women histories, incest sexual abuse. institutionalized. But what if ...

ENVIRONMENT
tion rroject
of seeing the world. This pyramidal view of reality was
known as the great chain of being. Sir Francis Bacon
sought a scientific method that could "put [Nature] on the
rack," uncovering "secrets of excellent use...in her womb."
Bacon was followed by Rene Descartes, responsible for
Cartesian rationalism wherein mind and matter became
two entirely separate spheres, then by Newton, a master of
the mechanical world view. He was followed by linearism,
a one-dimensional concept of time and evolution which
became a rational faith in progress and the accumulation
of property.
Under this dualist paradigm, religion and mythology
characterized female power—like nature's power—as
elemental and fearsome, potentially engulfing
if not contained at all times. Theology
professor Rosemary Radford Ruether has
inventoried the myths that underpin the
anti-woman principles of Western religions.
In the Hebrew creation story, males are
selected as representatives of God and
females, rib extracts that they are, as
servers. In the Greek creation story, the hierarchy
of mind over body, male over female
and human over animal is bolstered by the
notion of the well-ordered self. In the
Christian ethic, the rejection of the body in
favor of the spirit linked death and shame to
the life-giving fluids of sex and reproduction—producing, j
says Ruether, a phobia of women as birth givers. St. j
Clement said, "Every woman should be overwhelmed with I
shame at the very thought that she is a woman." St. John ;
Chrysostom said, "Among all savage beasts none is found j
so harmful as woman."
No discussion of ecofeminism is complete unless we !
look at the language used to link women with nature and j
men with the conquest of nature—and with nuclear
weaponry. As ecofeminist Karen J. Warren points out,
nature is feminized and then raped, conquered, mined; virgin
timber is felled; land that lies fallow is barren. Carol
Cohn has described a nuclear linguistic world of vertical
erector launchers, soft lay downs, deep penetration,
penetration aids, and what one
military advisor to the National Security
Council has called "releasing 70 to 80 percent
of our megatonnage in one orgasmic
whump." India's explosion of a nuclear
bomb is spoken of as "losing her virginity."
Cohn also points out that military
linguistic distortions—calling the MX missile
"Peacekeeper" and human deaths "collateral
damage"—lead us to disregard the
effects of nuclear technology on the earth
and her creatures. Did you know that a single
pound of plutonium, distributed around
27 - on the issues