Hey guy’s!

So my plan is going according to plan I purchased all items it has been three days of me eating vegan dinners. They haven’t even been that bad I started on Sunday the 26th and I’ve been going strong. It’a already been three days and I can already tell you the difference. My energy has elevated, I’ve even allowed myself to have avocado toast for breakfast every morning. I even add tomatoes and pinch sometimes! Melted vegan cheese is delicious. Being able to cook this stuff makes me feel so good about it. Sunday I started off with vegan cheese pizza from Shaw’s and it melted in my mouth. I was so excited it didn’t even taste different then regular pizza! Ah-maze-balls! This project has been pretty much my positive aspect right now with all this COVID stuff going around. On Monday night I had vegan mac and cheese and it tasted better than regular mac and cheese. The cheese was so much creamier I was beyond belief with every bite. Unfortunately today is Tuesday and I realized that I ran out of Kale so the meal wasn’t all that great but I read on it and heard that it had good “brain” foods. It’s been 30 minutes since I ate it and honestly… I feel a tad bit smarter? I think I’m gonna go pick up a vegan pizza again because I’m still hungry!

This is my second to last blog on this I really wanted to check in, in the middle of the week so you guy’s could understand my feelings how it’s going to so far. Three days down four to go. I think this might become my life style I love cheese and the vegan cheese works for me. I’ve also been reading a lot of poems that have to do with being vegan heres one I read today:

Vegan poem from vegan

I’ve also influenced my roommates to take part and now I will be forced to make extra meals so they can also eat with me! I’m so excited that my plan is already taking effect on people around me, I’ve decided to post it and my meals so other people can join me. Hopefully I will make a vegan group and have a huge following and see how far this can take me! I’m also getting into baking vegan deserts like sugar cookies! I used to eat them at dartmouth all the time!

I can’t wait to check back in with you, I’ll just be coming to re-edit this post in four days so check back for the update!

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO GOSSIP GIRL

WE ALMOST DONEEEE YALL

Guy guys, so we turned in our finals and it’s time to say good bye. I would like to say going vegan for a week made life a lot better for me, and I’m going for week two! I’ve decided I’m going to do this for the rest of May and then start a new diet. I suggest everyone try this act of eco feminism I believe it restarts your body. Daily exercises work well too.
This morning I had avocado toast with carrot dip, it was so good. I didn’t even realize how different vegan foods taste like regular food but more flavorful! This class has opened my eyes to a new lifestyle and I’m forever grateful I’ve decided I will be starting my own blog and it will be of topics I love to talk about. So please tell me some topics in the comments I would love to check them out. As for me my ecofem project was a success! WOOHOO

xoxoxoxoxo Gossip Girl

I don’t know if this will count as the assignment but you said to go back and redo a blog that we believe we did weak on. I don’t believe I did weak on any blogs, my blog was full of my personality and full of myself being raw. Though I wanted to take the time and do a blog of my own on something that matters to me. It’s about colorism in African women. I decided to find my own readings to read before posting this blog. It’s an article that’s in the book “Race, Gender, and class by Taylor J Matthews and Glenn S. Johnson.

The article is “Skin Complexion in the Twenty-First Century: The Impact of Colorism on African American Women”. Black women already have to struggle being the bottom of the food chain when it comes to humans. You’d think the fact we struggle and we understand the true pain, that we would come together in our own community. There are way too many instances when I feel a dark skin woman doesn’t like me because I’m light skin, or where light skin women try to get me to help them bash darkin women. There is a quote in the article that is as follows “Among african “among african americans there exists there exists an arrangement of skin tones with varying degrees from light to dark; some shades are considered more acceptable than others.”(Matthews/Johnson,250) When they say some shades are considered more acceptable than others, they mean mostly light skin women are considered more acceptable and why you ask? Because we are closer to white/caucasian color. Which is so ignorant and beyond me. Further in that same section they state that the “lightness of a woman’s skin leads to higher personal self esteem and social capital”(250) It made me rethink my life for a second, and honestly my skin has always upset me. I’m too white for the black kids, and too black for the white kids. It’s terrible. Though I can understand why they would think that having light skin would give you more of a personal self esteem. Though I was also in a multi-colored family so I didn’t understand why people compared skin colors and started a light skin VS dark skin women craze. I believe this is a part of ecofeminism because black women have so much in comparison to nature, and they believe in protecting nature and going natural 100%. I think this element should be added to the ecofeminism course at Umass Dartmouth. Understanding black women, and understanding nature. It will give students the outlook when it comes to black women and ecology. A Lot of black women use plant based products for their products. There are so many relations and articles that can support this to be its own section in the course.      

Mathews, Tayler J., and Glenn S. Johnson. “Skin Complexion in the Twenty-First Century: The Impact of Colorism on African American Women.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 22, no. 1-2, 2015, pp. 248–274. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26505337. Accessed 25 Apr. 2020.

Praxis

For my act of ecofeminist I didn’t know what to do. I sat here wondering and nothing was coming to mind that I loved, I decided to see what my peers were doing. Peter’s blog made me realize I’ve been a vegetarian but I’ve never tried to be a vegan. I love to cook so I love that idea and I could learn new recipes so I’ve put my vegan dinners only. I’ll be trying to eat vegan for dinner for a week. I don’t really eat breakfast and lunch anymore which is really bad but I’m stressed so dinner suits me well and some apples throughout the day. So I want my dinners to be my starting place of a healthier lifestyle. Peter gave me this idea and I’m going to expand on it. Below are the recipes I will be making! This will take time because I am really picky so my meals would have to look and taste good. I will be doing research and reading up on other vegan blogs, and meal journeys and see if I can relate to those.     

Monday

Vegan mac and cheese. 1 cup of Broccoli, 2 cups of vegan cheese, and 1 cup of pasta.

Tuesday

Kale blackbean & avocado burrito. Kale, ½ a cup of black beans black beans, ½ an avocado and 2 cups of kale.  

Wednesday

Spaghetti squash. 1 whole squash, and vegan pasta sauce. 

Thursday

Avocado toast. 2 slices of bread, vegan butter, ¼ avocado.  

Friday

Chickpea soup. 1 can of chickpeas, 1 cup of kale, 1 cup of spinach, 2 cups of water.

Saturday

Tofu Vegan pizza from shaws. I’ve never had this, this is something I want to try though I’ve had tofu before and it wasn’t bad so I hope I like this!

Sunday 

Vegan pizza from shaws. It includes everything vegan inside of it. I love pizza so I wanna end my Sunday with a regular cheese vegan pizza. 

I hope I can do this and I don’t just cave and order burger king! Wish me luck! I chose these meals because I’ve had them at the farmers daughter. These are all thing’s I’ve ate before so I hope I can master making them. This will give me a different outlook on life I believe. After learning all the information I’ve learned for this course I think I’ll be able to do this a lot more confident.

As I have stated in my blogs before, we as humans have reversed the role of nature, placings humans at the top. The last time I checked, humans inhabited the earth, not the other way around.

Society as we know has pretty much grouped up every group there can possibly be, only to maintain control of course. “Intersectionality is a way of thinking about how our social identities intersect.. Intersectionality is a concept that helps us think about the ways that a person might be oppressed in one category, and be privileged in another.” The social identities that society has created further connect us to nature. This concept offers the idea that if you are first somewhere you are last somewhere else.

If only we as humans would understand our role on this earth.

The survival of the species necessitates a renewed understanding of our relationship to nature, of our own bodily nature and of nonhuman nature around us; it necessitates a challenging of the nature-culture dualism and a corresponding radical restructuring of human society according to feminist and ecological principles. Adrienne Rich says, “When we. speak of transformation we speak more accurately out of the vision of a process which will leave neither surfaces nor depths unchanged, which enters society at the most essential level of the subjugation of women and nature by men…”   (470-471).

To accomplish this idea feminists present on their behalf, it is suggested that there needs to be a reconstruction of human society. I could not help but relate this concept of intersectionality to the times we are currently in. I believe that this pandemic is due to an uncontrolled forced elevation of the human species. Instead of adapting to our surroundings, humans have created their own surrounding: landscape, buildings, etc. The same way we maintain the homes we live in,we should be maintaining the earth in which we inhabit. It is the same idea that ecofeminists fight for.

It has been 21 centuries and we still have been fighting the same fights. We have created groups within groups(social identities) : males against females, heterosexuals against homosexuas, young against old, rich against poor, black against white, religion against religion. The argument that intersectional feminists are trying to prove is that you may want to get rid of feminism, but in modern day there are many social identities that will still remain an issue to feminists. When Crenshaw introduced the intersectionality idea, it gave feminist a bigger responsiblity to protect against discriminiation of all kinds. Sexism does not only cover male and female, it now involves those who may not identify as male or female, or maybe those who identify as homosexual and not the societal heterosexual way. It is just inevitable to argue against a feminist at this pount because the history of women root deeper than a physical connect, it is more like a NATURAL connection.

The ecofeminist intersectionality theory shows that even within these many identities, everything connects itself to our purpose for living on this earth.  “When we look at social injustice through an intersectional framework, it means that ending sexism will never be complete unless we also end racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, etc. as they are deeply connected to sexism.” Women have always had a connection with nature, which is why we fight so hard to protect it. At the rate human society is going, as privileged, nature and earth as we know it is being categorized as underprivileged. 

Women are the producers of life as life is also produced through nature. We personify the conditions and the processes of nature as “Mother Nature”. We see the connection of woman and nature through an array of movements posed by women. For example, in India, The Chipko movement, an organized resistance against the destruction of forests. The movement got its name from the word ‘embrace’, as the villagers would hug the tree in prevention of the contractors from cutting them. In the Chipko movement reading it mentions, “In the 20th century, it began in the hills where the forests are the main source of livelihood since agricultural activities cannot be carried out easily”. In this movement we see these women protecting LIFE which is not in the form of a child but the nature of woman is to care, to nurture, to protect. It is inevitable that women take the control of the land due to the connection that almost reciprocates as nature produces the necessities for living things to maintain life, where women bring forth the life that inhabits the earth. 

Now we’ll visit the motherland where concrete and highrises have not taken over. In an article, “Speak Truth to Power” by Wangari Maathai, we find out that “women hold primary responsibility for tiling the fields, decoding what to plant, nurturing the crops, and harvesting the food. They are the first to become aware of the environmental damage that harms agricultural production:…” We see that in African, women are the caregivers of the land as they have the knowledge of what the land needs. In return for the land being taken care of, the land produces the crops that supply the food for their family. 

After reading these texts, it is really sad what women went through all in the name of protecting the land. It’s like we are “biting the hand that feeds us”. Along with the knowledge of the role women posed in Africa, Maathai shares her experience as a fighter. “Maathai was hospitalised after pro-government thugs beat her and other women protesters. Following the incident, Moi’s ruling party parliamentarians threatened to mutilate her genitals in order to force Maathai to behave ‘like women should’.” I think about the people that do not carry out peaceful protests, those who protest through causing harm to others and those who protest through disrupting the peace. I don’t ever remember where hugging a tree to stop man from cutting it down deserves threats and being beaten. The math just doesn’t add up. A civil protest breeding uncivil consequences? I think not. 

There are too many instances where women are being abused for land, especially the women whose ancestors the land belongs to. An article in The Guardian, “ Dakota Access pipeline: At Standing Rock, women lead fight in face of Mace, arrests and strip searches. Prairie McLaighlin, a Native American woman, describes her journey as she protests against the Dakota Access pipeline. She says, “ a group of male and female guards forcibly removed her clothes where she refuses to strip in front of them.” Her daughter, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a continuer of the movements’ legacy, led the growing movement to stop the multibillion dollar project threatening their land and culture. “ Her friends have been arrested and subjected to what they describe as cruel and inhuman treatment”.

In my “Im Pro-whatever you wanna do” blog I talked about abrotion should be considered for the sake of saving mankind. I connect these two ideas to show that as we continue to overpopulate the earth we also continue to run through natures’ gifts (resources) to survive, and at the same time we destroy the land to inhabit it. The exponential destruction of nature and overpopulation has made humans like a parasite killing its host(earth) from within. And we wonder why there are so many hungry children in Brazil, says an article, “The Brazilian Slum Children Who Are Literally Swimming in Garbage”. Like i previously stated before, women are the producers of life, why in the world wouldn’t they defend something(nature), they produce the same quality of life.

thanks for coming.. hope you’re staying safe, I can’t wait for this to be over. I’m so tired and bored of this life. stay safe and stay home xoxo a very bored senioritis senior.

Hey y’all, let me guess y’all didn’t think you’d get two posts in one day? WELL HERE YA GO BABES. Please understand my writing in this one is going to be completely different than all my other blogs. I decided to focus on actual facts then allowing my own personal stance on this to take over my blog. I’m sticking to the proposed ideas of Ronnie Hawkins. 

After reading Ronnie Hawkins’ Reproductive Choices: Ecological Dimension, I feel like we might be closer to figuring out why this theory of ecofeminism is such an issue. Diving deeper into the idea of feminism we are introduced to ecofeminism, a movement that combines ecological concers with feminist, concluding both resulting from the domination of man in society. In this article, Hawkins’ argues the ecological side of this feminist idea concerning abortion. Hawkins’ believes that while the talks on abortions are maily based on moral beliefs and humane opinion, we need to consider the even bigger picture, the world we live in. 

Hawkins uses overpopulation as evidence for consideration of abortion because as ecofeminists, we take responsibility for not just human life but life given to us through nature. According to the article, over the past two centuries the human population has increased to about 5 and 6 billion people worldwide and is said to be expanding logarithmically. As we continue to read we see that the maximum number of people the planet’s resources will support is between 10 and 12 billion people. In a matter of two centuries we are almost more than double the maximum number.

When we do not consider abortion we are turning a blind eye on how this decision affects the earth. With resources already 50 percent reserved, not considering abortion as a means of population control would be neglecting the balance of nature and how it provides for all life forms. The more births, the more resources being used which creates a domino effect that not only deconstructs nature and its purposes for us but also deconstructs the power the feminist theory give women over nature. 

What I believe Hawkins’ is arguing is that if you consider yourself to be a feminist/ecofeminist, then abortion should be considered in support of their responsibility of nature. In an ecofeminist approach, all life is considered. Throughout the article, Hawkins’ explain the bigger picture of how this topic at hand affects life as we know it. 

Ecofeminism supports the idea that we must deconstruct the domination of humans over nature in order to introduce change. In the module labeled “Ecofeminism background” there were 3 points that the argument was compressed to, one of which caught my attention in writing this supportive argument. “(3) thus feminism is also a movement to end naturalism: the liberation of women requires the liberation of nature (and vice versa)…(page 2/7)” With overpopulation as a factor of evidence to consider abortion Hawkins explains that this also affects nature. So with a feminist job to end naturalism, being that the liberation of women requires the liberation of nature, we cannot neglect abortion out right without understanding how this may affect the world. As i talked about before, the more people on the earth, the less resources we have access to which starts to accelerate the destruction of nature due to lack of resources.

Hawkins’ article ends with important evidence that supports why abortion should be considered in circumstance.

“Abortion has recently received attention as a problematic issure for ecofeminists: it has been viewed as a ‘masculine’ response to unwanted pregnany that ‘fails to respect the interconnection of all life,’ and as a choice that is difficult to reconcile with ‘an abstract pr-nature stance’ that would allow ‘natural’ events suchas pregnancy to run their course. However, if as [Val] Plumwood maintains, there is a need to reconceptualize both the concept of the human and the concept of nature, part of meeting this challenge will lie in reconceiving ourselves as beings essentially of the natural world and yet beings whose nature it is to be active choosers of our own actions, responsible for their efforts on eachother and on other lifeforms, including the effects of out own reproductive activities. At the present time, recognition of our connectedness with all other life on the planet reinforces the need for abortion. When the interests of life in this larger sense are taken into consideration, the pro choice position is the one most deserving of the adjective pro life’.(693)”

Ecofeminist argument against abortion would be, in a way, neglecting the self inflicted responsibility of nature. Which would go against the theory of feminist. Their argument only supports a fraction of the bigger picture that Hawkins is trying to explain. Hawkin’s is arguing that we cannot try to save human life without considering the domain in which it provides us humans, the means of sustaining our lives on earth. 

I personally believe everyone should have their choice on abortion regardless of what happened whether they got pregnant by choice or rape whatever they choose is their personal business. They should also see how it would affect them and how it would effect the environment. Before I used to be a strong believer that abortion should be illegal but as I got older I realized I can’t force someone to hold something in their body. They deserve to be in control of their own bodies and choices for their future. Yes abortions are sad, and all women who have them feel hurt when they do so. So please lets not shame them. That’s all I will say, thanks for reading..

xoxo Gossip Girl.

Here we are again ladies and gentleman sorry for the wait but wifi isn’t free (; ANYWAYS I hope everyone is safe & sound and staying at home seriously, don’t be the idiot who causes more spreading of this b.s we have to go through, k thanks. 

• This week’s blog is gonna be a little different, it’s based off of Kari Norgaard and Richard York’s article about Gender equality and state environmentalism. Before diving in let me just say that women deserve to be in politics, and not only do they deserve to be in politics but they deserve to be heads. To lead, and to show true power. Here’s the link to the article PLEASE click and follow along as I go:

https://pages.uoregon.edu/norgaard/pdf/Gender-Equality-Norgaard-York-2005.pdf

So we start off with a question:

 “Does the degree of gender equality in the political realm within a nation have an impact on state environmental policy?” (507). Of course I have to state that you can’t have a political environment filled with just one gender. It’s crazy to even think that. Women and men react to things differently and women definitely relate to nature more. It’s even said through research that women show more support for the environment than men. York states “This research indicates that women are more likely than men to express support for environmental protection and that women consider a variety of environmental risks, from nuclear power to toxic substances, to be more serious than do men”(508). This reminds me of our women/nature association blog. How many time’s am I going to tell you guy’s women just make more sense when it comes to nature. Men are associated with ‘going hunting’ especially in childrens disney/pixar movies while women are described as ‘singing to nature’ in Disney movies. In general women are labeled as more nurturing than men and when it comes from an eco-feminist perspective I do believe that woman do care for nature more than men, but only because of all the comparisons they have with one another. You can refer back to our blog that compares animals to women. I use the disney example to give you how it’s been from the beginning of time, and through our society. Showing how important it is to the point it can take over a children’s movie to push the agenda that women are closer to the environment than men. Norgaard and York discovered that “girls had higher levels of environmental awareness than boys; in Australia, girls exhibited greater environmental responsibility than did boys when socioeconomic levels were held constant” (509). Implementing that they can “consider the percentage of women in Parliament as a key indicator of a nation’s gender politics”(511). 

While researching this more I found two more articles that support this notion and what it’s saying. One being Gender Differences in Environmental Concern: Revisiting the Institutional Trust Hypothesis in the USA  by Chenyang Xiao and Aaron M. McCright.

In their article they learn research indicates that “..environmental concern has consistently found that women have modestly stronger pro-environmental values, beliefs, and attitudes than do men.”(17) Implementing that with women being consistent with their relationship towards the environment they would be of great help help when it comes to the states environmental beliefs. My second article is Bread and Roses: A Gender Perspective on Environmental Justice and Public Health by Karen Bell, which argues that women who make a lower income than men are “perceived as having less social status than their male counterparts as a result of entwined and entrenched capitalist and patriarchal processes.” She also agrees that when it comes to the environment women should be in attendance when she proposes “that environmental justice research, teaching, policy and practice should be made more gender aware and feminist orientated.” 

_{Thanks for checking the blog out, please remember to stay safe & stay home #SSSH. Please bare with this blog it was all done off my phone, I’ve been laid off because of everything that’s going on so my wifi hasn’t been paid but fortunately my dad’s going to lend me $ tomorrow so hopefully your favorite gossip girl will have a better blog in the future, xoxo GOSSIP GIRL!}

Wait a minute before you continue reading did you read my title? Let’s read that again but slowly.

Admit. It. You’d. Rather. Eat. Your. Wife. Not. A. Burger. Oh wait.. what’s the difference? 

I’ve already told you about when I was a vegetarian now let me tell you WHY I turned into one. In 6th grade I was introduced to a video of how McDonalds chicken nuggets were made.. now at the time? We had just had baby chickens at our school the week before. They killed little baby chickens in the video, the week before I was playing with them. It’s so sad that the same baby chickens I played with were going to be used to either be forced to get plump and die for human foods, OR they are forced to lay eggs. I learned that baby chickens are forced to eat food an they put chemicals in their food that make the chickens grow bigger and faster. The conditions that the chickens live in I wouldn’t want my own dogs to go through that. How can dog be mans best friend and we allow ourselves to eat chickens.

We were told to choose three images and explain what we learned and all that good stuff, I’m gunna switch it up I’ll allow you to understand what I’ve learned but I will also include my own opinion on these photos. I suggest you stop reading now if you’re a man because you will probably most likely feel attacked I don’t mean to do so it’s just how society was built. Fight the government if you have to(PS MAKE SURE YOU VOTE!)

In an interview with Carol Adams we learn from an early childhood she realizes that ‘critters’ in her terms were her friends and she loves them. Due to the death of her pony she converts into a vegetarian she states:

“Why am I eating a dead cow when I wouldn’t eat my dead pony?”(Adams,12)

In the pictures placed above I chose these three images because they share the same message. In the first picture you can identify a pig dressed and snapped as a woman with words above her that say “Best butts in Georgia” and to the right of it there is a menu. In the interview with Adams during a question she tells us during “the sexual politics of meat slideshow” she now gives out a handout with nine feminist vegan posts and one is:

“6) Women are animalized and animals are sexualized and feminized.”(Adams, 13)

Now with learning that looking at the pig image it’s not just an image it’s abuse of an animal. It’s also highly disrespectful that they would draw the pig in the image of woman allowing viewers ESPECIALLY MEN because clearly the sex appeal is for men, and after my last post you learned that meat is usually a male food. Meaty cheeseburgers are a male food item, while little pathetic salads are for women. The next image shows a rack of ribs and two women with healthy chests with the caption “Best racks”.. where was the joke? You just sexualized a woman and compared her to a rack of ribs, her breasts are what? Edible? Shoot just throw your wife in the oven at that point when you use comments like that. We finish off with our last image “eat me” along with a burger. Now we could’ve stopped right their but of course to pull in customers and it’s CLEAR AS DAY that they were pulling in men customers they added some legs with netted stockings and red high heals. Now to me that could be used as an advertisement for pimps to gather more prostitutes but hey that’s just me. It’s actually really sick, and also a prominent issue that society has. Everything is to please the man. Food is for men, women are for men, men deserve the world at this point. Excuse my french but lets just say fuck the animals, fuck the women, fuck everything as long as the ‘man’ is happy fed and full everything is okay. ITS NOT. Sexualizing foods allows men to feel as if they have the upper hand. We are taught as children repetition is key, and consistency and how you present yourself. Our society from the beginning of time has had the same thing of all three but for men. Images like this give men the okay to treat women like they are a piece of meat, advertisements like this give men the okay to rape. I asked a random male from one of my classes how do you feel about women after looking at these three images.. he laughed at me and I quote he said:

“If advertisements don’t even respect women.. what makes you think I will?” 

That’s where I’ll leave it.. xoxo gossip girl & a VERY irritated and opinionated small girl with BIG opinions. 

WELCOME BACK TO MY BLOGGGGG!

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Here’s a quick story. I was a vegetarian from 6th grade to 10th grade, unfortunately I ended up getting sick because I wasn’t growing at the right pace and I guess I wasn’t getting all the nutrients I was supposed to get. It’s weird because once I started eating meat again I stopped losing as much energy and I gained so much weight. I tried again for a year from 2017-2018 but one day I just stopped I don’t remember why.

So my Professor posted this picture up and asked my class to tell her why she chose this image, after doing some research I’ve come to the conclusion that this picture was chosen because of the fact there is already a knife stuck through the meat with a little human. For some reason the little human didn’t have a gender at all so I knew it stood for all humans and to me it’s “Humans taking a big bite of something they can’t finish”, this image was chosen to shower dominance when it comes to humans and animals.

Whenever you eat a Banana what do you think about? For me I don’t really think about anything but there was a point in life where I refused to eat Bananas. There’s like this secret in society that everyone know’s about so maybe it’s not much of a secret but maybe a social construct. Men don’t eat Bananas because they remind them of Penis’s and it’s quite funny they believe Bananas are for women because women like penis but what about lesbians? Lol.. awkward. Have you linked why I stopped eating Bananas yet? 😉 Another food item I refuse to eat is hotdogs, EXACTLY THE SAME REASON AS BANANAS! A lot of food that are shaped like a penis are always said to be a women food group.  Lollipops too anything that involves women using their mouths in a way thats related to oral sex is always pointed out as a female food.

I snatched this quote from Greta Gaard:

“To be a pet is to have all one’s life decisions controlled by someone else: when and what to eat, how to act, whom to socialize with, whether or not to reproduce if the situation were offered to humans we’d call it slavery.” 

It’s crazy that whenever it comes to humans their lives are valued but you don’t see the same thing when it comes to animals. Later in her article Gaard states that usually men are partnered up with pets that help them become more dominant such as when hunting or when shepherding. Dog’s have been basically labels as “Mans best friend”. That has been the relationship thats been set for years upon years.

In another article by Deane Curtin he states:

“There are important connections through food between the oppression of women and the oppression of nonhuman animals. Typical of the wealth of evidence she presents are the following: the connection of women and animals through pornographic representations of women as “meat” ready to be carved up”

while reading this quote it reminded me of this picture I found on Pinterest last year in April:

Which I found quite hilarious because not only does it represent meat, but they had a woman but not just any woman they had Pamela Anderson a porn star whom is used to pleasure heterosexual men. So it was weird that Peta would do this to symbolize going vegetarian BUT to use a women thats used as a sexual product to lure men, was it used to show the true connection between women and animals? OR was it another tactic to use this women the SAME way humans use animals as a way to pull men in.

Below are some more advertisements that label women and animals as equal and these ad’s are used to lure men in:

• • ^{XOXO GOSSIP GIRL} •

I apologize if the pictures above are a little blurry, I can’t tell as I upload this blog so I guess I’ll see once I’m done.

As I was thinking of what to write on this blog I stared at the pictures I wanted to choose from. In the pictures: I am above, and my mother is below. This place behind us with a volcano and the dirt you see? This was once where my family lived. Unfortunately there was a volcano eruption in 2014 that wiped out my mothers entire village. Some people have begun building new homes down there again. The only person left of my family who survived still lives there and refuses to leave. You see in the picture I am eating grapes, the sweetest juiciest grapes you could ever feel your tongue brush on. The grapes taste so fresh and are so fulfilling. This land is the only land that grows these kind of grapes used to make the best wine 😉 if you’re under 21 sorry you are missing out. As I sit here and I contemplate place, I envision my mother playing here as a child. The woman my mother is, is the woman I hope to become. She is a vision, an inspiring art. My mother is so free but she was so confined at a young age. She had the strict parents so I know this place means something to her. I went there this summer on vacation hoping to learn more of my culture. Clearly you see the outfit I’m wearing I wanted to look ‘HOT’ for pictures BUT let me tell you sandals are not great for walking through hard lava rocks. I can feel the urge of crying right now because a place that was once so beautiful and carried so much culture now only carries burnt rocks. I know this place is special due to the fact the grapes can still grow even though the land went through that turmoil. I remember coming here in 2018 and seeing how much life was breathed into this place, the wilderness made it so beautiful. So yes I agree with Kingsolver when she states “People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do.”(Kingsolver, knowing our place) Coming from a true city girl, because I won’t lie at all I love the city, the buildings the sunrise when they hit certain buildings. Though there is something about the wilderness, it brings a different perspective. It allows us to understand where something came from, how far we’ve come as humans. It puts us in “our place” as Kingsolver said towards the end of her excerpt. We know where we stand when we involve the wilderness, there is something grater than us clearly because of all the different animals that we get to see, the different types of trees, the bodies of water.

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Bell hooks starts us off with the quote:

“When we love the Earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully. The ancestors taught me it was so.”(Hooks, 363) 

I believe this, my ancestors are from Africa and years and generations of my family come from Cape Verde. The same land they played on I played on, we seen the same things and at the same time we seen different things. Which is why I love my place so much,Williams says “Story offers a wash of images and emotions that returns us to our highest and deepest selves, where we remember what it means to be human, living in place with our neighbors.”(Williams, 3) Coming back to this place allows me to reminice and remembering how my ‘neighbors’ used to help each other. We would plant together, crop together, and build together. Williams reminds me of what its like to be human and understanding our neighbors from human to animals. When I tell the story of the volcano erupting all of my family members see what it was before the volcano rather than remembering what it is now. Although nature, and wilderness accounts for Volcano eruptions because that is apart of nature. The land still looks beautiful but in its own natural way. Yeah there’s no houses and buildings but theres so much land.

This is my mothers safe haven, but my mother is MY safe haven. So welcome to the Safe Haven inside of my mothers heart, Bem-Vindo Parque Natural Do Fogo.

Eco-feminists believe that humans should have a connection with nature. As do I, nature is everywhere, in every story. In every breath, in every move we make. We should care and give to nature, as nature cares and gives to us. 

Thanks for coming again, xoxo Gossip Girl & a girl who just might be an eco-feminist?