Animals and Women Feminist The

by Carol J Adams

  Now I do not want to suggest that sympathy and compassion are essentially female qualities — nor even that they cannot be found in science. But they are stereotypically part of the construction of the feminine in our culture, and it is for just that reason that, like Rothschild, I have heard them repudiated in the labs. Yet of course they can be found. As Keller notes, relating how her biography of Barbara McClintock was received by the scientific world, scientists often believe that empathy, at least, is intrinsic to doing good science (1989, 37). Moreover, these qualities are less often reviled by technicians — people who work in science but are not central to the construction of its ideology.

  For women, including feminists, working in science, the problems of how we relate to nature are acute. In the dominant culture, various “ others ” are similarly situated — nonwhite people, women, nonhuman animals. Yet a woman working in science has to accept its precepts, its beliefs that nature is out there, other to herself. In this sense, she must try to be “ in two places at once ” : she is both the “ other ” and (ambiguously) part of the science to which nature is seen as other.

  She must also accept that scientific research uses animals. If she dislikes that, for moral and/or political reasons, then she can either get out of science altogether or try to avoid doing nasty things to animals. Neither of these options, of course, actually changes the fact that much of the training she has received in science was itself based on findings from animals. Still, it does mean she can live more in accord with her principles.

  But where does that leave those who stay in the game? I have no intention of suggesting that these women are necessarily lacking in principles. In my experience, what motivates them is the desire to do good through science; this potential for good is the principle they live by, and which they see as balanced against the possibility of suffering by animals. I may choose to tip that balance toward the animals; many tip it the other way. Some of the letters written by women scientists to Labyrinth , the Philadelphia women ’ s newspaper, in response to an animal rights article illustrate this point. One writer felt, for example, that feminists should “ think of all the good that such research has done for women at very little cost to the rest of the animal kingdom. ” She believes, therefore, that “ animal rights and . . . feminism are not only unrelated, but are in many ways antithetical ” (Ottenheimer 1990).

  I would contest all those claims. Some new developments in biomedicine may have the potential for good — but they have been developed within a society in which women (and others) are oppressed, a society that places more value on obtaining cheap oil from the Middle East than on the lives of the people or animals killed by the weapons it creates. Feminists have often been critical of the ways in which women ’ s interests have not been paramount in the development of various interventions in reproduction, for example. As for the “ very little cost, ” I will merely point out that, in my rather small country, 3.24 million scientific procedures on animals were begun under license in 1991. 13 Worldwide, the number of animals used is staggering. Perhaps most are anesthetized for painful procedures: but many may not be, and nearly all lose their lives.

  These are, I believe, issues for feminism. Even if we accept that science can produce good things for women (and it can); even if we accept that doing science is fun for those who do it (it is — which is why I did it in the first place), we still must accept that there is a price to pay. Feminist critiques of science have emphasized how it is often women (or lesbians, or nonwhite people) who pay the cost. What we must now add is that it is also animals.

  It is not, moreover, an issue only for those who write critically about science. What the letter writers to Labyrinth are addressing is not only the question of the moral principles involved in using animals (although it is certainly partly that); their responses also relate indirectly to the question of how feminists should do research. What is, or might be, feminist praxis in the sciences — particularly if that science involves animals? For these scientists, feminist praxis centers on the possible outcomes of the research (in health care, say); for others (including me), feminist praxis in biology would have to take much more account of the subjectivity and possible suffering of the animals. We have barely begun to address these difficult debates.

  Feminist writing about science, too, needs to pay more attention not only to the ethics of using animals in science, but also to the broader questions of how we use the idea of animals, what they represent for us. Let me offer a couple of suggestions.

  First, we could look at ways in which “ animals ” are represented in science — not only our view of them as “ mirrors ” of nature, as examples of biological determinism, but also the images we have of these animals, and how they relate to other feminist work. When feminist writers evoke images of women as experimented upon (in relation to reproductive technology, for instance), there is similarity to the image of the animal-as-artifact in the lab, the analytic animal. How are these images constructed, and what is their meaning?

  As a second approach, we could examine in more detail how we use the concept(s) of “ others ” in writing about science. Even though I am a scientist, when the feminist critic in me takes over, she often looks at scientists “ from the outside ” — as others. Yet I am on the inside, too. Scientists, moreover, are both apart from and included within the general public. Many of the beliefs they state in interviews align them with the wider public: this is one source of their ambivalence about animals.

  In addition, we could examine more closely the construction of animals as others: in what circumstances, and to what extent, do we counterpose them as others? And who is the “ us ” to whom they are other? How do those boundaries relate to feminist theory? And what happens to our ideas about ourselves when those boundaries are threatened or blurred? These are all questions that need further thinking about and developing within feminist theory.

  The wider relationships between feminist politics and issues concerning animals are not straightforward. For a start, animal rights does not map in any simple way onto the political dimensions that we tend to use. So, while some view it as having connections with left-wing politics (e.g., Noske 1989), others have linked animal rights to the extreme right (e.g., Henshaw 1989).

  Yet both have something to learn from the other. From the animal side, what can be learned is how better to locate animal concerns in relation to wider politics. One reason why some critics have, in somewhat knee-jerk fashion, accused the animal supporters of being right wing (or even fascist) is that the latter have sometimes seemed to ignore other issues. It is unfortunately true that, in Britain, some members of animal rights groups have taken part in racist activities on the grounds of attacking cruelty to animals. Now it may be true that animals suffer less if they are stunned before killing, so that animals killed according to certain religious practices are likely to suffer. But that cannot justify (for example) anti-Semitic attacks. No human culture is free of animal suffering; and slaughterhouses that stun are hardly repositories of kindness and compassion. We need to find ways of expressing concern about what happens to the animals that do not express some kind of cultural imperialism.

  For feminism, I suggest, what can be learned is to question not only boundaries of difference within humans (or between women), but also to question the boundaries of what constitutes humanness. What is it that we are afraid of when we flee from any suggestion of our own connections with other kinds of animals? It is not enough to say glibly that it is “ biological determinism ” that we wish to avoid if we continue to shore up such determinism by assuming that it applies to nonhuman animals.

  * * *

  What I want to emphasize here is how contradictory some of these issues are, how ethically and politically complex. In that sense, writing about animal rights could usefully pay more heed to debates in feminist theory, with their emphases on cultural difference and their questioning of boundaries (in relation to gender and race, for example). But feminism, too, nee
ds to look at how it uses concepts of boundaries and otherness, at what assumptions it makes about “ biology, ” animals, and the environment, about how those assumptions impact upon other politics. For me, arguably the most central contradiction in feminist thinking about science and animals is how a critical discourse that celebrates difference and fracturing of simple dichotomies rests firmly and unquestioningly on such a dichotomy. Whatever “ animals ” are, they are more than just whatever it is we wish to transcend.

  Notes

  I am very grateful to the editors of this volume, and to Ruth Hubbard, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Susanne Kappeler, and Mike Michael, for taking the trouble to read and comment on an earlier draft of this essay. Its spirit is also utterly dependent on the love and support of the various nonhumans with whom I am privileged to live.

  1. See, for example, the Hypatia special issue on ecological feminism (1991, vol. 6, no. 1).

  2. An interesting exception to this generalization comes from Nazi ideology (Arluke and Sax 1992), in which the boundaries were drawn in such a way that some humans were "less than" human, and some animals acquired a status equivalent to that of (Aryan) humans.

  3. This is not to suggest that the behavior of all species of animals is flexible. Many species seem to have a relatively fixed behavioral repertoire. But vertebrates at any rate (and certainly mammals and birds) do appear to be much more flexible than we have tended to think hitherto. My point here is to emphasize that we should never assume fixity a priori.

  4. Apart from the fact that determinist approaches are inadequate for explaining animal behavior, they also raise ethical questions. A great many animals are being used in laboratories to test hypotheses regarding human behavior and its determination, based on inappropriate assumptions — inappropriate, that is, with regard both to humans and to the animals concerned. This raises the ethical question of whether we can justify using animals as models for humans if the model is inappropriate.

  5. In this sense, behaviorism was founded on an assumption of evolutionary continuity: all animals obeyed the same laws of learning. Behaviorism, however, still supported the mind/body dichotomy, largely by denying mind altogether.

  6. Unless, of course, these studies threaten endangered species. Even so, the furor is often less than that created by using animals in laboratories. That the concern is less, however, does not mean that studies of animals in the wild do not raise ethical issues. Many do, and these are now being addressed (e.g., Cuthill 1992).

  7. Even the title "lab animals" is a bit of a misnomer, since very few actually live in the laboratory. Rather, they live in specialized animal houses. Of those bred in any one institutional animal house, relatively few actually enter laboratories.

  8. To talk about the images in this way is not to imply that the procedures are not potentially painful or likely to induce suffering. It is not my intention here to belittle the message of those images, but simply to underline what kind of images of animals they rely on.

  9. It is interesting to speculate why this is so. Genetic uniformity may have seemed important at a time when research into genetics and breeding was given new impetus by the rediscovery of Mendel ’ s work in 1900. It is not, however, entirely clear that genetic uniformity does promote physiological or behavioral uniformity — nor is it clear why these qualities should be desired rather than variations being studied in their own right. Hubbard (1990) notes that genetics is about change and variation, not about uniformity — yet it is treated as though the latter is the case.

  10. The passive voice has another effect. It requires that the reader, subliminally, supply an image of the person doing the injection or other procedure, and both stereotypically and statistically, that image is likely to be male. So, women readers are situated outside the activities being described.

  11. This includes transgenic animals; these are usually agricultural animals into whom a human gene has been transposed. The animal is used as a cheap, living pharmaceutical factory. This practice undoubtedly raises ethical questions in terms of the potential for abuse of the animal; more specifically, the favored "system for expression" is likely to be mammary glands — so the ethical questions will focus on female animals and their offspring.

  12. I have to confess to having failed this test of the scientist-in-making. Twenty-something years later, the feminist in me cringes at my strategy for avoiding pithing frogs in my third-year neurophysiology practicals: I got one of the men to do it. That doesn ’ t change the fate for the frog: I simply avoided doing it myself.

  13. Experiments using animals in Britain are regulated by the Home Office, under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act of 1986. Statistics are gathered for scientific procedures; but, as the act forbids the reuse of animals except under special circumstances, that number is assumed to correspond roughly to the number of animals.

  References

  Arluke, A. 1988. Sacrificial Symbolism in Animal Experimentation: Object or Pet? Anthrozoos 2:97 – 116.

  — — — . 1990. Uneasiness Among Laboratory Technicians. Laboratory Animal 19:20 – 39.

  — — — . 1992. Trapped in a Guilt Cage. New Scientist 4 (April):33 – 35. Arluke, A., and B. Sax. 1992. Understanding Nazi Animal Protection and the Holocaust. Anthrozoos 5:6 – 31.

  Benney, N. 1983. All of One Flesh: The Rights of Animals. In Reclaim the Earth , ed. L. Caldecott and S. Leland, 141 – 51. London: The Women ’ s Press.

  Birke, L. I. A. 1982. Is Homosexuality Hormonally Determined? Journal of Homosexuality 6:35 – 49.

  — — — . 1986. Women, Feminism and Biology: The Feminist Challenge. Brighton, England: Wheatsheaf.

  — — — . 1991a. Science, Feminism and Animal Natures: I. Extending the Boundaries. Women ’ s Studies International Forum 14:443 – 49.

  — — — . 1991b. Science, Feminism and Animal Natures: II. Feminist Critiques and the Place of Animals in Science. Women ’ s Studies International Forum 14:451 – 58.

  — — — . 1994. Feminism, Animals, and Science: The Naming of the Shrew. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.

  Birke, L., and M. Michael. 1992a. The Researcher ’ s Dilemma. New Scientist , 4 April, 25 – 28.

  — — — . 1992b. Views from Behind the Barricade. New Scientist , 4 April, 29 – 32.

  Cheyney, D. L., and R. M. Seyfarth. 1990. How Monkeys See the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  Coleman, W. 1977. Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function, and Transformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Corrigan, T, and S. Hoppe, eds. 1990. And a Deer ’ s Ear, Eagle ’ s Song and Bear ’ s Grace: Animals and Women. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Cleis Press.

  Cuthill, I. 1992. Field Experiments in Animal Behaviour: Methods and Ethics. In Ethics in Research on Animal Behaviour , ed. M. S. Dawkins and M. Gosling, 57 – 64. London: Academic Press (for the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour/Animal Behavior Society).

  Davis, H. 1989. Theoretical Note on the Moral Development of Rats ( Rattus norvegicus ). Journal of Comparative Psychology 103:88 – 90.

  Dorner, G. 1976. Hormones and Brain Differentiation. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

  Elston, M. A. 1987. Women and Antivivisection in Victorian England. In Vivisection in Historical Perspective , ed. N. Rupke, 259 – 94. London: Croom Helm.

  Fausto-Sterling, A. 1993. Animal Models for the Development of Human Sexuality: A Critical Evaluation. Unpublished manuscript. Also forthcoming in Journal of Homosexuality (special issue on biology).

  — — — . 1985. Myths of Gender. New York: Basic Books. Griffin, D. R. 1992. Animal Minds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  Gross, A. G. 1990. The Rhetoric of Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  Halpin, Z. T. 1989. Scientific Objectivity and the Concept of “ the Other. ” Women ’ s Studies International Forum 12:285 – 94.

  Harding, S., 1989. Is There a Feminist Method? In Feminism and Science , ed. N. Tuana, 17 – 32. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.

  — — — . 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women ’ s Lives. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.

  Haraway, D. 1989a. Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science. London: Routledge.

  — — — . 1989b. Monkeys, Aliens, and Women: Love, Science and Politics at the Intersection of Feminist Theory and Colonial Discourse. Women ’ s Studies International Forum 12:295 – 312.

  — — — . 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature . London: Free Association Books.

  Henshaw, D. 1989. Animal Warfare: The Story of the Animal Liberation Front. London: Fontana.

  Hubbard, R. 1990. The Politics of Women ’ s Biology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

  Jasper, J., and D. Nelkin. 1992. The Animal Rights Crusade. New York: Free Press.

  Keller, E. F. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.

  Longino, H. 1989. Can There Be a Feminist Science? In Feminism and Science , ed. N. Tuana, 45 – 57. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  Lynch, M. E. 1988. Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object: Laboratory Culture and Ritual Practice in the Neurosciences. Social Studies of Science 18:265 – 89.

  McGaughey, C. A., H. V. Thompson, and D. Chitty. 1947. The Norway Rat. In The UFAW Handbook on the Care and Management of Laboratory Animals , Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, ed. A. N. Worden. London: Bailliere Tindall.