Environmental Philosophy, Lecture eleven

Ecofeminism

The common core of feminism, according to Warren, is that all feminist want the abolition of oppression of women. However, there are multiple feminist perspectives who disagree on the means to reach this goal.

Liberal feminism

is about individual liberation. Therefore, what is needed to end oppression is equal rights for women.

Traditional Marxist feminism

sees the oppression of women by men similarly to the upper-class oppression of the working class. The liberation of women must then come about trough bringing women into the workforce.

Radical feminism

states that women’s oppression flows forth from their biological sex. This liberation must be found in the abolition of the system (patriarchy) that enforces this biological difference in the moral sphere.

considers oppression of women to originate from the interplay between biological sex and society. Liberation must therefore also be twofold.

None of these systems are effective at establishing an eco-feminism. This comes mainly from the anthropocentric nature of the Liberal and Marxist views and the focus on gender oppression in Radical- and Social-feminism. Therefore, extending feminism to include oppression of the environment would require a new form of “feminism” called transformative feminism.

Warren thinks this move to transformative feminism is necessary because both oppression of -nature and -women have the same origin, namely the Logical of Domination. The Logic of Domination states that. P1: x is morally superior to y p2: being moraly superior allows one to dominate the inferior C1: x is justified in dominating y

In this argument, Warren takes x to be humanity and y to be nature in the case of the environment, and x to be men and y to be women in the case of feminism.

Transformative feminism