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I particularly love the Alice Walker quote:
The Feminist-Animal Rights Connection
Violence against women and eating meat are interconnected forms of oppression. Both are forms of dominionism, a global social hierarchy maintained by brute force and fear. Its credo is "might makes right."
Language facilitates violence against animals and women by causing us to unconsciously internalize oppression, according to The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams. "Not only is our language male-centered, it is human centered as well," she said. Animals are refered to as "it," implying they are inanimate unfeeling objects. Women are also demeaned in sexist language.
The Webster's definition of "husband" is the "male head of the household". To "husband" is "to use and employ to good purpose and best advantage," as in "animal husbandry". "Wife" comes from the word for "veiled" and also means "the female of a pair of mated animals."
Scripture (the word of "god" written by men) is male-supremacist and is used to justify the both human domination of animals and male domination of women. Consider the following:
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church." Ephesians 5:23-24.
"A woman must never be free of subjugation." Hindu code of Manu V.
"Suffer not woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man." Timothy 2:11-15.
In Genesis 1:2, "god" supposedly granted humans dominion over "all the wild beasts that move upon the earth." As feminist writer Simone de Beauvior said, "Man enjoys the great advantage of having a god endorse the code he writes. . . and the fear of god will keep women in their place."
The "absent referent" is a paradoxical use of language in which something is both present and absent. "Veal" refers to "meat" but not the calf. The helpless baby animal is absent as a being and present only as meat. "Animals are made absent through language that renames dead bodies before consumers participate in eating them," said Adams.
The literal suffering of one group is obscured when its suffering is appropriated as a metaphor for the suffering of another. If a raped woman says she felt "like a piece of meat," the absent referents are animals since their death experience (being killed for meat) now describes a life experience of humans (rape).
The bondage equipment of pornography (cattle prods, dog collars, chains and ropes) also recalls the domination of animals. So does calling women "bitches" and "chicks." Women, especially feminists, are morally challenged. How can women expect humane treatment by power-wielding male supremacists if they themselves use power to exploit animals?
"The ethic of human domination removed animals from the sphere of human concern but it also legitimized the ill treatment of those humans who were in a supposedly animal condition," Adams said. The suffering of these groups has been so great that its use as metaphor may be exploitive, such as the holocaust of the Jews and the slavery of black people. However, Alice Walker who wrote "The Color Purple," dared to connect human and animal suffering when she visited a factory farm, saying, "I can never not know that the chicken I absolutely saw is a sister," she said.
By avoiding metaphors and acknowledging the literal suffering of animals and humans, she made both visible and equally evil. As Adams said,"Could metaphor itself be the undergarment to the garb of oppression?"
Animal Rights and Feminism
The animal rights and women's rights movements are interconnected. Both women and animals are dominated by brute force used by those who occupy the higher rungs of the patriarchal hierarchy which currently runs the planet. Feminists must make the connecton between animal rights and the rights of women. Since people who are cruel to animals are more likely to abuse their fellow humans, it follows that an attitude of respect for animals provides the foundation of a moral code that requres respect for each other.
Men who batter women are often cruel to animals. Batterers may hurt or kill the battered womens' pets in order to send the message that the same fate may happen to her if she dares to oppose him.
Biblical myths give men divine permission to dominate both women and animals.This arrogant belief system assumes animals and nature exist only for the benefit of humans. In Genesis 1:2 God supposedly said, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Thus, humans placed themselves above animals who supposedly had no souls which meant their suffering no longer mattered.
Peter Singer in his book "Animal Liberation " said, "It can no longer be maintained by anyone but a religious fanataic that man is the special darling of the whole universe, or that we have divine authority over animals and divine permission to kill them."
It was once believed that women also had no souls.
The 17th century philosopher Descartes believed that since animals had no souls, they could not feel pleasure or pain. They were merely clockwork automatons whose cries when struck, "were only the noise of a little spring that had been touched but that the whole body was without feeling." Soon after these beliefs became popular, the widespread practice of vivisection began.
Anesthetics were yet to be invented.
A more compassionate view towards animals was held by Jeremy Bentham, a 17th century writer who said, "The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?' " He was one of the first to denounce "man's dominion" as tyranny by comparing the position of animals with that of black slaves. It isn't hard to see how easily those holding Descarts'e views could enslave millions of human beings and ignore the cries coming from the filthy holds of the slave ships. In a similiar manner, men who are numb to animal suffering are more prone to abuse women and children.
Treating animals with compassion means making major changes in our awareness which leads to changes in our lifestyle. Becoming a vegetarian is the most effective way to avoid supporting factory farms, egg ranches and many other industries which put profit above the compassionate treatment of animals. The owners of factory farms give as little thought to the suffering of animals crammed into filthy pens as the slave traders did to the welfare of their human cargo.
The dominant consciousness of the planet is still dominionism; the "god" given "right" to dominate animals and women. However, a more compassionate worldview is emerging as feminist consciousness spans the globe. Humans will never end war and brutality against each other until they learn to feel compassion toward the non-human inhabitants of the planet.
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