"A Woman's Land"

In Sallie Bingham’s essay,  A Woman’s Land. Her argument is based upon feminist ideals, in which she determines that if women were to be in control of property then we would not see the degradation of the environment or the destruction of species. She contends that men are to blame for these things and that an advent of eco-feminism is needed for change.
After reading this I found myself in a difficult situation, this is because I agree with her on many things but I disagree with her solution. I can understand her point that men do behave in competitive, and by that extent, destructive ways. I have experienced encountering this tendency to want to “making something out of”, in many other men. I believe it is borne out of the collective mythology we call culture, this idea that our gods tell men, and them alone, that it is their destiny to make something out of this world. One needs only to look at the many differing religions across the world and then their effect they've had on contemporary forms of male dominance produced by those cultures to confirm this belief. In my opinion this idea of patriarchy is as archaic as its political equivalent of monarchy, and just as equally ineffective in dealing with the modern world. The problem is that we have removed the political arm of this ideal from most governments around the world, but have kept the cultural element in place and thus we limit a natural progression as a species by incorporating this vestigial form of power placement. So, I do agree with her that there is something that is fundamentally wrong with the current method of stratification, but I disagree that the solution lies in replacing power from one gender to the other. Rather I believe that we must collectively readdress our conceptions of gender and change them to be less limiting, less destructive as we will remove the misplaced mythological influences, and more equivocal as we instill the best qualities of all sexes into everyone. Perhaps what we need then is not eco-feminism, but eco-genders. Because to rely on only one gender to prevent the impending environmental catastrophe would be asking quite lot from any side, being that our culture has restricted everyone before they even start.