g to conquer nature/women: "He breaks the wilderness. He clears the land of trees, brush, and weed. The land is brought under his control; he has turned waste into a garden. Into her soil he places his plow. He labors. He plants. He sows. By the sweat of his brow, he makes her yield. She opens her broad lap to him. She prepares him a feast. She yields. Her powers are mystery to him. Silently she works miracles for him. /.../ He is determined he will master her. He will make her produce at will." (Merchant, 1998 p.28). The natural world and women have been devalued as inferior and separate from God and reason, and therefore from men. The dualistic structure of the western thought results in structure of separation and hierarchy in society. Dualism of thought constitutes of sets of contrasting pairs: culture/nature, reason/nature, male/female, mind/body (nature), master/slave, rationality/animality (nature), reason/emotion, spirit/nature, human/nature, civilized/primitive, and self/other (Plumwood, 1993, p. 43). Reason separates men from women and nature. Women are stupefied and nature is deadened. Matter is dead and has no soul; the universe becomes a machine manipulated and controlled. Natural resources are exploited to the point of depletion. Nature is commodified; it has only economic value. Forest has no value by itself but the timber sold on market has its price. The economic structure breeds destruction and "instrumentalization" of nature and its creatures (including human beings). Nature is abused. Moreover, western religion, science, and economics justify the violence done. Societies before the western patriarchy had different ideology and values. The patriarchy suppressed the pagan concept of the immanent life within nature. It deprived nature of its previously assumed sacredness. It deprived humans of the previous sense of oneness and life in harmony with the natural world. The belief in Christianity and science justified patri...
