What is "Ecofeminism" and What is "Ecofeminism and Mothering"?

Ecofeminism and Mothering  

by Heidi Hutner

Ecofeminism and mothering are deeply intercon- 

nected in Western ideological constructions of both 

nature and gender. Ecofeminism as a set of princi- 

ples emerged in the 1970s with the increased aware- 

ness of the connections between women and nature. 

Françoise d’Eaubonne established the Ecology-Fem- 

inisme Center in Paris in 1972, and in 1974 she first 

used the term ecofeminisme. D’Eaubonne addressed 

the need for an ecological revolution lead by women, 

which she claimed would establish equality of gen- 

der relations and bring an end to the power of one 

group over another—including the domination of 

humans over nature. D’Eaubonne linked environ- 

mental degradation with patriarchal culture, and 

believed that a social structure based on feminisme 

would prevent the destruction of human beings and 

the planet. D’Eaubonne’s feminisme was based upon 

the principles of complete equality and the absence 

of all oppression; in effect, no one gender group or 

species would have power over the other. 

Woman and Mother Exploited 

Ecofeminism, as it has developed further through 

the work of such theorists as Carolyn Merchant, 

Karen J. Warren, Charlene Spretnak, Ynestra King, 

Judith Plant, and Val Plumwood, among others, 

locates the domination of women and the domina- 

tion of nature as interrelated and overlapping. As 

posited in Merchant’s The Death of Nature, women 

and nature both suffer under patriarchal domina- 

tion, as they historically have been treated as objects 

to be exploited, consumed, controlled, subdued and 

tamed. The Earth is depicted (both currently and 

historically) in feminized terms, and this descriptive 

language is complex and fraught with ambivalence: 

nature is portrayed as fertile, nurturing, and pro- 

tective (stereotypically maternal); sexualized and 

seductive (as observed and possessed by men); and 

wild, dark, and dangerous (needing to be tamed 

and civilized). According to ecofeminist theory, this 

complex representation of female nature as simul- 

taneously alluring, nurturing, and dangerous justi- 

fied the patriarchal domination and exploitation 

of nature throughout history—particularly with 

the advent of new science, colonization, and the 

industrial revolution in European cultures. Within 

this mechanistic and masculinist discourse, nature- 

woman is constructed as needing and deserving of 

being possessed, penetrated, and domesticated by the 

more rational and civilized white male. 

According to ecofeminist theorists, this system of 

patriarchal domination negatively impacts all liv- 

ing beings—including nature, women, indigenous 

people, and the poor. In this sense, ecofeminism 

overlaps with environmental justice theory, which 

argues that the racial, social, and economic under- 

classes are most negatively impacted by environ- 

mental degradation because they lack 

the economic and political power to protect their 

communities. Ecofeminist and environmental jus- 

tice theorists argue that the exploitation of nature, 

women, and people of color takes place because the 

rights of the individual (man) come before those 

of the community (all living things). A solution 

offered by ecofeminists is the ”partnership ethic” 

advocated by Merchant in Reinventing Eden. In 

this work and elsewhere, Merchant promotes a 

“moral ethic of care,” similar to the belief system 

of many Native American tribes, in which human 

beings live in a balanced and equitable relationship 

with all living things. In what Merchant calls a partnership
community, no group or species holds power over
the other, and interdependence replaces individualism. 

Expanding Field of Study

Ecofeminism is an expansive field of study with 

numerous branches: liberal, social, socialist, and 

cultural. It also has multiple applications, including 

scientific, philosophical, historical, literary/artistic, 

psychological, and spiritual. A significant aspect of 

ecofeminism is political activism; ecofeminist writers, 

academics, and scientists work to protect and pre- 

serve environmental rights. The so-called “mother” 

of American environmentalist movement was Rachel 

Carson, author of the acclaimed Silent Spring, which 

exposed the dangers of dichlorodiphenyltrichloro- 

ethane (DDT); Carson’s research demonstrated the 

deeply negative impact of toxics and chemicals on 

the environment, animals, and humans. 

In Africa, Wangari Maathi founded The Green 

Belt Movement to help restore denuded land in 

her country, enlisting poor African women to help 

plant millions of trees to stop the soil erosion and 

improve soil quality, food production, water quality, 

and economic prosperity. In India, Vandana Shiva 

founded Navdanya, an organization that works to 

preserve the biodiversity of seed and food, as well 

as what she calls the “democracy” and “sovereig- 

nity” of water. Winona LaDuke, a Native Ameri- 

can author and environmental activist and founder 

of the Indigenous Women’s Network, White Earth 

Land Recovery Project, and cofounder (with The 

Indigo Girls) of Honor the Earth, fights to protect 

the environmental rights and land of Native Ameri- 

can communities throughout North America. Petra 

Kelly cofounded the Green Party Movement in Ger- 

many and fought against the use and creation of 

weapons of mass destruction. In her work and writ- 

ing she claimed connections between sexism, war, 

and environmental degradation. 

Nature and Earth as Mother 

In her forthcoming, Polluting Mama: Ecofeminism, 

Literature, and Film, Heidi Hutner argues that the 

relationship between mothering and nature is cru- 

cial to ecofeminist theory and ecofeminist activism 

on linguistic, spiritual, political, and ideological lev- 

els. Hutner claims that the very way in which nature 

is constructed in language is inextricably bound 

with culturally constructed concepts of mother- 

hood, such as the expressions “mother nature” and 

“mother Earth.” These terms are embedded so deeply 

in Western culture that it would be impossible to 

detach them. Hutner suggests that there are deeply 

complex ideological, feminist, and ecological rami- 

fications inherent in this linguistic construction of 

mother-as-nature-as-Earth. 

Spiritual Branches 

Some spiritual branches of ecofeminism are tied 

to mothering through the belief in Earth-goddess 

worship. Starhawk, for example, holds that a 

human return to the goddess “Mother 

Earth, who sustains all growing things” will 

heal the deep ideological rifts between men and 

women, humans and nature, God and the human 

world. For spiritual ecofeminists, the Earth mother
goddess is the center of all spiritual life. 

Alice Walker, a self-proclaimed paganist (and 

womanist) follows a similar spiritual path in her 

work and discussions about The Color Purple. In 

her poem, “The Earth Is Our Mother,” Walker 

articulates a distinctly ecofeminist spiritual con- 

nection to the mother Earth—linking the nature 

body of the Earth with a human mother’s body— 

and this mother Earth connects all living things in 

her loving “embrace.” 

Female Reproductive Biology and Ecofeminism 

There is a historical relationship between mother- 

ing and environmental and peace activism; accord- 

ing to Hutner, many women have felt the “call” to 

fight against environmental degradation to protect 

their families from environmental toxins, pollution, 

nuclear waste, and disaster.

The impact of toxics and pollution on female 

reproductive biology plays an important part in the 

connections between mothering and ecofeminism, 

according to Hutner. In Having Faith, Sandra Stein- 

graber examines the delicate relationship between 

the mother’s body with the developing fetus and 

young nursing child, and points to the effect of 

environmental pollution on the placenta and breast 

milk. Embryos, fetuses, infants, and children are 

especially sensitive to environmental damage in 

their early stages of neurological and hormonal 

development. As mother’s bodies transfer poisons 

and unwittingly and adversely impact their young, 

they may be rendered infertile as a result of envi- 

ronmental pollution. 

Ecofeminist theory allows for an analysis of the 

highly charged and complex concepts of the moth- 

er’s womb—which can be made toxic through 

pollutants—as a sacred and protected space. Hut- 

ner argues that in an environmentally degraded 

world, mothers are "set up" as being at fault
for polluting their own children (or for being infertile),
and they are viewed as beingresponsible for
cleaning up the world. 

A novel such as Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s 

Tale warns of the potential impact of such reason- 

ing. In the fictional nation of Gilead, a land so pol- 

luted that human reproduction has diminished sig- 

nificantly, women are forced to procreate for the 

“good of the nation,” are blamed for their inabil- 

ity to conceive, and are punished when they give 

birth to “monsters.” 

Critics of Ecofeminism

Some critics argue that ecofeminism goes too far 

in embracing the woman and nature connection--  

which idealizes the female-as-natural and reifies the 

position that women are not capable of function- 

ing as rational thinkers. Ecofeminism has also been 

charged with setting men up as inherently outside 

of any real connection with the natural world. In 

other words, by idealizing the female-nature con- 

nection, some ecofeminists may be accused of rec- 

reating the very dualities it seeks to erase. Despite 

these claims, ecofeminists claim to move out of 

these binaries and include men, women, children, 

the elderly, and people of all races, cultures and 

classes in their theories. 

Bibliography 

Atwood, Margaret. Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Ran- 

dom House, 1998. 

Carson Rachel. Silent Spring. New York: Fawcett Crest 

Books, 1964. 

Hutner, Heidi. Polluting Mama: Ecofeminism, Mother- 

ing, Literature and Film. Forthcoming, 2011. 

Kelly, Petra. Fighting for Hope. Cambridge, MA: South 

End Press, 1999. 

King, Ynestra. “The Ecology of Feminism and the Femi- 

nism of Ecology.” In Healing the Wounds. Gabriola 

Island, BC: New Society, 1989. 

LaDuke, Winona. All Our Relations: Native Struggles 

for Land and Life. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 

1999. 

Maathi, Wangari. The Greenbelt Movement. Brooklyn, 

NY: Lantern Books, 2003. 

Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. 

New York: Routledge, 1994. 

Shiva, Vandana. Earth Democracy. Cambridge, MA: 

South End Press, 2005. 

Starhawk. The Earth Path. New York: Harper One, 

2005. 

Steingraber, Sandra. Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Jour- 

ney to Motherhood. New York: Perseus, 2001. 

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harvest, 

2003. 

Heidi Hutner 

State University of New York, Stony Brook 

Copyright © 2010 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution.

A Personal Response to the President's Cancer Panel Report

JULY 22, 2010

[Posted originally at Enviroblog: "Special to Enviroblog by Heidi Hutner, Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies at SUNY Stony Brook.]


The 2009 President's Cancer Panel report, "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk, What We Can Do Now," confirms what Rachel Carson articulated in Silent Spring and what Sandra Steingraber argued in her book, Living Downstream.
Toxic chemicals in our bodies, in random combinations based on exposures starting before we're born, are "linked to genetic, immune and endocrine dysfunction that can lead to cancer and other diseases."

Translation: many toxics cause cancer. The authors of the latest President's Cancel Panel Annual Report cannot say this outright because of the way scientific studies work and because our country has not invested nearly enough money in studying the relationship of toxics to human health (cancer specifically). We don't yet have complete enough national databases and precise enough methods of measurement to draw definitive conclusions.

But the authors of the President's Cancer Panel report certainly come up with a clear case, and they offer many examples of how and where we exposed to dangerous toxics and what needs to be changed. We do know enough, they suggest, we've studied enough, to be able to say that the evidence all points to the fact that our bodies are full of toxic junk that can cause cancer and, often, premature death.

Women's bodies tend to have larger amounts of these toxins, and they are passed to their unborn children through the placenta and later through breast milk. Children are born with their bodies already full of toxics. Their umbilical cord blood tells us this. Their little bodies are at special risk because of their smaller body mass and rapid physical growth, both of which make them more vulnerable to carcinogens.

I have waited for this official report for years.

There is a whole lot of cancer in my family on both sides. None of it seems to make sense. In 1994, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. I was 35. My mother was diagnosed with lymphoma when I was 32, and my father died from melanoma when I was 28. My paternal first cousin, who never smoked, died from lung cancer at 45. Two of my maternal first cousins have had early stage melanomas. My mother's younger sister died from breast cancer.

Recently, I was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma. The latter is a minor cancer, but it is cancer nonetheless, and with my father's fatal melanoma history, I don't go outside much in the daylight anymore. These cancers seem unrelated and random, and thus potentially a result of environmental rather than genetic history: melanoma is on opposite sides of my family (father and maternal cousins), and lung cancer is on opposite sides of my family as well (paternal cousin, maternal aunt)--so there does not appear to be a genetic connection there, and in my own immediate nuclear family--my mother, father, and I had three different types of cancer.

To top it all off, I am at high risk for secondary cancers because I have had more than 11 CAT scans as part of my Hodgkin's treatment and follow-up. The President's Cancer Panel report tells us:

"People who receive multiple scans or other tests that require radiation may accumulate doses equal to or exceeding that of Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors. It is believed that a single large dose of ionizing radiation and numerous low doses equal to the single large dose have much the same effect on the body over time."

Let me repeat, I have had 11 of these tests. Did the benefits of that many tests outweigh the dangers posed? Was I informed about the dangers of such tests at the time they were given to me? Would I have had so many CAT scans had I known what I know now?

No, no and no.

Unfortunately, I'm not the only one -- that's for sure. Forty-one percent of all Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Twenty-one percent will die from it. My neighbor across the street -- a 40-something father of two -- is dying of lung cancer. I used to hear him playing basketball with his 12-year-old daughter. He has tried every cancer treatment available, including experimental protocols, but the prognosis is grim. I don't hear the sounds of basketball anymore.
Two women in my immediate neighborhood have had their breasts removed. Several other immediate neighbors have passed away from breast and other cancers. These people are all in their mid-40s and younger. The story of my neighborhood is the story of every neighborhood, and cancer doesn't just strike adults. I know several children who have had it. Some survived, some did not. Today, this is everyone's story.

So the report is out. It comes from on high. We can fight the invasion of the body-snatcher toxins and radiation as individuals to some degree -- if we have the knowledge and economic means -- by eating organic food, using nontoxic cosmetics and cleaning products, avoiding unnecessary X-rays and CAT scans and working in relatively safe environments. Still, private and individual acts of prevention are not enough.

The authors of the President's Cancer Panel report argue that our nation needs a comprehensive strategy for eliminating cancer-causing environmental exposures. Poison often knows no borders -- it can travel and bio-accumulate -- wreaking havoc on the health of all species. Cancer strikes people of all genders, classes, ethnicities, and races. The poor, people working and living in environments with toxic and hazardous materials, and women and children are the hardest it, but we are all vulnerable to carcinogenic pollution.

Will our government (and all governments) make the radical changes called for in this study? Senator Frank Lautenberg's proposed Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 is an important first step.
As Americans, we need to ensure this act passes, and many more like it. It is time for us to follow the wise precautionary principle that has been adopted by the European Union.
As citizens, we must mobilize to ensure that our government enacts preventative measures to protect the health of our children and all living beings.

Will we do so? We must.

Cosmetics: What You Should Know

Other Than What You Would Expect

Last weekend I went to the lovely Kripalu Center in Lenox, Massachussetts.  I spent three days there doing yoga, meditating, walking, swimming, and eating delicious organic vegetarian food.  Two of those days I spent in silence.  The lake water was glorious and cool.  Across the street at Tanglewood, James Taylor and Carol King played together on the fourth of July.  Listening to the two old folkies sing together was heartwarming beyond words.  After the concert, the sky above Tanglewood lit up with fireworks.  I'm sure the fireworks were horrible for the environment, but I felt like a little kid as I watched the colors pop in the night sky.

Small moments like these remind me of why it is so great to be alive.

My daughter is away at sleep away camp.  People ask me why I would send her away, but I think it is important for the two of us to have our own identities, territories and experiences. I also want her to connect with nature and the land.  We live in a beautiful suburb, but the experience of being outside all day in the mountains--swimming, hiking, canoeing, sleeping under the stars, taking care of the farm animals, picking vegetables, doing chores, and bonding with her peers--is very different from living in the land of fences, lawns, cars and malls.  I was lucky enough to live in the country when I was younger, to ride horses bareback in the hills and fields of North Carolina, to climb the high Sierras of Nevada and California, and to hike miles deep into the tropical forests of Kauii.

There are precious secrets to be learned in those luscious quiet places-- those few last 'natural' places left.

Some new thoughts....

The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. ….  Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.

Every time I look at you, I think, Now I cannot die.

--Sandra Steingraber, Having Faith.

   Mothering and Cancer: The Awakening Of An Ecofeminist

The cancer memoir is well known: Audre Lorde’s Cancer Diaries, Sandra Steingraber’s Living Downstream and Having Faith, Zillah Eisenstein’s Manmade Breast Cancers, Susanna Antonetta’s Body Toxic, and Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place are brilliant examples of personal and feminist accounts of cancer, death and environmental degradation. These authors and narrators expose their histories as their bodies are and were exposed to the politics of a patriarchal world (medical, political, pharmaceutical, global, racist, heterosexist, technological).  Each of these stories links cancer, feminism and disease in some way with the degradation of the environment.

The awakening of my eco-feminist consciousness occurs in the conjoining of my cancer and mothering experiences. When I became pregnant, my concern about my own and my family’s cancer history propelled me into paralytic fear.  How could I protect my fetus from my own history, from my genes?   In time, I began to think my cancer might be related to environmental degradation, and that my daughter’s future and the future of all children would be (and is) imperiled and violated by toxic pollution.  This shift from cancer orphan, to cancer patient, to mother, to environmental scholar and teacher, took place over many years.  My story takes place both in and outside of the body, family, academia, the classroom, nature, and the culture at large. The history of these assorted rivulets and tributaries all ultimately conjoin in an ocean of what I call an ‘ecological, feminist, and mothering awareness.’

Let me begin here:  I went back to college at age twenty-five, after living many years in New York City as a struggling actress and singer.  The pleasure I found in reading, writing and research was immense.  I always had been a voracious reader and active personal journal writer, yet studying in a focused and scholarly way was new to me.  My beloved professors and mentors guided and encouraged me to go to graduate school and become an English professor.  I flew through and completed my undergraduate English degree, and then immediately entered a doctoral in English program at the University of Washington.

In Seattle, I loved the bodies of fresh water, the tall evergreens, the mossy stone gardens, the flowers, the bike and walking paths, the many bookstores, the strong coffee, and the snow-peaked Mt. Rainier that emerged periodically above Red Square.  The grey sultry days suited me just fine.  My time at UW was intellectually intense, rigorous, and productive.  My apartment was small and had little furniture—a futon, a few pillows, a desk, table and a few chairs.  I read, wrote, and studied all day seven days a week—taking breaks only to teach my own classes, attend graduate seminars, or go for a jog around Greenlake.  In my first year at least, it was an exquisitely disciplined life—simple, focused, clear.  It was a sublime balance of books, writing, and nature. Compared to living, studying and working in Manhattan (where I lived in a four flight walk up, worked two jobs, and struggled to make ends meet, all the while studying for my BA), graduate school in the emerald city was a vacation.  I couldn’t believe they were paying me to read and write and teach, and to live in such beauty! 

In graduate school I found a “niche” in eighteenth- century studies, with a focus on women writers, colonial discourse, and race.  I began publishing before completing my dissertation—editing and contributing to a collection called Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory and Criticism, and writing articles on other women writers and race of this age. Soon after the completion of my doctorate, I landed a tenure-track teaching position at Stony Brook University.   My (academic) life appeared to be a great success.

However, several personal tragedies occurred during those years.  At the end of my first year of graduate school, when I was twenty-nine, my father died from metastatic brain cancer related to two earlier Melanoma diagnoses.  One month after my father’s death, my (then) father in law passed away from colon cancer.  A year or so later, my mother was diagnosed with lymphoma; she also had emphysema (from smoking), heart disease, and was frequently hospitalized for pneumonia.  Five years after my father’s death, my mother died from complications post-open heart surgery.  Each of these deaths was traumatic beyond words.  I had never known anyone close to me die, and to lose both of my parents at such a young age was devastating.

Yet another blow came with my own cancer diagnosis one year after my mother’s passing.  My illness came at the tail end of my second round of job interviews and fly-backs for teaching positions.  The only benefit of the cancer diagnosis was that it allowed me to quiet my life: to slow down and, quite literally, rest.  I crawled underground into a chemotherapy cave to rest, vomit, and writhe from the pain of the chemicals in my bloodstream and fear of my own demise.

Somewhere in between my father’s and mother’s deaths, I married.   It was strange not to have my father at the wedding, and my mother wandered alone during the party—she was lost without my dad.  In the early years of my marriage I wanted to have children immediately, but my (then) husband was unsure about having children and he wanted to wait.  We struggled with this conflict for years.  My desire to be a mother consumed me.  I did not need to hear the cultural, medical, and anti-feminist messages about the biological clock ticking.  I heard the bell clanging loudly in my head every minute of the day. I was the kind of childless woman who passed a pregnant woman, baby carriage, or toddler, and wept. When friends became pregnant (everyone seemed to be getting pregnant), I would cry inconsolably.  All of my life, I volunteered to baby sit and I doted on babies and kids.  At social gatherings, I was the girl holding the babies—the one who wanted five kids when she grew up.  Now, time was passing and I was in my mid-thirties.  Losing my parents only made things worse—I wanted and needed to build my own family. 

So, at thirty-five, when I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, the prospect of my never becoming pregnant hit me very hard—more so than the prospect of dying.   The treatment for the cancer was chemotherapy, which meant there was a good chance I would become infertile.  There was no time to extract eggs, or freeze embryos.  I was in the late stages of my disease and I had to begin treatment immediately.  I made my husband promise that when the treatment was over, if I survived, we would have a baby.  He agreed.   I then went through six months of a grueling and debilitating chemotherapy treatment.  It was, to put it mildly and succinctly, hell.  I had 12 rounds of ABVD every two weeks.   The chemo knocked me out, and just as my body would begin to recover, the next cycle came around again.  With each cycle, my body became weaker, more susceptible to the chemicals, and by the last month, I was barely able to walk.  In the last few months of treatment, I also had to live with the possibility that the chemotherapy might continue beyond six months, and that I might need radiation as well, as my catscans showed that the tumors were not shrinking.  I don’t know what scared me more—death or more chemo.  Fortunately, my six-month catscan showed the cancer was gone.   It was now time to heal.   I would continue with testing every three months for the foreseeable future, but the chemotherapy treatment was over for now.

A little over a year after my cancer diagnosis, the plan was for me to go back to work.  I had accepted a tenure-track faculty position at SUNY Stony Brook (strangely, my diagnosis and job offer came simultaneously). Returning to the highly charged and competitive world of academia was scary after all I had been through. I was afraid to tell my new employers that I had been sick, for fear they would view me as unworthy or damaged. I associated my illness with the intensity and enormous demands of graduate school, publishing and the job search. Teaching graduate seminars and large undergraduate courses for the first time would be challenging under any circumstances, but doing this so soon post-cancer was especially challenging for me.  I was physically and emotionally frail.  Yet, there was the practical issue of money and work, and I had forged a profession for myself.  I could not imagine throwing all of that away.

Two years into my job at Stony Brook, at long last, I became pregnant.  I hid the pregnancy from my colleagues and students until the very last minute.  I feared their disapproval of my ‘motherhood’—as with the cancer, it seemed like anything corporeal would, in their eyes, deem me less scholarly and lacking in commitment to ‘the profession.’  Like many women in the (academic) workplace, I feared that motherhood would diminish or mar my reputation.[1]  The general recommendation was to ‘wait until you get tenure’ to have a baby.  I could not wait.  I was old.  I was a damaged cancer survivor. 

Susan Griffin writes, “When we awaken, there is a child given to us.  We are mothers.  We feel a pain where the vulva has been cut.  We are mothers.  We feel the skin of the child is soft.  The face to us in sleep is beautiful.  The small body lying against our body is vulnerable.  The cries move us…. We love this body, because we are a part of this body.  We are mothers”  (74).  Now she was inside of me: a little fish swimming in my salty sea.   Yet with that pleasure came fear about her future.  I worried greatly, at first, about the genes she carried.  All of her grandparents had had cancer, and only one lived through it (her paternal grandmother).  Her mother was a cancer survivor.  I felt guilty.  What right did I have to give birth with my body, a polluted body, a damaged body that had coursed with chemicals? What right did I to give birth to a child, when my life span was so unpredictable, when I might die at any moment?   What right did I to give birth to a child when I would pass along cancer genes?

How could I protect my fetus? 

This question sat heavily with me.  At first, the only protection I could think of was my own diet during pregnancy and while nursing. So I ate only organic food, took loads of vitamins, and cut out anything processed or refined.  This was not hard to do as I had changed my diet completely when I was diagnosed with cancer.  

My mode of protecting my fetus through a healthy ‘diet’ was of course, a good one, but it was rooted (in part) in an ideology I now have trouble with. [2]

 This belief system is one I came away with from New Age cancer healing approaches I had learned about from my father.  My father believed that we bring cancer upon ourselves and that we hold the power to heal ourselves from any illness, be it physical or emotional.  His philosophy was based in the self-healing models advocated by Louise Hay, Dr. Gerald Jampolsky, Dr. Bernard Seigal, and Norman Cousins.  In the ‘I caused my cancer’ and ‘I can fix my cancer’ by ‘healing myself’ movement, cancer functions as a private, individualized and personal issue.  My problem with this system is that it often divides and isolates the patient and the illness from larger socio-political, economic, and environmental contexts, and lays the blame for cancer on the victim. Obviously, there are benefits to these self-help philosophies (better immediate health and well being), but the part I worry about is the narrowness of this discourse and its potential to preclude social and political environmental activism.  The laying of the responsibility for cancer (both getting and curing it) on the victim, shifts the focus away from what more and more evidence shows us to be the likely cause of our cancer epidemic: toxics, chemicals, radiation, and other forms of pollution.  In the view of many environmental cancer activists and scientists, we are sick because our environment is poisoned.  Our environment is poisoned because of a capitalist and patriarchal system based on economic greed, domination and exploitation.

In my own case, the New Age self-help cancer philosophies caused me to feel guilty and isolated.  Cancer was my fault.  In my father’s case, it made him feel empowered.  He took it on as a challenge –he could fix the problem himself, he could save himself, and no one could have tried harder.  He did yoga twice a day, meditated, ate a strictly macrobiotic diet, worked less, ran his own cancer workshop, said healing affirmations multiple times throughout the day, and made amends to my mother and treated her kindly.  These were major changes for a stereotypical cigar smoking Cadillac driving meat eating angry businessman and patriarchal husband.  Suddenly, he became a serene yoga macrobiotic guru who not only changed his own life, but worked to help others as well.   Perhaps, these ‘self-healing’ approaches gave him a few extra years.  He did seem happier and more content with his life.   Eventually, however, the cancer caught up with and killed him.

At some point, an alarm went off during my pregnancy, and something substantially shifted in my thinking about cancer and human health.  I began to see the disease less as my own personal cross to bear and solve (something I could simply eat or chant away), and more as a larger socio-political and ecological problem.  This awakening happened one night while I was reading the book A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr.  What could be more terrifying to a pregnant woman and a cancer survivor, than a story about a childhood leukemia cluster in a town with contaminated water?  At first I became terrified for my own unborn child: what if I lived in a cancer cluster like Woburn?  What if, no matter now much organic broccoli I ate, the air, the soil, the water were so contaminated that this poison would enter my body anyway?  Long Island (where I live) has very high cancer rates.   I had heard that the water in the aquifer near Brookhaven, not far from where teach, had been contaminated with radioactive tritium from the Brookhaven Lab nuclear power plant (the lab knew of this leak and let it persist for 12 years before the information went public and the plant was shut down).  What other leaks and spills might be in the water and soil that remained hidden from public knowledge? 

My mind raced to my corporeal environmental history—what had I been exposed to during my life?  Maybe my own cancer had been caused by toxic pollution? Was it the insecticides in the strawberry fields adjacent to my house in South Miami, Florida where I was born and lived as a small child?   Was it the chemicals sprayed by the exterminator I led around in my loft building in Soho to suppress the roach infestation?  Was it the toxic smog I inhaled as I rode my bike up, down, and across Manhattan, or the asbestos laden air in the Twin Towers where I had worked for two years?  Was it radioactive isotopes from nuclear bomb fallout and nuclear reactor leaks throughout the U.S. (and elsewhere) that traveled up the food chain and into my body?

I then read everything I could get my hands on at the time—Silent Spring, Steingraber’s Living Downstream, Our Stolen Future.  Later, after my daughter was born, Steingraber, whose daughter is about the same age as mine, published her book Having Faith.  This book traces what happens to the fetus in the womb, when the mother’s body is assaulted with environmental toxins and these toxins cross the placenta, and later pass from breast milk to the baby and child.  Steingraber explored this theme as she experienced and described her own pregnancy and the biology of fetal and natal development in relation to the environment around her.  I read ecofeminist theory, and women’s environmental history, such as Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature, and I came to understand that the exploitation of nature and the domination of women are “twin oppressions” (Karen Warren, x).[3]  Ecofeminist philosophers and historians (among others) helped me to see that cancer (and other diseases) and the degradation of the environment are integrally linked and that throughout our lives, even before we are fused as sperm and ova into embryos and fetuses, we are assaulted with toxics, chemicals, pollutants and radiation.  Our bodies, all living bodies, are linked with the earth’s ecosystem, and this ecosystem is polluted.  Our earth is sick and so we, too, are sick.

Cancer was the end of innocence for me, the end of safety or trust in my body, nature, life, and family.  It was my exile from Eden, so to speak.  My pregnancy was a moment of great change.  I was happy, I was filled with life, but I was afraid: another being lived inside me.  My death would be her death, and my illness would be her pain and suffering.  A polluted earth would and does harm both of us, all of us.  I must care not just for my own biological child, but for all children and all people, all living creatures.  How can I protect my fetus?  My womb is the earth’s womb.  My child is every child.   These questions led me here.  This problem drives me in my research, teaching, writing, and in my life.  I want to be part of the ‘waking up’ from this fugue state of ecological unconsciousness.   I know that we must all wake up and act to halt the destruction.   A mother’s womb is the earth’s womb.

In the end, the awakening of my maternal ecofeminist consciousness led, not surprisingly, to a major shift in focus in both my scholarship and teaching. My pedagogical approach includes taking feminism, mothering and ecology into our lives in a direct ways—not only by reading literature and nonfiction criticism on ecology and feminism, and/or watching environmental films, but by gardening, hiking, birding, looking at the various environments we live in, turning off technology, using technology to learn about ecological processes, journaling and participating in environmental activism. The response of my students to this work has been overwhelmingly positive and often deeply moving.  One notable accomplishment of my students is the creation of Stony Brook’s first organic garden.  We are not a West Coast environmentally savvy campus community by any stretch of the imagination (we might as well be on another planet from a Berkeley, Santa Cruz, or Portland), yet this makes my investment in these classes and students all the more urgent.  Education is key.   If effective change is to come, all young people must learn about the hubris of man’s violation of the earth.

One day, after one of my first ecofeminism classes, a student asked to speak with me privately.  We sat outside under a blooming cherry blossom tree and, with her hands shaking, she held out a well-worn photograph.  The student tearfully explained that this was a picture of her mother who died many years ago from cancer:  “I grew up in Brookhaven, right near the nuclear reactor you told us about. Before this class, I had no idea about that tritium leak. None of us did. I couldn’t understand why my mom died at such a young age, why so many of our neighbors died from cancer.”  My own eyes filled with tears as she spoke.  I ached for her loss—it is a loss I knew and know only too well.  Then, with sad resignation, she said, “Now, I understand.” 

So I ache and write for the motherless girl, for the fish, animals, and birds in the poisoned Gulf, for the polluted seas, for the dolphins, for the sky, for the rivers, for my neighbor Carl with terminal lung cancer, for the whales, for the wolves, for the panthers, for Molly-a child friend- in remission from leukemia, for my parents, for the irradiated deserts and Chernobyl, for the soldiers poisoned with Depleted Uranium, for the Polar bears, for the blind horses, for all the creatures too many to name, for our blue, blue planet.  May we forestall the massacre, may we halt this annihilation of the earth.

--Heidi Hutner, SUNY Stony Brook


This essay is forthcoming in Maternal Pedagogies, edited by Deborah Byrd and Fiona Green, Demeter Press,  2011.


Also, this is part of my forthcoming book: Polluting Mama: Ecofeminism, Film and Literature,  Demeter Press,  2012.

                                                     

                                                            
                                              Works Cited

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin,  1962.

Colborn, Theo; Dumanoski, Diane; Myers, John Peterson. Our Stolen Future.  New York: Plume, 1997.

Evans, Erina, and Grant, Caroline, Mama PhD: Women Write about  Motherhood and Academic Life. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her.  San Francisco: Sierra Club, 2000.

Mason, Mary Ann; and Ekman, Eve Mason, Mothers on the Fast Track: How  a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific                Revolution, (New York: Harper and Row, 1976.

----Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World.  New York and London: Routledge, 2005.

Steingraber, Sandra, Living Downstream. New York: Vintage, 1988.

----------Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhoodd.  New York:                         Berkely Books, 2001.

Warren, Karen “Ecological Feminist Philosophies: An Overview of the Issues.” Ecological Feminist Philosophies.  Bloomington and  Indianapolis: Hypatia, Indiana UP, 1996.

Williams, Terry Tempest.  Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and  Place.  New York: Vintage, 1991.

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[1] Some interesting new collections on the topic of mothers and academia are Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life, and Mothers on the Fast Track.  Also, Andrea O’Reilly is conducting a full-blown study on mothers and academia.

[2] The American Cancer Society promotes a diet high in fiber and fresh vegetables and fruits, but still does not recommend organic food as a cancer preventative.  However, the recent President’s Cancer Panel argues that children, in particular, are susceptible to toxics and recommends feeding children organic food free from chemical pollutants and hormone disrupters; it also recommends a long list of ways children should be protected from exposure to toxics in the home, schools, playgrounds and other environments.  This report is remarkable—it is the first governmental report to directly support the links between pollution and cancer and to call for major change and prevention.

[3] For two excellent definitions of ecofeminism and ecofeminist theory, see Karen J. Warren, “What are Ecofeminists Saying?” 21-41, in Ecofeminist Philosophy; and Carolyn Merchant’s chapter, “Ecofeminism,” in Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World.

Time Is Running Out

Field notes from a busy Ecofeminist Mother:
As my sabbatical winds down and there is so much more work to be done on my book and other publications, I feel a bit of panic setting in.  I love teaching, but this work is so important and I have much more to do.  Time is running out.


I am increasingly obsessed with studying nuclear bomb and power history.  I will be interviewing and taping Helen Caldicott and many others.  This is thrilling to me.  I can't wait to speak with her.   I have found many activists who worked with my mother in the 1980s on nuclear freeze.   The information keeps unfolding and the stories are incredible and so important to environmental history.


I am awed by the work of my parents and their many peers and friends and colleagues who worked tirelessly for years in the peace, civil rights, and anti-nuclear movements.  My mother's last bit of volunteer work was for Planned Parenthood.  Doing civil good made my mother happy--even during very difficult times.  I wish more of us could tap into that.   Doing good in the world, giving to others and having a real "cause" enriches one's own life as well as the lives of so many others.   Inspiration comes from caring and doing for  something greater than ourselves.  As Martin Luther King says, "If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."  


Another bizarre example of American food waste, health, and garbage culture: Yesterday, I was served a vile supposed fruit salad (it had to have been canned 20 years ago) in my daughter's school cafeteria. This nasty stuff was served in a styrofoam container. These fruit containers are automatically put on the kids' trays  and of course the kids just throw them out.   What a waste.  The poison cup goes right into the garbage (better than in their little bodies) and fills up landfills.  What ever happened to the concept of serving a whole piece of (organic) fruit on a reusable plate?  I feel sorry for the many kids eating free lunches who have to eat this foul junk.  What ever happened to really taking care of the children?  And, styrofoam?  Are we still using this polluting non-biodegradable stuff?  On a hopeful note, Berkeley, California chefs are transforming public school meals. I just came across this great piece in Grist: "Healthy Breakfasts Buy Lunch in Berkeley Schools."  You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world.  Yes I do.


The BP spill is just one more reminder that we need to reduce oil consumption and invest in and develop new clean energy technologies.  Oil, coal, and nuclear are NOT the answer.  As for me, I'm trying to drive less, and I'm saving up for a hybrid.  I'm also considering a radical change in lifestyle-- a move to a sustainable community where my feet and legs are my main source of mobility.


I'm freaked out today.  My poor heart aches for my little one (how long will her mom be here? As a cancer survivor, this thought often crosses my mind).  I curse the barbarousness of cancer treatment.  Last night, I came across this information (again) about radiation exposure and catscans in the article, "President's Cancer Panel: Environmental Cancers 'Grossly Underestimated."   Among other alarming bits of information in this very informative article, it states that,  "Patients who have a chest CT scan receive a dose of radiation in the same range as survivors of the Hiroshima bomb attacks who were less than a half mile from ground zero."  When I was going through my cancer treatment and follow-up care, I had at least nine nearly full body catscans. It is hard for me to breathe after reading that quote.  
    
     In effect, I was exposed to at least the same dosage of radiation as the Hiroshima survivors who were in a half mile range of the atom bomb detonation. My body experienced this radiation dosage not once, but at least nine times. My scans were not just to the chest, either, so the radiation exposure would be even higher.    
      So, you see, there is so much to do, and not enough time.