Ecofeminism and Wilderness

Abstract

A basic tenet of ecofeminism holds that the patriarchal domination of women runs parallel to the patriarchal domination of nature (Warren 1994). Both women and nature have been controlled and manipulated to satisfy masculinist desires, we say; both have been denied autonomous expression and self-determination. But what, then, shall we make of wilderness? In the United States alone, nearly a hundred million publiclyowned acres-close to three percent of the nation's land mass-has been given wilderness designation by the federal government, ensuring that at least some of nature's processes will be left alone to unfold in their own way (Watson 1993). For those of us who cherish particular wilderness areas as a result of our experiences there, or who simply find comfort in the thought of uninhabited spaces, it is tempting to imagine that wilderness exists as an exception to the rule of patriarchal domination, that it has somehow been overlooked. There is a small degree of truth in that fantasy: much of the land that originally received wilderness designation under the Wilderness Act of 1964 was land so remote, inaccessible, or rugged that attempts at cultivation, resource extraction, or settlement would have been futile anyway. But the preservation movement has grown dramatically in the past thirty years, and, increasingly, the land set aside as wilderness is land that developers, mining interests, timber companies, and motorized recreationists claim has higher and better uses, another way of saying that it is land that is amenable to control.' Clearly, the continued existence of wilderness is no oversight: it is, instead, the outcome of often bitterly fought campaigns between passionate rivals. Nevertheless, we also cannot lull ourselves into complacently thinking that the preservation of wilderness is the result of the good guys winning, or of the obvious moral superiority of arguments in support of ecological integrity. However committed to natural diversity and biocentrism some environmental activists may be, the ultimate authority to create wilderness is in the hands of Congress and the President-the same people who have willingly authorized nuclear waste dumps, destruction of old-growth forests, diversion and damming of rivers, draining of wetlands, and countless other environmental abuses. Either this is inconsis-

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