April 9, 2015 - 16:07
I'm not sure if I understood anything we talked about in class today. I like to think that I'm interested in ecofeminism, but the direction of today's discussion was unclear to me. I still don't know what we are defining ecofeminism as. Maybe I put too much energy in "you can't be a feminist if you're not vegan" feminism and trying to think about the gender identity of cows. I don't care about the sex and gender of cows. When things get abstract, I am hopelessly anthropomorphic. I just cannot bring myself to even try to understand what cows feel and if we oppress them in gender related ways. Certainly, animals are mistreated and I want to work to change the systems that hurt them. But I also feel insulted by the idea of expanding feminism step by step, linearly from men to white women to black women to global women to animals. That timeline feels like a hierarchy in which I feel uncomfortably close to animal. In a world where I am dehumanized, I am not yet ready to give humanity to other animals. This is definitely a built in hierarchy of species but I don't know if I am ready to give it up or if I ever will be. Human is different from other animals, which are all different from each other. There is an insult in after a hisory of being considered less than human being expected to accept my animalness and the connections between other animals and me. Maybe the wounds are too fresh.