It has been twelve years since the third deadliest hurricane, Hurricane Katrina, impacted the United States. As the hurricane has taken lives and destroyed others, you often ask why Mother Nature would pit us against natural disaster. You tell yourself that human nature does not deserve such collateral damage. But indeed humankind does. You wouldn’t have noticed the occurrence of global warming taking place without these disastrous storms. Possibly on a larger scale, Mother Nature had something more substantial planned. She was tired of having humanity act against her so she reacts, sending her daughters to revolt.
It was the year when a hurricane was named after my grandmother where in my eight-year-old eyes, a bigger picture took form in a metaphorical sense— The deadliest storms are named after women, proving the capacity of strength and power a woman can hold. Much more than the disturbing archetypes and stereotypes. Much more than even the gender itself.
The rising conflict is in a patriarchal society, people don’t perceive women in this manner. Socially, women are perceived to be much less than powerful and much less than a destructive force. Perhaps, women are deemed as ruinous due to the cataclysmic force these storms withhold; however, we shouldn’t be put under such a negative light (although that might have been the intention of naming storms solely after women until the late 1970s). Being a woman is to be rabid, tough, and robust such as Hurricane Katrina and other deadly storms that have crossed this very earth.
It is also embedded in the concept of nature. Being motherly, being in control of the severity of the weather and the growth of vegetation are all characteristics that are commonly associated with Mother Nature. But amongst all things, being a woman and Mother Nature doesn’t have a direct correlation to one another in the eyes of patriarchy. To a patriarchal society, women to Mother Nature is the only way to easily place the blame on women due to its calamitous ways. Thus beginning a toxic relationship with women and gender politics, placing faults on women culturally.
When something such as humankind acts against nature and unnecessarily mistreats it, Mother Nature will react in a catastrophic manner rather than silently let it occur. When a white supremacist, misogynist, and bigot acts against women and unnecessarily mistreats us, we as women will react in a catastrophic manner rather than let it take place. That is why as women, we must revolt, resist and continuously be the storms men fear.
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