Activism Blog #2

1)      To begin service learning for this week, Amanda and I met with Abigail at the Wellness Center to label and distribute boxes for the drive that we organized for Harbor House, the local domestic violence women’s shelter. After the decorating was complete, we placed one box in the Wellness Center and the other box in the Women’s Studies office in Colbourn Hall. I enjoyed the creative and relaxing aspect of decorating the boxes, but I wish that we had begun the drive earlier in the semester for a more successful drive with more donations. On Friday night and Saturday evening, I was a volunteer for Active Minds, who hosted their national convention at the University of Central Florida this year. During my Friday shift, I assisted in checking people in and assuring that they arrived at the correct destinations for their presentations. On Saturday, I mainly aided the coordinator at the merchandise counter, lending a hand to help people find the correct size and color for their purchase and also handling transactions. I actually liked volunteering at the conference a significant amount more than I expected to.  I wish that I had gotten the chance to actually participate in the conference and sit in on some of the presentations instead of working behind the scenes, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Active Minds employees and the other volunteers who I had the chance to meet in the process, most (actually upon reflection, all) women who each had interesting backdrops to how they ended up at the conference.

2)      Working with Mentors in Violence Prevention, we predominately focus on male violence toward women in heterosexual intimate relationships. This directly correlates with the concept of ecofeminism, defined as “the connection between the dominations of women and the domination of nature,” based upon “masculinist social institutions and the destruction of the physical environment” ( Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 539). The patriarchal society in which we live in and contribute to bases its authority through the supremacy of men in our social, political, and economic systems. Just as women are sexualized in our society, which systematically contributes to heterosexual domestic partner violence, “in western thought, nature is often feminized and sexualized through imagery such as ‘virgin forest,’ ‘the rape of the earth,’ and ‘penetrating’ the wilderness” (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 539). From a dualistic standpoint, the male-connoted terms such as “ culture, mind…[and] civilized… are valued over nature, body, female, [and] primitive, which are thought of as ‘other’ and inferior”(Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 539).  Furthermore, by working with Active Minds last weekend and watching ‘The Story of Stuff’ in lecture, I saw the relationship between the toxicity of the products that we as humans, but primarily we as women, put on our bodies and mental illness. Many of the ingredients that are not regulated by the government, which is dominated by men, or companies who produce cosmetics and personal care products, who are predominately men, have been proven to cause neurotoxicity, which may conceivably contribute to female mental illness.

3)      Our unit on ecofeminism really fascinated me, as I define myself as a life-long environmental activist and feminist. I had never even fathomed that the two were related though, and upon analysis, I’m fascinated and shocked all at once. It makes more sense to me why I find acts of oppressing women and pillaging the environment both so disturbing when I view them both as byproducts of male domination within our society. Consequentially, because this unavoidable connection within our social system, advocating for one injustice also indirectly serves as avocation for the other. By working with Mentors in Violence Prevention, I am playing a small part in the insistence of respect for all of humankind, regardless of gender, and the environment in which we live.  

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Rey. "Women and the Environment ." Women's lives: multicultural perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 539. Print.