Who's Your Daddy?
(a short essay on the gender of the world)
Pausing from my afternoon jog to stretch my legs, I glanced over at a trail signboard. There was a list of directions for people to follow: no motorized vehicles, clean up your dog's shit, etc... The last bullet point, "Help Protect Mother Earth", stood out as a bit Gaia-esque for a municipal placard. Why not just plain "Earth"?
It has been in vogue among certain circles more oriented toward political correctness to flip around gendered pronouns and conceptions of gender in abstract concepts. As I started back along the path I started wondering why, amidst feminist bumper stickers and politically correct pronouns, I had never heard anyone talk about "Father Earth". It had an odd ring to it, one of cognitive dissonance. But why should it matter which parent our planet is?
A favorite quote that has been echoing through my head since rereading it senior year of college is from John Locke, the English political philosopher: "in the beginning, all the world was America." (section 49) Locke is writing in the late 17th century, and by "America", he essentially means "a limitless expanse of land awaiting cultivation and industry" (and by extension, property rights and money systems, so that we can effectively achieve them). As this land was bequeathed to us by God, it is our holy duty to develop it.
It won't be news to many of you that those ideas are some of the basic conceptual underpinnings of our capitalist society. But bringing gender into the equation is revealing. In Genesis, the LORD God gives Adam the land "to till...and keep" and he gives Adam a woman as "a helper". After they are banished from the garden she is made to "be ruled over" by Adam as well (Genesis 2,3). Man (or at least, the hardworking, worthy man) is given a divine authority over, well, everything. The Earth, the animals, and woman are all his subjects.
For years, feminists have been deconstructing gender and the associated power relationships, with the book of Genesis as a prime target. Across the campuses and liberal party aisles, environmentalists have been crying out on Mother Earth's behalf. What happens when we simply flip the gender on our planet?
Suddenly things look different. Phrases like "raping and pillaging Father Earth" don't quite have the same ring to them. Seen as a male figure of authority instead of a female one, the planet loses its assumed passivity and motherly benevolence. It's not a planet bequeathed to us to use up or to conquer, it's a planet that might take us out behind the woodshed and give a good lashing if we don't behave ourselves. If we need to stop thinking of the Earth as something exploit, this might be a useful cognitive exercise.
Pausing from my afternoon jog to stretch my legs, I glanced over at a trail signboard. There was a list of directions for people to follow: no motorized vehicles, clean up your dog's shit, etc... The last bullet point, "Help Protect Mother Earth", stood out as a bit Gaia-esque for a municipal placard. Why not just plain "Earth"?
It has been in vogue among certain circles more oriented toward political correctness to flip around gendered pronouns and conceptions of gender in abstract concepts. As I started back along the path I started wondering why, amidst feminist bumper stickers and politically correct pronouns, I had never heard anyone talk about "Father Earth". It had an odd ring to it, one of cognitive dissonance. But why should it matter which parent our planet is?
A favorite quote that has been echoing through my head since rereading it senior year of college is from John Locke, the English political philosopher: "in the beginning, all the world was America." (section 49) Locke is writing in the late 17th century, and by "America", he essentially means "a limitless expanse of land awaiting cultivation and industry" (and by extension, property rights and money systems, so that we can effectively achieve them). As this land was bequeathed to us by God, it is our holy duty to develop it.
It won't be news to many of you that those ideas are some of the basic conceptual underpinnings of our capitalist society. But bringing gender into the equation is revealing. In Genesis, the LORD God gives Adam the land "to till...and keep" and he gives Adam a woman as "a helper". After they are banished from the garden she is made to "be ruled over" by Adam as well (Genesis 2,3). Man (or at least, the hardworking, worthy man) is given a divine authority over, well, everything. The Earth, the animals, and woman are all his subjects.
For years, feminists have been deconstructing gender and the associated power relationships, with the book of Genesis as a prime target. Across the campuses and liberal party aisles, environmentalists have been crying out on Mother Earth's behalf. What happens when we simply flip the gender on our planet?
Suddenly things look different. Phrases like "raping and pillaging Father Earth" don't quite have the same ring to them. Seen as a male figure of authority instead of a female one, the planet loses its assumed passivity and motherly benevolence. It's not a planet bequeathed to us to use up or to conquer, it's a planet that might take us out behind the woodshed and give a good lashing if we don't behave ourselves. If we need to stop thinking of the Earth as something exploit, this might be a useful cognitive exercise.
posted by ben at 11:10 AM
1 Comments:
very well argued and written. you've given me something to chew on for a while. thanks!
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