The Climate Crisis is Misogyny in Action

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Cheeky Disclaimer: "Woke shit" is incoming. Turn away if that "stuff" is not for you. Get a puke bag or pillow to yell in if you're a glutton for punishment and decide to raise your blood pressure by staying tuned to a topic and a person you already know will make your blood boil. So kinky of you. 🙃

I recorded the first video in August of 2022, six months ago. Since then, there have been different climate catastrophe's happening all over the world. I googled "weather disasters in 2022," and the search came back with over 18 in the U.S. alone in 2022. That's anything from flooding, droughts, and wildfires, to hurricanes and other severe storms. It cost America over $ 1 billion dollars according to Google. Pay attention to my sources here.

In Canada, where I live, there was a "weak" tornado that touched the Capital region last summer. The heavy winds reportedly caused power outages that affected roughly 1.1 million people and other types of damage. At least 11 people were reported dead as a result of trees falling on top of them. We so rarely ever stop to commemorate these lives that are lost due to natural disasters. We barely blink an eye over all the COVID-related deaths, which are in the millions. Others have talked about the obsession with death and dying people with topics like eugenics and necropolitics, so I won't get into it here.

These events recently are nothing in comparison to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey last week on February 6th, 2023.

I've been thinking a lot about the 24 million people left affected. CNN reported that over 36 thousand people have died as a result. Google shows the number is closer to 37.3 thousand. There were almost 90 thousand people left injured, and 1.3 million people have been displaced. I saw a tweet yesterday of a 5-day-old newborn who survived. I've seen images of dogs being rescued. Humans wailing and publicly grieving. People are saying the air smells of dead bodies and others are begging for resources and support. Some agencies have admitted to being inadequately prepared. The damage is far-reaching, including roughly $85 billion dollars worth of damage.

I got most of this information from Google, the laziest of all searches.

I didn't even click on any articles, because it's too painful to read at the moment. And I have the privilege of being on the other side of the world, unaffected. These are just headlines, not first-person accounts. These are human beings, people's friends, and families. Gone, displaced, their lives forever changed. I intentionally raise weak research to say that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to get data on the devastation happening all over. Literally, just Google and see for yourself. Even I know things aren't going well for the planet. To deny climate crisis is really top-tier cognitive dissonance.

And I say this as someone who very much so had my head in the sand at one point for many many years. It still hurts to face reality. Thinking about the various truths I don't like, all around me, makes me want to eat lots of edibles and drink red wine, which I don't even like.

Note, at my most traumatized, when I was the sickest, and unable to face the realities of the world. Back when I was deep in fantasy and delusion, living a pretend life of cognitive dissonance, it was too painful to accept just how bad the situation was. Not only in my life but the planet. When I was in some of the worst shame of my life, I was unable to accept any negativity. I was a walking poster child for toxic positivity. Anything negative got on my nerves, even people in pain. I claimed I was healing, and asked why they couldn't get it together. Meanwhile, my life was falling apart and I was in too much delusion to call a spade a spade.

I shut down all social media. Cut everyone off for many reasons, including because they triggered wounds I couldn't get a handle on. I was a mess and yet, I thought I was awakening, enlightenment. On a spiritual path. A spiritual awakening, I called it.

I called myself spiritual and religious as so many deniers do. "God's got it." "It will be well." "Just negative haters fear-mongering." "The universe will provide." "We have everything we need." "We're abundant." I even went so far as to try to justify the melting ice as destiny and fate, "how it was meant to be." "Those of us from tropical climates will endure and survive." "Atlantis once sunk too." "The dinosaurs disappeared, but we made it. We will again and again." There was the evil and petty side of me that even went so far as to claim some of these disasters were a result of karma when they happened in areas where people who I didn't like or who I felt had wronged me lived.

I mean. Yikes. Yuck. Vomit. Puke. All of that is really bad. Not my proudest moment.

All it was, was spiritual by-passing and denial. I was lying to myself. Like so many of us do when we're too emotionally fragile but ashamed to admit it to ourselves or anyone else. Which leads to us performing like we have it all together. Then projecting our mess onto others. Seeing in them, what we refuse to see in ourselves. Getting irate and mad at them for facing what we don't have the courage to do ourselves. Or worse, making fun of those like us also struggling to come to terms with reality.

While I'm not that much better, I have grown somewhat over the years. It took a lot of work. Admitting I wasn't okay was hard. Asking for help was harder. I still struggle to ask for help. I've spent so much time alone healing, and I'm still in a place where I have to finally focus on myself and heal some more. It's been a never-ending arduous journey. It didn't have to be. But it has been. I think a lot of people know how time-consuming and miserable healing can be, which is why they pretend they are already healed or knock it.

What these last few years of facing harsh truths have taught me is this: things are really really bad. Really really great too. Both and. Holding space for that collapsed binary isn't easy. Finding hope in the apocalypse is impossible. Seeking joy in all the grief is difficult. Insert any and all corny adages that make you roll your eyes.

I now shut up and say very little. I'm still a know-it-all at heart, always have been, but I say much less now. I mostly observe and listen. Including Indigenous and First Nations communities who have been sounding the alarm for decades. I believe in science and scientists going so far as to set themselves on fire, risking death to alert us of impending destruction.

But most of us don't care because climate justice is not sexy. They haven't found a way to make it profitable, so they deny or dismiss the voices that are warning us. Many will not ever believe or change their minds because to care about the land is to in a way, care about women, the feminine, and humanity even. Their operating system isn't built that way.

While some Indigenous communities globally identify with the land and nature as Mother/She/Her (I’ve heard Yaa Asase/Asase Yaa used in Twi/Ghana), I’ve also had debates with white feminists who abhor this idea of the land as gendered, or as “woman”. A lot of these people also despise emotions, kindness, or nurturing anything. To them, no one should be that way, especially not women because we are stereotyped as those things. These same people can't see how alike they are to men they claim to be better than. But I digress.

I'm a Catholic, so I was raised to believe that the Holy Father is above, in the sky looking down at us. My dad did well in teaching me some of the old ways, so I also learned that Mother is down, in the land. I hold space for both.

In my adult years, I've been more focused on honoring the land and the Waters. The water especially. She is my compass, my confidant, and my truthteller. I may be a daughter of Yemaya or Oshun, but that is not my lineage, though I stay appropriating. I love the water. I sing to her when I can. I thank her and compliment her whenever I take in her beauty. I've written a blog about my love for the waters: creeks, rivers, lakes, oceans, and tub water I'm here for all of it.

Corny? Meh. If you don't believe in ancestors or telepathy, or that the winds and trees can communicate to us, if this is all too "Disney Pocahontas," and "woo-woo" for you, well, not sorry. Go on and make fun. Hate on me like you do the earth and emotions. See how all these things are connected?

Historically and to date, we've seen the same done with emotions that are put in opposition with rationale/logic/ or affect. French philosophers like Henri Bergson did away with the concept of space for similar reasons, in favor of time. And Deleuze and Guattari argued for rhizomes over trees, which in my opinion, feels like misogyny at play. I doubt I'm the first to connect the climate crisis with misogyny and hatred of women and the feminine.

Regardless of what you think, Nature, Earth, the land, and its waters have long been gendered as feminine, as women. We can’t deny that femininity is projected onto the land and in turn, treated in similar ways as women and femmes. The land is met with atrocious acts of violence like women are. They fear Nature like they do women. The land is viewed as a threat and approached in similar ways. As something to be conquered, dominated, and property to be owned. Which breeds environmental racism, intensifies greed that upholds capitalism, and results in humans, nature, animals, forests, and even coral reefs all going extinct.

I’m not the first to say this. India’s very own Vandana Shiva and Kenya’s Green Belt Movement founder and African legend Wangari Maathai addressed this in their work. These activists reminded us that we cannot attend to the climate crisis or environmental justice without centering on Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectionality.

Allow me to let the conspiracy theorist in me end the rest of this blog. This was originally posted on Earth Day of 2021. Back then I wrote, "These monsters will stop at nothing to win and "own" everything. They’ll kill and deplete everything on earth, then dip to Mars. That’s it, that’s all. On this Earth Day, Remember this “misinformation” brought to you from a “conspiracy theorist” “with an agenda.” 🙃

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Until next time, in solidarity.