Gender and the Animal Rights Movement

 

Introduction

About two years ago I helped organize a protest against a rodeo in Austin. At any protest it is to be expected that some people will feel compelled to roll down their car windows and yell insults, or heckle you as they cross the sidewalk. Ignoring these people is usually the best strategy. One group of males, though, sticks out in my mind. They walked in front of me and read the sign I was holding. They stopped, looked at me, and muttered something about how there’s nothing wrong with using electric shocks on bulls or lassoing and slamming animals to the ground. One of the men said to me, “I bet you don’t eat meat either, do ya?” No, I told him, I don’t eat animals. “What are you, a fag or something?” Before then, I hadn’t made the connection between gender, sexuality and animal rights; between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals. That connection, though, has become increasingly clear, despite sexist campaigns initiated by some animal rights organizations. The struggles for animal liberation and women’s liberation are both concretely and theoretically connected but this message is too often silenced or distorted in the animal rights movement. 

What are the connections between feminism and animal rights?

Arguing that there is a connection between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals does not mean that there is a direct, cause/effect relationship. Not many people would argue that eating meat or wearing leather causes sexism. It’s also important to point out that by making these comparisons, theorists are not trying to downplay the severity of women’s struggles, as some critics complain. The opposite is true. There are parallels between these two institutions of oppression, and these parallels have led many people to argue that they are linked in the same struggle. Both the oppression of women and the oppression of animals exist because of a patriarchal system that creates them and has a possessive investment in their existence (Adams & Donovan). The connections between feminism and animal rights can be further explained through examining cases of domestic violence, various animal rights campaigns and theoretical explanations of manhood and nature.

 Abusing animals, abusing women

Men who batter usually do not start- or end- with women. The same callousness, the same rage, the same mentality that precipitates violence against women precipitates violence against animals.

Professionals who work to prevent domestic abuse and counsel victims have increasingly come to recognize this and have adopted a “multi-victim approach” to family violence. The basis of this is that animal abuse should be considered an indicator of other problems in a dysfunctional household (Arkow, 21). Animals in these cases can be seen as an “endangered species” or an “indicator species.” If violence against animals is taking place in a household, it is likely that violence is, or will be, taking place against women or children.

In abusive relationships, animals are often used as objects and tools to abuse and constrain women. A little-discussed form of battering involves using animals to sexually humiliate women. Men who rape women using companion animals do so either to act out their own sexual fantasies, to psychologically destroy their spouse and enforce their dominance over her, or both.  

Linda reports that she was forced- under threat of death by her batterer- to allow a dog to mount her in the production of a homemade pornographic movie. ‘From then on if I didn’t do something he wanted, he’d bring me a pet, a dog.’ (Adams, 1995, 66)           

In this case, the animal is used as a threat. If Linda did not comply with her batterer, she faced being raped and humiliated by her batterer and companion animal. The only way that this can take place is if the batterer objectifies both the woman and the animal.

The animal’s status as object is what is important in this instance. But, then, so is the woman’s. Objects used for sex in this way, including animals and the women victims, are denied individuality, uniqueness, specificity, particularity. It is not who they are that matters as much as what can be accomplished through the use of them. Forcing sex between his human female partner and a nonhuman animal reveals the way that a batterer objectifies both of them so that they have become interchangeable objects. (Adams, 1995, 67)  

Animals are also the subject of violence in order to traumatize women and assert male dominance. Killing or torturing an animal reinforces the dominance of the man, while depriving a woman of “her last significant relationship, increasing her dependence on the batterer” (Adams, 1995, 70). If women attempt to leave abusive relationships, a family animal is used to pressure them into staying. The batterer threatens that if they leave, the animal will die, and so could the woman.  

A survey of women and their batterers by Jane Ann Quinlisk revealed much about the gendered aspects of animal and human violence. From this survey, she found that:

* 68 percent of abused women reported that they had animals in the home and that there was violence directed toward the animal.

* Women indicated that of children who witnessed the violent behavior, 54 percent copied the behavior (often being violent against the family animals, the only ones they have power over).

* Of the men whose wives were in one particular shelter, 50 percent said they were hunters and owned guns or rifles, one third admitted threatening to give away the family pet, 15 percent admitted childhood animal cruelty. (Quinlisk, 169) 

Perhaps most telling was Quinlisk’s interview with one of the batterers. The man vehemently maintained he did nothing wrong. He wasn’t cruel to animals and he wasn’t cruel to his wife, he said. “He said he loved his dogs and would never, ever hurt them, and if his wife would just obey him like the dogs did, they wouldn’t have a problem” (Quinlisk, 171).  

Gendered campaigns?

Two of the defining campaigns of the animal rights movement have been those against the fur industry and against the use of animals for cosmetic testing. Both of these campaigns implicate women because women are the target audience of both the fur industry and cosmetic industry, and thus have considerable power in determining the outcome of these campaigns.

In what can only be considered a backlash to this growing social movement, some groups have criticized the animal rights movement for targeting women. Much of these arguments focus on a single poster that circulated early in the anti-fur campaign. A pair of women’s legs is shown clothed in black stockings and spiked heels, dragging a fur coat and leaving a trail of blood. The caption reads, “It takes 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat. But only one to wear it.” Opponents of the anti-fur campaign say this unfairly targets women and is a form of sexual harassment. There is no difference between fur and leather, they say, except that women are the primary wearers of fur.

The previously mentioned advertisement may be an inappropriate marketing tactic. The problem with this advertisement, though, lies in the phrasing and imagery used, not in who it is targeted towards. Fur was earmarked as a major target of the movement because of strategic reasons, not gendered reasons. The fur industry caters to the extremely wealthy (which makes it more susceptible to attack) and is also vulnerable to fashion trends (which a boycott could successfully alter). Also, the methods of producing fur- gassing, trapping and anal and vaginal electrocutions- are difficult to justify for the sake of fashion.

Cosmetic testing has been targeted by the animal rights movement for similar reasons. Shampoos, perfumes and lotions are dripped into the eyes of rabbits, causing swelling, inflammation, pustules and blindness, although no law requires any cosmetic to be tested on animals. “Cosmetic companies were creating artificial markets (‘one more shade of mascara’) to make money. And with 1,300 shampoos already available, consumers were hardly clamoring for one more. Why was it necessary to have more and more new products and ingredients that required testing?” (Regan, 105). Challenging this questions the validity of consumerism. It forces women to question the consumptive roles- gender roles- that capitalism has created for them. Now, though, “cruelty-free” has become a marketing trend. Corporations market cruelty-free cosmetics as a way to have “beauty without cruelty”: a way to maintain sexist imagery in advertising without losing their consumer base.  

Women and nature

Possibly due to the rapid growth of the environmental and animal rights movements, a number of feminists have linked women’s oppression and animal oppression with patriarchy. Analysis of domestic violence and consumerism are good parallels, they say, but we must also critique the overarching structures that link these struggles together.

The implication here is that nature is feminine, and that women have certain natural characteristics, like compassion and cooperation (Mason, 188). This helps to explain why men label women and nature in similar terms.

In The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol Adams argues that one of the primary ways this hierarchy is established and maintained is through meat-eating. Adams explains that in most cultures, meat is symbolic of manhood. Real men hunt, real men kill, and real men eat meat. If food is scarce, men always receive the meat. The manliness of meat is reinforced by using female body parts to describe it. 

A contemporary example of this is the recent advertising campaign by Jack in the Box. In a series of commercials, a football team called “The Carnivores” trounces other teams (presumably due to how much meat they consume).  In one commercial, the Carnivores play the “Los Angeles Vegans.” The Carnivores plow over the L.A. Vegan quarterback referred to only as “Granola.” The gendered messages in this commercial are unmistakable. The L.A. Vegans do not eat meat (vegans eat no animal products, including meat, dairy and eggs) and are therefore physically inferior. The commercial shows fat men with hamburgers in the crowd cheering as the L.A. Vegans are beaten into submission, proving that the Carnivores are the real men.  

 The Extension Thesis

The most common argument against the animal rights movement as a whole is often made by other progressive social movements. “We don’t have time to worry about animals,” other “progressives” say, “There are so many human problems to worry about.” James Turner goes so far as to create what he calls the Displacement Thesis to explain the growth of the animal welfare and animal rights movements. “Industrialization and urbanization brought brutal factory condition, slums, unemployment, and child labor… but response to this suffering was difficult for middle- and upper-class people, as their own economic status was tied up with these changes” so they turned to animal welfare to avoid human plight (Finsen, 28). In doing this, they could express their compassion without undermining their social position.

The composition of the animal rights movement proves that this isn’t the case.

Part of the strength of the animal rights movement has come from connecting with other social movements, and attacking global systems of oppression (for example, animal rights activists have been at the forefront of the anti-globalization movement, linking capitalism with the oppression of humans, animals and the environment). By linking women’s liberation and animal liberation, feminists are building on this process, and extending the circles of compassion. Some scholars have called this process the Extension Thesis. Finsen says the Extension Thesis emerged from studies that showed individuals who devote themselves to the welfare of one exploited group also are concerned with other groups. Other women argue that trivializing animal concerns is a liberal feminist argument: it seeks to deemphasize comparisons between women and nature and  emphasize similarities between women and men. This emphasis on equality and acceptance with men reinforces patriarchal systems, and therefore reinforces both the oppression of women and the oppression of animals.

How is gender communicated in the animal rights movement?

The animal rights movement has always been dominated by women, with some estimates holding that women comprise 70 percent of the movement (Finsen, 246). Historically, many feminists, suffragists and abolitionists in the United States and England also advocated animal welfare reforms and vegetarianism. Considering the historic role of women in the animal rights movement, the number of women currently in the movement, and the links we have established between feminism and animal rights, how is this actually played out in the movement? The campaign tactics of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Feminists for Animal Rights are indicative of two disparate camps within the animal rights movement.

 Objectifying women to save animals

Possibly the biggest conflicts over representations of gender in the animal rights movement have come from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ ad campaigns. PETA, the largest animal rights organization in the country, has long been criticized for exploiting women’s bodies for political purposes.

In the early 1990s, a PETA staffer “stripped” on the Howard Stern radio show to send a message about fur (an on-going PETA campaign that uses naked supermodels on billboards with captions reading “I would rather go naked than wear fur”). Stern described the activist stripping in detail and interjected plenty of lewd comments about her figure (Francione, 74). The animal rights message was ostensibly lost.

In 1994 Patty Davis, daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, posed naked in a photo spread in Playboy magazine and donated half of her $100,000 fee to PETA. The media-conscious PETA issued a press release saying that Davis “turns the other cheek to cruelty in an eye-opening spread.” The model is described by PETA staffers as an animal activist, although her only activism involves donating money and being vegetarian (to which she attributes her “well-toned physique”).  PETA argues that this type of publicity spreads the concept of vegetarianism to people who ordinarily would not have encountered it. In this instance that message is completely lost. The media attention that this type of publicity stunt receives never focuses on the environmental, ethical or health reasons for vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is reduced to a novelty: “Look, even this sexy Playboy bunny is vegetarian.” If vegetarianism is mentioned at all in this context, it would be in relation to Davis’ comment that it helps her keep her figure. This has negative repercussions for the movement because it downplays the political importance of vegetarianism, while reinforcing unattainable concepts of beauty (vegetarianism, in this sense, is only valuable if it helps women achieve those standards).

The Patty Davis fiasco was mild in comparison to a campaign launched in August, 1995, to encourage organ donation and criticize xenotransplantation (the yet-to-be-successful process of replacing a failed human organ with that of an animal, usually a primate or pig). Billboards and ads were placed with pictures of Hugh Hefner’s spouse, Kimberley, and a caption reading “Some people need you inside them” (Francione, 76). When journalists questioned PETA about the controversial, sexist ad, PETA spokespersons played it up by saying “Just because we’re softhearted doesn’t mean we aren’t softcore.”

PETA currently has multiple campaigns that use women’s bodies to sell a message. For protests against the cruel treatment of animals in circuses, a PETA volunteer strips down, paints her body in tiger stripes and climbs in a cage. The intention, PETA claims, is to show that “Wild animals don’t belong in cages.” In doing this, PETA reinforces the label of attractive women as “wild animals” that need taming. It plays off of male fantasies of women as wild, sex-crazed animals that need to be controlled. In another PETA campaign, supermodels like Pamela Anderson and Claudia Schiffer pose nude with subheads that read “I’d rather go naked than wear fur.” PETA also uses women dressed in faux lettuce bikinis (the “Lettuce Ladies”) to pass out free vegan food. Women’s bodies are used here as novelty acts: publicity stunts that are hoped to gain public attention long enough to send a political message.  PETA also places naked male models in their anti-fur ads and uses “The Broccoli Boys” to give away free food. But using a few naked men in a campaign doesn’t erase sexism. Oppression can’t be balanced out. Men in this context are viewed differently than women. They are not sexual objects or sexual property, and they do not have to deal with an overwhelming amount of media images and cultural beliefs that treat them as such.

A lot of the discussion about the sexist imagery of these ads has taken place on email lists and discussion boards, but the conflict was publicly discussed when activists from around the country gathered at the Animal Rights 2001 National Conference in Washington, D.C. I was at this conference, and others in the past, and this was the first time I have seen ties between gender and animal rights explored openly- and heatedly- by the movement itself. In a rap session entitled “Campaign tactics: How far is too far?” activists ignored other issues to focus exclusively on PETA’s campaigns. This debate quickly spread throughout the entire conference, into other rap sessions and workshops and into the hotel lobby. Feminists for Animals Rights circulated a letter written to PETA, and asked activists from around the country to sign on and condemn the campaigns. The letter recognized that PETA has done amazing things for the animal rights movement. I would go so far as to say that it would be hard to imagine any animal rights movement in this country without them. However, PETA has become a “marketer that ‘sells’ animal rights and does so using the very same oppressive and exploitative images and slogans that are used in the society at large” (Francione, 75).

What surprised me at the conference was the number of women who supported PETA’s controversial imagery. They said that they had a responsibility to do everything they could to save animals’ lives, which I agree with, and that this including “using” their bodies to get public attention. They conceded that much of the attention this imagery received was not positive, nor focused on animal rights, but they still felt it was worth it. I think this reflects how effective cultural messages have been that tell women their bodies are objects to be used and exploited. At some level, it seems that some women were hesitant to criticize the campaign lest they would have their credibility in the movement challenged. Gary Francione explains that “there has thus far been little criticism of such sexism on the part of the national organizations, in part because any criticism is usually met with a response that the critic is disloyal or is not acting with the best interests of the animals in mind” (Francione, 76). To argue that “if it helps animals, it is justified” is like arguing that if animal exploitation helps humans, it is justified. Neither is justifiable. We cannot fight animal exploitation without challenging patriarchy, and we cannot challenge patriarchy without fighting animal exploitation. Using sexist imagery to “sell” animal rights is detrimental because it reinforces the system that we should be trying to dismantle.

Feminists for Animal Rights

Sexist imagery, such as in PETA’s campaigns, are not common in the animal rights movement. At the same time, though, few organizations have openly criticized those tactics and directly linked the oppression of women and the oppression of animals. One of the few organizations that is devoted to this connection is Feminists for Animal Rights.  The organization is:

Dedicated to ending all forms of abuse against women and animals. Because exploitation of women and animals derives from the same patriarchal mentality, FAR attempts to expose the connections between sexism and speciesism whenever and wherever we can. We feel that a common denominator in the lives of women and animals is violence - either real or threatened - and we work in nonviolent ways to change that. (FAR website)

Part of this strategy is to work within the feminist and animal rights movement, spreading information to each movement about the connections between the “objectification, commodification and abuse of women and non- human animals in patriarchal society” (FAR website). The intention is to draw feminists into the animal rights movement and animal liberationists into the women’s movement. 

The other part of their strategy is to work on campaigns that bring the two movements together, such as the Companion Animal Rescue Effort. Women in abusive relationships often are reluctant to leave those relationships out of fear for their own safety, but also out of fear for the safety of their companion animals.

Karen’s inability to enter a shelter because they cannot take pets is confirmed by some battered women’s shelter workers and volunteers, who told me that women were not leaving the abuser because they feared their pets would be killed. Some who did leave would go back to the home within one or two days because of concern about the pet who remained in the home. (Adams, 1995, 62) 

Men threaten to kill these animals as a way to control women and pressure them into compliance. Because of this, “A woman in this situation may feel that her choices are extremely limited--to stay, in part to protect the animal(s), or to leave and to worry about what is going to happen to them” (FAR website).

In 1993, Feminists for Animal Rights began the Companion Animal Rescue Effort to respond to the safety concerns of battered women for their animals. The program created a national network of safe places for animal companions of women entering battered women’s shelters.

Women and direct action

A main tenet of the animal rights movement is that words are not enough. It is not enough to say you are against exploitation, that you are against oppression, that you are against environmental destruction, if you don’t act out that commitment in your daily life. Like the women’s movement, there is an emphasis on “the personal is the political” in the animal rights movement. This takes the form of veganism, only buying products that were not tested on animals, not attending circuses or rodeos that use animals and not buying clothes made from animal flesh. These are all personal choices that individuals can turn into political choices.

The movement also emphasizes that it is not enough to focus solely on the personal. It’s admirable to eliminate as much suffering as possible from your own life, but we must realize that this is not enough. Billions of animals are still being tortured and killed. This is why certain parts of the animal rights movement use direct action and economic sabotage to save lives.

In her book Free the Animals, Ingrid Newkirk (president of PETA) tells the story of the formation of the underground Animal Liberation Front by a woman she calls Valerie. Valerie forms cells- small, autonomous groups- to break into research laboratories and breeding facilities to rescue animals, and sometimes destroy the machinery that is used to torture them. The ALF in the United States has rescued thousands of animals, and the video footage taken by ALF cells has led to federal investigations and national exposure of what goes on behind the closed doors of vivisection laboratories.

Another example of women using direct action to save animals is the campaign against the seal trade. Baby seals are literally clubbed to death in the wild by hunters who want to profit from their flesh. Their soft, supple coats are used by some fashion designers for winter jackets. Animal rights activists have used a variety of tactics to halt the murder of these animals, including spraying non-toxic dyes on animals in the wild (to damage their “coats” while not harming their bodies). Other activists have taken boats out to seal habitats and physically blocked hunters from clubbing them. A Greenpeace activist recalls an incident where a volunteer, Eileen Cheever, intervened:

She was the first of her sex to come to this place where, for centuries, Newfoundland males had entered their manhood by steeling themselves to kill the most beautiful infant creatures they'd ever seen. . . A man was crunching across the ice [after a pup], not even having to run, yet coming up on it swiftly, and the pup's mother was bobbing up and down in a nearby blowhole, powerless to answer the desperate wailing of the infant that was not long ago safe inside her.. The next seal hunter found himself blocked by a furious young woman, breathing harshly and gasping at him: ‘No! No! No! He elbowed her aside and her light body could not resist the rock muscles of his arm. . . Not far away, Jean-Claude Francolon was there to capture the moment he had been waiting for, when a woman from the twentieth century would rise between a man armed with primitive killing tools and an animal that died in its infancy  to service equally primitive female vanity, a new age in collision with darkest antiquity. (Herscovici, 81)

By intervening to stop this killing, Cheever is directly challenging the oppression of animals and the oppression of women. She is threatening the male hunter’s authority and power, and therefore his manhood itself. In taking direct action, both Cheever and Valerie are violating traditional gender roles. Women are gendered emotional and empathetic, but also passive and weak. Direct action on behalf of animals takes the desirable aspects of that gendered analysis (compassion, empathy) and destroys the oppressive aspects (passive, weak). In this way, women in the animal liberation movement who use direct action can be seen as creating new conceptions of gender.

Conclusion

For some people in the animal rights movement, arguing that there is a connection between the oppression of animals and the oppression of women is too overwhelming. It’s hard enough to see animals confined to stalls, slaughtered for food, shocked and sliced open for experiments. Arguing that this is part of a system of gendered oppression almost seems overwhelming. But that’s not the intention. This analysis is not meant to be depressing, but empowering. Realizing that the struggles for animal liberation and women’s liberation are concretely and theoretically connected means that we are closer to identifying the root of the problem, rather than the superficial representations of the problem. At the same, recognizing that this message is too often silenced or distorted in the animal rights movement means that we have identified an obstacle, that if overcome, could further both social movements.

For more information please contact SACA, info@utanimalrights.com, or the UT Alliance for a Feminist Option, feministoption@yahoo.com

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