Feminist commitments to end violence err if they stop at the species barrier. A commitment to stop violence can succeed only when all forms of oppression are included within our analysis, and all forms of violence exposed and then challenged.
5. Harm to animals is violence in its own right and shows how violence is interconnected.
It was once thought that battering involved a series of discrete episodes: a slap here on this day, a hit there on that day. Such cataloging of separate events ignored the context of coercive control that the first slap initiated. It also often began its charting with “ what did you do to provoke him? ” The assumption was that A led to B, and that there were then C, D, etc. A linear analysis that maintained the separateness of each event was inadequate in establishing how battering behavior actually works. By identifying forms of battering, Anne Ganley aided the contextualization of battering; discrete actions, including how one speaks (batterers often linguistically objectify their partners), were interrelated. Similarly the chart of coercion provided a way of recognizing how a climate of terror is established by a violent man. (Indeed, it could be argued that when battered women ’ s shelters attempt to impose linearity upon the chart of coercion — that is, this will happen first, then that — that they too are misreading a nonlinear phenomenon.) Neither of these tools could be linear in their analysis because battering is nonlinear, establishing an environment of control and fear. (Recall, it is not what is done but what is accomplished.)
Once theory is freed from a distorted and distorting dependence on linearity, then we are closer to understanding the dynamics of male control through battering against an individual woman and also its connection with other forms of (largely unchallenged) male control in our culture. The movement from a linear analysis to a recognition of interconnected forms of violence within the home (connections between physical and psychological battering in the home) and without (connections between battering and other forms of male violence) continues when we identify what happens to animals both within the home (harm to animals as a form of battering) and without (a male-dominant culture that with impunity eats, experiments upon, and wears animals).
In The Sexual Politics of Meat, I argued that violence against animals cannot be understood without a feminist analysis, because this violence is one aspect of patriarchal culture — arising within and receiving legitimation from the way male sexual identity is constituted as dominance. Gender is an unequal distribution of power; interconnected forms of violence result from and continue this inequality. In a patriarchy, animal victims, too, become feminized. A hierarchy in which men have power over women and humans have power over animals, is actually more appropriately understood as a hierarchy in which men have power over women, (feminized) men, and (feminized) animals.
Animals have been largely absent from battering theory, as much as women have been absent from conventional animal rights theory. But the way our culture countenances the construction of human male identity through control of others and the impunity with which women and animals are harmed reveals the errors of such linear approaches. Recognizing harm to animals as interconnected to controlling behavior by violent men is one aspect of recognizing the interrelatedness of all violence in a gender hierarchical world. The challenge now, as it has been for quite some time, is to stop it.
An abortion clinic staff member found her beheaded cat on her doorstep; later, when she arrived at the clinic, she was confronted with signs that read “ What happened to your cat? ” (Blanchard and Prewitt 1993, 259). Leaving a dead animal can be a warning, as two lesbians attempting to set up a retreat center for women in the South discovered in 1993 when they found a dog, dead, draped over their mailbox, with Kotex napkins taped to his/her body (Minkowski 1994, 73). One sex-specific form of torturing women political prisoners in Latin America was introducing mice into their vaginas. And, as noted, in Chile, female political prisoners were raped by trained dogs (see Bunster-Bunalto).
* * *
Notes
This essay is deeply indebted to conversations with activists in the movement to stop violence against women, especially Kathleen Carlin, David Garvin, Leigh Nachman Hofheimer, and Mike Jackson. Leigh, Mike, Josephine Donovan, Marie Fortune, and Susanne Kappeler provided close readings of an earlier version of this essay. I am extremely grateful for their attentiveness to this issue and my words. Thanks too for their support and conversations to Batya Bauman, Lisa Finlay, Gus Kaufman Jr., Leslie Mann, Ken Shapiro, John Stoltenberg, and DeLora Wisemoon.
1. This essay expands the preliminary work I have done on this subject (see Adams 1994c).
2. In this essay I use some terms that do not sit comfortably with me and other activists. For instance, I am uncomfortable with the term "battered woman," although it is one that the movement against violence against women has itself adopted. I agree with Sarah Hoagland (1988) that the term elides the agency of the batterer, while also ascribing an unchanging status to his victim. However, because it is the commonly adopted term, and is used by the scholars and activists from whom I draw my examples, I use the term in this essay. I also use the conventional term "pet" to describe animals who are a part of a household. Those involved in the movement to free animals from human oppression prefer the term "companion animal." While I find this term helpful, the word "pet" is the word used most frequently within the battered women ’ s movement. Thus, for consistency, I continue their usage. Furthermore, given the insights of Yi-Fu Tuan into the making of pets — dominance combined with affection (Tuan 1984, 2) — it may be deceptive for us to presume that there can be nonhierarchical relationships with domesticated animals at this point in history. Just how humans should relate to other animals in any intimate way, that is, the feminist implications of "pet" keeping and whether domestication of animals is consistent with a nonhierarchical feminist theory, is beyond the scope of this essay, but see in general Noske (1989), Tuan (1984), Serpell (1986), and Mason (1993). Finally, personally and philosophically, I find the use of the pronoun "it" disturbing when used to refer to nonhuman animals. However, again, for the purpose of continuity of the narrative, I do not intercede with [ sic ]s when "it" is used by other authors.
3. Much of the material in this section is taken from Adams 1994b, 11 – 21.
4. Reported in the Dallas Times Herald, 15 June 1991.
5. For a detailed analysis of the failings of law enforcement systems to protect battered women, see Jones (1994).
6. Battered women ’ s shelters often cannot take pets because of Health Department regulations and the restrictions of their liability insurance. Feminists for Animal Rights is starting programs in various communities that offer shelter for the companion animals of battered women. For information on this program, see Adams 1994a or contact Feminists for Animal Rights, P.O. Box 8869, Tucson, Arizona 85738.
7. Conversation with author, October 1994.
8. Some would object to the notion of animals as property that this sentence countenances, but this was in fact the reality for the Lowes.
9. Insight of John Stoltenberg, conversation with author, May 1993.
10. "In fact, the batterer often is a pimp, forcing his wife to have sex with other men or with animals" (Jones 1994, 85).
12. Insight of Mike Jackson, conversation with author, spring 1994.
13. Martha R. Mahoney proposes that the term "separation assault" be used to identify the struggle for control that occurs when a woman decides to separate or begins to prepare to separate. "Separation attacks," she argues, should be used to designate the "varied violent and coercive moves in the process of separation assault." Mahoney maintains, " Separation assault is the attack on the woman ’ s body and volition in which her partner seeks to prevent her from leaving, retaliate for the separation, or force her to return. It aims at overbearing her will as to where and with whom she will live, and coercing her in order to enforce connection in a relationship. It is an attempt to gain, retain, or regain power in a relationship, or to p
unish the woman for ending the relationship" (Mahoney 1991, 65 – 66). This and the following example need to be seen as separation attacks, constitutive parts of separation assault.
14. Insight of Mike Jackson, conversation with author, spring 1994.
15. This section arose from conversations with Mike Jackson. I thank him for his close reading of a previous version, and his discussions with me about this issue. Jackson articulated clearly the need to identify parallels in the treatment of animals and children.
16. Using an animal to harm a woman is a way of exerting control; this explains why there are instances of lesbian attacks on their partner ’ s pet. While human male violence is responsible for most of the damage to women and the other animals in cases of battering, a patriarchal, hierarchical culture will find expressions of this form of violence in some women ’ s same-sex relationships. Where there is an acceptance of a patriarchal value hierarchy, some lesbians will wish to establish control (and be on top in terms of the hierarchy) through violence: "38% of the [abused lesbian] respondents who had pets reported that their partners had abused the animals" (Renzetti 1992, 21). These acts of battering are considered violent and coercive behavior (see Hart 1986, 188). The battered lesbian whose partner injures or destroys a pet faces a double burden: overcoming the invisibility or trivializing of lesbian battering and the invisibility or trivializing of abuse to animals.
11. In the past few years, some battered women ’ s advocates have raised concerns about the use of Biderman ’ s charts by shelters. They have focused their concern on several issues: (1) it cannot be seen as explaining woman-battering since it fails to contextualize the psychological effects from coercive controlling behavior within the social structure of male dominance; (2) shelters should not see the chart as a codification of every form of psychological battering, thus they should not assume that it is exhaustive in its identification of coercive controls; (3) it cannot be used as a tool to enable advocates to assess the life-threatening nature of the batterer ’ s actions, nor does it indicate order and predictability. This chart does not mean that the batterer is going to act out in the order in which items are listed. Thus, it is not a predictor of the safety of the woman. In other words, the chart functions best in offering an interpretive structure for a woman to understand the psychological battering she has experienced. When pressed into duty as a predictor of her safety or as a tool that explains why a man batters, it will lose its effectiveness. My purpose in reproducing it is to demonstrate just how fully insinuated within the coercive control of the batterer is his treatment of the animals in the household.
References
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— — — . 1994b. Woman-Battering . Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press.
— — — . 1994c. Bringing Peace Home: A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on the Abuse of Women, Children, and Pet Animals. In Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals, 144 – 61. New York: Continuum.
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4
Marti Kheel
License to Kill: An Ecofeminist Critique of Hunters ’ Discourse
Oh, never a brute in the forest and never a snake in the fen
Or ravening bird, starvation stirred, has hunted prey like men.
For hunger and fear and passion alone drives beasts to slay,
But wonderful man, the crown of the plan, tortures and kills for play.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “ Voice of the Voiceless ”
We cannot have peace among men whose hearts
delight in killing any living creature. By every act that
glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in
killing we set back the progress of humanity.
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Introduction
Most people conceive of the environmental movement as designed to curb or eliminate our society ’ s destructive relation to the natural world. It may, therefore, seem puzzling to some that a growing number of environmental writers have endorsed an act of violence — namely, hunting. For an increasing number of writers, however, hunting is seen not only as morally acceptable, but as replete with moral and spiritual import. How did this phenomenon occur?
In the 1970s a number of environmental writers sought a different direction for environmental philosophy. 1 Having grown weary of the focus within environmental ethics on abstract principles and universal rules, they began to search for an ethic (more often called a “ consciousness ” ) that placed greater emphasis on the importance of experience. In distinct ways, the writings of deep ecologists, ecofeminists, and other radical ecologists all reflected this new orientation. For a number of writers, the valorization of experience was also accompanied by a turn to native cultures for practical inspiration for a new environmental consciousness. For some, hunting was viewed as an exemplary activity for grounding this new environmental consciousness. 2 Richard Nelson, a cultural anthropologist turned nature writer, who is frequently cited by environmental philosophers, illustrates this interest in the activity of hunting. In his words:
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