Animals and Women Feminist The

by Carol J Adams

  Second, many of us understand caring as intrinsic to our moral agency. For example, Carol Gilligan discusses the approach to morality in which “ responsibility signifies response, an extension rather than a limitation of action. Thus it connotes an act of care rather than the restraint of aggression ” (Gilligan 1982, 38). The caring approach to morality is neither exclusively nor universally adopted by women. Many men besides myself support animal liberation at least in part as an extension of caring agency; examples include Roongtham Sujithammaraksa (1987), Steve Sapontzis (1987), and John Robbins (1987). 15 Though one could argue that the adoption of a caring morality does not logically entail animal liberation (if one can be a caring person without caring for nonhumans), it is still true that animal liberation is one way to extend our capacities as caring agents. 16

  Animal liberation involves overcoming institutionalized barriers to our compassionate connections with animals. But beyond challenging the desensitizing ideologies and distancing mechanisms, the existence of a healthy animal liberation movement also helps us take our empathies for animals more seriously as a basis for action. For example, years ago when I was living in St. Louis, a friend returned from a visit to the East Coast, bringing with her a live lobster at my request. Though I had eaten lobsters in restaurants, I had never cooked one. My friend did not eat lobsters herself but she was familiar with the cooking procedures. She told me that you must drop the live lobster into boiling water. I asked her whether this hurt the lobster. She said she was not sure, but she had heard that the lobsters let out a high-pitched scream for some time after being dropped into the water. I found this extremely distressing, and wondered whether I would be able to carry out the procedure. I kept imagining being boiled alive. I went through the cooking preparations, and when the time came to boil the lobster, I gingerly picked him up, lifted the lid off the large pot, dropped him in, and then ran from the room with my hands over my ears, frantically determined not to hear the screaming. I returned later, finished the cooking and then ate the lobster.

  * * *

  I now see this as a paradigmatic failure of authentic agency, an incapacity to act: especially the willful self-deception and blocking of perception, but also the fragmentation of a person who does not recognize his sympathies as a potential basis for action. It is not that I considered sparing the lobster but decided against it, rather, the possibility never occurred to me, even though I sweated and agonized over the suffering I expected to inflict. An animal liberationist perspective would have made freeing the lobster a salient option, and thus would have opened up greater possibilities for action. 17

  Sarah Hoagland writes:

  In my opinion, the heart of ethical focus, the function of ethics, and what will promote lesbian connection, is enabling and developing individual integrity and agency within community. I have always regarded morality, ideally, as a system whose aim is, not to control individuals, but to make possible, to encourage and enable, individual development. (Hoagland 1988, 285)

  Similarly, animal liberation does not limit action through control of self and others, it develops the individual ’ s capacity for a broader range of action. It is creative, not restrictive. Patriarchal support for restrictions and controls, based on a pernicious elevation of reason over emotion and on a distorted view of human sympathetic tendencies, is a threatened impairment of autonomous individuals living in community with humans and nonhuman animals. Fortunately, we need not choose between patriarchal animal rights theory and support for the continuation of animal exploitation. A nonpatriarchal understanding of morality, in which, as Kathryn Pyne Addelson puts it, “ the whole human being is the basis of ethics ” (Addelson 1991, 151), fits animal liberation very well.

  Notes

  1. This section has benefited from the comments of Carol Adams, Paul Benson, and several anonymous reviewers.

  2. Singer and Regan themselves see the differences between their approaches as "fundamental" (Singer 1987, 3; Regan 1986a, 94), while Charles Magel, bibliographer of animal liberationist literature, takes Regan and Singer jointly to define the terms of debate:

  If a student interested in animal rights were to ask what to study, my advice would be: first, read all the works by Regan and Singer; then read all the responses to their works; and then read whatever you wish. (Magel 1989, xiii)

  3. Alternatively, the rationalistic writers may be unwittingly dependent on convention or authority to gain assent to their initial intuitions (see below for an instance of deference to authority). In any case, at these points reason has run out. For a fuller explanation of how the purely rationalistic arguments for animal liberation fail, see Luke 1992, 100 – 102.

  4. Regan begins his book with the quote "every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption," and he often adverts to the "growing intellectual respectability of exploring the moral status of animals" (Regan 1982, 113).

  5. For example, this nineteenth-century dismissal:

  Is it necessary to repeat that women — or rather, old maids, form the most numerous contingent of this group [i.e., antivivisectionists]? Let my adversaries contradict me, if they can show among the leaders of the agitation one girl, rich, beautiful, and loved, or some young wife who has found in her home the full satisfactions of her affections. (Quoted in Kalechofsky 1992, 62)

  And recently at an antihunting demonstration I heard hunters call some female activists "dykes" and advise others that "someday, when they had children" they would understand. Both today and a century ago women ’ s feelings for exploited animals are derogated as the misplaced affections a proper woman would direct only to her husband and children.

  6. And Andr é e Collard (1989, 97) links Singer ’ s insistence that he does not love animals (Singer 1990, ii) with a "fear of appearing too ‘ soft. ’ "

  7. Linzey stated in 1990, "we are no longer a movement of little old ladies in tennis shoes: ours is a movement of intellectual muscle" (quoted in Kheel 1993, 262). Regan has used similar metaphors, calling his animal rights theory "tough-minded" (Regan 1986a, 95), and concluding elsewhere that through the "forceful" editorship of anthologies on animal rights and other such efforts "we may safely put to rest the stereotypical picture of ‘ little old ladies in tennis shoes ’ " (Regan 1982, 113). Singer has argued that the perception of animal welfare as "a matter for old ladies in tennis shoes to worry about" is an unfounded prejudice (Singer 1979, 48). Significantly, in a later version of the same book, Singer replaced the phrase "old ladies in tennis shoes" with "people who are dotty about dogs and cats" (Singer 1993, 55).

  8. The Greek root arche — appearing in "patriarchy," "hierarchy," etc. — means both rule and principle, thus highlighting the close connection between ruling and the use of principles. This point was brought to my attention by Jennifer Whiting.

  9. The present essay differs from the works under discussion in that it (1) promotes a metaethical framework that is not structurally suited for programs of social control and (2) critically examines the hierarchical academic structure of which it is a part. Even so, the fact that this essay, authored by an assistant professor and appearing in an academic press, is clearly part of the hierarchical institution under examination raises questions about its consistency. This is one case of the common political problem of determining when criticizing an institution from within is more valuable than separatism. For me, the present case is unresolved, and, though I fully intend and hope to further animal liberation through the academic publication of this essay, I am still open to the possibility that animal liberation is best served by deemphasizing academic theorizing altogether.

  10. This can be compared to Stanley Milgram ’ s research on the conditions under which individuals accept a scientific authority ’ s commands to apply electric shock to another person. He found that the willingness to follow such commands correlated with the breakdown of what he called "the structure of a meaningful act — I am hurting a man" (Milgram 1965, 64).

  11. "T
he most commonly reported justification for slaughtering, mentioned by 9 of the 19 interviewees, was that people eat meat, so that slaughtering must be done by someone" (Herzog and McGee 1983, 130).

  12. This reasoning is formalized and defended by philosophers Peter Wenz (1979, 424), Michael Martin (1976, 27), and R. G. Frey (1983).

  13. Even apart from its prima facie implausibility, this theory ignores the fact that bow-hunting for deer has a 50 percent wounding rate (i.e., for every deer "bagged" by a bowhunter, one is hit but not retrieved) (Boydston and Gore 1986).

  14. Integrity is evidently more an ideal of autonomy than a condition, since we are still agents when we act with internal conflict.

  15. Here I pass over an issue that is critical for a full development of a feminist metaethic of animal liberation, namely, the gendered politics of caring — how caring by men and caring by women are structured so differently in our society.

  16. Nel Noddings ’ s argument that the "true ethical sentiment" of caring requires the reciprocity of mutual recognition and affection (and thus does not arise vis- à -vis unknown farmed and vivisected animals) seems to me to involve an unnecessarily restricted notion of moral caring (see Noddings 1984, 148 – 59; also Noddings and Donovan 1991).

  17. Even if liberating a lobster in St. Louis presents serious practical difficulties, surely there is some fate better than being boiled alive that caring intentions could discover.

  — — — . 1987. Animal Liberation or Animal Rights? Monist 70:3 – 14.

  References

  Adams, Carol. 1990. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum.

  — — — . 1994. Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals. New York: Continuum.

  Addelson, Kathryn Pyne. 1991. Impure Thoughts: Essays on Philosophy, Feminism, and Ethics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

  Aldhous, Peter. 1991. A Leap Into Controversy. Nature 352:463.

  Arluke, Arnold. 1990. Moral Elevation in Medical Research. Advances in Medical Sociology 1:189 – 204.

  Baker, Ron. 1985. The American Hunting Myth. New York: Vantage Press.

  Beck, Marilyn. 1991. Scott Bakula Goes Ape on NBC ’ s Quantum Leap. TV Guide 39(29):17.

  Boydston, Glenn, and Horace Gore. 1986. Archery Wounding Loss in Texas. Internal study, Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept., Austin, Texas.

  Collard, Andr é e, with Joyce Contrucci. 1989. Rape of the Wild: Man ’ s Violence against Animals and the Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  Culliton, Barbara. 1991. Can Reason Defeat Unreason? Nature 351:517. Donovan, Josephine. 1990. Animal Rights and Feminist Theory. Signs 15:350 – 75.

  Frey, R. G. 1983. Rights, Killing, and Suffering: Moral Vegetarianism and Applied Ethics. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.

  Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women ’ s Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  Herzog, Harold A., Jr., and Sandy McGee. 1983. Psychological Aspects of Slaughter: Reactions of College Students to Killing and Butchering Cattle and Hogs. International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems 4:124 – 32.

  Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. 1988. Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value . Palo Alto, Calif.: Institute of Lesbian Studies.

  Kalechofsky, Roberta. 1992. Dedicated to Descartes ’ Niece: The Women ’ s Movement in the Nineteenth Century and Anti-vivisection. Between the Species 8 [2):61 – 71.

  Kheel, Marti. 1985. The Liberation of Nature: A Circular Affair. Environmental Ethics 7 (2):135 – 49.

  — — — . 1993. From Heroic to Holistic Ethics: The Ecofeminist Challenge. In Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 243 – 71. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

  Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1971. From Is to Ought. In Cognitive Development and Epistemology, ed. Theodore Mischel, 151 – 235. New York: Academic Press.

  Luke, Brian. 1992. Justice, Caring, and Animal Liberation. Between the Species 8 (2):100 – 108.

  Magel, Charles. 1989. Keyguide to Information Sources in Animal Rights. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company.

  Martin, Michael. 1976. A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism. Reason Papers 3:13 – 43.

  Mason, Jim, and Peter Singer. 1980. Animal Factories. New York: Harmony Books.

  Milgram, Stanley. 1965. Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority. Human Relations 18:57 – 76.

  Noddings, Nel. 1984. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education . Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Noddings, Nel, and Josephine Donovan. 1991. Comment and Reply. Signs 16 (2):418 – 25.

  Nozick, Robert. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

  Regan, Tom. 1982. All That Dwell Therein: Essays on Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics . Berkeley: University of California Press.

  — — — . 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  — — — . 1986a. The Bird in the Cage: A Glimpse of My Life. Between the Species 2:42 – 49, 90 – 99.

  — — — . 1986b. The Search for a New Global Ethic. The Animals ’ Agenda 6 (December):4 – 6, 40 – 41.

  — — — . 1991. The Thee Generation: Reflections on the Coming Revolution. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

  Rifkin, Jeremy. 1992. Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture . New York: Dutton.

  Robbins, John. 1987. Diet for a New America. Walpole, N.H.: Stillpoint Publishing.

  Sapontzis, S. F. 1987. Morals, Reason, and Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

  Serpell, James. 1986. In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships. New York: Basil Blackwell.

  Sharpe, Robert. 1988. The Cruel Deception: The Use of Animals in Medical Research. Wellingborough, England: Thorsons Publishing Group.

  Singer, Peter. 1979. Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  — — — . 1981. The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

  — — — . 1990. Animal Liberation. 2d ed. New York: New York Review.

  — — — . 1993. Practical Ethics. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slicer, Deborah. 1991. Your Daughter or Your Dog? Hypatia 6 (l):108 – 24.

  Sperling, Susan. 1988. Animal Liberators: Research & Morality. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Sujithammaraksa, Roongtham. 1987. Agent-Based Morality in the Ethics of our Treatment of Animals. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.

  Thompson, William. 1983. Hanging Tongues: A Sociological Encounter with the Assembly Line. Qualitative Sociology 6:215 – 37.

  Vyvyan, John. 1988. In Pity and in Anger: A Study of the Use of Animals in Science. Marblehead, Mass.: Micah Publications.

  Walker, Alice. 1988. Living by the Word. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

  Warren, Virginia. 1989. Feminist Directions in Medical Ethics. Hypatia 4:73 – 87.

  Wenz, Peter. 1979. Act-Utilitarianism and Animal Liberation. Personalist 60:423 – 28.

  13

  Susanne Kappeler

  Speciesism, Racism, Nationalism . . . or the Power of Scientific Subjectivity

  The importance of the groundbreaking work of feminists who have politicized animal oppression cannot be overestimated. Not only does it make a much needed feminist intervention in (masculinist) theories of animal rights or animal liberation, revealing the sexism as well as other masculinist structures of thought underlying those theories. In pointing out the fundamental speciesism that underlies much of our own work, it has also contributed significantly to feminism. For many of us feminists, too, have worked with the apparently “ natural ” distinction between the oppression of humans (women) and the oppression of animals. As Carol Adams has pointed out in The Sexual Politics of Meat, 1 expressing our outrage at the treatment of women through metaphoric comparisons to the treatment of animals — that a violent man treats a woman like
a dog, or pornography treats women as meat, etc. — actually validates the oppression of animals, implying that while these things should not be done to women, they may be done to animals: that dogs may be treated “ like dogs ” or animals be herded into cages “ like animals, ” that animals may be “ slaughtered like animals ” and treated as meat. Not only do we thus tacitly recognize this form of oppression and exploitation as “ acceptable, ” we are also missing an important link in the critique and understanding of oppression itself. As feminists we have argued that we need to oppose all forms of oppression, that we must question power and violence on principle, not just on given occasions; that we need to challenge power even where it is an apparently benevolent use of power, or where it is conceptual power, as Brian Luke, for instance, has challenged it in his contribution to this volume.

  Victimism and Protectionism

  We know that the naming of violence after its victims — as the sexual violence against women, the sexual abuse of children, the enslavement of black people, the present-day racism against black people and the people of the Third World, the anti-Semitism directed at the Jews, and also the oppression and exploitation of animals and of nature — may all too easily lead us to compartmentalize oppressions and conceive of them as separate phenomena, thus setting up a competition between oppressions, or between different groups of the oppressed, as to which are more or less important than others. It may lead us to adopt one particular oppression as our special “ cause ” and to champion these particular “ victims, ” calling for their special consideration if not their protection. Instead of challenging the power relationships and interests that institutionalize these oppressions, it may lead us with the best intentions to victimize the oppressed, in the practice of victimism as Kathleen Barry has defined it: treating them as victims and trying to speak and act on their behalf. 2 This is all the more likely where we are dealing with a form of violence and oppression of which we are not ourselves the principal sufferers and where, as in the case of animals, the victims have no power or possibility to represent themselves — so that if we do not act as their champions, who will? Yet it is a feature common to all those oppressed that they lack the power to assert their interests, especially vis- á -vis their oppressors, and less a special feature of animals who do not speak human language. And it is the very strength of feminist politics to have developed a practice of supporting survivors, which significantly differs from the championing of victims: a politics that challenges the structures of oppression without revictimizing the oppressed, that is, without making them the clientele of our benevolent protection and representation.