Teaching Patriarchal Violence and Neocolonialism with Disney’s Moana
Did your granny say listen to your heart Be who you are on the inside I need three words to tear her argument apart Your granny lied I'd rather be
Shiny
Tamatoa, Disney’s Moana
As a university professor, whose main teaching duties center on curricula designed, as our Jesuit humanistic mission aspires, “to educate the whole person” in mind, body and soul, I am charged with the difficult, but joyous, work of helping students appreciate the complexity of worldviews and ideologies that underlie their experience of being human. From the perspective of my academic discipline of philosophy, this means assisting students in entertaining competing arguments and recognizing tensions between implicit and explicit ideologies at the heart of things as serious as political discourse but also seemingly less dire discourses abounding, somewhat playfully, in pop media. It is to this end, that I often teach a beloved family favorite, Disney’s Moana.
Both beautiful and riveting – an obvious feminist tour de force for a children’s movie – the film centers the value of what women learn from other women, particularly from a bold but nervous young, indigenous woman, curious about the world and her role in it. Seemingly stifled by an overbearing father but supported by a quirky, yet spiritually adept, grandmother, who prompts Moana to “listen to [her] heart” and become the way-finding adventurer she dreams of being. Prima facie, this ostensibly empowering film appears to suggest the value of just that: listen to your wise granny and follow your heart, i.e., become a hero despite patriarchy.
My goal in the classroom, however, is to help students see how the film is also problematic or "in tension with itself." Indeed, teaching Moana is less about the “reality” of the views found therein and more about developing the skills of what Chicana feminist Maria Lugones calls “complex communication,” wherein we can recognize difference without seeking resolution, accounting for complicities in problematic discourses without shame but rather with a sense of serious (sometimes tension loaded) playfulness, i.e. a responsible openness to the experience of others, particulariy, individuals who stand on the margins of our dominant communities. In short, the goal, I argue, is to show how Tamatoa, the crab monster who makes fun of Moana’s grandmother, was right, “Granny (read: Disney) lied.” The film, far from truly honoring indigenous feminine empowerment, specifically Pacific East-Islander cultures, is simply a “shiny” new trophy, possibly nothing more than a neocolonial and dangerous reproduction of the same discourses that reinforce systemic oppression. So, how can a children’s film be both a wonderful piece of feminine empowerment and also racist/colonialist? It is due to this complexity, i.e. the reality that even a film like Disney’s Moana can be simultaneously good and bad, that it can be inspiring alongside demoralizing and complicit, that I find the film to be one of the most effective pedagogical resources for teaching issues in intersectional and antiracist feminism. Moana is a rich dramatization of a plight that many women suffer in patriarchal regimes, including the symbolic coding of masculine and feminine in things like culture and nature, as well as a visually stunning piece of art that highlights the continual problems pop media often perpetuates: cultural appropriation and a quiet shaming of indigenous peoples.
I. Feminist Empowerment: Healing from Patriarchal Trauma/Violence
Typically, when analyzing Moana as a classroom exercise, I have students begin by describing the overt moral lessons and “virtues” of the film. Inevitably, students emphasize several thematic elements that highlight feminist and environmental themes. Students frequently applaud Moana’s strong-will, boldness, resourcefulness and even her humor, as she stands toe-to-toe with Maui in the art of clever speech. Excitedly, students further note that Moana does not need saving nor does the film depict any love interest or romance – a heteronormative theme which predominates in most of Disney’s princess films (even if only employed subversively in ones like Frozen, where Elsa has no love interest while her sister’s blind devotion to the myth of “love at first sight” undermines the problematic trope in its resolution). Even Maui’s attempts to redeem himself at the end of the film by returning to fight the monstrous Ta Kã is an exercise in futility, as Moana, subversively, rather rescues her male side-kick, the demi-god, by ultimately discovering who Ta Kã really is – a victim (more on this later) rather than a villain.
Quick to employ the vocabulary of toxic masculinity, students also latch onto Maui’s arrogance and tend to joke as they unpack how his introductory song, Thank You, highlights the vainglorious services patriarchal men think they gift to the world, oblivious to the fact that they are alone, that they don’t even know the basics of what is happening in the world, oblivious to the damage that they have wrought and still perpetuate, as Maui remains complicit in the ecological crisis he has caused. Weak and impotent without his magic fishhook, Maui, despite all his bluster, is afraid, an orphan who has wasted his life seeking approval and love from impersonal masses. The film ultimately highlights Maui’s true power: not his magical fishhook that can only cause physical transformation, but his ability to learn from Elsa’s script and “let it go,” transforming from a narcissistic misogynist into an ally who humbly bows before the divine feminine.
Class participants also note the patriarchal context for Moana’s own village and its chief, her father. Saddled with inheriting sovereignty over her people, Moana’s character is juxtaposed to his own trauma, the loss of a brother to wayfinding. This loss has lead her father to seek safety, forcing his people to be content in a life dedicated merely to survival. The island people should not dream of more. It is not safe and so Moana’s father demands that everyone follow the same rules and way of life, never leaving or going further than he deems safe. By the end of the film we see a different model of leadership, markedly feminine leadership. Moana will not rule out of fear but out of love, a love which will, or so we are lead to believe, honor the creative dreams of their historical past not by aiming simply at survival but by becoming who they “really are.” They are wayfinding, adventurous explorers whose wisdom and knowledge, skills and resources, bring them to beautiful new horizons.
Yet still other students point to the value of feminine indigenous wisdom in Moana’s grandmother and mother, the gift to communicate with the Ocean and eventually to see and recognize that Ta Kã is not a monster but a grief-stricken and traumatized victim. It is here that I begin to push students to, perhaps, the most controversial, but still seemingly virtuous, message of the film. As a feminist whose work focuses on historical symbolism and that which is often coded as masculine and feminine in our discourses, both ancient and modern, be it in art, philosophy, narrative, etc., Maui’s fishhook was immediately “read” (by me) as an obvious phallic symbol. Its large, powerful magic aside, Maui is dependent on it…and impotent without it. He is willing to walk away from friendships to protect it. To be sure, this coding of Maui’s fishhook becomes explicit – and not a silly feminist flight of fancy – when Tamatoa, the shiny crab who has been hording the power of the fishhook as a trophy, witnesses Maui’s surprising inability to wield it by laughing at the demigod, singing:
Well, well, well.
Little Maui's having trouble with his look.
You little semi-demi-mini-god.
Ouch! What a terrible performance,
Get the hook (get it?)
You don't swing it like you used to, man.
Even without this explicit reference to male sexual dysfunction, in the opening scene, wherein the life-generating heart of Te Fiti, is plucked out, Maui, smilingly malevolently with his large phallic hook, had already shocked me. In the dark theatre, just a few minutes into viewing a children’s film, I turned to my two young sons, eagerly watching the development of the dramatic plot behind the movie, and I knew that they would have no idea that the theft of a small smooth stone with a circular engraving, imagery historically associated with feminine reproductive power, was a metaphor for sexual assault, particularly the “rape of nature” but explicitly in this film anthropomorphized as an actual indigenous goddess. Indeed, I remember quite clearly my attempts to dismiss the possibility of said interpretation as I watched the film for the first time. Surely, it was only my own feminist idiosyncratic worldview that would allow me to see a metaphorical rape in Maui’s act. Yet, the thought was there and so I was nervous about how the writers might accidentally tell a tale that would Disney-ify such a metaphor. I didn’t think this was going to go well.
And then, approximately 90 minutes later, Moana discovers the imprint of the empty land mass where Te Fiti seems to have sunk into despair after having had her heart stolen. My heart broke as we see her curled up, like so many victims of sexual assault lying on the floor (of the ocean) in the fetal position.
In that moment, we experience Moana’s realization that the monster, Ta Kã, the destructive being thwarting all who come near her, spreading death and ash, emptying all the world of beauty, was in fact Te Fiti transformed by trauma. Moana, seeing this, recognizes that the monster they had to overcome, the terrorizing figure, was a woman, a goddess fighting for her own survival. No longer afraid, but empathetic, Moana turns to her, holds up the heart and reconnects with a woman who has become lost to her own pain. She sings:
They have stolen the heart from inside you.
But this does not define you.
This is not who you are.
You know who you are.
Ta Kã Ka/Te Fiti scrambles, crawling with a terrible urgency toward Moana, meeting her eyes as the young girl returns what has been stolen. They see each other and the goddess and Moana touch heads, sharing in the knowledge of trauma before filling the empty recess of Te Fiti’s chest with her life-generating heart.
As a sexual assault survivor, hot tears streamed down my face, quiet but still audible sobs escaped from my chest. The scene was perhaps one of the most healing moments I have experienced while watching a children’s movie. Holding my boys’ hands, I thought to myself, “Finally, a Disney film that was directly tackling the real trauma of women. For the most part, we are not honored as princesses, but we are survivors of the theft, assault and violence of men. Because of this, we have sometimes, like Moana, find ourselves controlled by our "fathers," or let ourselves be dismissed by the Maui’s of the world, or worse still, like Ta Kã, realize we are targets for violence and in order to survive we sink into the role of the monstrous. But, like the song, this is not who we are.” While my boys may not have grasped the difficult and profound truth behind the Disney plot, it might subconsciously allow them to internalize that pain and later, as they grow older, allow them to reflect on the horrors that so many women, particularly BIPOC women, face: sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and the corresponding need for women to seek healing through relationships with other women. At least, I thought, now there is a story that shows women are not defined by their traumas – at least, there is a film for kids, that can inspire the value of recognition, love and the hard, sometimes, ocean-crossing work of healing. I cried both with a bit of despair that the child in me never had such stories but also with a new confidence for the next generation.
Nonetheless, despite this optimism, I watched the final scene with unease. Te Fiti is fully restored and, for the sake of a children’s film, Maui is forgiven, an act many sexual assault victims would not feel comfortable. As one blogger, whom I discovered when researching whether anyone else saw this metaphor in the film (because I must be crazy for seeing this in a kid’s film, right?), writes:
Perhaps it is a sign of my own mortality that I cannot forgive as readily as a Goddess. […] Perhaps my own fears that the one who hurt me, so long ago, sees me not as a woman who for too long has been consumed by the terrible question of “Where is my worth, myself, my power centered?” but as an artifact to be treasured and coveted, owned and displayed. Perhaps I’m not ready yet. Perhaps I’ve been ready for too long. But nobody has traveled the oceans yet to heal me. So, I watch Moana with joy, and with laughter. And with tears and dread. It is a wonderful film. But it is one that I don’t think I will ever be able to watch without that feeling. That pain. A pain that, I’m sure, even if I were to live a thousand years, would never truly subside. (2017)
Eventually, I would reconcile this ending as well, i.e. Te Fiti’s forgiveness toward her assailant. Yet, I would go a different direction than the author above, a direction which is complementary but also at odds with my original reading of the film. For me, my moment of looking in a new direction, one that helps students in the activity of “complex communication,” involves understanding how Maui, an indigenous man could be the cast as the assailant of mother nature and the impending death of Pacific East Island culture. In short, despite how shiny the film is, is it possible that we need to hold this legitimate experience of the film alongside another experience? The experience of indigenous Pacific East Islanders who might not identify with this representation of Maui? Is it possible that this feminist tour de force shifts the traumas inflicted on women, particularly indigenous women and the current ecological crisis (i.e. the “rape of nature” which disproportionally affects to this day colonized and displaced individuals) away from white settler colonialism and western capitalism and toward indigenous men, toward cultural heroes of Pacific East Islander communities?
II. Western Colonialism/Capitalism and the Rape of Nature
Overwhelmingly, the primary interpretation with which children and viewers of the film walk away is a message about the impending environmental crisis. “Obviously, that’s the main take-away, Danny, not this esoteric feminist agenda about sexual assault,” I tell myself. Yes, but we must also recall the historical associations and identifications of “nature” with the feminine, where concrete women were associated with the earth: irrational, mysterious, wild and in need of someone to control them, “cultivate,” “domesticate” them. As far back as ancient Greece, this ideology can be found in philosophical works by Plato and Aristotle, amongst others, who coded matter as feminine and passive, as an unruly and supplemental cause in comparison to reason and intellect, which were coded as masculine. In myth, feminine earth goddesses like Gaia are depicted as the sources of monstrous offspring who are eventually “tamed” by the more rational or “sober” gods like Zeus. Only then, the ancient myths teach, can authentic culture emerge. This trope, wherein masculine reason/science/culture must subdue the feminine wild, natural world, rears its head most egregiously in modernity with thinkers like Francis Bacon. Bacon explicitly deems “Nature” a bride to scientific inquiry who must be respected and lawfully wed to the “Mind.” If this comportment to nature is maintained, she will be seduced and forced to expose her secrets, a project that would lead to ever more precise knowledge. Bacon warned, though, that like a woman we must treat nature right, manipulating her to produce new technologies but not violently so. To be sure, this feminization and sexualization of nature is the ideological origin of the current ecological trope that emphasizes the identity of land with the feminine, decrying the “rape of nature” by modern capitalism and consumerism.
In fact, Moana seems to explicitly play with this narrative. Consider that Maui, the patriarchal figure with the fishhook, attempts to protect mankind - “er,” as he corrects himself “humankind” – by helping it survive and flourish by bringing new gifts to the people. This desire to manipulate the world, much like Bacon, leads him to his final transgression, the theft of a Pacific East Island Mother Nature’s life-giving force. Maui seems, like Western patriarchs, to think 'If only mankind, er again, humankind where not subject to her unpredictable life-giving but, rather, could possess and wield it themselves." Isn't this the historically masculine desire to be free from the feminine, free from choatic mother Mother Nature? Yet, as we know, once Maui takes the heart, the island begins to collapse; Maui even loses his fishhook. Maui’s virility now lost (or, at least, externalized from himself), the hero of culture (masculine) in the face of nature (feminine), is now trapped and isolated on an island for undue millennia. The dying of the islands signifies the destructive outcomes of Maui’s, i.e. humanity’s, er mankind's exploitation/rape of nature. Further, Maui’s loss of the fishhook and its appropriation by Tamatoa also confirm this theme. Tamatoa, the ever-consuming crab that “ate [his] grandma,” seems, at first blush, to be just a fun interjection of a random villain. What function, other than being a deus ex machina, does this crab serve in the journey to reappropriate Maui’s fishhook? In response, I contend that if Maui is meant to be the patriarchal symbol for the masculine practice of subduing nature via culture, i.e. scientific enlightenment/reason and the production of humanistic technology, then Tamatoa reflects the unexpected monster that resulted from that. In other words, Tamatoa’s appearance in the film is not ad hoc comic relief. Rather, Tamatoa reinforces the historical narrative in which the naivete and moral arrogance of men in the Enlightenment age lost their power, replaced by a crustacean leviathan who took the “fishhook” of culture and technological production not for the sake of the good of humanity but for the sake of being shiny, for the sake of leading masses of easily duped fish toward the “virtue” of endless, i.e. pointless, consumption and hoarding. Tamatoa is the monster of capitalism that chants the ideology that the real nature of humanity is either vicious, ready to eat even loved ones, or dumb, easily duped by appearances. As Tamatoa sings:
Your granny lied
I'd rather be
Shiny
Like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck
Scrub the deck and make it look
Shiny
I will sparkle like a wealthy woman's neck
Just a sec
Don't you know
Fish are dumb, dumb, dumb
They chase anything that glitters (beginners)
Oh, and here they come, come, come
To the brightest thing that glitters
Mmm, fish dinners
I just love free food
In other words, the shiny crab of capitalism retains the transformative tool of patriarchal cultures, i.e. reason, science and technology, but it does nothing with its power to promote culture. Rather, it is merely a trophy, another thing that makes him illustrious and entertaining. Ultimately, the return of the fishhook, i.e. Western patriarchy’s power to confront nature, is a red herring. Maui or masculine power/bravado will not restore Mother Nature. Only the feminine, particularly the indigenous feminine – as this film implies – can go beyond the limits of patriarchal control, can brave the waters, remember and embrace the arts of her people long forgotten. Moana, rather than Maui, reminds viewers that we/humanity must return to a time when we respected feminine indigenous ways of knowing. This is the only way we can heal and restore the waters and earth to their illustrious role as great Mother and provider.
Now, so far so good. Another powerful metaphor –healing from the “rape of nature” requires we transform or move away from Western patriarchy and technological arrogance. Yet, as alluded to at the end of the last section, there is something very problematic about this, particularly insofar as Moana takes place in either a mythical world or an historical time where the true causes of such trauma in the Pacific East Island culture are eerily absent, i.e. settler colonialism and the extraction of goods/resources from native lands for the sake of capitalist consumption. Keeping in mind that “colonial mentality” expands patriarchal mentality in its identity of nature with the feminine. For the colonist, indigenous people were demeaned as ones who were “uncultured,” backward and closer to wild, savage nature and, thusly, indigenous people subject to colonization were dismissed as “feminine” and so subject to masculine (read: Indo-European colonial culture) dominance and control. Colonialists (and neocolonialist – contemporary or new colonialism) continuously reinforce the identity of native cultures with nature and “feminine” spirituality (opposed to “masculine” science/rational culture), romanticizing indigeneity and its nature/femininity spirituality (think Pocahontas’ “Colors of the Wind”) whilst at the same time subjecting native women and children to actual sexualized violence (both during the height of colonization and now) so as to insure the complete destruction/genocide of said people romanticized.
Colonization of areas like the Pacific East islands was a practice in genocide and enslavement, a process which used sexual terror and assault as one of its most horrifically effective tools for destroying entire cultures. As authors like Ines Hernadez-Avila argue, Native women, because of their Te Fiti-like “life-generating” capacity, were a particularly marked threat and so “[…] Native American women [were] hunted down and slaughtered, in fact, singled out, because she has the potential, through childbirth, to assure the continuance of the people” (1993: 386). Such treatment of Native woman, including pervasive sexual assault, is deeply tied to the colonialist mindset wherein women/nature, the so called savage in need of “real” culture and knowledge, were thought to be less than the Indo-European encultured “rational” man. These native people, like their own Indo-European women, were “less than” and, so, are mere resources to be exploited for masculine pleasure – not even given the capacity to consent insofar as they weren’t even “real” women but perverse and backward savages.
It is with that historical background that we can return to Moana and Disney’s role in particular exploitation of Pacific East Islands like Hawaii where the issues of colonial, gender and environmental degradation/consumerism cannot be separated. As Haunani Kay Trask argues:
[…] to convey the utter degradation of our culture and our people under corporate tourism by employing “prostitution” as an analytical category . . . The point, of course, is that everything in Hawai’i can be yours, that is, you the tourist, the non-native, the visitor. The place, the people, the culture, even our identity as a “Native” people is for sale. Thus, Hawaii, like a lovely woman, is there for the taking. (1993, 194)
Careful to make the setting of Moana reflect the value of diversity in their films, Disney producers released a film about a grossly generalized “native” people untouched by colonialism Thanksgiving weekend 2016 - opportunely when most of the country pretends that the holiday is about a peaceful breaking of bread between native and colonizer. To make worse for wear, the villain/unintentional bad guy of Moana – the cause for the rape of nature/the goddess and the destruction of indigenous ways of life, is not Indo-European colonialism but an orphaned indigenous man/cultural hero. This is, as Buescher and Ono argue of Disney’s Pocahontas, the hallmark of neocolonial mindsets where one feels free to rewrite the history of American colonial encounters with Native Americans, replacing the history of mass slaughter with myths that “civilize” or make acceptable, even attractive, such historically horrific practices. The tools of neocolonialists often deploy the current cultural values, e.g. feminist empowerment, ecological sustainability, diversity, equity, inclusion for the sake of setting themselves up as the “good” colonizer in opposition to the “bad”/violent colonizer. Discussing Pocahontas, Buescher and Ono write:
Pocahontas uses feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism to argue for the benevolent colonialism signified by John Smith versus the malevolent colonialism typified by Governor Ratcliffe. Through a happy cross-cultural encounter and a sharing of gifts, Pocahontas suggests that colonialism was simply one manifestation of today's preferable multicultural world. Furthermore, colonialists emancipate Pocahontas from Native American patriarchy by figuring Pocahontas as a woman dreaming of a more exciting life, or, as her counterpart Belle in Beauty and the Beast (1991) sings, "more than this provincial life''; for Pocahontas, adventure is "just around the riverbend.'' By pitting the "natural" Pocahontas and John Smith against the greedy Governor Ratcliffe, who wreaks havoc on the environment, Pocahontas affirms environmentalism while eliminating only Ratcliffe's form of colonialism. Thus, the Pocahontas narrative argues that the colonialism represented by Smith, when done properly, is a benevolent emancipatory process.
In short, Moana really is no different. Like Pocahontas, Moana dreams of her adventure and Disney provides it, finally gives Pacific East Islanders a moment to dominate the silver screen. The corporate shiny crab is to be applauded for its lovely song despite the fact that the film collapses dozens of culturally diverse peoples that populate the vast stretch of waters from Hawaii to New Zealand, blurring ritual dances, dress, practices, languages, mythologies, etc. Yet, despite that blurring, Disney was able to tout cultural authenticity via the extensive “consultation” of and hiring of indigenous folks in the making of the film. More grossly, there are several moment where racist tropes overtly rear their head. The opening song, “Where you Are,” appeals to tired cliches about islander life focusing on the value of the coconut, cliches used to reinforce romanization and consequent tourism. This, alongside the depiction of the Kakamora – an ancestral tribe of Polynesia known for their short stature – as faceless savage coconuts who wish to also steal the heart of Te Fiti, fails to recall that “coconut” was the common racial slur used against peoples of the region and acts, more or less, as a moment of jaw dropping “brown” face.
So, ultimately, Moana is, for me, a neocolonial piece which like Pocahontas uses feminism and environmentalism to reinforce dangerous ideas about indigenous culture. They need to heal from their own patriarchal/colonialist/savage cultures and toxic/violent masculine heroes/gods, rather than, the historically real culprit, Western settler colonialism. Such an alternative doesn’t even exist in the world of Moana. The problems women face are men, be it the patriarchal attitude of Moana’s father or Maui, but not the “more enlightened” men of today who wrote and produced this beautiful film. No, we, the producers of this diversity feminist-minded children’s film, are the good colonizers – we truly value diversity and women’s stories.
Realizing that Moana was ultimately a neocolonial narrative, was ultimately how I reconciled Te Fiti’s forgiveness of Maui. I watch it with my kids still but, now, I read into Te Fiti’s silent smile. She is looking at Maui, the one who has just performed the haka, the Māori ritual dance against obstacles, in order to protect a native daughter. For me, I like to believe that the goddess forgives him because she knows the truth - Maui is not the one who assaulted her, not the one that raped Mother Nature, spread disease and death through her islands. Rather these are characteristics of the white Western capitalist oppressor who runs around in a Polynesian-face for 2/3 of the film. The Maui who gives up his hook and dances the haka, as well as the non-patriarchal father who welcomes Moana back, these are the ones, like Te Fiti and Moana, who deserve the gifts of transformative healing. Ultimately, this is how I teach Moana – the same way I do my sons. It is okay to like it - to see that it offers a beautiful attempt to empower women, particularly women of color, acknowledging the very real violence done to them over centuries. Yet, to learn to hold the tension of these emboldening messages with its neocolonial complacency and complicity via dialogue and questioning, that is the true pedagogical merit of the film. By analyzing something seemingly benign like a children’s film, they learn not to immediately accuse or shame the film makers but, rather, they learn to make space for dialogue and disagreement, seeing how even shiny things can have a dark underbelly. For me, I always underscore that the goal is not to “know” or get the text/film/meaning right but to listen to the songs of other storytellers, other people who may help us understand how to journey through this project of being human, knowing we can be both the characters represented but, also, part of the silent and forgotten puppet masters of a crustacean hermit-like culture that has and continues to consume everything for the sake of all that glitters.
Bibliography and Suggest Further Reading
Bellanger, P. “Native American women, forced sterilization, and the family,” Every woman has a story, ed. Gayla Wadnizak Ellis. Minneapolis: Midwest Villages and Voices, 1982.
Buescher, D. and Ono, K. “Civilized Colonialism: Pocahontas as Neocolonial Rhetoric,” Women's Studies in Communication, 19:2, 127-153, 1996.
Kiyomi, K. “Disney's Pocahontas: Reproduction of Gender, Orientalism, and the Strategic Construction of Racial Harmony” in Disney Empire, Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 6:4, 39-65, 2000.
Berkhofer, R. The white man’s Indian. New York: Vintage, 1978.
Crenshaw, K. “The intersection of race and gender” Critical Race Theory, ed. K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, and K.Thomas. New York: New Press, 1996.
Dillingham, B. “Indian women and IHS sterilization practices” American Indian Journal (July): 27–28, 1978.
Hernandez-Avila, I. “In praise of insubordination, or what makes a good woman go bad?” Transforming a rape culture, ed. E. Buchwald, P. Fletcher and M. Roth. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1993.
Lloyd, G. The Man of Reason: "Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Trask, H. K. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism & Sovereignty. Hawaii, Common Courage Press. Monroe, MN, 1993.
Warren, K. 1993. “A feminist philosophical perspective on ecofeminist spiritualities,” Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. C. Adams. New York: Continuum, 1993.