I chose this image because it reflects Warren’s writings on Symbolic Connections. This image sexualizes a pig, calling her “Lady Edison” the “Hoofed Temptress”. I, for one found this incredible offensive. The imagery is essentially not only doing what Warren claims in this section by describing a woman, in how she said “animal terms”, but also still using the sexual language that feminism and ecofeminism are trying to eradicate. “The development of theory and praxis in feminism and environmental philosophy that does not perpetuate such sexist-naturist language and the power over systems of domination they reinforce is, therefore, a goal of ecofeminism (Warren).” This image was clearly created with the male gaze in mind.
“They proposed that patriarchal cultural structures revolved around layers of symbol systems that justified domination. For example, they interpretthe creation stories in the book of Genesis, foundational for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as demonizing both woman (Eve) and animal (the snake) (Hobgood, 4).” Much like in the ad I posted, these animals are used to not only represent women, or an aspect of femininity, but in a degrading and dehumanizing manner. In the quote, Hobgood explains how the snake was used to represent evil, and if you have read the Bible, we know Eve gave in to such evil. However, this is problematic because like Hobgood states, it essentially demoralizes both women (Eve) and the snake. This issue has gone back generations before even our time, and has only begun to be called into question in the past few decades. Male-dominated culture and the patriarchy is so toxic, but so normalized, that any attempt to challenge it seems cantankerous to others not involved in the movement.
I am still struggling a bit to understand the concept of ecofeminism. So, to explain to another newbie to the topic I suppose I would say that ecofeminism is the link between women and nature. Beyond that, it is the tying of the two together that fights against dehumanizing both nature and women by patriarchal power and the male gaze.
I will go again with Warren’s Symbolic Connections and choose the example of the media. While this is broad, it is one that has really stuck out to me over the years in my WGS courses and even my Communications course where I learned more in depth about the male gaze in media. (While this is not connected to animals, I felt it was important to connect the ideas as it’s not too far off in my opinion.) Something that we did in that communications class was take a quiz while watching the music video to “Stacy’s Mom”, and we were to at the end, describe random objects in the video. Such as what color the car was, or what kind of plants were in the garden. To our shock, a lot of us did not know the answers, because of the male gaze imagery distracting us from anything other than the sexualized woman in the music video. The fact it slipped by us college kids, was a real eye opener to how society molds us as a whole, generation after generation.
My question: What can we do to bring more awareness, besides education and teaching younger generations, to stop perpetuating these ideals?
