September 13, 2010 • 17 mins
Ecofeminism is a movement that combines feminist and ecological concerns. In this episode, Molly and Cristen discuss the history, goals, movements, conflicting ideas and complications of ecofeminism.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how stuff Works dot Com. Hello, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen Christ and today we're
(00:20):
going to discuss eco feminism. And I have to say
when I first heard about eco feminism and we thought
about it as a podcast topic, I thought, oh, this
will be really kind of easy because its name implies
what it is. It's an interest in both ecology and
feminism made into one word. But it turns out it
is just as complicated as all other feminisms that we
(00:41):
have discussed on this podcast. Surprise. Yeah. The reason why
we are talking about eco feminism is because How Eco
Feminism Works is an article that's been sitting on our website,
how stuff Works dot Com for quite a while now.
Eco Feminism actually existed on the site long before How
Feminism Works, which I wrote. It's a very great article,
(01:04):
and uh, Molly and I were always a little bit
surprised by that, and we kind of you know, talked about,
you know, doing a podcast on and then other things
would pop up, and then finally we said to ourselves.
We said, let's do eco feminism, And you're right. It
does seem kind of simple and kind of no brainer
(01:26):
on the outset, but it is a little complicated when
you start digging. I think you can make any topic
complicated by just attacking feminism on the end of the word.
Some would say, yes, all right, so let's get in.
As I said, on its simplest level, is what it
sounds like. It is. An interest in ecology, is an
interest in feminism. But when you put them together you
(01:47):
can get um some conflicting ideas about what this topic
should stand for. Well, we should say first that the
term eco feminism was coined in nineteen seventy four from
a French feminist, Francois du Bone, who wrote a book
in French that I can't translate the name of. I thought,
you're gonna go for Christ and I was really excited
(02:08):
to hear here's some French pop out of you. But
you're right, and another significant author, nstra King when so
far As called eco feminism the third wave of the
feminist movement, which is a pretty radical statement to make
because we've talked a lot about, you know, first wave feminism,
second wave feminism of you know, the sixties and seventies
in particular, and then there's been a lot of debate
(02:30):
about whether or not a third wave exists, what it is,
and saying that eco feminism is the third wave is
pretty bold, i'd say, in your opinion. In my opinion, well, again,
this is one of those things where on the surface
it does seem like it makes sense because think of,
you know, the messages were bombarded with on a daily
basis about the environment. It's something we've got to say.
(02:50):
We've got to conserve oil, we've got to live our
lives in a more friendly way to the earth so
that our grandchildren, and are those kids grandchildren, they have
a place to grow up. Um, So what they are
saying is that feminists and women in general have a
special interest in saving the environment in this way because
and this is where things start to get a little tricky,
(03:12):
because you throw in the o word oppression. Oppression. Yeah,
this is actually the word that I generally like to
avoid when discussing feminism. And so this is why it's tricky,
because eco feminists would say that the oppression of the
women and the oppression and destruction of the earth and
nature are closely connected because you can blame both of
(03:33):
them on men. Men and patriarchy. Um. And this is again,
I mean, this is you know right here, you can
probably see where it starts. Get a little bit tricky
because this implies somehow that all the damage done to
the earth is by men, and that, you know, women
are oppressed. And like Christen said, it's not a word
we like to throw out because I wouldn't say that
(03:53):
I feel oppressed. I would say that things could change
so that there's more equality in the world. Right the
word of press in general seems to present sort of
a victim mentality that I'd say that, just speaking for myself,
that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with. But that's really
the crux of eco feminism as it came out in
(04:14):
the mid nineteen seventies. It has evolved somewhat since then,
but that's really the root of it. Now. Another facet
of eco feminism that some eco feminists will adopt and
some will throw away is the idea that because women
are the homemakers and the ones who are gathering food,
let's say, then they have some sort of special connection
(04:34):
to the earth and a special desire to make sure
that it continues to exist for their children. UM. Some
people find this to be a very demeaning point of
view because it says that, you know, only women have
this connection. Other women find it very empowering that, yes,
we are somehow closer to the Earth by virtue of
being you know, mother's mother mother Earth. The connection is
(04:57):
made by a few people. Yeah, and that's kind of
the interesting thing about eco feminism because it's it's a
pretty radical school of thought in terms of linking you know,
this this environmental oppression to so called female oppression. But
at the same time, it kind of saddles women with
this mother child bearing, you know UM function that a
(05:20):
lot of second way feminists were trying to kind of
get away from, you know, of becoming saying that women
are more than mothers, were, more than you know, baby machines.
We are people and individuals, right, And some eco feminists
do have sort of that more second way view where
they're saying, Okay, yes, maybe we have these typically stereotypically
female traits such as cooperation and sensitivity, and these seem
(05:43):
to be married with, you know, the so called male
traits of um aggressively pursuing an idea in a way
that will somehow, you know, solve our environmental problems. But
others will just say, no, you know, we're we're mothers,
we must mother the earth. And it's kind of uh mean,
not to pass judgment, but to put it simply, it's
sort of a hippie dippy idea that a lot of
(06:05):
feminist academics have trouble with. Another idea that these feminist
academics have trouble with is the idea of spirituality within
eco feminism, because one of the things that came out
of the eco feminist movement or was sort of happening
at the same time, was this emergence of earth goddesses
and rejecting a church that some viewed as patriarchal to
(06:29):
you know, worship with the altar of earth goddesses. And
so when you've got one eco feminist saying, you know,
our our earth mother and our earth goddesses compel us
to take care of the environment, and then you've got
someone who's trying to make a very academic argument to
let's say that the president, like I wouldn't go to
the president and say the Earth goddesses compel us to
(06:49):
do this. So that's sort of one of the big
divides between uh some eco femnists. So in critiquing this
spiritual aspect that sometimes attached to you eco feminism only now,
I came across an article by Joanie Seeger about the
coming age of feminist environmentalism, and it's very apparent that
Seeger prefers feminist environmentalism to eco feminism, specifically because she
(07:15):
says that eco feminism is a term is too much
of a dual signifier, essentially tries to do too much
at one time, trying to be an environmental movement of
feminist driven by feminist ideals, but also this you know,
spiritual movement as well, because regardless of whether you choose
to identify yourself as a female environment a feminist environmentalist
(07:37):
as see Or does, or as an eco feminist, you
have the same goals. So I think that Seer is
making a pretty interesting point of eco feminism has too
much baggage attached to it, and that's an argument we
hear about regular feminism. Sure, your word is just too loaded.
Let's get rid of it. Because what we're after, what
eco feminist or feminist environmentalists or after are addressing issues
like water pollution, deforestation, toxic waste dumping, agricultural development, sustainability,
(08:02):
animal rights, nuclear weapons policies, all these things that we
we have a steak and we have interest in. And
you know, Chris and I were talking about it. We
have steaks in these as human beings. Do we need
to have additional steaks in these causes as feminists? And
it makes sense that eco feminism took off when it
(08:22):
did in the mid nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties
because there were different environmental movements sprouting up across the world. Actually, um,
there's an eco feminist movement in Kenya around that time
called the green Belt movement that really just started as
a local community tree planting effort, and it was a
group of local women who were wanting to address the
(08:44):
lack of um local water and the effects of soil
erosion and all of the problems caused by deforestation. And
so they got together and started um planting trees on
a on a large scale effort to replace those um
the ones that have been removed. And then over in
the United States in nineteen we have the Love Canal
disaster in Upstate New York, in which a chemical landfill
(09:08):
site leaked into a neighborhood and there were all of
these chronic illnesses and um, there's certain health ripple effects
that came up as a result of it. And let's
talk about the chip Cope movement, which has often heraldled,
heralded as the you know, defining moment of eco feminism,
because what was happening. This is in the Himalayas of
(09:29):
northern India and the government is allowing more and more
companies to come into the forest there and tape trees,
like I think one of the big companies was a
sports equipment company was going to come in and make
tennis rackets out of the trees. But when they cut
the trees down, then there will be landslides, flooding, soil erosion.
And this affected the women. And this is you know,
(09:51):
one of the arguments is that because these environmental disasters
affect women in their roles as gathering water, cooking, et cetera,
that that's why women have a special interest in this.
But what they did is they managed to, you know,
get all the women to go together to the trees
that were remaining when they heard someone's going to come
(10:11):
in and cut them down. And they put their arms
around the tree to hug them, tree hugging so that
the people couldn't cut down the tree. And chip co
means to cling in Hindi. So that's uh, you know,
by by standing up, the standing, by standing between the
saw and the tree, these women managed to save the trees. Yeah,
(10:31):
and I had no idea that this concept of tree huggers,
if you will, really started in the Himalayas of northern
India by a group of women, by a group of women.
And they're saying that this is significant in terms of
eco feminism because they went to the entire villages and said,
you know, we need you all to come out and
hug the trees because people are going to cut them down.
It's gonna be bad for our little village. And it
(10:53):
was only the women who responded. It was only by
making that appeal to women that you know, there will
be a landslide in your home, will be flooded if
we don't do this, that women were able to see
the importance of the effort. And in these more rural areas, UH,
eco feminism and eco feminist movements like chip CO make
a lot of sense because women are really the primary
(11:14):
stakeholders in terms of going out and needing to gather
wood for fire, or get fresh water for cooking, or
you know, getting all of these things they need to
take care of their homes. And I feel like once
you translate that to Western culture, it becomes a little
bit more diluted, in a little bit more um condescending
(11:37):
a little bit. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's the
problem that you mentioned earlier, Christen, is that if we're
all walking around as these big earth mamas, that that
is sort of what second way feminists were trying to
get us away from, because it could be a person's
entire job just to be a mother and then or
to be an environmentalist, and it doesn't limit them to
put this label on them. So it's it can get tricky.
(12:00):
And you know, also where we're doing the most polluting
ore in the western countries. So these um, these more
village oriented communities, they say, are not doing the extent
of damage that we're doing in terms in you know,
in our part of the world. Well, it's interesting to
just thinking about it now and in terms of the
(12:21):
this idea that women are not doing as much environmental
damage as men, like the patriarch, etcetera, is the it's
the cause of all this environmental destruction. Whereas in you know,
in the United States, women are generally in control of
what something like eight of household consumer purchases. So while yes,
we we have the power to lead a movement, but
(12:42):
the same time, over the years, we have been in
charge of household budgets and have certainly been contributing our
fair share to environmental destruction as well. So I think
that before we start, you know, going going all gaia
on everybody, you know, not to be not to be
condescending about it, but I think it's you know, that
(13:03):
we have to examine our own actions first. I think
that's very true, and that's probably one of the reasons
why that word oppression just rubbed us the wrong way,
because it does seem that when you're reading a lot
of eco feminist tracks, that there is this tendency to
want to blame the patriarchy for all of the world's
problems and it removes any any sort of responsibility from
(13:24):
our shoulders. But if you know, as long as you
just say that you're oppressed and you're a victim, then
then you aren't, you know, it removes the notion that
you could have contributed anything to it exactly. So to me,
the question, Kristen and I don't know the answer. This
is what we'll need the input from our listeners to
to think on. Is if we are you know, refusing
(13:45):
this victim role but we still have a care we
still have a lot of concerns about the environment. Is
it more helpful to view environmental problems through a feminist
lens or are the two just unrelated it entirely and uh,
you know, just complicating the issue. So, in other words,
(14:05):
do you think eco feminism is necessary? Like humally, I
don't know the answer either. So let's turn it over
to our very wise listeners and see what they think, because,
like you said, I mean, it's you know, we don't
want to um come down on this term, and we
certainly don't want to come down on environmentalism or on feminism.
I like both questions. Yeah, but do you need to
(14:28):
you know, smash them both together? Are they are the
two joined too much? Exactly? And that's what we want
your thoughts on, mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And in the meantime, let's read some people who have
already written into that very same email address. I have
one from Lydia about the peak Host podcast, and I
(14:50):
will say that one of our sources said you could
say it peak host. Other people are very adamant that
it's PCOS. I say, you call it whatever you want to.
I think people will get will get the picture. And uh.
Lydia shares a few points here about what you should
do if you get a diagnosis or suspect you have it.
(15:10):
She writes, if you suspect you have PECOS, the first
step of you goat would be to go to a
gynecologist and tell her of your suspicions. If you feel
you aren't getting adequate care or she just misses, you
see a reproductive endocrinologist, even if you aren't trying to
get pregnant. Arise are fertility specialists and generally very knowledgeable
about PEKOS. I perplexed my O B G y N,
but was diagnosed in fifteen minutes by my ARI. And
(15:32):
then she says, and I think this is pretty important.
With lifestyle changes and good medical care, pekos is manageable.
Don't lose hope. Alright. I've got one here for about
our podcast on long distance relationships, and this is from Brianna,
And for a little background, Brianna has been in two
l drs in her life and she her first one
(15:52):
was with a guy in England that she met on
the line and they ended up getting engaged, then she
broke things off. But this is what she has to say.
For me, there is nothing more revealing than text. You're
forced to truly think about what you were saying, and
honesty seems to prevail. Also, misunderstandings are typically addressed straight away.
All in all, we were together for two years and
(16:13):
all other relationships until my current one paled in comparison.
After having quote unquote normal relationships. Following that one, I
concluded that you can feel more distant from a person
sitting next to you than a person ocean away. It's
an investment, and when you choose to enter an LDR,
both parties realized that it's a serious undertaking of great
import the constant nurture required to sustain it can actually
(16:33):
be a very rewarding experience rather than an exhaustive one. So,
after years of normal relationships, and met another fellow online,
this time for me, even then farther away, I knew
what I would be in for I knew the difficulty
it would entail, but I also need the lavish rewards
that were to be reaped. Although it's painful to be
a part and makes one realize the amazing value of
the smallest details of being with someone that others take
(16:54):
for granted. Hearing the person you love so dearly's heartbeat
for the very first time is an experience us of share,
bliss and gratitude. So thank you, Brianna, and again, if
you guys want to send us an email, It's mom
stuff and how stuff works dot Com. Hit us up
on Facebook as well and share your thoughts with other listeners.
Follow us on Twitter if you like, and Leslie, you
(17:17):
can head over to our blog during the week It's
stuff I Ever told you, and you can find it
along with how eco feminism works at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because at how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
(17:38):
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how stuff Works dot Com. Hello, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen Christ and today we're
(00:20):
going to discuss eco feminism. And I have to say
when I first heard about eco feminism and we thought
about it as a podcast topic, I thought, oh, this
will be really kind of easy because its name implies
what it is. It's an interest in both ecology and
feminism made into one word. But it turns out it
is just as complicated as all other feminisms that we
(00:41):
have discussed on this podcast. Surprise. Yeah. The reason why
we are talking about eco feminism is because How Eco
Feminism Works is an article that's been sitting on our website,
how stuff Works dot Com for quite a while now.
Eco Feminism actually existed on the site long before How
Feminism Works, which I wrote. It's a very great article,
(01:04):
and uh, Molly and I were always a little bit
surprised by that, and we kind of you know, talked about,
you know, doing a podcast on and then other things
would pop up, and then finally we said to ourselves.
We said, let's do eco feminism, And you're right. It
does seem kind of simple and kind of no brainer
(01:26):
on the outset, but it is a little complicated when
you start digging. I think you can make any topic
complicated by just attacking feminism on the end of the word.
Some would say, yes, all right, so let's get in.
As I said, on its simplest level, is what it
sounds like. It is. An interest in ecology, is an
interest in feminism. But when you put them together you
(01:47):
can get um some conflicting ideas about what this topic
should stand for. Well, we should say first that the
term eco feminism was coined in nineteen seventy four from
a French feminist, Francois du Bone, who wrote a book
in French that I can't translate the name of. I thought,
you're gonna go for Christ and I was really excited
(02:08):
to hear here's some French pop out of you. But
you're right, and another significant author, nstra King when so
far As called eco feminism the third wave of the
feminist movement, which is a pretty radical statement to make
because we've talked a lot about, you know, first wave feminism,
second wave feminism of you know, the sixties and seventies
in particular, and then there's been a lot of debate
(02:30):
about whether or not a third wave exists, what it is,
and saying that eco feminism is the third wave is
pretty bold, i'd say, in your opinion. In my opinion, well, again,
this is one of those things where on the surface
it does seem like it makes sense because think of,
you know, the messages were bombarded with on a daily
basis about the environment. It's something we've got to say.
(02:50):
We've got to conserve oil, we've got to live our
lives in a more friendly way to the earth so
that our grandchildren, and are those kids grandchildren, they have
a place to grow up. Um, So what they are
saying is that feminists and women in general have a
special interest in saving the environment in this way because
and this is where things start to get a little tricky,
(03:12):
because you throw in the o word oppression. Oppression. Yeah,
this is actually the word that I generally like to
avoid when discussing feminism. And so this is why it's tricky,
because eco feminists would say that the oppression of the
women and the oppression and destruction of the earth and
nature are closely connected because you can blame both of
(03:33):
them on men. Men and patriarchy. Um. And this is again,
I mean, this is you know right here, you can
probably see where it starts. Get a little bit tricky
because this implies somehow that all the damage done to
the earth is by men, and that, you know, women
are oppressed. And like Christen said, it's not a word
we like to throw out because I wouldn't say that
(03:53):
I feel oppressed. I would say that things could change
so that there's more equality in the world. Right the
word of press in general seems to present sort of
a victim mentality that I'd say that, just speaking for myself,
that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with. But that's really
the crux of eco feminism as it came out in
(04:14):
the mid nineteen seventies. It has evolved somewhat since then,
but that's really the root of it. Now. Another facet
of eco feminism that some eco feminists will adopt and
some will throw away is the idea that because women
are the homemakers and the ones who are gathering food,
let's say, then they have some sort of special connection
(04:34):
to the earth and a special desire to make sure
that it continues to exist for their children. UM. Some
people find this to be a very demeaning point of
view because it says that, you know, only women have
this connection. Other women find it very empowering that, yes,
we are somehow closer to the Earth by virtue of
being you know, mother's mother mother Earth. The connection is
(04:57):
made by a few people. Yeah, and that's kind of
the interesting thing about eco feminism because it's it's a
pretty radical school of thought in terms of linking you know,
this this environmental oppression to so called female oppression. But
at the same time, it kind of saddles women with
this mother child bearing, you know UM function that a
(05:20):
lot of second way feminists were trying to kind of
get away from, you know, of becoming saying that women
are more than mothers, were, more than you know, baby machines.
We are people and individuals, right, And some eco feminists
do have sort of that more second way view where
they're saying, Okay, yes, maybe we have these typically stereotypically
female traits such as cooperation and sensitivity, and these seem
(05:43):
to be married with, you know, the so called male
traits of um aggressively pursuing an idea in a way
that will somehow, you know, solve our environmental problems. But
others will just say, no, you know, we're we're mothers,
we must mother the earth. And it's kind of uh mean,
not to pass judgment, but to put it simply, it's
sort of a hippie dippy idea that a lot of
(06:05):
feminist academics have trouble with. Another idea that these feminist
academics have trouble with is the idea of spirituality within
eco feminism, because one of the things that came out
of the eco feminist movement or was sort of happening
at the same time, was this emergence of earth goddesses
and rejecting a church that some viewed as patriarchal to
(06:29):
you know, worship with the altar of earth goddesses. And
so when you've got one eco feminist saying, you know,
our our earth mother and our earth goddesses compel us
to take care of the environment, and then you've got
someone who's trying to make a very academic argument to
let's say that the president, like I wouldn't go to
the president and say the Earth goddesses compel us to
(06:49):
do this. So that's sort of one of the big
divides between uh some eco femnists. So in critiquing this
spiritual aspect that sometimes attached to you eco feminism only now,
I came across an article by Joanie Seeger about the
coming age of feminist environmentalism, and it's very apparent that
Seeger prefers feminist environmentalism to eco feminism, specifically because she
(07:15):
says that eco feminism is a term is too much
of a dual signifier, essentially tries to do too much
at one time, trying to be an environmental movement of
feminist driven by feminist ideals, but also this you know,
spiritual movement as well, because regardless of whether you choose
to identify yourself as a female environment a feminist environmentalist
(07:37):
as see Or does, or as an eco feminist, you
have the same goals. So I think that Seer is
making a pretty interesting point of eco feminism has too
much baggage attached to it, and that's an argument we
hear about regular feminism. Sure, your word is just too loaded.
Let's get rid of it. Because what we're after, what
eco feminist or feminist environmentalists or after are addressing issues
like water pollution, deforestation, toxic waste dumping, agricultural development, sustainability,
(08:02):
animal rights, nuclear weapons policies, all these things that we
we have a steak and we have interest in. And
you know, Chris and I were talking about it. We
have steaks in these as human beings. Do we need
to have additional steaks in these causes as feminists? And
it makes sense that eco feminism took off when it
(08:22):
did in the mid nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties
because there were different environmental movements sprouting up across the world. Actually, um,
there's an eco feminist movement in Kenya around that time
called the green Belt movement that really just started as
a local community tree planting effort, and it was a
group of local women who were wanting to address the
(08:44):
lack of um local water and the effects of soil
erosion and all of the problems caused by deforestation. And
so they got together and started um planting trees on
a on a large scale effort to replace those um
the ones that have been removed. And then over in
the United States in nineteen we have the Love Canal
disaster in Upstate New York, in which a chemical landfill
(09:08):
site leaked into a neighborhood and there were all of
these chronic illnesses and um, there's certain health ripple effects
that came up as a result of it. And let's
talk about the chip Cope movement, which has often heraldled,
heralded as the you know, defining moment of eco feminism,
because what was happening. This is in the Himalayas of
(09:29):
northern India and the government is allowing more and more
companies to come into the forest there and tape trees,
like I think one of the big companies was a
sports equipment company was going to come in and make
tennis rackets out of the trees. But when they cut
the trees down, then there will be landslides, flooding, soil erosion.
And this affected the women. And this is you know,
(09:51):
one of the arguments is that because these environmental disasters
affect women in their roles as gathering water, cooking, et cetera,
that that's why women have a special interest in this.
But what they did is they managed to, you know,
get all the women to go together to the trees
that were remaining when they heard someone's going to come
(10:11):
in and cut them down. And they put their arms
around the tree to hug them, tree hugging so that
the people couldn't cut down the tree. And chip co
means to cling in Hindi. So that's uh, you know,
by by standing up, the standing, by standing between the
saw and the tree, these women managed to save the trees. Yeah,
(10:31):
and I had no idea that this concept of tree huggers,
if you will, really started in the Himalayas of northern
India by a group of women, by a group of women.
And they're saying that this is significant in terms of
eco feminism because they went to the entire villages and said,
you know, we need you all to come out and
hug the trees because people are going to cut them down.
It's gonna be bad for our little village. And it
(10:53):
was only the women who responded. It was only by
making that appeal to women that you know, there will
be a landslide in your home, will be flooded if
we don't do this, that women were able to see
the importance of the effort. And in these more rural areas, UH,
eco feminism and eco feminist movements like chip CO make
a lot of sense because women are really the primary
(11:14):
stakeholders in terms of going out and needing to gather
wood for fire, or get fresh water for cooking, or
you know, getting all of these things they need to
take care of their homes. And I feel like once
you translate that to Western culture, it becomes a little
bit more diluted, in a little bit more um condescending
(11:37):
a little bit. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's the
problem that you mentioned earlier, Christen, is that if we're
all walking around as these big earth mamas, that that
is sort of what second way feminists were trying to
get us away from, because it could be a person's
entire job just to be a mother and then or
to be an environmentalist, and it doesn't limit them to
put this label on them. So it's it can get tricky.
(12:00):
And you know, also where we're doing the most polluting
ore in the western countries. So these um, these more
village oriented communities, they say, are not doing the extent
of damage that we're doing in terms in you know,
in our part of the world. Well, it's interesting to
just thinking about it now and in terms of the
(12:21):
this idea that women are not doing as much environmental
damage as men, like the patriarch, etcetera, is the it's
the cause of all this environmental destruction. Whereas in you know,
in the United States, women are generally in control of
what something like eight of household consumer purchases. So while yes,
we we have the power to lead a movement, but
(12:42):
the same time, over the years, we have been in
charge of household budgets and have certainly been contributing our
fair share to environmental destruction as well. So I think
that before we start, you know, going going all gaia
on everybody, you know, not to be not to be
condescending about it, but I think it's you know, that
(13:03):
we have to examine our own actions first. I think
that's very true, and that's probably one of the reasons
why that word oppression just rubbed us the wrong way,
because it does seem that when you're reading a lot
of eco feminist tracks, that there is this tendency to
want to blame the patriarchy for all of the world's
problems and it removes any any sort of responsibility from
(13:24):
our shoulders. But if you know, as long as you
just say that you're oppressed and you're a victim, then
then you aren't, you know, it removes the notion that
you could have contributed anything to it exactly. So to me,
the question, Kristen and I don't know the answer. This
is what we'll need the input from our listeners to
to think on. Is if we are you know, refusing
(13:45):
this victim role but we still have a care we
still have a lot of concerns about the environment. Is
it more helpful to view environmental problems through a feminist
lens or are the two just unrelated it entirely and uh,
you know, just complicating the issue. So, in other words,
(14:05):
do you think eco feminism is necessary? Like humally, I
don't know the answer either. So let's turn it over
to our very wise listeners and see what they think, because,
like you said, I mean, it's you know, we don't
want to um come down on this term, and we
certainly don't want to come down on environmentalism or on feminism.
I like both questions. Yeah, but do you need to
(14:28):
you know, smash them both together? Are they are the
two joined too much? Exactly? And that's what we want
your thoughts on, mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And in the meantime, let's read some people who have
already written into that very same email address. I have
one from Lydia about the peak Host podcast, and I
(14:50):
will say that one of our sources said you could
say it peak host. Other people are very adamant that
it's PCOS. I say, you call it whatever you want to.
I think people will get will get the picture. And uh.
Lydia shares a few points here about what you should
do if you get a diagnosis or suspect you have it.
(15:10):
She writes, if you suspect you have PECOS, the first
step of you goat would be to go to a
gynecologist and tell her of your suspicions. If you feel
you aren't getting adequate care or she just misses, you
see a reproductive endocrinologist, even if you aren't trying to
get pregnant. Arise are fertility specialists and generally very knowledgeable
about PEKOS. I perplexed my O B G y N,
but was diagnosed in fifteen minutes by my ARI. And
(15:32):
then she says, and I think this is pretty important.
With lifestyle changes and good medical care, pekos is manageable.
Don't lose hope. Alright. I've got one here for about
our podcast on long distance relationships, and this is from Brianna,
And for a little background, Brianna has been in two
l drs in her life and she her first one
(15:52):
was with a guy in England that she met on
the line and they ended up getting engaged, then she
broke things off. But this is what she has to say.
For me, there is nothing more revealing than text. You're
forced to truly think about what you were saying, and
honesty seems to prevail. Also, misunderstandings are typically addressed straight away.
All in all, we were together for two years and
(16:13):
all other relationships until my current one paled in comparison.
After having quote unquote normal relationships. Following that one, I
concluded that you can feel more distant from a person
sitting next to you than a person ocean away. It's
an investment, and when you choose to enter an LDR,
both parties realized that it's a serious undertaking of great
import the constant nurture required to sustain it can actually
(16:33):
be a very rewarding experience rather than an exhaustive one. So,
after years of normal relationships, and met another fellow online,
this time for me, even then farther away, I knew
what I would be in for I knew the difficulty
it would entail, but I also need the lavish rewards
that were to be reaped. Although it's painful to be
a part and makes one realize the amazing value of
the smallest details of being with someone that others take
(16:54):
for granted. Hearing the person you love so dearly's heartbeat
for the very first time is an experience us of share,
bliss and gratitude. So thank you, Brianna, and again, if
you guys want to send us an email, It's mom
stuff and how stuff works dot Com. Hit us up
on Facebook as well and share your thoughts with other listeners.
Follow us on Twitter if you like, and Leslie, you
(17:17):
can head over to our blog during the week It's
stuff I Ever told you, and you can find it
along with how eco feminism works at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because at how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
(17:38):
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
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