Neither Man nor Beast

by Carol J Adams

  Welch, Sharon D. Communities of Resistance and Solidarity. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1985.

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  Whitbeck, Caroline. “A Different Reality: Feminist Ontology.” In Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy. Edited by Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989, pp. 51–76.

  Wiley, Carol. “The Feminist Connection.” Vegetarian Times no. 161 (1991):

  pp. 59–65, 80.

  Wiley, Carol. “Why It’s Impossible to Be a Vegetarian.” Vegetarian Times (May 1991).

  Williams, Delores S. “African-American Women in Three Contexts of Domestic Violence.” Concilium: Violence Against Women. London: SCM Press, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994.

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  Wood-Gush, D. G. M., and R. G. Beilharz. “The Enrichment of a Bare Environment for Animals in Confined Conditions.” Applied Animal Ethology 10 (1983): pp. 209–17.

  Woolf, Virginia. “The Plumage Bill.” From The Woman’s Leader, July 23, 1920. In The Diary of Virginia Woolf. vol. 2: 1920–24. Edited by Anne Olivier Bell. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978, pp. 337–38.

  Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, 1929.

  Zorza, Joan. “Woman-Battering: A Major Cause of Homelessness.” Clearinghouse Review (special issue, 1991): pp. 421–29.

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  Every reasonable effort has been made to locate the owners of rights to previously published works printed here. The publisher and author gratefully acknowledge the following sources. Sections of Neither Man nor Beast have been previously published in the following essays. All have been edited for Neither Man nor Beast, some extensively, and are reprinted with permission. Chapter 1: “Eating Animals,” originally written for Eating Culture, ed. Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz (State University of New York at Albany Press, 1998). Chapter 2: “The Arrogant Eye and Animal Experimentation,” With a Fly’s Eye, Whale’s Wit and Woman’s Heart: Relationships between Animals and Women, ed. Theresa Corrigan and Stephanie Hoppe (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1989). Chapter 3: “Abortion Rights and Animal Rights,” revised from Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics 7, no. 4 (Fall 1991) (P.O. Box 254, Berkeley, CA). Chapter 5: “Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals,” revised from Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Special Issue on Ecological Feminism, vol. 6, no. 1 (1991). Chapter 6: “The Feminist Traffic in Animals,” Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). Chapter 7: “Reflections on a Stripping Chimpanzee” extensively revised from “Developing Courses that Integrate Animal Rights and Feminism” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 90, no. 3 (Fall 1991). Chapter 8: “Bringing Peace Home: A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on the Abuse of Women, Children, and Pet Animals,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Special Issue on Feminism and Peace (Spring 1994). Chapter 9: extensively revised from “Feeding on Grace,” which was originally published in Good News for Animals? Contemporary Christian Approaches to Animal Well-being, ed. Jay McDaniel and Charles Pinches (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1993).

  Acknowledgement is made to Lantern Books for permission to reprint the chart found on p. xxvi from the Afterword by Carol J. Adams to Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko and Syl Ko (New York: Lantern Books, 2017), pp. 142–43.

  Notes

  Epigraph to book: Alice Walker, “Am I Blue?” Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973-1987 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), pp. 7–8.

  Preface

  Epigraph to preface: Wendy Brown, Manhood and Politics: A Feminist Reading in Political Theory (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), pp. 55–56.

  1. Denise Webb, “Eating Well,” New York Times, January 23, 1991, p. C3.

  2. Thanks to Emily Culpepper and her friend for calling this image and its feminist implications to my attention.

  3. Anne Llwellyn Barstow argues that the figures in the millions often cited are too high, she proposes a conservative estimate of two hundred thousand accusations and “a figure of one hundred thousand dead.” Anne Llwellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (San Francisco: Pandora, 1994), p. 23.

  4. See John Stoltenberg, Refusing to Be a Man (Portland, Oregon: Breitenbush Books, Inc., 1989).

  5. Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 119.

  6. While an extended analysis of just how postmodern theory opens up space for debating the exploitation of animals is beyond the scope of this book, it may be that the concept of personhood, which has clearly been destabilized by postmodern theory, is in addition being enlarged and thus able to encompass animals. Steve Baker notes that “the decentering of the human subject opens up a valuable conceptual space for shifting the animal out from the cultural margins. It does so precisely by destabilizing that familiar clutch of entrenched stereotypes which works to maintain the illusion of human identity, centrality and superiority.” Steve Baker, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 26.

  7. Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 48n.

  8. Sandra Lee Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), p. 14.

  9. Even though the concept of personhood is extremely problematic from the perspective of feminist philosophy, I use that term in this book because I think that in a general, less philosophically-based discourse, this is what many animal defenders mean when talking about an animals’ beingness.

  10. See “ ‘I Just Raped My Wife! What Are You Going To Do About It, Pastor?’—The Church and Sexual Violence” in Transforming a Rape Culture, ed. Emilie Buchwald, Pamela Fletcher, Martha Roth (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1993).

  11. The process of associating a person (or for that matter, animals) with “beasts” deserves lexicographical acknowledgment. The term bestializing will function as that term in this book.

  Epigraph to Part One: Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality (Trumansburg, New York: The Crossing Press, 1983), pp. 66–67

  Chapter 1

  1. On the cultural production of meat, see Nick Fiddes, Meat: A Natural Symbol (London and New York: Routledge, 1991).

  2. Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People,” Philosophy 53 (1978), p. 469.

  3. See Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990), p. 64.

  4. See Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990), p. 64.

  5. For a summary of the environmental consequences of eating dead animals, see Alan Thein Durning and Holly B. Brough, “Reforming the Livestock Economy,” in Lester R. Brown et al., State of the World 1992 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1992), pp. 66–82.

  6. On discursive control, see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).

  7. Plutarch, “Of Eating of Flesh,” in Animal Rights and Human Obligations, ed. Tom Regan and Peter Singer (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1976), p. 111.

  8. Lynn Meyer, Paperback Thriller (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. 4–5.

  9. Cited in Peter Sinclair, “Carrots and Sticks,” Vegetarian Times, no. 167 (July 1991), p. 68.

  10. Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), pp. 99ff. Nancy Tuana pointed out that Quine’s explanation of �
�mass term” was applicable to the cultural construction of animals as edible, and her interpretation of his work has greatly influenced my description.

  11. This example is based on an explanation offered by Nancy Tuana.

  12. Insight of Nancy Tuana.

  13. Wayne Swanson and George Schultz, Prime Rip (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1982), p. 24.

  14. J. Byrnes, “Raising Pigs by the Calendar at Maplewood Farm,” Hog Farm Management, September 1976, p. 30, quoted in Jim Mason and Peter Singer, Animal Factories (New York: Crown Publishers, 1980), p. 1.

  15. “Doublespeak Awards Don’t Mince Words,” Dallas Morning News, November 20, 1988, p. 4a.

  16. Colman McCarthy, “Sins of the Flesh,” Washington Post, March 25, 1990.

  17. Thanks to Bill Carl and Tim Morton for discussing the Greek meaning of the term with me. As they both pointed out, the term sarcophagic is actually the most accurate rendering of flesh-eating. Its relationship with the word sarcophagus (stone coffin) is a reminder that flesh-eaters literally turn their bodies into graveyards.

  18. McCarthy, “Sins of the Flesh.”

  19. Steven G. Kellman, “Green Freedom for the Cockatoo,” Gettysburg Review (1991), p. 152.

  20. Karen L. T. Iacobbo, “Advertising: Making Risk Acceptable,” Vegetarian Voice, 1991, p. 9.

  21. Bernice Kanner, “The Ways of All Flesh: The New Marketing of Meat,” New York, November 22, 1982, p. 20.

  22. “Scotch and Beef Are Served in a New Shrine to Trousers and $1000 Suits,” New York Times, 1990. Thanks to Ken Reichley for sending me this clipping.

  23. Article on La Madeleine, Dallas Observer, June 10, 1993-June 16, 1993, p. 21.

  24. Helen Bryant, Dallas Times-Herald, n.d.

  25. Thanks to Hilary Martinson and Ingrid Newkirk of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for sending me a “turkey hooker,” and thanks, also, to Patricia Barrera for calling my attention to the image of the can-can and its implications.

  26. Paul Langner, “Judge Imposes Gag Order in Rape Suit,” Boston Globe, November 18, 1990, p. 24.

  27. F. K. Pious, Jr. “How to Kill a Chicken,” Reader: Chicago’s Free Weekly, January 18, 1980, p. 24. Thanks to Karen Davis for discovering this metaphor and sending it to me.

  28. “Political Art Critics Fed More Raw Meat,” Washington Times, April 4, 1991.

  29. Greg Moyer, “School Daze,” Nutrition Action, September 1982, p. 7.

  30. William Harris, M.D., “Hype Parades as Science” Ahisma 31, no. 3 (July/September 1990), p. 6.

  31. Ibid., p. 5.

  32. See John Robbins, Diet for a New America (Walpole, New Hampshire: Stillpoint Publishing, 1987), and “The New Four Food Groups: Summary,” Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, April 1991.

  33. See Marian Burros, “Rethinking Four Food Groups, Doctors Tell U.S.,” New York Times, April 10, 1991.

  34. The reason I wonder whether the PCRM proposal prompted a premature release by the USDA Health and Nutrition Service is because the USDA had printer’s proofs of brochures, but had planned to release the graphic later in the spring. See Carole Sugarman and Malcolm Gladwell, “Pyramid Deserted as Symbol of Foods,” Buffalo Evening News [originally in the Washington Post], April 26, 1991, p. A4.

  35. Dallas Times-Herald, editorial, May 5, 1991.

  36. See Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat, p. 80.

  37. Karen Davis, “Chickens Reign a la King, Not Peasant Poultry,” Montgomery Journal, September 17, 1992, p. A3. United Poultry Concerns can be reached at P. O. Box 59367, Potomac, Maryland 20859, 301–948–2406.

  Chapter 2

  Epigraph from Susanne Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 68.

  1. Sandra Harding’s The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986) summary of the cultural stereotype of science described by M. W. Rossiter in Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), p. 63.

  2. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975), p. 11.

  3. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, pp. 52�53.

  4. Ibid., p. 154.

  5. Ibid., p. 62.

  6. Quoted in “Animal Abuse at Gillette Labs Exposed—International Boycott Called,” Animals’ Agenda, December 1986, p. 15.

  7. Nicholas Humphrey, “Seeing and Nothingness,” New Scientist, March 30, 1972, pp. 682–84.

  8. Susanne Kappeler, correspondence, October 31, 1988.

  9. Humphrey, “Seeing and Nothingness,” p. 682. Peter Singer in Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review Book, 1975), notes this incident as well (p. 47).

  10. Humphrey, “Seeing and Nothingness,” p. 683.

  11. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, p. 58.

  12. Quoted in Michael D. Ware, “The ALF Strikes: Animal Liberators Come to North America,” Animals’ Agenda, July/August 1984, p. 8.

  13. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, p. 62.

  14. The Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Humane Society of the United States have legally challenged this interpretation, and were successful at the federal district court level. However, the USDA appealed this ruling. In May 1994, the US Court of Appeals threw out the judge’s ruling. Thanks to Valerie Stanley of the ALDF for this information. The Animal Legal Defense Fund National Headquarters is at 525 East Cotati Avenue, Cotati, CA 94931. http://aldf.org/

  15. Andrew N. Rowan, Of Mice, Models, and Men: A Critical Evaluation of Animal Research (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984), p. 2.

  16. Singer, Animal Liberation, p. 78. This article appeared in 1970 in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine.

  17. Singer, Animal Liberation, p. 42.

  18. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, p. 165.

  19. Quotation from Fortune magazine in Troy Soos, “Charles River Breeding Labs,” Animals’ Agenda, December 1986, p. 42.

  20. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, p. 61.

  21. Rowan, Of Mice, Models, and Men, p. 151.

  22. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, p. 54.

  23. Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 138.

  24. Coral Lansbury, The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 99.

  25. Ibid., p. 128.

  26. Alice Park, Vegetarian Magazine 14, no. 5 (1910).

  27. Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 79.

  28. Soos, “Charles River Breeding Labs.”

  29. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 159.

  30. Norma Benney, “All of One Flesh: The Rights of Animals.” In Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for Life on Earth, ed. Léonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland (London: The Women’s Press, 1983), p. 149.

  31. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, p. 104.

  32. Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, p. 152.

  33. Conversation, summer 1988.

  34. Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, p. 6.

  35. Zuleyma Tang Halpin, “Scientific Objectivity and the Concept of the ‘Other,’ ” Women’s Studies International Forum 12, no. 3 (1989), pp. 292–93.

  36. For an argument that recognizes important connnections between environmental pollution and pornography, see H. Patricia Hynes, “Pornography and Pollution: An Environmental Analogy,” in Pornography: Women, Violence, and Civil Liberties, ed. Catherine Itzin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 384–97. She argues that “pornography, incest, woman-battering, traffic in women: all this ugly, necrophilic degradation is ‘women’s nuclear winter.’. . . We who oppose pornography want no less of a change in consciousness about porno
graphy than environmentalists want about the destruction of rainforests” (pp. 386, 395).

  Chapter 3

  1. I use this title and the juxtaposition that this title provides more as an organizing principle rather than as an adherence to narrow notions of, on the one hand, animal rights instead of animal liberation, and on the other abortion rights instead of reproductive freedom. I hope to devote an entire book to the subject of reproductive freedom and the animal defense movement, but for the time being and for the purpose of juxtaposition in this chapter I will use the terms abortion rights and animal rights to encapsulate positions regarding women’s moral choices regarding pregnancy and activism against animal exploitation.

  2. Nat Hentoff, “How Can the Left Be Against Life?” Village Voice, July 16, 1985, p. 20.

  3. See Dallas Blanchard and Terry Prewitt, Religious Violence and Abortion (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), p. 259..

  4. Donna Haraway, “Otherworldly Conversations: Terran Topics, Local Terms,” Science as Culture 3, part 1, no. 14 (1992), p. 87.

  5. Sperling, for instance, sees both animal rights activists and antiabortionists as anxious about the incursions of technology into nature. (See Susan Sperling, Animal Liberators: Research and Morality [Berkeley: University of California Press].) I think she is wrong. First, antivivisection activism often involves recommending computer models and other advanced uses of technology in place of animal experimentation. Meanwhile, a large number of antiabortionists are in the anomalous position of using technology (i.e., television and radio) in an attempt to turn back the modernizing effects of technology. For this insight see Blanchard and Prewitt, Religious Violence and Abortion. Furthermore, abortion predates technological methods.

  6. Susanne v. Paczensky, “In a Semantic Fog: How to Confront the Accusation That Abortion Equals Killings,” Women’s Studies International Forum 13, no. 3 (1990), p. 183. Paczensky is, I think, staking out the affirmative definition of pregnancy, a feminist ideal at the moment. Unfortunately, at this time, pregnancy requires no specific decision to continue once fertilization has occurred. What I value in this definition is that she clearly establishes the primacy of the pregnant woman in making the decision about the fetus. I do not infer from her definition, nor do I imply in my use of it, that the “fetus is just a physical appendage,” as Elizabeth Mensch and Alan Freeman state in alluding to my use of Paczensky’s definition. See Elizabeth Mensch and Alan Freeman, The Politics of Virtue: Is Abortion Debatable? (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 13.