Feminism and the Mastery of Nature

Abstract

Val Plumwood (1939–2008) was an Australian ecofeminist philosopher deeply critical of the “androcentric,” or male-centered, viewpoint she identified at the heart of what she called the “standpoint of mastery.” Plumwood argues in this essay that such a view is built on a false dichotomy that strictly separates reason (associated with males) from non-reason or feeling (associated with females). By extension, this distinction also splits culture (seen as the sole creation of men) from nature (seen as the province of women; hence, “Mother Nature”). Because this is so, Plumwood and other ecofeminists argue, men have seen the natural world like the world of women, as ripe for plunder, subordination, and exploitation. However, unlike some ecofeminists, Plumwood was wary of simply appropriating those terms like “empathy” and “nurturing” that are conventionally associated with “Mother Earth,” or the Greek goddess Gaia. She believed it a mistake to see only “good” phenomena at work in the natural world or to associate them exclusively with women while rejecting rationality as solely male and a “bad” trait underpinning universal patriarchy, or rule by men. To the contrary, Plumwood rejected such “essentialist” notions (or the idea of male and female “essences”) as well as the belief that patriarchy is a universal phenomenon. Rather, she argues that the real problem is a particular Western view of “anthropocentrism” (or human centeredness) based on a partial or one-sided view of “rationality” that defines concepts like “progress” and “civilization” in a too-narrow fashion that rules out other ways of life, while simultaneously wreaking ecological devastation.