THE ECOFEMINIST DESIRE FOR NATURE
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who maintained that it detracted from an agenda that primarily addresses women’s immediate
needs for bodily integrity and civil rights.
14. Unity Statement—Women’s Pentagon Action, 1980, in Ynestra King, What is Ecofeminism?
(New York: Ecofeminist Resources, 1990).
15. Ynestra King, "If I Can't Dance in Your Revolution, I'm Not Coming," in Rocking the Ship
of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics, eds. Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1989), p. 282.
16. See Gwyn Kirk, "Our Greenham Common: Feminism and Nonviolence," in Rocking the
Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics, eds. Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 115-130.
17. For a sensitive and thorough discussion of WomanEarth, as well as an exploration of
issues of race and class in ecofeminist politics in general, see Noel Sturgeon, Ecofeminist
Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action (New York: Routledge, 1997).
18. Sturgeon, Ecofeminist Natures, p. 82.
19. Murray Bookchin, personal communication, June 11, 1998.
20. As ecofeminism has grown in popularity, there has been significant confusion regarding
the origins of the term and of the movement itself. While during the early 1980s, the term
(still largely unknown in many feminist circles) was most closely associated with the Women's
Pentagon Action of which King was a primary organizer, the mid- to late-1980s brought
newcomers unfamiliar with the movement's origins.
In recent years, many have attributed the origins of the term 'ecofeminism’ to an article
written in 1974 by Frangoise d'Eaubonne entitled Le Feminisme ou la Mort, (Paris: Pierre
Horay, 1974). However, the article did not reach English speaking audiences until 1994 (in an
essay translated by Ruth Hottel as "The Time for Ecofeminism," in Carolyn Merchant, ed., Key
Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994), almost
fifteen years after the theory and movement had emerged as a way to explicitly link an
anti-militarist, anti-capitalist, and anti-patriarchal stance to questions of ecology. Though a
version of the d’Eaubonne essay did appear in 1980, in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de
Courtivon, eds. New French Feminisms: An Anthology (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1980), this version does not explicitly mention ecofeminism.
Examining the lineage of the term is a way to explore the specific historical context in which
ecofeminist theory and action emerged. Attempts to trace the ecofeminist movement itself
back to d’Eaubonne obfuscate the historical continuity between ecofeminist curriculum and
writing that emerged at the ISE by King, and the wider context of the U.S. New Left made up
of activists involved in the radical feminist movement, the feminist peace movement, the
anti-war movement, and the anti-nuclear movement.
21. Indeed, many of the anthropological texts written by feminists during the late 1960s and
early 70s used the domestic/public split as a key analytical framework. For a glimpse into this
discussion, see Woman, Culture & Society, eds. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise
Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974).
22. King continued to teach at the ISE through the 1980s and participated in the ISE's annual
colloquium on ecofeminism until 1994. For a more comprehensive discussion of the
relationship between King, Bookchin, and the ISE, see Noel Sturgeon's book Ecofeminist
Natures (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 32-40.
23. Ynestra King, "What is Ecofeminism?" in What is Ecofeminism, ed. Gwyn Kirk (New York:
Ecofeminist Resources, 1990), p. 26.
24. Robert D. Bullard, Introduction in Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the
Grassroots, ed. Robert D, Bullard (Boston: South End Press, 1993), p. 9.
25. Taylor, Dorceta E. "Environmentalism and the Politics of Inclusion." Confronting
Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots, ed. Robert D. Bullard (Boston: South End
Press, 1993), p. 58.
26. Cynthia Hamilton, "Women, Home, and Community: The Struggle in an Urban
Environment," in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, eds. Gloria Orenstein
and Irene Diamond (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1992), p. 217.
27. Gita Sen and Caren Grown, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1987), p. 29.