Collie's Bestiary

I have written previously (though not well) on Australian ecofeminist activist and intellectual Val Plumwood's 1994 Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. She offers a theorizing historical examination on the subject of ecofeminism which exemplifies a startlingly brilliant feminist logic. Her brilliantly lucid critique of Western ethics is a consistently theorized and tightly-written examination of [...]

In 1993 a book emerges which provocatively probes ecofeminism's epistemology during its analysis of the historical roots of the oppressive conflation of women with nature. The collection of essays titled Ecofeminism, by Maria Mies & Vandana Shiva, is a biting critique of the colonization of nature, women, and the Third World by the white male [...]

In a brilliantly re-creative intellectual thread, in 1993 feminist lesbian poet Judy Grahn re-members and reclaims the sacrality of women and menstruation in her Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. She notes with startling clarity that, "All origin stories are true" (7), as she offers us a radical new origin myth for [...]

Passing thoughts during the days which bubble up between readings: Crockpots Crockpots are incredibly cool! While I'm familiar with them, I'd never used them to any extent before. For fun and relaxation, and to improve my cooking, I've decided to make one crockpot meal and one casserole dish per week. Last week I made "Sunshine [...]

Reflecting on spirituality vs. ethics, I was fascinated to realize I'd made one of the mistakes the author notes: considering non-violence as equivalent to passive resistance — as nothing more than yet another tactical tool to be used in accomplishing social justice. Instead, Fernandes refers extensively to Gandhi, noting his belief that non-violence is a [...]

This is a review of Leela Fernandes'  Transforming Feminist Practice: Non-Violence, Social Justice, & the Possibilities of a Spiritualized Feminism. The title of the book was the basis of an interesting personal challenge: as a friend put it to me, why apply women's spirituality to feminism or issues of social justice? For that matter, why [...]

I apologize that, due to Wolf's writing resonating powerfully for me, I'm falling back on massive quotes more than I would like to. In my defense I will note that I feel she writes with more clarifying passion than I do, and I want to share that in its purest and clearest form with my [...]

In my last posting on Vagina: A New Biography, I closed with the virulently damaging effects of rape — physically, sensually, and emotionally — for women. As the author notes, there have not yet been any books written to study if men can suffer similar ill effects from rape — though some data seems to [...]

  In an instant, I realized that original sin did not, as the Judeo-Christian tradition has it, originate in human sexuality. Our species' original sin was in deviating from our earliest tradition of reverence for the feminine and for female sexuality, and all that it represented for us. Our original sin lies in five thousand [...]

The horrible reality of domestic violence and rape isn't new, of course — Freud originally reported the emotional trauma which ensues in girls and women who cannot prevent persistent sexual abuse or incest. Unfortunately the sheer number of abused women and children in this condition, throughout all levels of society — along with public outrage [...]