Animals and Women Feminist The

by Carol J Adams

  The contract idea ignores these and other facts, such as the innumerable diseases of domestication which, pertinently, have created a flourishing animal research, pharmaceutical, and veterinary industry. It romanticizes and exonerates our relationship to domesticated animals and teasingly suggests that species that in other environmentalist contexts are rigorously denied moral agency and autonomy, in some sort of lopsided scapegoatism, just happen to have them here. 13 Domesticated animals were themselves once wild and free. “ Egg-type ” chickens released into wild habitats they personally have never known revive their suppressed behavioral repertoire. Whether farm and other domesticated animals could survive under feral conditions, it is inappropriate to refer to an “ unspoken social contract ” between themselves and their human “ masters. ”

  I have a photograph of a poultry researcher posing for the media in an experimental battery hen unit with a scientifically blinded and defeated hen in his arms and a smile on his face (Greene 1992, A-6). I have a letter from a poultry experimenter who writes: “ I think you will agree that the human species is the only one that has any compassion for its prey. . . . I perceive in your literature the proposal that chickens be treated as pets. The child who is holding a Plymouth barred rock hen should stay near a supply of clean clothes. I have been involved with many thousands of chickens and turkeys and I don ’ t think they are good pets, although it is evident that almost any vertebrate may be trained to come for food ” (Jukes 1992).

  This is the voice of the expert so insensitized that the image of a little girl tenderly holding a hen in her arms produces only thoughts of the hen ’ s defecation — a reminder that his involvement with thousands of chickens and turkeys is such that they evacuate when he touches them. In being barred from entering the environmentalist dialogue by way of “ Clucking Like a Mountain, ” I cannot help wondering how far the delegitimization process acts as a form of intellectual protection against the mute importunities and soft dialogues of all the Vivas in the world. There is no comfort in seeing the eyes of a hen staring out of the cage built especially for her. The supposition that she has no expression, nothing to express, is, however, a great comfort.

  * * *

  Notes

  1. This extended essay on "food" animal slaughter and vegetarianism was written in 1892 as a preface to the Russian edition of Howard Williams ’ s Ethics of Diet (1883). Williams ’ s book is a biographical history of philosophic vegetarianism from antiquity through the early nineteenth century.

  2. See Callicott (1980, 315): Toward the "urgent concern of animal liberationists for the suffering of domestic animals . . . Leopold manifests an attitude which can only be described as indifference."

  3. In Lord of the Flies (Golding 1954), see chapter 8, "Gift for the Darkness."

  4. Says Leopold (1966, 137): "Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf."

  5. See also Callicott, "Farm Animal Feminism" (1988b). Cf. Ursula K. Le Guin, "She Unnames Them" (1985, 27): "Cattle, sheep, swine, asses, mules, and goats, along with chickens, geese, and turkeys, all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people to whom — as they put it — they belonged."

  6. "Abandon all hope, you who enter here," the inscription on the entrance to hell in Dante ’ s Inferno 3.9. See also Davis, "Farm Animals and the Feminine Connection" (1988b); "Mixing Without Pain" (1989); and "Farm Animal Feminism" (1988a).

  7. For a valuable consideration of this issue, see Michael Allen Fox, "Environmental Ethics and the Ideology of Meat Eating" (1993). He says, for instance, concerning the environmentalist dismissal of dietary ethics and the suffering of individual animals, that it is "ethically myopic and no more than self-serving; it is an example of the kind of compartmentalized thinking that humans have practiced far too long and from which environmental ethicists had promised to deliver us. It is a kind of thinking that must be abandoned if human and other forms of life are to coexist and flourish on this planet" (122).

  8. In Pacelle, "The Foreman of Radical Environmentalism" (1987), David Foreman of Earth First! is quoted as saying: "I see individual lives as momentary energy blips on a grid" (8).

  9. In "The Rights Stuff," Knox (1991, 37) concludes that "Those who would fight the earth ’ s battles can ’ t help but make common cause with animal rights activists where their interests coincide — but carefully, lest the ever-elusive big picture doesn ’ t get miniaturized into portraits of battered puppy dogs."

  10. See Karen Davis, "Red Contact Lenses for Chickens: A Benighted Concept" (1992). Available from United Poultry Concerns, Inc., P.O. Box 59367, Potomac, MD 20859.

  11. The 1994 report Laying Hens by the Swiss Society for the Protection of Animals upholds this claim, noting, "Neither thousands of years of domestication nor the recent extreme selective breeding for productivity have fundamentally altered the behaviour of chickens. The frequently expressed view that the brooding instinct has been bred out of present-day hybrid birds has been proved wrong. Hens repeatedly become broody even under intensive production conditions" (11). My personal experience with domesticated chickens over the past ten years supports these observations.

  12. Except for some sentence tightening, "Clucking Like a Mountain" — this essay within the essay — is represented here exactly as it was submitted to the editor of Environmental Ethics .

  13. See, e.g., Mary Anne Warren, "The Rights of the Nonhuman World" (1992).

  14. On the concept of the moral ecology of pain and suffering, see Karen Davis, "What ’ s Wrong with Pain Anyway?" (1989).

  References

  Adams, Carol J., and Marjorie Procter-Smith. 1993. Taking Life or “ Taking on Life ” ?: Table Talk and Animals. In Ecofeminism and the Sacred ed. Carol J. Adams. New York: Continuum.

  Birch, Charles, and John B. Cobb Jr. 1981. The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Buyukmihci, Nedim C. 1992. Letter to the author, 9 March.

  Callicott, J. Baird. 1980. Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair. Environmental Ethics 2:311 – 38.

  — — — . 1988a. Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Back Together Again. Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics 4:163 – 69. Reprinted in The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective , ed. Eugene C. Hargrove. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992, 249 – 61.

  — — — . 1988b. Farm Animal Feminism, [letter to editor]. The Animals ’ Agenda (June):3 – 4.

  Cobb, John B., Jr. 1992. Matters of Life and Death . Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press.

  Dahl, Ruth [Mrs. Richard A.]. 1987. Thinks We Show Favoritism to Whales [letter to editor]. The Animals ’ Agenda (June):47.

  Davis, Karen. 1988a. Farm Animal Feminism [letter]. The Animals ’ Agenda (June):4.

  — — — . 1988b. Farm Animals and the Feminine Connection. The Animals ’ Agenda (January/February):38 – 39.

  — — — . 1989. What ’ s Wrong with Pain Anyway? The Animals ’ Agenda (February):50 – 51.

  — — — . 1989. Mixing Without Pain. Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics 5:33 – 37.

  — — — . 1990. Viva, The Chicken Hen (June – November 1985). Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics 6:33 – 35.

  — — — . 1992. Red Contact Lenses for Chickens: A Benighted Concept. Potomac, Md.: United Poultry Concerns, Inc.

  Fox, Michael Allen. 1993. Environmental Ethics and the Ideology of Meat Eating. Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics 9:121 – 32.

  Giardina, Denise, and Eric Bates. 1991. Fowling the Nest. Southern Exposure 19(2):8 – 12.

  Golding, William. 1954. Lord of the Flies . N.p.: Wideview/Perigree Books.

  Greene, Jan. 1992. Cal Poly Chicken Study Ruffles Feathers: Animal Rights Groups Blast Contact Lens Study. Telegram-Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.) 13 March, A-l, A-6.

  Hargrove, Eugene C. 1992. Letter to author, 18 October.

  Jukes, Thomas H. 1992.
Letter to author, 4 September.

  Knox, Margaret L. 1991. The Rights Stuff. Buzzworm: The Environmental Journal 3(3):31 – 37.

  Le Guin, Ursula. 1985. She Unnames Them. The New Yorker, 21 January, 27.

  Leopold, Aldo. 1966. A Sand County Almanac . New York: Ballantine Books. Originally published 1949.

  Nash, Roderick Frazier. 1991/92. Island Civilization: A Vision for Planet Earth in the Year 2992. Wild Earth (Winter):2 – 4.

  Nicol, Christine, and Marian Stamp Dawkins. 1990. Homes Fit for Hens. New Scientist (March 17):46 – 51.

  Pacelle, Wayne. 1987. The Foreman of Radical Environmentalism: A Discussion with David Foreman of Earth First! The Animals ’ Agenda (December):6 – 9, 52 – 53.

  Roszak, Theodore. 1973. Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society . New York: Anchor Books.

  Sagan, Carl. 1977. The Dragons of Eden: Speculation on the Evolution of Human Intelligence . New York: Random House.

  Schleifer, Harriet. 1985. Images of Life and Death: Food Animal Production and the Vegetarian Option. In In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer, 63 – 73. New York: Basil Blackwell.

  Seed, John, et al. 1988. Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings . Philadelphia, Pa.: New Society Publishers.

  Smith, Page, and Charles Daniel. 1975. The Chicken Book: Being an Inquiry into the Rise and Fall, Use and Abuse, Triumph and Tragedy of Gallus Domesticus . Boston: Little, Brown.

  Swiss Society for the Protection of Animals STS. 1994. Laying Hens: 12 Years of Experience with New Husbandry Systems in Switzerland . Bern: Kummerly & Frey AG.

  Walker, Alice. 1988. Why Did the Balinese Chicken Cross the Road? Living by the Word: Selected Writings 1973 – 1987 . New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

  Warren, Mary Anne. 1992. The Rights of the Nonhuman World. The Animal Rights/Environmentalist Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective , ed. Eugene C. Hargrove, 185 – 210. Albany: State University of New York Press.

  So far “ respect ” has been defined as attentiveness to both the mutual interests of and the differences between human and nonhuman animals. But this is only half the picture of “ care respect. ” What then constitutes “ care ” of the wolf?

  “ Care ” is the desire to preserve the existence and to promote the good of wolves. It is a way for us to express respect for them and, in order to be complete, should result in our active moral response to their needs. As discussed above, respectful knowledge of what at first appears to be the other (wolves) results initially from recognizing the “ similarity or affinity of the subject with the object of affection ” (Aristotle, Ethics, bk. 6, sec. i). This respectful understanding arising first from similarity will in turn engender the desire to care for the nonhuman animal.

  In loving a friend, one chooses to love one ’ s own good, the “ good ” being the friend and the friend ’ s virtues. Women align with wolves in the area of our desire of and their instincts for the good represented by their survival. Our desire for their continued existence directs our moral will to act respectfully on their behalf, even though the care can never be fully reciprocated in kind. Consider in this context the model of a mother with children, who does not seek equal benefit for the benefits she bestows but who rejoices nonetheless over her children ’ s continued healthy existence. This paradigm can be broadly applied to the relationship of care between humans and wolves.

  However, although ecofeminists might seek to conserve the wolf purely because of its intrinsic value as a life form and should not expect full reciprocity in kind, there are three forms of wolf reciprocation for human care. First, wolves do provide women, as children provide mothers, with the opportunity to satisfy our needs to “ act or forbear acting out of benevolent concern ” (Dillon 1992, 71) for living creatures, in order to become self-defined moral beings.

  A second example of incidental but beneficial wolf response to our care is that the lifeway of wolves offers a socially empowering image of females as leaders, equal to or, in the case of young alpha females, exceeding that of alpha males in the survival skills required by the pack. Women ’ s appreciation of these similarities in virtue between wolves and women — the female wolf ’ s “ spirit, ” which resembles human courage; or the “ prudence ” in survival ability, which in human terms is the political virtue par excellence — also offers an opportunity for creating a sense of our community with wolves. Physiological similarities, such as the fact that we share parts of our brain with the reptiles and other mammals, and emotional congruence — the fact that wolves display feelings of sadness, rage, disappointment, loss, joy, affection, embarrassment — further link us through our bodily natures, and make it that much easier to take into account the good of all animals, human and otherwise.

  9

  Diane Antonio

  Of Wolves and Women

  Developing an ethic of care and respect toward nonhuman animals is a challenge to the feminist moral imagination. It will necessitate an examination of our relationship not only to the similarities underlying all animal life, but also the development of new ways of relating to the differences. Such an examination touches on the sources of racism and classism, for ecofeminism generally contends that moral failures of perception and imagination between human and nonhuman realms of nature are symptomatic of similar failures between men and women, races, and social classes. 1

  In contemporary theorizing about the human-animal relation, both those who build theories of natural and/or legal animal rights and those who draw oppositions between women and nature and men and culture may be criticized for being self-referencing or anthropocentric in relation to the natural world. In certain versions of the former theory, rights are extended to animals because of their likeness to humans, insofar as they are experiencing subjects of their own lives or independent individuals (Rigterink 1992). Animal species are not necessarily or primarily regarded as lifeways possessing intrinsic value, and nonhuman animal rights claims become competitive with human rights claims. In some accounts of the latter theory, those who focus upon a certain equivalence between nature and women, also emphasize similarity, neglecting a relation to difference. In fact, there are serious differences to be addressed if we are to be true to our goal of a robust and more equitable relationship with nonhuman animals. And while we should not fall into glorifying nature in the abstract, as though it were something dancing “ out there ” on the other point of a dualism, or try to stamp out all fellow feeling for the qualities and interests of our own human species, neither may we facilely dismiss nonhuman animal qualities and values as being ontologically inferior to our own. 2

  Ecological philosophers like Deane Curtin provide a promising alternative by calling for a caring relationship to nonhuman life (1991, 60 – 75). But as others have pointed out, the idea of care is just a starting point for approaching nature on its own terms; it is not there a priori as a concept ready for use. To be consistent with general ecofeminist theory, it has to be forged out of the stuff of our own experience with an individual animal or out of a concrete situation in nature, such as imminent species extinction. (In my case, an interest in wolves began, not with an encounter with an individual wolf, although I have observed a wolf pack in captivity, but as a result of my acquaintance with an admirably wolf-like canine, an American pit bull terrier.)

  In this essay, I suggest a way of shaping an ecofeminism or ethical theory of “ care respect ” (to use Robin S. Dillon ’ s term; 1992, 73) that includes a deeper relationship of women to difference.

  The Ethic of Care Respect

  Women who seek to develop “ respect ” for the wolf may do so through rational analysis of the natural history of the wolf. To reach a respectful understanding of what wolves value, we must first educate ourselves about wolf behavior and imagine lived experience from the wolf ’ s point of view. Second, we can attend to the wolf ’ s needs for survival and a life without physical or emotional pain. Third, we can acknowledge wolves ’ inhere
nt value as living creatures. At the same time as we attend to the wolf ’ s need for us to live with better economy and equity on the earth, we would be recognizing our own moral need to give respect to nonhuman animals. In this way, we may help transform the phenomenal world according to our moral valuations in communication with wolves ’ observable valuations of activities, relationships, and events in their environment. As a practical matter, this transformation would be wrought first, according to a human valuation of the good — such as, for example, the continuity of sacred life or preservation of beauty on earth. Such public witnessing of our own valuations, based on women ’ s self-respect as self-defined moral agents, is an exercise of political power. Then, by recognizing not only the similar but the differing values of the wolf — for example, acknowledging the wolf ’ s service of balancing the ecosystem through predation — the ecofeminist would properly empower the animal as part of the earth community. 3

  Finally, male/female human relations are greatly illuminated by considering how Western males relate to difference vis- à -vis Canis lupus . In her book Pure Lust (1984, 282 – 84), feminist philosopher Mary Daly explores the analogy between male violence toward women and the torture of animals (wild cows). If it is true that one builds relationship, initially, through identification of mutual interest, it would be fruitful to pursue a causal relation between men ’ s cultural and philosophical concepts about women as incarnations of evil and the violent treatment of wolves, which has pushed them even to the brink of extinction. Western woman — in the guise of the irrational, the unlimited, the bestial, the inferior “ other ” end of the good/evil duality — had unleashed all the evils of Pandora ’ s box upon the Classical world, preyed upon the sensuality of dreaming Jewish men, and caused males to be flung out of Paradise. Not incidentally, the European witch burnings of the Middle Ages coincided with Church-sponsored programs against the wolf, the archetype of the ravening beast in literature and folklore. And while “ human ” werewolf burnings ended in the eighteenth century, nonhuman wolves are targeted for torment to this day. The “ other ” — which is often typified by Western woman and which becomes, in this case, exemplified by a particularly hated nonhuman animal — is still perceived by some men as being irredeemably “ evil. ”