The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.

In Western patriarchal culture, both women and nonhuman nature have been devalued alongside their assumed opposites - men and civilization/culture. Nature tends to be objectified, “controlled and dissected”; nature is an object to be exploited for “natural resources” (Merchant, “Dominion” 47). Women and nature are placed together in the “Not A” category, and are often seen as objects for exploitation, “things” to be used for the benefit of the “A” category - white, property-owning males. Ecofeminists - at least in theory - oppose all forms of domination, and reject “the notion that any part of the world, human or nonhuman, exists solely for the use and pleasure of any other part” - they reject power-over (Vance 133-34). Dichotomies and hierarchies , contemporary ecofeminists note, are alien to the natural world - nature is interconnections (Y.King 461). No individual or species is privileged in the world of nature: all eat and are eaten; all become sick and die in their turn. Humans are part of an interconnected continuum of life (Merchant, Earthcare 204). In light of environmental racism and sexism, many ecofeminists call attention to the fact that environmentalists, feminists, and those fighting racism and poverty are plucking at different straws in the same broom: “The global environmental crisis is related to the sociopolitical systems of fear and hatred of all that is natural, nonwhite and female” (Riley 473).