The Oppression of Women and Animals

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Carol Adams

“The difficulty that one faces when trying to awaken our culture to care about the suffering of a group that is not acknowledged as having a suffering that matters, is the same one that a meditation such as this faces. How do we make those whose suffering doesn’t matter, matter?” (Adams p 6).

what is being sold?what is being sold?

Genocide. A word that demands to be defined and yet struggles to be understood. I read A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power when it was first published. Or, I should say, I read half of it. It was a monster of a non-fiction and its subject matter was something I wanted to comprehend on a deep emotional level and found difficult to read in both the continual genocidal atrocities described and the extreme political nature of the word and how impossible it is for political leaders to claim it. Why? Because if they state it, they must do something about it. There in lies the rub. I believe the same is true for abuse of women and animals in todays culture. If we don’t speak about it, it isn’t happening and we can pretend it doesn’t affect us as individuals and we can overlook it. Or as Adams so succinctly puts it, “Genocide, itself, benefits from the politics of the dismissive” (p 5)

The three images above were chosen due to their long term impact on me as a woman and human. The ‘Bingo Wings’ are the imitation of the popular truckers mud flaps with profiles of what appear to be naked Barbies (unobtainable dimensions). I’ve always found them extremely distasteful when I spot them on large and small trucks. To then use that profile to sell animal parts takes another step into darkness. What Adams describes in the reading, the absent referent, is clearly visible here. It is the joining of objectification of women’s bodies with objectification of a dead animal part. Where once there was someone, the chicken, now there are just edible inanimate parts, the wings. This, in one image, destroys two sentient beings and heralds sexism and speciesism as the way to a man’s humanity and stomach.

The following two images, regarding hamburgers are even more distasteful and sexist. To use an image of a woman’s legs, spread open with a man apparently delivering a burger from her vagina?? How is this even acceptable? Not only do we see objectification of the female, we see dissection of the body: legs and implied vagina and womb only. Ground cow parts made into a meal for a man.  And the other advertisement doesn’t even need an image of a woman or any of her severed body parts. The suggestion of what she would say regarding, not the burger but the penis, is reprehensible. That society chooses to link women and animal oppression in such violent, vile images is something I will never agree with or find amusing or legitimate. As women, we fight yesterday, today and tomorrow for autonomy of body, mind and soul.

Because i live from a Buddhist framework and I see life as one universal whole, duality does not ring true for me. Adams describes how she views humans and non-humans as “…human and animal are definitions that exist in tandem, each draws its power from the other in a drama of circumscribing: the animal defining the human, the human defining the animal”(p 5). It is the artificial patriarchal system that keeps the domination of woman and animal facade in place. All life is precious and demands to be treated as such. It is also the apathy, numbness and spiritlessness of the general population that allows it to continue.

PETA campaign

4 Ways the Animal Rights Movement Uses Human Bodies to Sell Animal Rights

The image above is horrendous on so many levels. A friend works for PETA and he was required to view their videos as part of his interview for the position, but has he seen these types of images? He is considering becoming a vegetarian, but is he considering becoming a misogynist? These images do nothing other than promote the subjugation and violence that continues toward women and animals. Utilizing fetishistic sexual violence against often times nude vulnerable women to shock viewers into giving a damn about animals is perpetuating and adding to violence against women. From my standpoint, this image would have been far superior and memorable toward achieving their goal if, in fact, they had shown elephants being mistreated and/or abused. If their goal is to help animals, why not depict what is actually occurring? And reframing the language associated with the images to factually describe their torture. Or coming to the fight from a place of caring and concern. Aran Stibbe writes, “The animal rights movement, as it exists today, provides a discourse that opposes oppression. Animal rights authors frequently counter the classifications of mainstream discourse by using terms such as “nonhuman animal,” and “other-than-human animal.” They also use inclusive terms such as “being” in, “If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration”. This is the same “humans are animals” semantic classification used in biological discourse to argue against animal rights. However, in this case the similarities drawn are different, focusing on animals’ ability to suffer and feel pain in the same way that humans can” (p 157).

Adams writes about the ‘War on Compassion,’ “caus(ing) people to fear that beginning to care about what happens to animals will destroy them because the knowledge is so overwhelming” (p 10). Are we, as a species, really so weak and fragile that when it comes to seeing something that is real life as opposed to what has been whitewashed, or should I say, redwashed for our convenience, that we can’t take it? I think and believe that it’s much easier in the long term to see the truth than to hold on to the lie. Human psyches have a great deal more trouble with the lie, because intrinsically we already know what the truth is. And with that knowledge of the truth we can stand a little taller and see a littler clearer. Those times of clarity build character. They may hurt like hell and cause great discomfort, but the inhumanity of a situation sometimes takes precedence  Compassion can take the place of inhumanity, creating an awareness of another’s suffering and the choice to take on the task of change. It’s in all of us. It’s our humanity that make us human.

What is meant by animal rights?

Every conscious being has interests that should be respected. No being who is conscious of being alive should be devalued to thinghood, dominated, used as a resource or a commodity. The crux of the idea known as animal rights is a movement to extend moral consideration to all conscious beings.

Nobody should have to demonstrate a specific level of intelligence to be accorded moral consideration. No one should have to be judged beautiful to be accorded moral consideration. No being should have to be useful to humanity or capable of accepting “duties” in order to be extended moral consideration. Indeed, what other animals need from us is being free from duties to us. (https://www.friendsofanimals.org/program/what-is-meant-by-animal-rights/)

Annotated Bibiography

Stibbe, Aran. “Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals.” Society and                   Animals, 9:2. 2001, pp 145-162.

Stibbe analyzes the myriad ways language and vernacular is used to dominate and exploit animals in the factory farming industry and animal products industries, such as beef for cows, pork for pig, meat production for murder, leather for skin. In this same way, using negative phrases with animals; ugly cow, stupid dog, greedy pig, big ape, you chicken. This language discrepancy continues to subjugate animals, thereby creating a perpetual lack of care for all animals, not just industrial animal production. Stibbe posits that the general population allows the mistreatment and murder of nonhuman animals and, therefore, can change the vernacular to change the treatment.

 

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