Peak Oil, Gender and Power
Sharon August 3rd, 2008
I made the National Post - pretty cool, huh? And the author (the really cool Vanessa, of Green as a Thistle) mentioned LimeSarah, and Crunchy’s blog - how cool is that! And what, oh what was the author talking about? But the whole peak oil gender thing. How neat is it that that discussion made the paper?
“Of course, arguing that men and women have different, gender-specific responses to global warming or the looming oil crash is a broad generalization, and one that could very well prove unfounded.
However, there’s no question that the majority of women writing about peak oil are considerably more focused on what we can do now to make life better, not just what we may have to do at some point down the road.
Even if nothing happens — if the polar ice caps cease to melt, the smog in Beijing just disappears one day and endangered species begin multiplying in vast numbers — it hardly means all that tomato-canning and cycling to work was a waste of time.
Better, then, to keep track of all the peak oil news, but remind people like Savinar and Kunstler that we need to be acting, not just reacting.”
To be fair though (and the author, of course, admits it), I’m not totally sure that the “men talk about doom, women act” stuff really quite covers the ground. Kunstler has been yelling at everyone to design better landscapes, reinvigorate rail, get people the fuck out of their cars and integrate retail and housing for oh, 15 years, at least since _The Geography of Nowhere_. Matt Savinar may be the Crown Prince of Doom, but he runs his forums full of lonely, cranky men ;-) with a heavy emphasis on gardening, tools and practicalities. And, umm, the man sells food storage.
You could also choose a completely different set of men to hold Deanna and me up against. Set against Pat Murphy and Rob Hopkins, for example, what could you say about the difference in gender approaches, except that La Crunch and I are looking kinda butch and doomy these days – after all, she recently posted on adopting bunnies and killing and eating them, while I wrote that we were in the middle of a fast crash, heading down.
There are differences between the men and the women here, but I think they are slightly subtler than one group announcing disaster and the other getting to work on it. My observation is that in general (and there are plenty of exceptions) , men either place much more or much less faith in policy solutions than women do. That is, they tend to focus a lot on big picture issues. And because the big picture is so central to most men’s focus, if it seems impossible that institutions and structure can persist, the most common alternative is complete and utter collapse. I don’t think women react this way to the idea that our society might not go on as it has been – and if I had to put a finger on why this is so, I’d say it is because women (and minorities and gay men) are often made aware of the fact that institutions weren’t necessarily their friends to begin with, and that powerful institutions are dangerous. They learn this because sometimes the institutions are corrupt in obvious ways – for example, they institutionalize racism and sexism – think of the Driving While Black issue, for example. And they learn this in more subtle ways – because the people within them often feel little qualm about translating institutional power into personal, even sexual power. I suspect most women will know what I mean, and many men will not, at least viscerally.
My own feeling is that (and again, I am wildly overgeneralizing) women have had to be more skeptical of the power of institutions than men for a host of reasons – partly just because the reins tend to be held by the boys - and partly because if you were raised female (and probably even more so if you were raised female and part of a religious, ethnic or racial minority) you get, in a visceral way, that power is a two edged thing. It can be great – but it can be used against you.
How many girls make it through their adolescence without feeling at least a few times, the ways that “power” “authority” and “strength” can be a fundamental threat, as well as a benefit? How many women get to adulthood without a few moments of being told in a host of ways, explicit or not, that the power to do things means the power to do some very terrible things – I’ve been luckier than many women on this front, but I simply can’t think of a single woman I know who has never had a moment they walked away from that began as an ordinary exchange and changed into a moment that was very much one of terrible vulnerability. I think the recognition that sexual violence, even the broad, general threat of sexual violence or intimidation often come from people who have power, and are comfortable with it, means that women have a harder time seeing institutionalized power (from which we have often been disenfranchised as well) as an unmitigated good, or at least, something to rely upon.
So while we work with and in power institutions, I think women often have a more subtle relationship to what “collapse” might look like – it is fearful, and troubling – but it also represents possibilities and release from certain other kinds of threats. I think often men see the collapse of institutions, both institutions they’ve worked for or even those they’ve worked to change - as more disastrous, leaving a vast emptiness likely to be filled by chaos. I think one of the truths about being female is that you know, on some level, that approaches to power, reliance on existing institutions is always a little risky – chaos never seems quite as far away.
Most rapes, most sexual abuse, most moments of sexual pressure, harassment and intimidation aren’t moments when strangers, unconstrained by powerful institutions attack us – oh, that happens to women too, but most of the times that sex and power get tied up in bad, scary ways happen among the men you know (and yes, I know that these things happen to boys and men too, and women do them to women too sometimes – I am again, overgeneralizing). Most of the rapists are men women know and trust. Most cases of sexual abuse aren’t stranger attacks, but fathers and brothers and uncles. Most sexual harrassment happens in places where you’ve learned to trust people. Most of those weird, queasy moments that don’t quite fall into any category, but where some man makes a woman know that they are only safe because the man chooses it to be that way – they happen with people you know, in quite ordinary places, in quite ordinary circumstances.
I think for many women, and many people who are not white or fall into some minority group, and for many gay people – the idea that you can trust and rely on public structures is not something that comes naturally. That’s not to say that many men also don’t understand that institutions are corrupt, but the truth is that those of us who are particularly vulnerable to power plays know that even when they aren’t corrupt, they are – that is, even when power in the hands of the powerful is mostly working as it should, at least on the surface, the powerful are very comfortable asserting their power. The fact that on some level all women have to know that even the most secure of institutions and structures contain threats within them – that there are no places where they are not vulnerable, gives them a sense that one can function in a space that is ambiguous, uncertain, vulnerable and frightening.
Again, this is probably overstating all sorts of things. But my own sense of the difference is this – everything falling apart is damned terrifying for many men – it makes them feel vulnerable, in ways that they don’t have to feel vulnerable most of the time. That’s why the guns and spam so dominate the conversations – the language is about protecting “one’s own” but the truth is, I think that a lot of men are afraid also for themselves in a way that they have never experienced before, and that must be quite terrifying.
Their vulnerability, however, is a lot like a kind of vulnerability that most women, a lot of non-white folks, and gay men have had to get used to for a very long time. It is a yucky feeling – one that none of us like. For those who haven’t had to experience it before, the feeling is damned overwhelming. For the rest of us, who have lived in that territory some time, we set to work minimizing our risks as best we can – but we don’t either fervently believe we can fix everything enough that we’ll never have to live in the ugly grey of domination and vulnerability, or believe that having to face that horrible, queasy feeling straight on is the same thing as the sign to go back to the bunker – because if we did, we’d have never come out. We’re already living in grey areas, and they have become inhabitable – we know that deep vulnerability is something that can often be navigated, or at least survived.
It seems odd to think that this might be an advantage, as things collapse, but I suspect it actually might be.
Sharon
