Animals and Women Feminist The

by Carol J Adams

  Care Respect for What Is Different

  Many ecofeminists rightly agree that our emotional attachments to individual animals and species are moral realities that need to be illuminated by feminist discourse. This discourse may help us expand the boundaries of the moral domain to include what has been seen to be, for both men and women, ontologically “ other ” — that is, nonhuman nature. In articulating a relation of care respect, then, we must move beyond the limiting concept of similarity, once it has been examined in the context of male mythmaking, and press for a more complete apprehension of the wolf in its concrete particularity of differences. In Josephine Donovan ’ s words, we need to create a human ethic “ in consideration and consultation and communication with other species ” (1991, 424).

  Despite similarities, or areas of mutual valuation, in so many ways, wolves are not like us, will never reason like us, and for all we know, would gain no advantage in “ feeling ” as we do about moral issues. For instance, from time to time, wolves bring down prey far in excess of food needs, destroy sick pups, and, contrary to popular opinion, have killed humans in North America, notably Inuit and other Native American hunters, who share territory and prey (Lopez 1978, 27, 51, 54, 69). That is not to say that human beings do not slaughter in excess of survival needs but that in the areas in which wolf behavior comes into conflict with our collective mores, we must enlarge our concept of moral virtue.

  In her essay “ Care and Respect, ” Dillon properly defines the virtue of “ care ” as a cherishing respect that manifests the “ object ’ s special worth. ” In this sense, an act of care not only reveals the presence of virtue in the one who cares and protects but reciprocally indicates virtue in those who are cared for and protected, helped to “ pursue their ends, ” and assisted in satisfying their “ wants and needs ” (73).

  The notion of an active “ virtue ” of care when applied to the behavior of a nonhuman animal is a problematic one, to be sure. Because of the rationalist bias of much traditional Western ethical philosophy (such as Platonist or Kantian theory), which requires, among other things, the voluntary intellectual cultivation of good judgment so that one may make sound moral choices, nonhuman animals may seem to be excluded from the realm of moral agency. Appearing to be devoid of choice of activity, or motivated by instincts alone, they often have been thought to be “ virtuous ” only in the pleasure or utility found in them by human beings.

  However, as documented by Rick Bass in his book The Ninemile Wolves (1992), there may be enough behavioral variation in nonhuman animal individuals to allow for some choice, at least in degree, in the performance of their instinctual behaviors. For example, the so-called “ Good Mom ” (36, 103), a she-wolf living in the Ninemile Valley of Montana with her six cubs, shared a meadow with a herd of cows and chose not to teach her cubs to kill them. (Bass believes that wolves must be taught to prey on cattle.) This act of forbearance, not shared by all wolves who come upon grazing cattle, was virtuous in two senses. First, it was a caring act of protection of her cubs, who would have been persecuted had they become cattle killers. Second, the “ Good Mom ’ s ” peaceful coexistence with cattle was virtuous in human economic terms, that is, she “ respected ” the ranchers ’ turf and did not “ steal ” from them. (I am not suggesting, however, that the “ Good Mom ” was cherishing the cattle, and thus revealing the presence of virtue in them!) Another example of differential caring behavior among wolves would be an individual wolf ’ s choice or refusal to use force to seize food from pups (Bass 1992, 29).

  Barry Holstun Lopez (1978) also argues for differing “ personalities ” and, therefore, variation in virtuous behavior, among wolves (33). Some babysitting adults, he says, are more playful and therefore more effective in teaching cubs how to hunt. He also discusses the great range of “ feelings, ” “ facial expressions, ” and “ moods ” displayed by wolves (44).

  In addition to the idea of the virtue of caring being exhibited by individual nonhuman animals, there is already fertile ground in feminist thought for the development of a theory of “ communal virtue ” in regard to nonhuman creatures. Marilyn Friedman, in “ Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community ” (1992), has provided a useful paradigm for such a discourse. Her notion of a “ communitarian self ” or moral agent “ constituted and defined by its communal attachments ” (88) fits nicely with the notion of the strong social bonds of a wolf pack, for example. Wolves also share with humans the three types of communities outlined by Friedman: the “ found ” community into which one is born, the voluntary community of mating and companionship, and the nonvoluntary community of place in which the young and the old must dwell in order to survive (92 – 95). For the purposes of this essay, and taken in the context of a human cultural or nonhuman animal social structure — if not within an absolute value system, religious or otherwise — communal virtue may be provisionally defined as an attitude or quality or set of attitudes or qualities of character that are mutually beneficial to the individual and his or her social community. These positive qualities are generally manifested, in the case of nonhuman animals, in physical gesture, vocalization, and social behavior. It is interesting to note that wolves themselves recognize virtue in this sense, deferring to evinced individual leadership qualities, and allowing each wolf to contribute according to talent and inclination.

  Yet, an obstacle to the wolf ’ s claim to American women ’ s special interest and protection is the “ Disney Dilemma, ” in that the bloody details of the wolf ’ s worthy ecological service of preserving nature ’ s balance (i.e., by thinning out overpopulated deer or caribou herds) may conflict with our cultural bias for the relative aesthetic value of the nonpredator species that wolves feed on. The recent popular Disney film Beauty and the Beast depicted a snarling wolf pack that endangered both Beauty and Beast. To enlarge our concept of moral agency in this context becomes the work of the imagination.

  So first of all, in attempting to create an imaginative new relationship to difference, we can initiate a celebration or hymein of the mystery of difference whenever we are tempted to punish or repress it. Second, we can take a cue from the Seneca native culture and find a basis for trust in the notion that a wolf may be trusted always to behave like a wolf.

  On a collective level, feminist acts of imagination like these have the potential for causing sweeping moral change. As Aldo Leopold observed, “ No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections and convictions ” (1966, 246). Let us look now at the wolf of the Western imagination — through the eyes of religion, philosophy, gender issues, and anthropology — and try to see how we can change it.

  Whose Wolf Is This Anyway?

  Religion

  In his sympathetic and intelligent treatment of the lupine, Of Wolves and Men , Lopez reminds us that from an historiocultural point of view, at least, humans “ create ” wolves. Leaving aside for the moment the obvious question of techne — that is, who is doing the creating — it is intriguing to recognize that the root of the Greek word for wolf, lukos, is so close to the word “ light, ” leukos, that it has often been mistaken in translation (Lopez 1978, 209). The Latin homology lupus/lucis further elucidates the linguistic linkage of twilight-prowling wolves with the fallen lightbearer ( lucem ferre ) or Lucifer (Lopez 1978, 210). Lucifer was, of course, the prince of angels who — like the Judaic Lilith, the first woman — rebelled against the Father, and thereby “ turned into ” a devil, the quintessence of darkness in a Judeo-Christian tradition that suppressed the Mother Goddess in all her many forms (Koltuv 1987, 6 – 7).

  So much of our atavistic memory of wolves seems to be dominated by this essentially religious concept of the devouring demon, augmented in legend by a Grimm romanticism of evil. Again and again, throughout Western history, Europeans played out mass Manichean dramas of the beast against the light. In the fifteenth century there were great organized drives against wolves
. At the height of the “ burning times ” — the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries — hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of women were condemned by the Inquisition for being lupine shape-shifters. For generations of our ancestors, the werewolf, not to mention the she-wolf, became the personification of pure evil. (In North America, Navajos also have werewolves, but, in contrast, they are usually male.)

  To be fair, it must be noted that wolves have not only been hounded to extinction throughout most of Europe (there are none left in the British Isles), but their populations have also been substantially reduced in India as well as in the Near and Middle East. Still, the West has had a particularly fatal attraction to the wolf.

  In contemporary America, there is increasing concern for the survival of the wolf. But there are also the pernicious images of the lone wolf, the Big Bad Wolf, a wolf in sheep ’ s clothing, wolfing it down, Saturday night wolf. This is typical and troubling linguistic abuse of a species that usually mates for life, can pursue temporary solitude while maintaining a highly cooperative social group, typically shuns or even patiently tolerates humans, feeds its old, and collectively cares for its playful young in a way roughly analogous to an extended human family.

  According to National Geographic, wolves of the high arctic are known to be intelligent, resourceful, and not easily fooled by humans. They are patient hunters, trekking long distances over harsh terrain to find food for the pack, food that even the alpha pair leaders will feed first to the pups. It may take up to three hours to bring down their musk oxen prey, which are much larger than wolves and can only be approached by the collective pack. The wolves husband their energy for the good of the group.

  At this point, alerted by the bad fit of observed reality to idea, a time-honored test of scientific theory, we North American women might well ask of culture: whose wolf is this anyway?

  Philosophy

  In addition to the foregoing brief examination of the religious basis for negative attitudes toward the wolf, it may be useful here to make a similar historical survey of pertinent philosophical concepts, especially those concurrent with the early European settlement of this country.

  We may recall that in “ On the Generation of Animals, ” Aristotle negatively defined the female role in reproduction in terms of the female ’ s inability to transmit the active life principle or spirit to her offspring; in his view, she offered only dumb, inferior matter. We may further recall that this pseudoscientific theory of reproduction was later taken up by the English biologist William Harvey. In 1651, after doing anatomical studies on the doe ’ s reproductive system, Harvey published his finding that Aristotle was, basically, right (Anderson and Zinsser l988, 96)!

  In seventeenth-century France, meanwhile, Ren é Descartes was denying a soul to animals altogether, describing them as cunning automata, upon which vivisection could be practiced with impunity. Compatible with such ethical arguments upholding human superiority over the creatures, the English empiricist John Locke told his fellow men that it was their God-given duty to “ subdue ” the wilds of the North American continent (1952, 21), as did New England theologian Cotton Mather. Given this proprietary view of nature and, dating back to the Greeks, the oft-made identification of women with the “ inferior ” natural functions, it is hard to escape the conclusion arrived at by Ursula Le Guin in her essay “ Woman/Wilderness ” : that for many American men, the chaotic wilds, psychologically speaking, include women (1989).

  Gender Issues

  While I would agree that many men have underestimated the value of the role of wolves and overestimated their own (human) importance within the ecosystem, as well as the strength of some of their more dubious claims (e.g., the right to hunt soon-to-be-endangered species), I would also suggest that the problem goes much deeper and that it is gender based. Lopez relates two anecdotes that support my thesis. The first concerns a favorite ruse among cowhands, who would stake out a female dog in heat to attract a wolf. Then, while the two canines were joined in a copulative tie, and unable to break apart, the men would club the wolf to death (196). Significantly, if we look back to linguistic roots again, we find that the Latin word for “ whore, ” lupa, is a homophone for “ wolf. ” The sexual imagery embedded in the Western imagination is inescapable.

  Literature and folklore also provide supportive examples of the link between the wolf and female, which is to say, sinful sexuality. Dante called his damned seducers “ wolves, ” and in the medieval villages of the Caucasus, it was believed that adulteresses were punished by becoming werewolves for seven years.

  One more account will serve to illustrate poignantly the connection between male sexual violence against women and wolf killing. In the 1970s, three “ fun-seeking ” Texas men on horseback lassoed a female red wolf, dragged her around the prairie until her teeth broke out, stretched her between their horses with ropes, and for a finale, beat her to death with a pair of fence pliers. To complete the humiliation of the scapegoat, which strongly suggests innumerable newspaper accounts of the prolonged torments of some rape victims, the wolf was taken to a few bars in a pickup, then flung into a roadside ditch to rot (Lopez 1978, 152).

  I am not trying to suggest here that men ’ s cruelty or ascription of only instrumental value to animals is exclusive to wolves (or that women are exempt from these attitudes, but that is another matter). That other species are similarly targeted can be seen in examples of bear baiting, cockfighting, and whaling, in which the sperm whale was hunted to extinction by the New England trade and others. Nonetheless, it could be argued that pursuit of the wounding or death of individuals of these species (some wild) was primarily motivated by an economic interest, such as gambling stakes or sperm oil, rather than by irrational hatred. It is probably also true that sadistic pleasure in the animals ’ pain was present in some members of the pit audience or whaling crew, thus giving an economic enterprise a secondary “ entertainment ” value. With the exception of the brutalities of the wolf bounty system, wolf torture often has no primary economic value.

  Perhaps a better model of an irrationally persecuted species, this time domestic, would be the cat, which is again a creature traditionally associated with female witches. Even in recent years there have been TV news reports of cat mutilations. Still, with Canis lupus, from the Middle Ages to our own era, the impulse or impulses of men that result in either fatal economic interest or in random persecution of these other animals has repeatedly exploded into full-blown Church- or State-sponsored war against wolves.

  It is important to note here that in modern Minnesota, for example, the aerial hunters who waged wolf “ genocide ” from the safety of hovering helicopters were mostly, if not all, males of our species. Although this wholesale wolf killing was banned in 1972, male outrages against this particular animal continue. Lopez, who relates the “ unrestrained savagery ” of the perpetrators of U.S. bounty programs — den dynamiting, poisoning, wolfing for sport, and other national pogroms against the wolf, such as the Canadian wolf war in the 1950s — believes that hunting is “ ingrained ” in men and that ranchers were simply defending their Lockean property rights. He says he cannot blame them (1978, 198). Nonetheless, he suggests, it is true that when it comes to wolves many men do not seem to know their own place in the natural scheme of things. They hunt too much, they hate too much, they hurt too much. They will not share, and they do not act sensibly within the larger natural economy. Whatever reasons are given for it, Lopez says, all wolf killing is “ rooted in the belief that the wolf is ‘ wrong ’ in the scheme of things, like cancer and has to be rooted out ” (165). 4

  Even as I was revising this essay, I came across a disturbing but somehow not surprising announcement in the New York Times of 19 November 1992. The government of Alaska had given permission for up to 80 percent of the state ’ s endangered grey wolf populations to be destroyed by aerial tracking and shooting. The reason given was that the 7,000 grey wolves were acting like wolves and devouring some of the million strong
caribou and moose herds, thereby depriving hunters of the pleasure of killing the deer themselves, at a convenient location close to home. Quite apart from the moral question of valorizing hunters ’ pleasure over conservation of what is an endangered species all over the country and around the world, the Alaskan wolf-control policy was irrational. Without wolf predation, ungulate populations would decline even more drastically through famine and disease, not only in numbers but in quality and evolutionary diversity. Due to the international efforts of conservationists who threatened a tourism boycott, former Alaska governor Walter J. Hickel postponed the massacre, pending an ecological conference. In the spring of 1993, the Los Angeles Times announced that the Alaska government had decided to allow the destruction of 150 wild wolves beginning in the fall. It would take place in a 200-square-mile region southwest of Fairbanks and would not include aerial hunting. The presumption was that with most tourists locked into their plans for the summer, the wolf kill could proceed without delay. With this sort of ecological betrayal, not only of Alaska but of the whole continent, the future of the Alaskan wolf was tenuous. What is already an endangered species elsewhere in this country would soon be hunted down in their last American stronghold. In 1994, under this “ game management ” plan, approximately a hundred Alaskan wolves were slaughtered. As we go to press, the wolf kill has been canceled, granting the wolf a reprieve. But the game management forces in the Alaskan state legislature are strong: the wolves are still gravely at risk.