Wayne’s Sierra Club World: Sexism is destroying our planet and poisoning our water

by Wayne Tanaka, Chapter Director | Reading time: 3.5 minutes

Commenters and analysts have long recognized the intersection of sexism and our greatest environmental challenges, not only in the disproportionate impacts of the climate crisis on women and girls, but in how patriarchy and the systems and norms it supports precludes the women (and particularly indigenous, minority, queer, and trans women) on the frontlines of the climate fight from participating in spaces of power.

Notably, countries with greater numbers of women in their legislature have now also been shown to adopt more ambitious climate policies, demonstrating how confronting sexist norms and systems of patriarchy may be key strategies in our current generations' effort to save our planet.

Here in Hawaiʻi, we have no shortage of examples demonstrating the intersection of sexism, patriarchal institutions, and our environmental and social crises. This includes the issues highlighted in last year's “No Kānekuaʻana and Our Lifegivers” panel with the Commission on the Status of Women; the leading efforts of kānaka maoli women to re-build our islands' resilience, as reflected in our “Navigating the Climate Crisis” series; and the leading role of women and femme-identified people in efforts to protect our aquifer and uphold the public trust in water.

Photo: Civil Beat

Last month, Civil Beat revealed yet another shocking example of how apparent sexism silenced the Red Hill fuel director's warnings about the mismanagement of the Red Hill Facility, leading to her demotion and the subsequent lack of oversight that eventually poisoned our once-pure sole source aquifer, and thousands of military and civilian families.

Despite having received numerous commendations and medals throughout her nearly 20 year military career, and despite her extensive training in fuel supply management, almost immediately after she was assigned to the Red Hill Facility, the fuel director's “male superiors excluded her from meetings and decision making,” and “misconstrued her words and 'ostracized' her.”

She was often “shut down, talked over,” and this open hostility eventually served to perpetuate unethical, immoral, and increasingly dangerous conduct by Navy officials. In early 2021, the year of the catastrophic fuel leak, she was prevented from filing a fuel spill report by her captain, Trent Kalp (who also sent emails expressing “political concerns” should the active leak from the Red Hill system be revealed), and was barred by another male superior from correcting false information the Navy submitted to the Department of Health.

And despite the inherent threat the facility presented to life as we know it on Oʻahu, her numerous, urgent concerns about the safety of the facility only led to her effective demotion, and a lack of operational oversight - leaving the facility in an even more dangerous state than before.

For the fuel director, it was clear that this treatment was “because she was a woman who did not have time and experience in the fuel community, despite her qualifications and training.”

Her male superior would later defend against her complaints not by proving them wrong, but by calling her “erratic, all over the place, mercurial” - a classic strategy used to dismiss the voices and legitimacy of women who challenge authority, by playing on sexist tropes of “hysterical” females.

Tragically, the sexist treatment of the Red Hill fuel director would set the stage for the water crisis our island is still navigating - one which also exposed tens of thousands of people to jet fuel in their drinking water (with a CDC survey indicating that the majority of these affected individuals were also women…).

Simply put, the damage done to our ʻāina and our people here in Hawaiʻi due to the pervasiveness of sexist norms and patriarchal institutions is too evident, too extreme, and too dangerous to be ignored.

Navigating the biggest environmental crises of our time - crises that will impact all of us, but will most immediately and deeply harm the most vulnerable - requires that we open our eyes to the intertwined and co-enabling systems of sexism, patriarchy, colonialism, racism, and extractive capitalism, and actively confront them on every front that we can.

As illustrated all too well by the tragic case of the Red Hill fuel director, this is not just a moral endeavor, but a strategy essential to our very survival.