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.
Pins hidden in her shoes, head forced down a toilet, kicked in the stomach: South Korean hairdresser Pyo Ye-rim suffered a litany of abuse from school bullies, but now she is speaking out. The 26-year-old is part of a phenomenon sweeping South Korea known as “Hakpok #MeToo,” where people who were bullied publicly name and shame the perpetrators of school violence — “hakpok” in Korean — decades after the alleged crimes. Made famous globally by Netflix’s gory revenge series The Glory, the movement has ensnared everyone from K-pop stars to baseball players and accusations — often anonymous — can be career-ending, with
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes on an island near Antarctica — known as Big Ben — has been spotted by satellite spewing lava. The lava flow on the uninhabited Heard Island, about 4,100km southwest of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica, is part of an ongoing eruption that was first noted more than a decade ago. The image was caught by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on Thursday, and is a composite of an optical picture and an infrared image. The lava is seen flowing down the side of Big Ben from near the summit, known as Mawson Peak.
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to
TIME TO TALK: Among China’s grievances were economic and trade issues related to Taiwan, but both countries emphasized the need to maintain communication US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) on Friday raised complaints about China’s state-led economic policies during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤), who objected to US tariffs and trade policies, as well as issues related to Taiwan, their offices said. However, statements from the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce emphasized the need for Washington and Beijing to maintain communication on trade. “Ambassador Tai highlighted the need to address the critical imbalances caused by China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade policy,” the USTR said in a statement released after the
RSS