggested that can add to the , made famous by Robert K. Merton in 1968, the 'Matilda Effect', named for the American suffragist and feminist critic of , who in the late nineteenth century both experienced and articulated this phenomenon. Calling attention to her and this age-old tendency may prod future scholars to include other such 'Matildas' and thus to write a better, because more comprehensive, and ."

"The undervaluing of minorities and their researcher contributions reduces when a threshold level of minority representation (between 15 and 30%) is reached in a group or community. Botany is celebrated as a discipline in which women have been able to make important contributions, especially in the past. At the same time, other s have raised worries that women's research contributions are being neglected or dismissed not just in the past but even currently. Based on data on the representation of women authors in 15 , I will suggest that the difference between botany and other disciplines may arise from the numbers and proportions of women. The contributions made by women in botany could not be as easily dismissed or neglected as elsewhere in biology due to women's higher representation in botany."

"Science is stratified, with an unequal distribution of research facilities and rewards among scientists. Awards and prizes, which are critical for shaping scientific career trajectories, play a role in this stratification when they differentially enhance the status of scientists who already have large reputations: the ‘’. Contrary to the – the expectation that the personal attributes of scientists do not affect evaluations of their scientific claims and contributions – in practice, a great deal of evidence suggests that the scientific efforts and achievements of women do not receive the same recognition as do those of men: the ‘Matilda Effect’. Awards in are not immune to these biases. ... While women’s receipt of professional awards and prizes has increased in the past two decades, men continue to win a higher proportion of awards for scholarly research than expected based on their representation in the nomination pool."

"Transfeminism is a term used to describe a collection of perspectives on feminism that centre the experiences of trans people. This perspective recognizes trans people as a group who, like cis women, suffer greatly at the hands of patriarchy, which punishes us for transgressing the roles laid out for us from birth. It is not a rival movement to other forms of feminism, nor is it a subdivision. It is a specific approach to feminist thought and organizing that begins with trans experience, rather than seeking to slot trans people into a cis feminist theory that is often articulated without us in mind."

"Trans feminists seek to interrogate society’s ingrained assumptions about the social and cultural meanings we ascribe to biology. They also generally incorporate an analysis of intersex people, who do not fit this reductive model, and who have suffered historical and ongoing mistreatment at the hands of a medical establishment obsessed with imposing binary biological sex on to bodies that don’t ‘fit’. The experiences of trans and intersex people show us that not all humans fit perfectly into two clear-cut categories of biological sex; indeed, the belief there are two separate sex categories is itself an erasure of sex variations that occur either naturally or through medical modification. The global dominance of men over women can never be dismantled while simultaneously maintaining, preserving and reinforcing the binary model of sex and gender."

"Naturally, cisgender women’s feminism starts with the general principle that patriarchy is a system that benefits men to the detriment of women, and empowers men specifically by disempowering women. In some form or other, most cis feminist thought argues for a crucial distinction to be made between sex – one’s biology – and gender, a social structure that dictates appropriate male and female behaviour. Trans feminists also believe that, while the difference between bodies and the cultural narratives we use to interpret those bodies does exist, such difference is not always easily recognized or mapped. Our sexed bodies never exist outside social meanings: consequently, how we understand gender shapes how we understand sex. The gender critical feminist idea – that there exists an objective biological reality which is real and observable to everyone in the same way and, distinct from that, a constructed set of subjective gender stereotypes that can be easily abolished – is an oversimplification. The way we perceive and understand sex differences and emphasize their significance is so deeply gendered that it can be impossible to completely divorce the two."

"Not only do trans people need feminism, but feminism also needs trans people."

"Like women more generally, many trans women are feminists. Feminism and transgender activism are not in any way incompatible or mutually exclusive. As feminists who acknowledge intersectionality, we believe that we should be fighting to end all forms of sexism and marginalization — this includes both traditional sexism and transphobia. Forcing trans women into a separate group that is distinct from cis women does not in any way help achieve feminism’s central goal of ending sexism."

"I believe it is important to debunk the myth that transfeminism is a new departure from the feminist theory of the past. As we have seen, ambivalence about the categories of man and woman, challenging biological essentialism, and championing a multifaceted analysis of the harm that misogyny does to every human being (including men) have always been central to feminist thought."

"In the radical feminist view, the new feminism is not just the revival of a serious for . It is the second wave of the most important revolution in history. Its aim: overthrow of the oldest, most rigid class/caste system in existence, the class system based on sex – a system consolidated over thousands of years, lending the archetypal male and female roles an undeserved legitimacy and seeming permanence."

"“You can be a groundbreaker, a leader and a lady.”"

"Radical feminist movement has many political assets that no other movement can claim, a revolutionary potential far higher, as well as qualitatively different, from any in the past."

"Revolutionary feminism is the only radical programme that immediately cracks through to the emotional strata underlying ‘serious’ politics, thus reintegrating the personal with the public, the subjective with the objective, the emotional with the rational – the female principle with the male."

"To be a Radical Feminist now is to do quantum leaping. That means to act with fantastic courage because you see real hope now, not lovely little lah-didah hope (a very contained hope), but really great Hope for participation in Quintessence, which is the harmony of the universe."

"The word ‘radical’ means ‘going to the roots’. It is derived from the Latin radix, meaning root. Radical Feminism goes to the root of oppression and the way out. And I define it as “way of being characterised by (a) an Awesome and Ecstatic sense of Otherness from patriarchal norms and values (b) conscious awareness of the sadosociety’s sanctions against Radical Feminists (c) moral outrage on behalf of women as women (d) commitment to the cause of women that persists, even against the current, when feminism is no longer ‘popular’; in other words, constancy."

"The contemporary radical feminist position is the direct descendant of the radical feminist line in the old movement, notably that championed by Stanton and Anthony, and later by the militant Congressional Union subsequently known as the Woman’s Party. It sees feminist issues not only as women’s first priority, but as central to any larger revolutionary analysis. It refuses to accept the existing leftist analysis not because it is too radical, but because it is not radical enough: it sees the current leftist analysis as outdated and superficial, because this analysis does not relate the structure of the economic class system to its origins in the sexual class system, the model for all other exploitative systems, and thus the tapeworm that must be eliminated first by any true revolution."

"If any revolutionary movement can succeed at establishing an egalitarian structure, radical feminism will."

"TERF ... has expanded to include any woman worried that permitting men who “self-identify” as female to enter women’s changing rooms or refuges unchallenged makes her less safe. TERFs, according to trans activists, are evil. TERF is the new witch. Search on Twitter for "TERFs must die" or "burn in a fire, TERF" and behold a cauldron of violent vitriol. Before the meeting, a trans-woman posted: "Any idea where this is happening? I want to f*** some TERFs up, they are no better than fash [fascists]." Search "punch a TERF" and you will find crowing approval of what happened to Maria. So at Speakers’ Corner trans activists and feminists were chanting and taunting each other. Maria was taking photographs when an opponent grappled with her, snatched her camera and smashed it on the ground. Then a tall, male-bodied, hooded figure wearing make-up rushed over, hit her several times and as police arrived, ran away. I asked a young activist if she was OK with men smacking women: “It’s not a guy, you’re a piece of s*** and I’m happy they hit her”, came the reply. So when is it OK to punch a woman? When she won’t do what you want; when you don’t like what she says. Some things never change."

"The existence of trans people ought to make everyone take a long hard look at their own dearly held ideas about gender, and wonder whether these ideas are quite as stable and certain as they once thought. This would be healthy. The distinction between men and women is often arbitrary. The distinction between ‘binary’ trans men and women and non-binary trans people is equally arbitrary and, in reality, the precise distinction between people we call cis and people we call trans isn’t rigid either. The fact that definitions can be so unstable is clearly deeply troubling to many – which is why it is easier to belittle challenges to binaries than to take on their contradictions, complications and exceptions. ‘We are all non-binary’ is potentially a radical new analysis for how we might reorder society, but conventionally it is used by gender critical feminists to mock those people making political demands to dismantle the binary’s imprint on our culture. Yet those critics provide no alternative for how we would otherwise emancipate society from binary gender stereotypes and roles. Once more, feminist hostility to non-binary people reasserts the notion of an inescapable biological sex that should be given more social and legal credence than a variant gender identity, a notion that merely replicates patriarchy’s own logic."

"There are some who hold onto rigid ideas of biological sex, but I do not expect feminists to be among them. When I hear people refer in code to “biology 101,” meaning the scientific basis of female and male sex difference, to claim that trans women are not “biologically women,” I want to offer in rebuke, “Biology 101? Patriarchy wrote that textbook!” and pass them a copy of Andrea Dworkin’s Woman Hating, a radical feminist text that supports transsexuals having access to surgery and hormones and challenges what she calls “the traditional biology of sexual difference” based on “two discrete biological sexes.” To be so-called gender critical while leaving traditional biology intact tightens rather than loosens the hold of a gender system on our bodies."

"Anti-trans feminists’ repeated claims that they were being silenced were in fact highly effective in getting their viewpoints aired on television, radio and in the press."

"Feminism must concern itself with radical possibilities for our future, a future in which gender-based violence and harm is abolished, freeing us all to lead more joyful lives. That cannot begin with barring the freedom to find other ways to look at, understand or do gender."

"The way we are all taught, from a young age, to make the link between visible biological sex traits and behaviour can be extremely powerful in shaping our intuitions about other people. This process of interpretation and the way it affects how we relate to and behave towards others is part of the system we call gender. Feminism, though, ought always to interrogate biological essentialism (the idea that a person’s nature or personality is innate; arising from, or connected to, their biological traits). The idea that anyone born with a penis is inherently more aggressive or violent because they have a penis is an anti-feminist idea: it actually suggests that male violence is linked to biological ‘essence’ and is therefore inevitable, immutable, perhaps not even truly men’s fault. Yet anti-trans feminism is forced to rely on biological essentialism in its insistence that there is too great a similarity between trans women and cis men for the former to be regarded legally and politically as women. Transphobic feminism often uses imagery connected to penises (imagined or real) belonging to trans women as a powerful rhetorical tool, to suggest that trans women are exhibiting aggression or entitlement or are a threat."

"Could the terrors and crimes of today be possible if both Origins had been balanced? In the hands of woman lies the salvation of humanity and of our planet. Woman must realize her significance... she should be prepared to take responsibility for the destiny of humanity. Mother, the life-giver, has every right to direct the destiny of her children. The voice of woman, the mother, should be heard amongst the leaders of humanity. The mother suggests the first conscious thoughts to her child. She gives direction and quality to all his aspirations and abilities. But the mother who possesses no thought of culture can suggest only the lower expressions of human nature. But in her striving toward education, woman must remember that all educational systems are only the means for the development of a higher knowledge and culture. The true culture of thought is developed by the culture of spirit and heart. Only such a combination gives that great synthesis without which it is impossible to realize the real grandeur, diversity, and complexity of human life in its cosmic evolution. Therefore, while striving to knowledge, may woman remember the Source of Light and the Leaders of Spirit—those great Minds who, verily, created the consciousness of humanity. In approaching this Source, this leading Principle of Synthesis, humanity will find the way to real evolution."

"Economic reforms based on the idea of limitless growth in a limited world, can only be maintained by the powerful grabbing the resources of the vulnerable. The resource grab that is essential for “growth” creates a culture of rape—the rape of the earth, of local self-reliant economies, and of women."

"The common thread among ecofeminsts is that the patriarchal power in society oppresses both nature and women. This interconnection between the mistreatment of nature and the degradation of women is the core of ecofeminism. In this sense, "the rape of the earth, in all its forms," to quote Plant (1989), "becomes a metaphor for the rape of woman, in all its many guises" (p. 5). In Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, (1978), Griffin discusses the close connection between women and nature, revealing how the female speaker feels proud of having her roots in the earth: I know I am made from this earth, as my mother’s hands were made from this earth, as her dreams came from this earth and all that I know, I know in this earth, the body of the bird, this pen, this paper, these hands, this tongue speaking, all that I know speaks to me through this earth and I long to tell you, you who are earth too, and listen as we speak to each other of what we know: the light is in us (p.227). ...If we learn to communicate with each other and acknowledge the value of being interconnected with both the human and the other-than-human on this planet, we can then unmake the current world and start anew."

"The displacement of women from agriculture disempowers women and reduces food security. Food systems evolved by women based on biodiversity based production rather than chemical based production produce hundreds of times more food, with better nutrition, quality, and taste.... The Millennium Development Goals ignore these women friendly alternatives which would not just halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Women can remove hunger not just by 50% ‐ they would remove it by 100% both because their knowledge system and technologies produce more while using less, but also because in our value system it is unacceptable that in 2015, 500 million should continue to go hungry."

"When Maria Mies and I wrote Ecofeminism two decades ago, we were addressing the emerging challenges of our times. Every threat we identified has grown deeper. And with it has grown the relevance of an alternative to capitalist patriarchy if humanity and the diverse species with which we share the planet are to survive. Ecofeminism was first published one year after the Earth Summit, where two important treaties were signed by the governments of the world: the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. There was no World Trade Organization. However, two years after Ecofeminism, the WTO was established, privileging corporate rights, commerce and profits, and further undermining the rights of the Earth, the rights of women and the rights of future generations. We wrote about what globalization implied for nature and women. Every crisis we mentioned is deeper; every expression of violence more brutal."

"The Great Mother... specifically symbolizes planet Earth - fertility, nature, the flow of abundance in all aspects of life. Someone who has assimilated the Great Mother archetype trusts in the abundance of the universe. It's when you lack trust that you want a big bank account. The first guy who accumulated a lot of stuff as protection against future uncertainty automatically had to start defending his pile against everybody else's envy and needs. If a society is afraid of scarcity, it will actually create an environment in which it manifests well-grounded reasons to live in fear of scarcity. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy!... We have been living for a long time under the belief that we need to create scarcity to create value. Although that is valid in some material domains, we extrapolate it to other domains where it may not be valid. For example, there's nothing to prevent us from freely distributing information. The marginal cost of information today is practically nil. Nevertheless, we invent copyrights and patents in an attempt to keep it scarce. So fear of scarcity creates greed and hoarding, which in turn creates the scarcity that was feared. Whereas cultures that embody the Great Mother are based on abundance and generosity."

"If the dichotomy between life-producing and preserving and commodity-producing activities is abolished, if men acquire caring and nurturing qualities which have so far been considered women’s domain, and if, in an economy based on self-reliance, mutuality, self-provisioning, not women alone but men too are involved in subsistence production they will have neither time nor the inclination to pursue their destructive war games. A subsistence perspective will be the most significant contribution to the de-militarization of men and society. Only a society based on a subsistence perspective can afford to live in peace with nature, and uphold peace between nations, generations and men and women, because it does not base its concept of a good life on the exploitation and domination of nature and other people."

"In Ecofeminism Maria Mies, a German social scientist and activist in the feminist movement, and Vandana Shiva, an Indian theoretical physicist from the ecology movement, issue a serious and urgent call for a new vision, which they term the subsistence or survival perspectives. For Mies and Shiva the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (UNCED, June 1992) simply confirmed their conviction that "solutions to the present worldwide ecological, economic and social problems cannot be expected from the ruling elite of the North or the South... [Rather] a new vision -a new life for present and future generations, and for our fellow creatures on earth... can be found only in the survival struggle of grassroots movements."

"Women are more likely to experience poverty and have less socioeconomic power than men, which makes it more difficult for them to recover from weather disasters that are becoming more and more frequent. Ecofeminism is a movement that aims to address this problem. It recognizes that life in society as well as nature should be maintained by means of collaboration instead of domination — and that the domination of women and nature stem from the same roots."

"In a university classroom packed with a multigenerational crowd... Spanish Ministry of Finances researcher María Pazos Morán dug into what she identified as the “core” of climate problem: a male-driven economy that centers the needs of only half of the population. “Cars and planes,” “meat” and “caretaking” were the headings of a grid she and her colleagues drew on a whiteboard. “These are three major topics that are big contributors to contamination,” she said... Men are most employed by and most involved in the consumption of two of the most polluting: private means of transportation and meat consumption. Given that men continue to hold more leadership roles in government, they also disproportionately advocate for policies that enable the uninhibited continuation of each, such as ongoing corn and soy subsidies which keep beef prices artificially low and a lack of funding for public transit projects."

"Eco-Feminism, one of the more recent developments in feminist theory, advocates that the paternalistic/capitalistic society has led to a harmful split between nature and culture that can only be healed by the feminine instinct for nurture and holistic knowledge of nature’s process. The strikingly new concepts of Eco-Feminism are metaphorically narrated in some of the mobile network ads. Women are equipped with a heightened sense of sustainability and a caring attitude. In one ad, the gift given to the retired man is a sapling, given by a girl. In another ad, the idea of developing traditional and nature-friendly products to develop the village is proposed by the girl; and she leads the men of her village to this goal. All of these advertisements promote eco-friendly ideas such as the use of paper bags, planting of trees and sustainable development."

"The Great Mother archetype was very important in the Western world from the dawn of prehistory throughout the pre-Indo-European time periods, as it still is in many traditional cultures today. But this archetype has been violently repressed in the West for at least 5,000 years starting with the Indo-European invasions - reinforced by the anti-Goddess view of Judeo-Christianity, culminating with three centuries of witch hunts - all the way to the Victorian era. In Victorian times - at the apex of the repression of the Great Mother - a Scottish schoolmaster named Adam Smith noticed a lot of greed and scarcity around him and assumed that was how all "civilized" societies worked. Smith... created modern economics, which can be defined as a way of allocating scarce resources through the mechanism of individual, personal greed... If a society is afraid of scarcity, it will actually create an environment in which it manifests well-grounded reasons to live in fear of scarcity. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy!"

"In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground- a time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now."

"Basically, ecofeminism sees a relationship between the serious environmental damage done to the earth and the repression of women. But that one relationship can take many forms, depending on what kind of ecofeminist you are. One form of ecofeminism takes it very literally, saying that women are viewed in the same way as natural resources: as something to be taken, plundered, or used... Whatever your interpretation, ecofeminism is a unique feminist lens on the very real relationship between gender and environmental issues. Damage to the environment is definitely a feminist issue; it desperately needs the involvement of empowered, educated women to succeed in protecting communities and stopping further serious degradation."

"Finally, it must be pointed out that we are not the first to spell out a subsistence perspective as a vision for a better society. Wherever women and men have envisaged a society in which all — women and men, old and young, all races and cultures — could share the ‘good life’, where social justice, equality, human dignity, beauty and joy in life were not just utopian dreams never to be realized (except for a small elite or post poned to an after-life), there has been close to what we call a subsistence perspective."

"Kamla Bhasin, an Indian feminist who tried to spell out what ‘sustainable development’ could mean for all women in the world lists a number of principles of sustainability similar to the features of a subsistence perspective. It is clear to her, as it is to many women and men who are not blind to the reality that we live in a limited world, that sustainability is not compatible with the existing profit- and growth-oriented development paradigm. And this means that the standard of living of the North’s affluent societies cannot be generalized. This was already clear to Mahatma Gandhi 60 years ago,who, when asked by a British journalist whether he would like India to have the same standard of living as Britain, replied: ‘To have its standard of living a tiny country like Britain had to exploit half the globe. How many globes will India need to exploit to have the same standard of living?’ From an ecological and feminist perspective, moreover, even if there were more globes to be exploited, it is not even desirable that this development paradigm and standard of living was generalized, because it has failed to fulfil its promises of happiness, freedom, dignity and peace, even for those who have profited from it."

"The word ‘ecofeminism’ might be new, but the pulse behind it has always driven women’s efforts to save their livelihood and make their communities safe. From the Chipko forest dwellers of North India some 300 years ago to the mothers of coal mining Appalachia right now, the struggle to create life-affirming societies goes on. It intensifies today as corporate globalization expands and contracts, leaving no stone unturned, no body unused. The partnership of Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva symbolizes this commonground among women; it speaks of a grassroots energy that is found in a movement across all continents. Ecological feminists are both street-fighters and philosophers."

"With ecofeminism, the political focus turns outwards. Its first premise is that the ‘material’ resourcing of women and of nature are structurally interconnected in the capitalist patriarchal system. Ecofeminists may draw on other strands of feminism at times, but liberal and postmodern approaches are generally unhelpful for building global political alliances with workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, and other victims of the Western drive to accumulation. A critically important facet of ecofeminism is that it offers an alternative to the relativism that takes over as capitalist commodification homogenizes cultures. Mies and Shiva paint a sharp contrast between the social decay of passive consumerism and the social vitality of skillful, self-sufficient and autonomous livelihood economies: subsistence."

"Ecofeminist scholars who coined the term “ecofeminism” in the 1970s argued that the system of capitalist patriarchy is the underlying source of both the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women. As stated in the book Ecofeminism by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, the desire for dominance over females has led men to oppress women through rape, violence, and sexism, while the desire for profit has led men to oppress nature through the exploitation of its resources and the destruction of ecosystems."

"(What did ecofeminism mean to you in the 1970s and what does it mean for you, today in 2020?) CV: First of all, I never heard of the term ecofeminism in the ’70s, no one was using that term. [Laughter] I don’t know if anyone used the term to classify their art. I was thinking about it–I was doing it in the ’60s–I was working through what I was seeing and feeling while living in Chile, you know and being near the South Pacific Ocean. I was doing and making what people now call land art long before that language existed as a name or concept, and I’m not the only one either who was shaping the movement without using any terminology to define it."

"I think part of the big shift that we need is a better balance between masculine and feminine — finding a more deeply interconnected, nurturing side. But that requires time... A genuine appreciation of the other, a genuine appreciation of the plants, the animals, and the sun requires free time we cannot get through the speed that these new technologies are imposing on us. You might ask yourself: What happens to us — as individuals, as communities — under the time pressures that nearly all of us experience today?... The first step is to connect with like-minded people, and then collectively start questioning the dominant assumptions. Part of that is to listen to what really makes your heart sing. Where were you and what were you doing when you experienced moments of deep contentment and happiness? Listen to the answer and use it as a guide."

"Eco-feminism is a critical and wide-ranging set of ideas that call attention to the link between centuries of exploitation of women and the environment — a patriarchal system that exclusively serves the interests of those benefiting from the global capitalist economy."