#BlackLivesMatter is making police violence against African American people visible, when, though this violence has been going on since the Civil War, this pattern has been invisible to media and the white populations in general before. Now, one movement that seems to me on a par and similar to what we were doing in the ’60s and ’70s is the movement in Ferguson. It is this sort of thing that we reconfigured so that in the case of rape, we began to see it as part and parcel of a larger pattern of injustice against women or in the case discrimination again African Americans in housing, we redefined this as outside any issue of private ownership or private property, but instead as an act of discrimination that is not just and should become illegal. In that article, I redefine rape not as a sexual act but an act of aggression, using sexuality, using sex as weapon – turning sexual penetration into a weapon.

I began with research from a sociologist, who was teaching then at UC Berkeley, Menachem Amir, who had done a very convincing study showing that men who had raped (he studied men in prison who were convicted of rape)* didn’t have difficulties with sexuality, as had been assumed before, but they did have difficulties with aggression. In that period, I wrote an article about rape. I think that what we were doing in the earlier period was establishing that it was injust and raising people’s consciousness and their anger over it, and challenging discriminatory policies. Even though, of course, racism and misogyny and injustice are still plaguing our world, more people recognize inequality between women and men, and African American and other minorities and white people as injust. An understanding of injustice on the basis of race and gender is more widely braided into our culture. Susan Griffin: There are lots of ways in which what’s happening now is building on what happened then. I recently read a tweet by justice activist Shaun King that said, “If you ever wondered what you would do if you were alive in the Civil Rights Movement, now is the time to find out.” As someone who was and is extremely active in both times, what similarities and differences are you seeing?

Many are comparing our present era with that of the Civil Rights era. In honoring the approaching anniversary of your book, I thought we might explore the time period Woman and Nature came out of – the Civil Rights era. This book was, and still is, revolutionary and should be read by anyone working to deconstruct the rise of patriarchy and a mechanistic worldview, as well as the silencing of women and the natural world. We are approaching 40 years since its original publication. I am so thrilled about the release of the e-book version of Woman and Nature. Jeanine Canty: Susan, first off, it is an honor to once again interview you and engage in dialogue.

Woman and nature by susan griffin