ws test 2
violence against POC
African American activist‐scholars Angela Davis and bell hooks similarly demonstrated that the myth of the Black male rapist of white women was created in the post‐Reconstruction US South to justify violence against Black men, hide the reality of white male sexual depredations against Black women, and create a regime of terror used to maintain segregation and white supremacy. That lynchings of Black men (accused of such crimes as having looked at a white woman) by mobs of enraged white men in the South in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often included genital mutilation, demonstrates that "sexual violence sat at the core of white supremacy" (McGuire 47), not only for Black women, but for Black men as well. Intra-racial sexual violence (sexual violence among people of the same racial or ethnic background), the most common form of violence, also becomes hidden under the myth of the Black male rapist, which shields white male perpetrators from scrutiny at the same time that it makes it harder for women of color to speak out.
raw oppenness- self reflection
AnaLouise Keating's "From Intersections to Interconnections: Lessons for Transformation" (2009) gives us specific strategies to reshape and expand our analyses to create change. She revisits the lessons from Moraga and Anzaldúa's path‐breaking This Bridge Called My Back (1981). We can redefine difference in transformative ways that embrace commonalities and difference into a relational approach. We must also embrace the concept of interrelatedness, realizing that what we do impacts others. Finally, we must listen with "raw openness" to create new pathways to dialogue. Finally, Angelou's iconic poem "Still I Rise" (1978) expresses the ability of Black women to overcome a legacy of racism and oppression and assert a genuine self. She speaks of joy, self‐determination, richness of personality, and visions of resistance. The poem is at once a manifesto of a survivor and of a prophet. It tells women that our spirits cannot be dominated when we individually and collectively fight against oppression. This is a perfect note on which to end this text book. All of these lessons and directives provide workable and hopeful visions of social justice activism.
negative representations
As Gaspar de Alba and Guzmán demonstrate, negative representations of victimized women in the media and society contribute to the State's inaction. In her article on domestic violence, Martha Mahoney also starts from this perspective but adds that stereotypical representations of victimized women and of domestic violence in the legal system also specifically contribute to the State's inability to right the wrongs done to survivors of intimate partner violence. She highlights that the prevalence of intimate partner violence, which is estimated to affect close to half of American women, is hidden by the legal profession's emphasis on the most severe cases.
hegemonic masculinity
As masculinities theorist Michael S. Kimmel explained in Chapter 1, hegemonic masculinity props itself up by demeaning women and feminine men; aggression is the only emotion Western society deems appropriate for men. lawyer, and academic Andrea Parrot, demonstrate in "Scope of the Problem" (1993) how the confluence of these two factors creates a situation in which groups of men in highly hegemonic masculinist organizations such as college fraternities and team sports are more likely to sexually assault women.
violent masculinity
As readings in Chapters 4 and 6 demonstrate, stereotypical representations of women are often violent and coercive. Female subordination and sexual violence are eroticized in our heteronormative culture (Catharine MacKinnon in Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality" 43). In their documentary films, white anti‐violence activist Jackson Katz and African American former football player and film‐maker Byron Hurt demonstrate that violent masculinity is a cultural norm that includes sexual violence against women; it also promotes homophobia and is linked to power and control.
diverse bodies
Based on ideas of "normalcy and desirability," women's sexualities - and their bodies - are used to reaffirm imbalances of power between men and women. Yet rejection of oppressive cultural ideals and institutions can challenge and disorder these same power relations. Forms of bodily resistance and empowerment emerge when women reclaim and combat constricting definitions imposed, created, and internalized by us. This was demonstrated early on by Nancy F. Cott's "Passionlessness".
christianity
Christian feminists have also reinterpreted Biblical texts in more egalitarian ways than most organized churches have. Influenced by Latin American Liberation Theology (a mixture of Catholicism and Marxism that advocates for economic justice for the poor and structural redistribution of resources), UK‐based Argentinian Catholic feminist Marcella Althaus‐Reid, for example, calls for Catholic ethics to be fully inclusive of expressions of queer and female sexuality, including those of poor and indigenous women. Euro‐American Catholic feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether's reformulations of religion include the need to heal the entire earth in a broad ecofeminist spiritual vision for justice.
normative partner violence
Echoing Rich's insight regarding how society normalizes male violence in heterosexual relationships, Mahoney argues that the over‐representation of the most extreme cases of intimate partner violence makes it hard for the legal system and the broader society, as well as the women who are on the receiving end of the abuse, to even identify their situations as cases of intimate partner violence. Mahoney relies on the voices of survivors of domestic violence (including her own) to flesh out her theories and call the legal system, as well as the broader society, to go beyond their denial of the extent of the problem and redefine the terms of analysis.
resistance to violence
Feminist critiques and activism have been instrumental in creating legal concepts protecting women from various forms of "sexual terrorism" (Sheffield). Sexual terrorism is defined as a continuum of violence and threat of violence against women that includes marital rape and battering as well as sexual harassment, and whose goal it is to keep women in subordinate roles to men. The United Nations' 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women includes "[p]hysical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, ... the general community, ... and ... perpetrated or condoned by the State." Influenced by feminist definitions, the Declaration acknowledges that violence against women has both an interpersonal and an institutional component. Chase's search for answers and community led her to associate with already existing activist groups such as radical lesbian feminism and the transgender liberation movement. She created the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA), a major support and information group whose main platform is the elimination of surgeries on intersex infants, in 1993. ISNA works through alliances with journalists and scholars (some of whom are well‐known feminists such as Anne Fausto‐Sterling) as well as transgender, queer, and gay and lesbian activist groups. Unfortunately, alliances with mainstream feminist groups have been more difficult to accomplish, in part because the mainstream feminist movement focuses on women and the existence of intersex people questions the stability of that category.
spirituality/ social justice
Focusing on the ways spirituality can forward social and ecological justice and foster liberation and harmony is another rich area of scholarship (e.g. Anzaldúa; Facio and Lara; Hull; Maparyan; Spretnak). As suggested by Mescalero Apache medicine woman Meredith Begay in her 1994 interview with Native American Religions scholar Inés Talamantez (Mescalero Apache and Chicana) excerpted here, being genuinely spiritual and an effective healer entails understanding "the intricacies of equalness between earth, plant, trees, rock, clouds" and humans, and acting accordingly. Similarly, Women's Studies scholarship highlights the ways holistic healing practices promote empowerment and socially equitable wellbeing in harmony with nature (echoed in Chapter 7's reproductive and environmental justice readings). It is critically aware that healing, "the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again" (Oxford Dictionary), is often solely associated with Western biomedical approaches that tend to focus on curing physical illness. In contrast to concentrating on the end result of whether or not one is cured, many scholars and healers offer an analysis of healing as a process of transformation that attends to the wellbeing of the whole person as a body, mind, and spirit situated within social, environmental, and cosmic contexts mediated by power relations.
naral phood
In "Just Choices: Women of Color, Reproductive Health and Human Rights" (2002), they reframe arguments for women's reproductive health in public policy debates, starting with the priorities of grassroots women. Challenges include the marginality of reproductive health issues in the traditional organizations of people of color, and the difficulty of working with mainstream women's health organizations such as NARAL(the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood.
demedicalization
In the early twentieth century (and into the present) medical opinions still held sway, but industrialization needed female factory workers. Unsafe conditions led to protective labor laws for women only, but these were soon seen as counterproductive to women's enfranchisement (1920 in the United States) because they curtailed allowable jobs for working and middle‐class women on the basis of health and morality (Lehrer). These laws were abandoned soon thereafter. By the mid‐twentieth century women's legal and political status remained woefully inadequate, giving rise to the "Second wave" of feminism that sought shared familial duties, legal parity, and the end of the sexual double standard. Across these centuries, American women were presumed and pressured to be heterosexual (Rich) and able‐bodied and expected to be physically appealing in appearance: standards that were based on Euro‐American middle‐class norms. The backlash against feminism created a fetal rights movement that fostered anti‐abortion activism (after the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973) (Roth).
environmental justice and neo values
M. Jacqui Alexander's "El Mundo Zurdo and the Ample Space of the Erotic" (2002) addresses the necessity for radical political people to embrace spirituality. She says that organized religion's precepts that sex and sexuality are sinful and shameful creates a "fragmented colonization" that prevents a holistic, non‐hierarchical value system that values bodymindspirit wellness amidst a community. Self‐healing, she says, similar to hooks's valuing of love and Morris's call for bodily acceptance, can remind us why we do political social justice work. Through this approach, we can reciprocally heal the collective self. Sze, a self‐identified Asian American woman, details the interlocking concerns and strategies for environmental justice in "Expanding Environmental Justice" (1997). She details the sex‐segregated global workplaces where Asian women are clustered in industries with toxic materials that damage their health. She links this with global economic exploitation, anti‐immigrant policies (that blame immigrants, largely of color, for environmental degradation), and dumping of toxic materials in communities of color.
point 3 healing and spirituality irene lara
Many feminists recognize that spirituality can be oppressive and can also promote liberation. Indeed, several authors critique the ways that heteropatriarchy, imperialism, and nationalism are oftentimes reflected in dominant manifestations of the world's religions, which participate in the division of people into superior and inferior social groups and "true" believers from pagans or infidels, as well as the division of people from "God" and earth from heaven - ideologies that have been used to maintain systems of inequality. For example, in Khus's account of the colonial missionization process in California, she documents how native people were not allowed to leave the Santa Barbara Mission and were made into enslaved workers or killed. Such legacies of religiously sanctioned oppression persist and continue to be resisted by many indigenous peoples and members of religious minorities globally.
islamic
Moroccan feminist sociologist Fatima Mernissi pushed the reformulation of Islam even further in her memoir Dreams of Trespass, extending an egalitarian stance based on Islam not only to all humans, but to animals as well (35). Rifaat's story "My World of the Unknown" (1974/1983) is part of this Islamic feminist tradition. In her article on Rifaat's story, Diya Abdo explains that the short story provides a radical Islamic feminist reinterpretation in which women are seen as participating in the divine principle and female‐to‐female sexual relations p rovide both "sexual and spiritual fulfillment" (401).
independent
Morris identifies key areas that disabled people have reclaimed and renamed: the right for independent living; the rejection of traditional rehabilitation; the medical model where non‐disabled people speak for the disabled; and community‐based self‐help programs that empower the disabled.
dissed abilities
Morris, in "Fighting Back" (1991), applies these same principles to the disability rights movements. Her historical overview, which covers 1969-1990, asserts that non‐disabled people's attitudes towards disabled people are more disabling than the latter's physical conditions. This echoes Hershey's arguments in Chapter 6. Like hooks, Morris states that disability is compounded by intersectional identities: race and social class, and she includes the vital category of heterosexual privilege. For disabled people, affirmation and empowerment comes from organizational bonding with one another both nationally and internationally; this breaks down isolation and creates a better quality of life
violence demographics
Most physical and sexual violence is committed by men. Individual men inflict violence on individual women in order to control them. Lesbians, gay men, and transgender people are often victims of hate crimes, sometimes due to their sexual orientation, sometimes due to their transgressive or nonconforming gender presentation Working‐class transgender people of color are at even greater risk for violence. Violence against women and children occurs in all strata of society and in all cultures; it can happen to feminists and non‐feminists alike, and contributes to keeping women in secondary positions in society. For too many women and children, home is often no safer than the streets. Incest and intimate partner violence often force women and children into poverty and homelessness in Western nations. a pervasive rape culture blames the victim and normalizes violence against women (Buchwald et al.).
eugenics
Offenses of the medical community include the failure of doctors to provide information on side effects of this method of birth control, and the basic arrogance of physicians who make decisions directed at the population control of queer women and women of color. In addition to sharing the stories of Depo Provera's effects, the Committee conducts research on alternative methods of birth control and abortion, disseminating this information electronically on their website.A second example of women of color organizing strategically to promote reproductive health comes from the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Project.
war/ capitalism
Rape is a form of social control that has often been used on a large scale as a weapon of war, in particular in contexts of ethnic cleansing. Wars also tend to create an influx of refugees and displaced persons, the majority of whom are women and children whose refugee status places them at heightened risk for violence, including sexual violence. The same goes with spaces of globalized capitalism such as export processing zones, which draw many rural women who find themselves alone and vulnerable there, as discussed by Ehrenreich and Hochschild in Chapter 2. In their essay "Feminicidio" (2010), Chicana lesbian feminist author Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Chicana scholar Georgina Guzmán examine a particularly egregious and systemic case, that of the serial killing of hundreds of poor young Mexican mestizas (mixed‐race) and indigenous women working in maquiladoras (partially US‐owned plants taking advantage of lax labor laws and access to a cheap, docile workforce) in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, south of the Texas border city of El Paso. The term that feminists have created to describe killings of women just because they are women is "femicide" (feminicidio in Spanish). Gaspar de Alba and Guzmán discuss the fact that the killers have been operating - and continue to operate - with impunity since 1993 and that neither Mexico nor the United States has worked very hard to solve these crimes, in part because the victims are members of several devalued groups who are conveniently seen as prostitutes and blamed for their fate.
ch 10 activism for the future
Readings in this book have highlighted both the means of women's empowerment and their institutionalized global oppression along the lines of gender, race, sexuality, ablebodied-ness, gender identity, and social class. This last set of readings show ways that Women's Studies' intersectional analyses encourage resistance and proactive leadership both locally and globally. In the face of new as well as continuing issues and challenges, these essays provide a road map to further social justice. They emphasize collective struggle rather than exclusive, one‐cause one‐cure thinking, and encourage attention to intersectional identities and strategies for empowerment. hooks, in "Feminism: A Transformational Politic" (1989), argues that it is insufficient to identify patriarchy as the root cause of systems of exploitation and domination.
property
Rose Weitz's overview in "A History of Women's Bodies" (1998/2003) traces legal traditions that defined women's bodies as male property. This assigned them a status less than men's since our bodies were seen as inferior. Women's sexuality was also problematic: African American women pre‐ and post‐ American slavery (largely abolished in 1865) were deemed hypersexual, animalistic, and incapable of being raped.
womanist/ chicana
Several recent contributions in the field attest to ongoing engagement with such concerns, including: womanist theological perspectives largely grounded in African American cultural traditions (Floyd‐Thomas), Chicana feminist perspectives that recuperate Mesoamerican indigenous worldviews and re‐envision the Virgin of Guadalupe, a mestiza Marian figure, and other feminine indigenous deities or revered forces (Anzaldúa; Castillo), Native feminist theology (Smith), Asian American feminist theology (Kim), and more.
point 2 healing and spirituality irene lara
So while one's spiritual and religious identities may certainly go hand in hand, many contemporary writers make a distinction between the two. They associate the latter with canonical texts, fixed tenets, and hierarchical institutions and the former with a more personal, everyday relationship to "God," "Mother Earth, Hutash" (as Chumash activist Pilulaw Khus describes in this chapter), or other names for who or what they consider to have spirit and thus be sacred or divine, including humans, other elements of nature - such as revered homelands - and what Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat expresses in her short story here as "unseen powers in the universe."
interalized/ institutionalized violence
Society encourages female behaviors that can, ironically, put women more at risk, such as seeking men (the primary source of violence against women) for protection against violence, identifying with the perpetrator and wanting to help him, trusting that a man they know would not exert violence against them (Bohmer and Parrot), dis‐ identifying with the image of the battered woman, denying the extent of the intimate partner violence they have experienced, and denying that they are victims of relationship violence (Mahoney). Violence against women is often also part of other forms of oppression. In her essay "Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy," academic and activist Andrea Smith (2006) discusses three different types of institutional violence that white supremacy (or white dominance) uses to establish and maintain itself: slavery/capitalism, genocide/colonialism, and Orientalism/war. In the United States, the first aspect has been used particularly against African Americans, the second against Native peoples, and the third against immigrants of color (especially Latinos, Asians, and Arab Americans).
sexual oppression
Such "controlling images" (Collins 69) served to justify their continuing sexual oppression by white men. During that era, middle‐class Euro‐American women's bodies were diametrically opposed to those of African American women (Washington) and considered frail and asexual (Smith‐Rosenberg) except when conceiving children, a theme resonant in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," which is discussed in Chapter 8.
patriarchal bias in religions
Such legacies of religiously sanctioned oppression persist and continue to be resisted by many indigenous peoples and members of religious minorities globally. Feminists have responded to the patriarchal biases of most organized religions in a variety of ways, from revisions of religious beliefs and practices, such as E. M. Broner's in this chapter, to rejection of organized religions in favor of other spiritual practices. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (or Islamic) feminists have all proposed reformulations of their religions, often based on arguing that a male hermeneutic tradition (tradition of interpretation) of Scriptures has ignored the more egalitarian aspects of the religion. US‐based Egyptian feminist scholar Leila Ahmed demonstrates that there are at least two Islams, one textual, hierarchical, and legalistic (that of male clerics) and one ethical, e galitarian, and based on the oral tradition (an Islam of women, other marginalized groups, and more spiritual branches of Islam such as Sufism) (238-39).
power
Suzanne Pharr, a white lesbian feminist and anti‐racist activist, defines oppression as a norm that maintains its control through institutional and economic power, backed up by violence and the threat of violence. As a way of enforcing oppression, violence always includes an institutional, system‐wide aspect and an interpersonal one
eco/feminist stewardship
Thanks to feminist and ecofeminist work, women have the means to question previous logics of controlling women and nature, and they gain the potential to care for their bodies, communities, and the non‐human members of the natural world in mutually beneficial ways.
psychological violence
The classic 1892 feminist short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," penned by US white middle‐class author, editor, and economist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, illustrates the psychological violence that patriarchal society does to women, even in the absence of physical violence. The story chronicles a female narrator's descent into madness as a response to her alienating conditions of isolation and enclosure in a sparsely furnished upstairs room of her home, as prescribed by her husband after the birth of their son. That the husband is a medical doctor is no accident given the long history of how Western doctors medicalized childbirth and infantilized women in the process (Rich, Of Woman Born 128-55)
population control
The emphasis of these mainstream organizations had been on "choice" as relates to abortion; there is further concern that their drives for inclusiveness might diminish funding that would otherwise go to women of color organizations. Additional challenges come from environmentalists who advocate population control as a corrective for environmental degradation, faith‐based initiatives encouraged during the George W. Bush era, and the dependency of many anti‐poverty programs upon Catholic Charities, which will not collaborate with any organization having a pro‐choice agenda.
feminist motivation
The need to find ways to address violence against women was one of the forces behind the rise of feminism. Feminists contributed the important understanding that sexualized violence against women is motivated more by a desire for power than by sexual desire. In her famous essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Jewish American author Adrienne Rich discusses how male dominance, even violence, in heterosexual relationships is viewed as normal and heterosexual pleasure is linked to violence, while lesbian love is ironically seen as sick and deviant (40, 42).
reproduction
The reproductive capacity of life on earth may inspire wonder but it also occasions alarm when we consider threats to the reproductive wellbeing of female humans, as well as human degradation of the natural environment that sustains all forms of life. The readings in this chapter help us assess cultural narratives that have equated women with nature, ranking them in a hierarchy below men and culture, and seeking to control them through the dominant discourses of gender, heterosexuality, race, and science, which are reflected in colonial, economic, and religious doctrines.
female restoration/ ritual
The restoration of these empowered women's histories goes hand in hand with remembering that before the global advent of dominant manifestations of the Abrahamic traditions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - in which God is represented as male, many cultures gendered God or other powerful spiritual elements of nature as feminine, dual‐gendered, transgender, or non‐gendered. Indeed, such belief systems persist, as depicted in Rifaat's short story featuring a feminine Djinn, a sacred spirit that can take the shape of a serpent... Whatever one's religious or spiritual identity, ritual is a way to perform, perpetuate, and (re)create cultural and spiritual authority, as well as enact personal and collective power, healing, and transformation. Thus, all ritual is political. Women's Studies scholars ask: Who created, revised, or enacted the ceremony? For what ends? What cultural histories and ideologies undergird it? Who should or should not participate in or lead it and who decides? This question is particularly salient for Khus, who raises critical awareness about the historical appropriation of Native traditions by some whites who feel entitled to participate.
domestic violence
There is also a higher incidence of sexual and relationship violence against women in the police forces as well as in the military, especially during war time. In situations of domestic violence, the likelihood of female death increases if men have access to guns. The likelihood of intimate partner violence increases if the perpetrator is intoxicated. The connection between drinking and violence against women clarifies why the nineteenth‐century temperance movement seeking to ban alcohol in the United States was part of the feminist movement (Buhle).
stereotyping
These beliefs, and the laws that enforced them, changed only when women's activism, education, and employment opportunities challenged their assigned emotional and physical frailty. Physicians, as self‐appointed cultural experts, had the power to name and control women's bodies and sexualities: this is seen through the use of gynecological surgeries performed on white middle‐class women (to revert them to their proper roles) (Barker‐Benfield) and the class‐ and race‐bound belief that working‐class and ethnic women and women of color were robust and suffered little ill health.
heteronormativity
These led to homophobia (fear and hatred of homosexuals) among heterosexuals, particularly men. Such norms supported emerging capitalism because they centered the nuclear family, reproduction, and consumer culture. This chapter addresses diverse bodies of color, gender, disabilities, and masculinities. Cross‐culturally the male body is seen as the baseline measure of the desirable body. It is presumed to be biologically, politically, and intellectually ideal (Barker‐Benfield). Hence women's bodies are often defined, controlled, and legislated in ways that support key cultural institutions of patriarchal power, nation‐state authority, able‐bodiedness, and heterosexual and racialized privilege
cultural oppress/pressures
This chapter identifies cultural pressures and institutionalized oppressions that alienate women from our bodies. It offers strategies for reclaiming the body and healing the mind/body/spirit split typical of Western thought. The readings in this section offer historical and contemporary insights into how the norms of able‐bodied persons and heteronormativity (defined as the presumption that heterosexuality is ideal and normal), as well as Westernized ideals of beauty, have been taught and institutionalized. These same dictates valorize masculinities that arose alongside culturally constructed ideals of femininities.
expertise
This is and must be an international movement that makes disabled people experts on their own lives and rejects the inspirational model that puts a disabled person on a pedestal. This liberation movement must - and does - generate self‐definitions and collaborations with other social justice movements. Yet these bold assertions cannot obscure the reality of living with the frailty of the human
body politics
This means realizing our primary source of power does not come from attractiveness, as Mirikitani shows in "Recipe." It means giving voice to disabled bodily experiences, understanding Muslim worthiness, rejecting Anglo‐as‐norm beauty ideals, and challenging the idea that woman's value lies in our heterosexual desirability to men.
approaching reproductive wellbeing from the grassroots
Through both fiction and the collection of women's own stories, feminist writers enable us to hear voices of women disempowered by medical and other social authorities that seek to decide their reproductive lives for them. In "Depo Diaries and the Power of Stories" (2008), women's health advocate Etobssie Wako and Black queer feminist organizer Cara Page share the first person accounts of women who are still affected by a modern‐day version of eugenics. As revealed by the activist work of the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment, medical authorities have been especially aggressive in administering Depo Provera, an injected form of birth control, to poor women and women of color. The assumption is that they cannot be relied upon to employ other methods of birth control, even if they choose to limit their families.
internalization
Women are expected to enforce such oppressions upon other women and upon ourselves through our internalization of sexist rules and because we sometimes stand to benefit from participating in patriarchal structures. This is what Turkish feminist scholar Deniz Kandiyoti has called "bargaining with patriarchy." From mothers who demean their daughters (or daughters‐in‐law) to women who lure unsuspecting girls into the sex trafficking industry, women also perpetuate violence against other women (as the powerful opening of Chicana film‐maker Lourdes Portillo's documentary film Señorita Extraviada makes very clear).
responsibility for liberation
Women have also been agents of domination and this has flourished according to social class and race. Sexism does dominate the private sphere, however, but that same sphere is (often) the source of caring bonds. Sexism, hooks argues, must be part of a larger struggle to eliminate all forms of domination: sexism, racism, and social class privilege, all of which are co‐equal determinants. All of these interlocking forces must be addressed while recognizing that no one woman's experience is universal. To struggle for these goals necessitates love as a source of empowerment. The "Fat Liberation Manifesto" (1973), written by Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran, asserts equal rights for fat people whose identities are often missing from discussions of intersectionality. The authors decry their mistreatment via sexism, commercialism, and medicalization and asserts their intention to reclaim power over their bodies and our lives. But this cannot be done in isolation: the struggle for fat liberation is allied with other social justice movements against classism, racism, sexism, ageism, able‐bodied-ism, financial exploitation, and imperialism. It is a call to reclaim bodily definitions and ally with other liberation struggles. Interestingly, while this is the oldest document in this section, it is still one of the least covered issues in many feminist circles.
ecofeminist approaches to environmental justice
Women have been making a difference in environmental study since they began collecting fossils and illustrating natural history volumes in the eighteenth century. Mindful of an ancient legend, in 1974 women of the Chipko Movement in India hugged trees to prevent lumberjacks from felling their essential community resource. The term "ecofeminist" dates back only to the mid‐1970s, but it is increasingly a part of feminist vocabulary. critiques the hierarchical thinking that has long been accepted as rational, attributing it to "white Western male systems of hatred of all that is natural and female, people of color and working class." calls for continuing scientific critique and seeking of alternate ways of knowing the world without dominating it. King envisions women assuming the stewardship of evolution, accomplished by bridging dualisms and connecting the social evolution of humans to the ongoing evolution of the planet.
women's agency
Women have worked to change the narrative, ministering to their own educational needs, as did the Boston Women's Health Collective when, in the late 1960s, it began developing the self‐help book Our Bodies, Ourselves. As exemplified in this chapter's readings, women of color have been prominent leaders in both conceptualizing and leading movements for reproductive and environmental justice, not just in the United States, but also throughout the world. e
point 1 healing and spirituality irene lara
Women's Studies has long been at the forefront of examining spirituality and healing through a critical and creative feminist lens. While "spirituality" refers to "the quality or state of being concerned with religion or religious matters," it more broadly implies "the quality or state of being spiritual," that is, relating to spirit, a vital, animating force (Merriam‐Webster), within and beyond one's self. As conceptualized by Chicana Religious Studies scholar Lara Medina, spirituality is about the many ways people cultivate balanced relationships "with self, with others, with nature, with the universe, with the ancestors, and with the sacred source and great mystery of life and death" and includes acting on the awareness "of one's interdependence or connectedness to all that can be seen and that is unseen" (167).
illness, healing, and building community
Working from holistic, indigenous perspectives that consider how physical, emotional, spiritual, and environmental factors interweave to create health, several authors engage illness as a state of being out of balance, internally and in relationship to the social and natural world. Navajo (self‐named Diné) neurosurgeon Lori Arviso Alvord analyzes "Life out of Balance" (1999) as a doctor for Indian Health Services and for her Native patients. She reflects on the ways her assimilation of the white world and Western medical training that excluded such holistic approaches has affected her life and therefore the lives of her patients. Moreover, she situates such lack of balance within the broader historical context of settler colonialism to which much illness can be traced: "... it often occurred to me that much of what we were treating were white men's diseases - syndromes and conditions the people would never have known if not for the European colonizers."
fraility
Yet these bold assertions cannot obscure the reality of living with the frailty of the human body. What is needed is feeling friendly towards one's body. This echoes hooks's idea that love is necessary to succeed as a movement.
