Eco-Feminism And Its Meaningfulness In Practice

Ecofeminism is the outcome of environmental movement and the feminism of the modern era in the West. It was born on the social movements of the end of 1970s-the start of 1980s. The proponents are Karen J. Warren, Val Plumwood, Carolyn Merchant, Ariel Salleh, Vandana Shiva, Judith Plant, Rosemary R. Reuther, Ynestra King and so on. These people gave many viewpoints and introduce social fairness into our eyeshot from women special historical status. They make us to think reasons of environment problems and ecological crises from new angle, and turn on a new thought to settle these crises.Though the debate is still there, the ecofeminism is quite influential in the western feminism, environmental philosophy and the eco-ethics after the development of twenty years. The lens of eco-feminism includes a prepatriarchal historical analysis, an embracement of spirituality, and a commitment to challenging racism, classism, imperialism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, anthropocentrism (i.e., human supremacism), speciesism and other forms of oppression. The synthesis of the political and the spiritual is one of ecofeminism's most appealing features. It tries to disclose the oppression of the patriarchy and the dichotomy upon environment and women by rethinking the close relationship between the gender oppression and the abuse of the nature in human thoughts and social structure. Ecofeminists believed that the change of the oppressed social status of women depends on the harmonious development of ecological circle. They are against all kinds of dominance and oppressions and set the targets of removal of oppression, women liberation and the relief of the ecological crisis, and thus establish a new set of social order, cultural concepts and the way of thinking and thus form a new type of relationship between person and person, between person and nature. It is a feminism theory and a ecological ethnics and a multiplex-cultural viewpoint. It have flowing and unfixed features. Simultaneously, ecofeminsm has a commonness of post-modernism and theory: anti-traditionalism.Nowadays, the ecological crisis is the main problem we confronted in the world, ecofeminism offers us a brand -new perspective for our understanding and settlement to the ecological crisis, while enlightening us from the angle of combined nature and female each other: the problems of environment and female are not at all isolated to each other, we should stand on one new development viewpoint, seek the methods for settlement to the ecological crisis and lightening the pressure coming from environment problem on society through organically integrating the both and a good many social problems.The essay first introduces the ecofeminism systematically and then makes the comparison between ecofeminism and other trends of thoughts and then based on this the essay analyzes the theoretical and realistic meaning of the thought. The essay means to contribute to the environmental protection and the theoretical establishment concerning the field.