Page - 24 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

24 | Angela Sue Sawyer www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 21–33 aphors (earth as mother, ecological destruction as rape) is variously useful and unhelpful in awakening consciousness and action in both ecology and feminism. Early connections between these interests stemmed from contexts of war, as Heather Eaton describes for the 1970s: during the invasion of Vietnam, the United States used Agent Orange to de- foliate the Vietnamese landscape. This atrocious activity became merged with the image of raped/despoiled women and napalm burnt/scarred children. This sparked anti-war protests that linked women campaigning against militarist technologies, sexual assault and devastating ruin of the natural world.13 Rosemary Radford Ruether suggests a connection between ecology and femi- nism is based on the domains of women’s work, child bearing, and child rear- ing, explaining that “deep ecology … examines the symbolic, psychological, and ethical patterns of destructive relations of humans with nature and how to replace this with a life-affirming culture”.14 Critique of this relationship re- lates to dualisms perpetuated by linking nature, earth, and mother. Marlow suggests there is a lack of data and evidence to show feminine links to nature.15 A reliance on images of ecological degradation and feminist concerns via a rape metaphor is objected to because of its essentialist appropriation.16 A rape metaphor entails power and violence.17 Eaton explains, “Ecofeminists see domination as a core phenomenon at the ideological and material roots of the women/nature nexus.”18 They seek to exchange this power dynamic for what Ruether describes as “mutual interdependency”.19 The levels of domination of the earth are perhaps on a global scale not previously seen, with the threat of nuclear weapons, highly mechanised forms of mining, and industrialised processing of finite resources. As Sigridur Gudmarsdottir explains, When the earth is declared a body, violated by human consumption and greed, powerful transformations of language take place. On the one hand, 13 Eaton 2005, 13. 14 Ruether 1994, 13. 15 Marlow 2009, 91. 16 Gudmarsdottir 2010, 208; Berman 1994, 177. 17 Kyung 1994, 176; Berman 1994. 18 Eaton 2005, 59. 19 Ruether 1994, 21.