Ben Milne does ecofeminism

By Scott McRae

Benjamin Milne, who will graduate with an honours in sociology and a minor in women’s studies, had an epiphany in the classroom.

“I took an introduction to the philosophy of ethics with a former Concordia professor, Dr. Stanley French, and one of the first things he told the class was that he was a feminist,” said Milne in an e-mail interview. The course challenged him to think about issues of gender, sex and sexuality in ways he never had before.

“As I went through further sociology and women’s studies [courses], I came to understand that breaking down one hierarchy, such as race or gender, requires the breaking down of all hierarchies. Women’s studies is the only discipline [I’ve found] that attempts to interweave all systems of hierarchy in critiques.”

Ecofeminism, a branch of feminist study, seems to encapsulate this all-encompassing outlook. As Milne explained, the ecofeminist worldview takes racism to be similar to environmental destruction of capitalist thought: each system sets up a hierarchy of power, and the only way to suppress these inequalities is to eliminate every expression of oppression. Despite what Marxists or Greenpeace might say, ecofeminists argue that no one ideology can be addressed in isolation.

Next fall Milne will return to his hometown, Vancouver, to wrestle with these ideas, pursuing an MA at Simon Fraser University. He will research postcolonial development policies and domestic economic policy in an ecofeminist framework, a route he hopes will take him through to a PhD and an eventual professorship.

Despite his love for the academic, Milne hopes his research will solve real-world problems.