: And Mother Earth quaked with pain
: Heaving and twisting again and again
: As though to shake off the mites
: That were annoying her, destroying her
: The mites called men.
: For she was angryYike! This warrants a reply...
Mother Earth is a Bitch!
-- or --
The Politics of a Gendered Planet
As a concept which has transcended many ages and cultures, the earth is female. Well, obviously not down to the nitty-gritty genital-based differences, but in essence and in spirituality, she's definitely a 'she'. She's big, she's round, she's beautiful, she ultimately gives birth to us all. She's a chick true and true.
And this is true in many different languages, religions, and cultures, too. Throughout time, to the best of my knowledge, the Earth has been mostly female, sometimes gender-nuetral and almost never male. It's a concept that seems to rise in and out of history books according to the times.
Of late however, the relatively recent waves of feminism seem to have created a new life for the 'female' earth concept. Through eco-feminism and goddess-based spirituality in particular, we're seeing a strong belief that the Earth should be thought of as a 'she'. (To that end, but to a lesser extent, we're also dealing with a female moon and a male sun, for the record, in addition to a couple of other gendered planets within out system). And speaking of astronomy, the renewed interest in astrology has also done much to reinforce the notion that we're on a female planet.
OK, so what's the point? It's just a concept, surely? Just a name like any other?
Well, no. Not really. See, if it had no bearing on things then it wouldn't be such a prominent issue -- the very fact that subscribers to the Earth-as-a-female dogma are so sure of their truth, tends to indicate that she's a she for a reason. These reasons vary according to who you talk to and I've no intention of representing the many different viewpoints here, beyond saying that they're big issues for those concerned and are not up for negotiation. However, I would like to work with the implications of a female Earth. See, I believe that giving gender to our planet has some inherantly undermining aspects to it. I believe that it's bad for feminism, bad for equality and (equally) bad for men.
Feminism has taught us a variety of lessons and stimulated much thought on many issues. One of these is the theory that we should not be judged by our gender but instead should be free to roam unhindered by other's inappropriate assumptions. It has furthered this thought into the challenging of stereotypes and 'norms' based on gender. It has, in my eyes, established that a person should be a person first and a representative of their gender later. That is, an individual should be given the right to behave in any way they please, regardless of gender. Key examples in this debate have been the encouraging of men to come out of emotional denial, of women to get practical skills, and so forth. The list is virtually endless.
So what are we saying when we call the earth 'female'? Well, without a doubt, we're associating the qualities of the Earth with the qualities of what we perceive female to be. Why else would it be gender upon which we think of the earth? It's not like it's a Chinese-like planet or elderly or anything like that.
Which is kind of alarming -- think about the Earth for a moment, and think about the qualities you come up with. The Earth is ultimately one huge nurturer. It gives life (birth) to everything upon it. Further, it's generally quite, calm, beautiful, mysterious, magical, centered and all those other things that feminism has been trying so hard to allow women freedom from. In holding the earth to be female we are holding ourselves to an outdated and sexist personal politic.
This problem extends to other things, also. Consider, if you will, the many other things we attach gender to; ships (calm, beautiful, smooth), trees (providers, quite acheivers, beautiful) and other things of personal importance or beauty ("She's a beauty, that house, built her myself"). It could -- perhaps -- even be argued that something is gender-nuetral until it is seen as special or beautiful in some way, at which point in time it becomes female. In doing so, not only are we holding feminism's freedom-campaign back, we're also damaging our male-folk by not allowing them to be possessive of the qualities we speak. And surely a culture of men who are not seen as being able to be nurturing, giving, forgiving, mysterious, gentle and beautiful is not a healthy one?
This last point is somewhat exonerated by a couple of factions who have been a little more extreme in their persual of a 'female' planet -- namely, eco-feminism and the goddess movement. In short (perhaps unfairly so), both of these movements have a attached a strong female bias to the environment. They've taken it on as a female-only issue (despite the shallow fob-offs to the contrary -- I'm sorry, but it cannot be argued that a movement which is almost entirely female-centric is all-inclusive. It's not in theory and it's definitely not in practice. It's alienating at best and at worst it's clandestine and Victorian). And with these extremes comes the notion that men shouldn't (or can't) possess a deep, emotional and spiritual connection to the Earth.
The irony here is of course that keeping men out of the earth-spirituality movement does nothing for the eco-principals of these two groups. Unless the whole of the population (both men and women) are committed to environmentalism it's just never going to happen on a broad-scale. Particularly given that, as it stands at the moment, those making the anti-earth decisions are disproportionately represented by males. Surely we should be trying to get the decision-makers onside, not rejecting them from the picture.
Then there's another aspect to the whole earth-as-a-female concept which is rather alarming. When the earth is put in the context of modern society, a less than perfect relationship results. If we take into consideration the way the earth is currently being treated, a much deeper implication of the gendered approach is uncovered, one which undermines any hope of empowerment for women.
Firstly, let's consider what happens to our planet. Without wishing to invoke the doomsday gods, suffice to say things are pretty grim on terra firma. Economic (ir)rationalism aside, things are basically fucked down here. We're screwing up the planet at an alarming rate -- its air, its waters, its soil, its species and its future. We've used it, abused it, taken what we've wanted and left. Heck -- it's even been described as 'rape'. The Earth is, as it stands, the ultimate victim of the whole capitalist system.
And so what does that say about having a female earth? It's well and truly keeping women in their roles as victims, and as long as we keep clinging to the oversimplified, unfair, innaccurate and progressively more outdated notion that men are the doers of all evil, we're holding this society to a destructive subconcious belief that it's about men Vs women. And that's something we've just got to get over.
So it's time we did some shifting in our thinking. Fortunately most progressively forwards-moving folks no longer assume people, animals or whatever to be male ("The guy in the car in front just cut me off.") and it's time we stopped assuming the earth, the moon and whatever else, is female. It's not healthy for our society, it's not healthy for feminism and it's not healthy for us.
Cheers, Rog.
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