From storms named after women that cause more damage because people prepare for them less to men who refuse to recycle because they think it looks girly, climate damage is riven with toxic masculinity, a new exhibition argues.
The exhibition, titled “Man-Made Disaster: Patriarchy and the Planet,” went on display on Thursday at Protein Studios in east London and through an online portal.
Climate change is a “man-made” crisis in every sense, with male-dominated culture fueling damaging behavior while women and girls disproportionately pay the price, the creative team behind the art show said.
It hopes to shed light on the issue with an exhibition responding to themes of gender and climate by 30 artists who are women or do not identify as male or female.
“Climate change is sexist: It disproportionately affects women and girls precisely because they are already marginalized in our societies,” said Ashley Johnson, a member of Do The Green Thing, the environmental group that organized the show.
“There’s gendered consequences, there’s gendered causes and there’s gendered solutions. We wanted to explore that as an idea and offer artists the chance to respond to it,” Johnson said.
Women and girls suffer more than men from the effects of climate change, experts have said.
They account for 80 percent of those displaced as a result and their vulnerabilities are exposed during disasters, the UN has said.
Studies suggest that men have bigger carbon footprints on average and are more skeptical of climate change, with a paper from Yale University saying that some are put off from environmentalism because they see it as feminine.
“Women on every metric you can think of generally are more environmentally friendly,” Johnson said.
“They are more likely to recycle, they litter less, they are more likely to buy an electric car, they are more likely to vote for politicians who care about the environment,” she said.
“Men, on the other hand, are often influenced by toxic masculinity ... and make the exact opposite choice, because they are worried that environmental behavior brands them as feminine,” she added.
Artworks ranged from portraits of women and girls threatened by climate change to pieces offering suggestions for solutions.
There were also more light-hearted contributions, such as a work dressing up bins as strongmen and monsters to help tackle stigma for men around recycling.
Sophie Thomas, a graphic artist, contributed works with the neon quote “I want you to panic” from 16-year-old climate advocate Greta Thunberg over a tangled black background of comments from prominent male climate-change skeptics.
“These pieces are about urgency,” she said.
“The research I did around my piece ... was looking at some of the voices we have been hearing very loudly for the past decade, which are the big climate deniers and they are very male,” Thomas said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not