Masculin and feminin. An ecofeminist approach.

We arrived at this moment of the film where everything can tip over, the suspense is total: will we fall into the abyss that opened before us, or will there arrive from somewhere a miraculous help? In the movies we know that the hero is always rescued despite the alarming images, the distressing music, the evidence of the fatal end, the improbability of the rescue. But are we the heroes of the film 'History of the Earth'?  

Since the Neolithic man has indeed taken himself for the genius of the world. It was quite new this anthropocentrism, what Jean Guilaine calls “self-glorification”. Now man considers himself the hero and he erects great statues in his image.

Until then, the human being composes with Nature, infinitely greater and more powerful than him. He fears and respects it. He sees in it an image of the mother who gives birth and resumes life, who feeds and causes to suffer from famine, who takes care of and punishes. He must struggle to get what he needs; women gather fruits and seeds, dig up roots and men hunt animals[ii]. But already, this hunt can skid and sometimes turns into extinction of species[iii].

However, the real change takes place when humans begin to domesticate animals and land. They now behave as masters of ‘their’ (!) lands, submitting the land with stump and plough, with draft horses and tractors, with organic fertilizers, then chemicals and pesticides.

A second change takes place when humans move from an extensive agriculture for which women are responsible to an intensive agriculture with accumulation of stocks and introduction of trade, and that from the same movement agriculture becomes a man’s business (women now stay home)[iv].

This still takes a turn at the time of the introduction of industrial agriculture, from the end of the nineteenth century.

But it’s not just agriculture, it’s also the industrial revolution, bigger cities, roads and cars, etc. By all this we have profoundly, globally and sustainably changed the Earth’s surface, the Biosphere’s ecosystems, the composition of the Atmosphere. Today we are talking about a new geological era “the Anthropocene”, the era of the Anthropos, the human. We are the master of the Universe. And … at the edge of the abyss.

Everything that has allowed us to control our environment, has led us to this moment when our success seems to inaugurate our loss. The planet is warming inexorably, the sea level is rising imperceptibly but with constancy, the forces of Nature are unleashed, the earth dries out, forests are burning, the air is in places unbreathable, food contaminated by pesticides and heavy metals …

Here we are, facing this terrible truth that we are only small, very small, and that we are nothing more or less than “stakeholders of Nature”, “subject” to its rules.

Throughout the history of homo sapiens, we see a tendency to domination. Domination of women by men first[vi]. Gender differentiation and male dominance seem to precede our species. It is already found in great apes. At first, this dominance was still relative as men and women were together responsible for their children and the survival of their small family. The domination then continued to increase to arrive at its climax in the patriarchal community family. What is interesting is to see that the domination of Nature by man (mostly men) follows the same path, as we saw above.

If we then look at the history of human beliefs, we see the same movement of decline of the feminine. Specialists believe that in the early days of humanity, there was a preponderance of the feminine. Although we cannot speak of a ‘religion of the Goddess’, the feminine was probably very present. First as Mother Earth. One of the oldest myths speaks about 'the Origin of humanity' as 'the Emergence of the Cave'[vii]. But this ‘feminine’ understanding is slowly disappearing. The Sumerian-Babylonian myth Enuma Eliš, Epopée de la Création of the twelfth century BCE, explicitly relates how the ancient goddess Tiamat was replaced by other deities, including Enki, Marduk, who were … gods. The ancient primordial gods, gods of Nature, were thus substituted by more ‘civilized’ and almost exclusively masculine gods. The myth goes as far as to tell how Marduk, after killing the goddess Tiamat, his mother and mother of all being, creates the world by cutting her body into pieces.

We see a parallel development between   

• the increasing domination of the women by men (nuclear family where parents are more or less equal since together responsible for their vulnerable children >>> patrilineal family that favors the eldest son to not disperse wealth >>> patrilineal community family where all sons remain with the father and where women must submit to this androcentric organization) 

• the relative 'disappearance' of the goddess (Mother Earth >>> Great Goddess >>> Goddesses of all kinds but always in subordinate roles)     

• the ever-increasing control of nature by man (restricted harvesting of natural resources (berries, roots, leaves, water, insects, animals) >>> extensive agriculture to meet the needs – women are responsible >>> intensive agriculture focused on an economy of exchange, trade (with the constitution of stocks and accumulation of wealth) - men are responsible       

• increasing societal inequalities (equality between all clan members >>> accumulation of wealth in certain families >>> creation of kingdoms with concentration of wealth in the hands of kings and traders)  

Louis Ansa, thinker and shaman of the late 20th-early 21st century, speaks of a dominant male culture, convex, penetrating, conquering[viii]. It is a way of thinking and acting that does not see things as they are, but reduces what is seen to the (utilitarian) idea which suites man. This leads to an action that colonizes the world in his interest, dominates the Earth, exploits Nature. And we see today where it leads us.  

Lets be honest, this approach has brought us a certain security and an undeniable comfort far from the hard life of our paleolithic ancestors. Facing today problems we need all that science can bring andd every possible and conceivable technical solution. We will need force too, protection and defence. But we also know that if we relie only on this approach it will lead us to the abyss and our loss.

We need the feminine, the concave, the welcoming, the resilient. A "way of acting" and doing which is before everyting else a "way of being" and only after that a way of intervening. This intervention will then know, respect, and consider the other … Even if women are not to be identified with their role as mothers and ‘care’, it is still a great asset to have learned over more than 300,000 years of responsability for their vulnerable children, how to ‘care’. This is absolutely what we need today; to take care of the Planet, to take care of each other.

What’s more, we probably have to forget this image of the sweet, helpful, submissive woman. Being a woman, being a mother is so much more than that. When we delve into the lives of Palaeolithic women, what an extraordinary force it was to raise and protect their children; when we reflect what it needs to ‘give birth’, this primordial force that allows a woman to go through all the suffering so that the child passes the birth canal; when we read the ancient myths about often ferocious goddesses, Forces of Nature; when we look at Nature how it can be merciless but invigorating … woman and feminine rhyme above all with Force. And again, we really need it.

It seems obvious to me that we must balance the masculine by a good dose of this feminine which is both 'care' and 'strength'. We must learn to live differently with the Earth, with plants, fungi, bacteria, with our non-human animal brothers and sisters, with our human animal brothers and sisters. We will have to learn to 'be'. Learn the concave, the welcoming, the resilient. It’s a question of both women and men. Even if most women are more gifted, it is also up to us men to learn this femininity. It is perhaps the only way to have 'a happy end' to our movie.

[i] Guilaine, Jean (2015), ‘La seconde naissance de l’homme. Le néolithique’, Eds. Odile Jacobs, Paris, p 136-138 et 140

[ii] This distribution is not an invention of misogynist researchers, but is currently accepted as a fact by all scientists. Comp. Lahire, Bernard (2023), ‘Les structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines’, Eds. La Découverte, Paris et Todd, Emmanuel (2022), ‘Où en sont-elles. Une esquisse de l’histoire des femmes’, Eds. Seuil Paris.

It seems that this is the cultural consequence of a biological constraint, secondary altriciality (the fact that in human animals children develop for long years outside the womb, being extremely vulnerable during this time and that women are forced to wear them and breastfeed.

[iii] Harari, Yuval Noah (2011), ‘Sapiens. A Brief History of Mankind’, Vintage, London, p 80 et Reeves, Hubert, ‘Là où croît le péril, … croît aussi ce qui sauve’, Eds. Points, Paris, p 63 – 109

[iv] Todd (2022),p 167

[v] Genèse 1, 26 : "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let him be master of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the beasts, all the wild beasts, and all the creatures that come and go upon the earth.".

[vi] See the two recent monographs of Lahire and Todd already mentioned.

See our post 'The Primordial Force of Mother Earth' and the post 'Finding Hope in the Origins of Life', in the 'The Soil' section of the Blog.

[viii] See Ansa, Luis (2015), ‘La Voie du Sentir’, Eds. du Relié, 2015, Paris