Women Versus Sexism and the Climate Crisis
Below are some of the things we addressed at the Women and the Environment Workshop [see the article “Women and the Environment,” by Shani Fletcher , on page 61 of Present Time No. 208]:
- We need to work on how our minds and bodies were hurt when we were girl children.
- We need to fight against the effects of sexism—for example, “caretaking,” and undermining and sacrificing ourselves—that keep us from fighting capitalism, oppression, and climate change.
- Sexism and male domination interfered with our learning, particularly in the fields of math and science. Because of this, women tend to be relegated to the “adaptation” sector (an extension of “caretaking”) instead of the “energy” sector of the climate movement.
- We need to contradict and discharge patterns of victimization, so we don’t act on them or pass them on to others.
- The fight against climate change is an economic fight, and it’s critical that women play a role in that.
- Women have the individual intelligence and collective power to end both sexism and the climate crisis.
- We can and must unite with our sisters worldwide.
I am a white owning-class Protestant older woman. I have attended Diane Balser’s women’s liberation workshops every year since the beginning of my Co-Counseling career and have fought to understand and internalize women’s liberation theory. It’s been a long road to fully take in how early and badly I was hurt as a female and to have any idea of how to fight for myself.
The culture I grew up in gave me messages of pretense and denial—for example, that I “had it better” than others; that I wasn’t even hurt; that my role was to look good, act right, attend an elite educational institution, marry a man of similar class background, and raise children—all to make me fit into the upper levels of society. This squashed for me any sense of having myself or my mind. Sexism and classism thoroughly scrambled my brain.
I have had to face the following: I was a victim of sexual exploitation. I was silenced and betrayed by the closest female in my life, my mother, in my fight to stand up against a dominating, abusive father. I was unable to show my struggles or get help because I was utterly alone and humiliated. I assumed there was something wrong with me. I had to go far away, hide, and “erase” myself. Facing all this feels unbearable. I have to fight to know that I have a mind and a voice. And I have decided to take on [undertake] this fight.
There are many committed, effective female elder climate activists. They have fought against sexism and elder oppression to be visible in the movement. They have had to contradict distress recordings of urgency and desperation to “fix” the problem for present and future generations.
We elder women can feel overwhelmed, powerless, insignificant, hopeless, and discouraged from accumulated hurts from sexism. Many of us have not been active in the climate movement. I am someone in that category. For me, facing the enormity of the climate emergency and the destruction of the environment feels unbearable, exactly the way it feels unbearable to face my hurts from sexism and male domination. The workshop motivated me to look at these unbearable places. I have had big Co-Counseling sessions discharging despair from having been hurt as a girl child by sexism and male domination.
I am now more determined to keep fighting for myself. I am hopeful I can heal from the early hurts and be active in the climate movement. I am excited to be doing this in solidarity with other women.
USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 208, July 2022)